Alarmy vs Beyond Alarm: feature-by-feature comparison, 2026

Both apps make you finish a mission to stop the alarm, and both run on Android and iPhone. Alarmy has far more years and users behind it; the newer one adds camera-counted exercise and blocks your apps once you are up.

The short version:

• Same core: a mission, not a tap, dismisses the alarm in both.
• Alarmy wins on track record — 50M+ downloads and many more years of fixes.
• Beyond Alarm adds app blocking after the alarm, which Alarmy does not offer.
• Neither tracks sleep. Sleep as Android does that properly.
• If Alarmy already wakes you, stay. Switch for the blocking or the exercise missions, not for a new icon.

Here it is feature by feature, dated and sourced rather than asserted.

Side by side

What the table doesn't show

Alarmy's missions ask you to prove something; Beyond Alarm's exercise missions count it. A photo mission or barcode scan proves you walked somewhere and did something once. Camera-counted reps track the motion continuously — though "unfakeable" is a claim worth being skeptical of for any camera mission, including these.

Alarmy has no answer for the hour after the alarm. This is the one category-level gap, not a feature Alarmy happens to be missing this version — checking every major Play listing in this space, none of the established alarm apps mention blocking other apps at all. Beyond Alarm's Morning Lockout is built specifically to close that gap, starting the moment the mission finishes rather than at a clock time you guessed the night before — the reasoning for why "clock time" and "mission finished" drift apart is worked through here.

Alarmy's track record is real and worth weighting. Fifteen years across however many Android and iOS releases is a genuine reliability signal a newer app cannot claim yet, however carefully it's engineered. That's not false modesty — it's the honest state of two different products at two different ages.

Beyond Alarm

Beyond Alarm does this part for you: the alarm will not switch off until you have actually moved, and the apps you pick stay locked afterwards.

Reading the mission lists side by side

Alarmy's mission set leans on variety and proof-of-action: maths, a photo, scanning a barcode or QR code placed somewhere specific, a shake, and more — each one a single check that you did something once. Beyond Alarm's set overlaps on maths, barcode/QR, photo and memory, then adds three missions built around continuous tracked motion rather than a single check: push-ups, squats and jumping jacks, counted rep by rep by on-device pose detection rather than verified by a photo. Neither approach is strictly better — a photo mission is faster for someone who just needs to prove they stood up; a counted-rep mission is harder to complete without genuinely being awake and moving for the length of the set.

Which one to actually pick

If you already use Alarmy and it wakes you up reliably, the honest advice is to stay — a change of icon alone has never gotten anyone out of bed, and fifteen years of edge-case fixes is worth something. Switch if either is true: the mission variety you want (specifically camera-counted exercise) is behind Alarmy's paywall, or the alarm works and the morning still disappears into your phone afterwards — that second one is a different problem than waking up, and no version of Alarmy is built to solve it.

What neither app does

Being complete about it: neither is a sleep tracker (no sonar, no snore detection, no sleep score), and neither offers network-wide website filtering independent of app blocking. If either is the thing you're looking for, a dedicated app for that job is the right answer.

The power button is a partial exception. On Android, Beyond Alarm has an optional Prevent power-off setting that closes the power menu while an alarm rings, and an alarm interrupted by a restart rings again afterwards — but no non-rooted Android app can stop a forced hardware shutdown. On iPhone, no third-party app can touch the power controls at all.

On iPhone specifically

Both apps are on the App Store, and the core is the same: missions to stop the alarm. The differences on iPhone sit around that core. Beyond Alarm's iPhone alarms run on Apple's AlarmKit, and its Morning Lockout uses Screen Time — which blocks the apps you choose, shares one list across every alarm, and has no whole-phone option. Its Wake-up Check, the re-ring a few minutes after you dismiss, is Android-only for now. Alarmy's iPhone feature set may differ from its Android one; check its App Store listing rather than assuming parity.

Sources

Alarmy's download count, rating, mission list and pricing structure checked against its Google Play listing on 31 August 2026. Alarmy's feature claims come from its own Play description on the same date; Beyond Alarm's were re-checked against the app itself, including the iPhone build, on 21 October 2026. Re-check before relying on any number here, since listings change over time.

• Alarmy · Beyond Alarm