Alarmy vs Beyond Alarm — a straight, feature-by-feature comparison

Both apps solve the same core problem the same way — a mission, not a tap, to dismiss the alarm. Where they actually differ is everything around that core, so 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), neither offers network-wide website filtering independent of app blocking, and neither claims to block the power button — that's a platform-level restriction on Android for any non-rooted app, and Apple's equivalent restriction on iOS means no third-party app can override the phone's own lock/power controls there either. If any of those three is the actual thing you're looking for, the right answer is a dedicated app for that specific job rather than either of these two, however the rest of the comparison shakes out.

Sources

Alarmy's download count, rating, mission list and pricing structure checked against its Google Play listing on 31 August 2026. Feature claims for both apps are drawn from their own Play descriptions on the same date; re-check before relying on any number here, since both listings change over time.

• Alarmy · Beyond Alarm