An alarm app has one job, and it does it at the worst moment of your day. You are half awake, the room is dark, and the phone is shouting at you. That is exactly where the biggest alarm apps put their ads.
What free usually costs
Open a popular free alarm app and count. A banner under the tab bar. A promo card on top of your alarm list. And on the ringing screen itself, a banner ad, sitting right next to the button you need to press to make the noise stop.
That is not an accident. Ads pay per impression, and nothing gets more impressions than a screen you are forced to look at every single morning. The worse your morning, the better the ad slot.
We think that is backwards. The ringing screen belongs to you.
The pledge
WakeRule will never show ads. Not a banner, not a video before your mission, not a "sponsored" mission, not a promo card on your alarm list.
This is not a setting, a paid tier or a launch promotion. There is no advertising code in the app to switch on later:
- No ad network SDK.
- No advertising identifier read or sent.
- No analytics or attribution SDK tracking you for someone else.
If that ever changes, this post will still be here, and you can hold it against us.
So how do we pay for it?
The simple way. Everything your phone can check on its own is free, because it costs us nothing to run. The AI missions, where a camera and a model watch you do something you described in your own words, cost real money per minute. Those run on credits you buy once. You pay for what costs us money, and nothing else.
What you get, free
The free tier is not a trial with the good parts locked away:
- Math, Typing, Shake, Colour tiles, Scan a code. The classics.
- Item hunt. Find a cup, a toothbrush, a towel, and show it to the camera. Other apps put this behind a subscription. Ours runs on your phone, so it is free.
- Steps. Walk it off. Also free here.
- Photo and Shout. Match a spot you photographed at setup, or be loud for a few seconds.
- Six exercises. Out of bed, jumping jacks, squats, push-ups, touching your toes, standing on one leg, counted on your phone.
- Up to five missions per alarm. Chain them in any order. The alarm stops only after the last one.
The exercises and chaining are out now. Here is what they do.
And the thing nobody else has
Type anything. "Hold a plank for 30 seconds." "The first taekwondo poomsae." "20 kettlebell swings, driven from the hips." Every other alarm app gives you a list of presets. WakeRule gives you a keyboard.
No ads, no snooze, no mercy. Just you, awake.