Before I get into what's broken, a question worth sitting with: why are you reading this? If you already use Freedom, something about it isn't working. And the reason probably isn't the feature list. It's the moment where you feel stuck on a task, your brain reaches for relief, and the tool that was supposed to stop you either fails or gets in the way of something you actually need. That tension between wanting to focus and wanting to escape is the real problem. The tool is just where it surfaces.
The first week is great. You set up your blocklist, start a session, and it feels like progress. You open Twitter out of habit, Freedom catches it, and you feel a small hit of self-control. This works. I can do this.
Then the cracks show up.
Day four, I needed to check a Loom video someone sent me. Loom was on my blocklist because I'd blocked all video platforms. Freedom has no way to say "this specific video is fine, let it through." It's all or nothing. The entire domain is blocked or it isn't. So I ended the session, watched the two-minute video, and then had to manually restart my block.
Day six, Freedom's Chrome extension just stopped working. No error message, no notification. I opened Reddit, it loaded normally, and I lost twenty minutes before I realized my session wasn't active. The extension had silently disconnected.
Day ten, I tried to block the Messages app on Mac. Freedom said it was blocked. Messages opened anyway. The block was cosmetic.
This is where Freedom falls apart for a lot of people. Users are writing about this constantly.
"It didn't restrict me from accessing the website... With a simple click of a button I can cancel the session."
Naomi Browne, Trustpilot (1 star)
That's without Locked Mode. Freedom charges you for the tool and then doesn't lock sessions by default. The default experience is one where you can bail out whenever you want.
"All I needed to do was log into safe mode and take away its permission to block things."
Beth, Trustpilot (2 stars)
"It just doesn't work... it's clunky and slow. I can get past it with ease."
Because Reasons, Trustpilot (2 stars)
"Protection will sometimes randomly cease to work."
81.Lich.18, App Store (4 stars. When your fans are hedging, that's a problem.)
The result is a focus tool that works most of the time. And "most of the time" is exactly the wrong reliability threshold. You don't need enforcement when you're in flow. You need it in the exact moment your resolve breaks. If Freedom is down for thirty seconds at that moment, you're on Twitter. Game over.
Even when Freedom's blocking works perfectly, there's a deeper issue: the blocklist model itself.
Freedom needs you to predict, in advance, every website and app that might pull you off task. You build a list. You maintain that list. The moment something new appears that isn't on it, Freedom lets it through without question.
But that's not how most people get pulled off task in 2026. The real problem is context. YouTube is a tutorial one hour and a rabbit hole the next. Notion is your project management tool during deep work and a doom-scrolling machine when you're avoiding the hard thing.
"It seems to work randomly... doesn't block most of the websites that I want it to block."
Ike Myung, Trustpilot (2 stars)
Maintaining a blocklist becomes a second job. And every time you sit down to update it, you're spending cognitive energy on meta-work instead of the actual work you're trying to protect.
"Good tool, but even after paying for the full version I constantly have to remove their ads which suggest I gift it to someone. Give it a rest please. Super distracting and against the purpose of this tool."
Per Larsen, Trustpilot (2 stars)
A focus tool that is itself distracting. A product you pay for that still nags you with promotional pop-ups about gifting it to friends. Inside the app whose sole purpose is to eliminate interruptions.
"Blocking the entire internet when attempting to block only Twitter... paralyzed iPhone twice."
ZanyButterflier, App Store (1 star)
VPN-based blocking is a blunt instrument. When it works, it works. When it fails, it tends to fail spectacularly, because you're routing all of your device's internet traffic through a third-party server.
"Very clunky and unreliable both on Windows and Android. Bad UX on both."
Axl Andersson, Trustpilot (3 stars)
Freedom's strength is supposed to be cross-platform coverage. But if the experience on half of those platforms is clunky and unreliable, you're getting inconsistent enforcement across devices, which might be worse than having a tool that's excellent on one platform.
The real issue is the lack of a free tier. Focus tools have a trust problem. You need to use one for at least a few weeks to know if it actually changes your behaviour. Seven sessions isn't enough. You're making a purchasing decision before you know whether the product works for you.
I built Hugo because the blocklist model is fundamentally backwards. It asks you to predict the future, and when you're wrong (which is constantly), the tool fails.
Hugo works differently. You tell it what you're working on. Hugo's AI evaluates every new tab and app against that goal in real time. Same website, different context, different outcome. No blocklist needed.
When Hugo catches something off-task, it asks you to justify why you need it. That moment of having to articulate "I need Instagram to finish my investor update" is usually enough to break the autopilot.
Free tier: 2 sessions/day, 45 min each. Pro: $12/mo or $99/yr.
I'm biased. I built it. But I also paid for Freedom, used it for three months, and switched. The free tier costs nothing, which is more than Freedom offers.
Download Hugo for freeFreedom is a legacy product with a large user base and a core feature, cross-platform sync, that nobody else has matched. That feature alone justifies its existence.
But everything else about Freedom is stuck in 2015. Static blocklists. Unreliable enforcement. Paying customers getting nagged with gift promotions inside the app. No free tier. An approach to focus that requires you to predict your distractions before they happen, every single time.
3.5 million users can't all be wrong. But they can all be using a tool that was best-in-class a decade ago and hasn't kept up. If you need cross-platform, Freedom is still your best bet. For everything else, the category has moved on.
Freedom can't tell the difference.
Between a YouTube tutorial and a YouTube rabbit hole. Hugo can. AI-powered, context-aware, Mac-native.
AI-Powered Focus
Hugo sits between you and distraction. It hides your apps, locks down your browser, and uses AI to silently decide if what you're opening is actually work - so you never have to burn willpower again.