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Sparky vs LockedIn: What a Habit Is Worth in Minutes

October 10, 2026

I build Sparky, so weigh this with that in mind. The short answer: LockedIn and Sparky run the same trade, habits in and screen time out, but only Sparky publishes the exchange rate. LockedIn’s App Store listing says you earn coins and spend them on a timer. It never says what a habit pays. Pick LockedIn if you want a camera to count some of your reps. Pick Sparky if you want to know the price of every habit before you start.

This post covers LockedIn: Earn Screen Time (App Store id 6747677872), sold by Jonathan Scholl. Check the id before you install, because the name is crowded. Apple’s App Store search API returned 15 apps with “LockedIn” in the name on 4 October 2026. An older app called LockedIn: Screen Time Control (id 6466096636) no longer resolves in the US store at all.

What do LockedIn and Sparky have in common?

Both apps lock the apps you choose through Apple’s Screen Time framework and give time back when you finish habits. Both are free to download, with paid upgrades. Both list one person as the seller. And both are small: LockedIn shows 4.54 stars from 125 ratings, and Sparky shows no ratings at all, checked 4 October 2026.

The differences you can see before installing are size and reach. LockedIn is 121.3 MB, English only, and runs on iOS 18.0 or later. Sparky is 59.9 MB and needs iOS 26.0. That floor is a real cost: an iPhone that stays on iOS 18 can run LockedIn and cannot run Sparky.

Apple’s own Screen Time does the locking half for free. If a plain daily limit holds you, you need neither app. Most people land in this category because “Ignore Limit” costs one tap. Both apps sit in a field of earn-your-time apps that we track in the earned screen time guide.

How many minutes does a habit earn in Sparky?

In Sparky 1.6, one Energy is one minute of app time, and every habit pays a fixed amount per check-in. A glass of water pays 1 Energy. Breathe pays 3. Move, Focus, Read or Learn, Brush Teeth and Skin Care Routine pay 5 each. Sleep Wind Down pays 10. No default habit pays more than 10 Energy a day.

Those numbers come from the code of version 1.6, the App Store build on 4 October 2026 (build 30, commit bc5163bc), in HabitSeedService.swift and HabitEconomyModels.swift. Each default habit has a daily cap of 10 Energy. A check-in pays that cap divided by the check-ins allowed, rounded down to a whole number. The rounding shows:

• Drink Water allows 8 check-ins at 1 Energy, so it tops out at 8 a day.
• Breathe allows 3 check-ins at 3 Energy, so it tops out at 9.
• The five habits with 2 check-ins pay 5 each and reach the full 10.
• Sleep Wind Down pays its 10 in a single check-in.
• A habit you create yourself starts with a daily cap of 5.

Two bonuses sit on top. Spark Surge picks one habit at random each day and doubles its pay and its cap, so a default habit can earn 20. A Perfect Day means every habit scheduled that day is done, with at least three on the list, and it adds 1 Energy per habit: never less than 3, never more than 5. Then a daily earn cap closes the whole day. Setup offers 60, 120 or 240 Energy. On Pro, a Settings slider moves it anywhere from 30 to 480. On the free tier, the setup pick stays.

Here is a full day with five default habits that pay 10 each. One of them surges. Finish everything and the day pays 4 × 10, plus 20 for the surged habit, plus a 5 Energy Perfect Day bonus. That is 65 Energy, a little over an hour. On the 60 cap, the day stops at 60.

Spending runs the same ledger in reverse. A Sparky session lasts at most 60 minutes (AccessBankService.swift). Stop early and the unused minutes go back to your bank for later. Pro adds one 5-minute top-up per session. It opens only in the last 2 minutes, and you pay for it in Energy, not money.

What does a habit earn in LockedIn?

LockedIn does not say. Its App Store listing tells you to “Earn coins by completing your habits throughout the day” and “Spend coins to unlock screen time using the built-in timer.” Its website calls the same currency points. On 4 October 2026, neither page gave a coin price for any habit or a coin cost for a minute.

The listing does name “Custom habits with rewards” as a feature, without saying what a reward is worth. What LockedIn documents well is checking. Its version 2.0 notes, dated 2 April 2026, add two things. One is “Apple Health integration to automatically track your daily steps.” The other is “Camera-based push-up verification to ensure every rep counts.” Version 2.1, on 20 May 2026, says “New and improved verification AI.”

That is real ground LockedIn holds over Sparky. Some LockedIn habits get checked by a sensor or a camera. Sparky checks none, and every check-in is a tap on your word. (Whether checking is worth the friction gets its own post, Sparky vs Habit Doom.) As of 4 October 2026, version 2.1 was still LockedIn’s current release, 137 days after it shipped.

Should you be able to change the exchange rate?

Sparky lets you, and I count that as a weakness. In version 1.6, a habit’s daily cap goes anywhere from 1 to 120 Energy, and changing it is free, not a Pro perk. Set Drink Water to 120 and each of its 8 glasses pays 15 minutes. The only brake left is the daily cap you chose.

Another earn app makes the opposite case in plain words. DoomIt’s App Store listing says its rates are built in, then adds: “An exchange rate you can adjust yourself isn’t one.” That is a fair hit on Sparky. A rate you can move is a rate you can move at 11 p.m., when you want TikTok and the habit list looks long.

We allow it anyway, for one reason. A glass of water and a 5 km run should not cost the same for everyone, and only you know which habits are hard for you. What we can do is keep the inflation visible: the cap sits on each habit’s edit screen as a plain number. If you know you would raise it on a bad night, a fixed-rate app suits you better than Sparky. LockedIn sits in a third place. Its rate is unpublished, so from outside you cannot tell whether it is fixed or yours to change.

One caution about this whole argument. The strongest evidence in this category is about the pause, not the price. In the PNAS study of the one sec app, 280 people over 6 weeks closed the target app on 36% of their attempts after one sec interrupted them. A second experiment in the same paper found that the option to back out did more than the waiting time. Co-author Frederik Riedel is the originator of one sec, as the paper discloses. Neither LockedIn nor Sparky has published outcome data on its currency, and our evidence write-up says the same of the whole category.

What does LockedIn cost compared with Sparky?

On 4 October 2026, LockedIn’s listing showed five in-app purchases and no billing periods: LockedIn Premium at $6.99, “Lockedin Premium Discount” at $24.99, LockedIn Premium at $29.99, “Premium Plan” at $49.99 and “Lifetime Access” at $44.99. Sparky’s listing shows $8.99 a month, $59.99 a year and $129.99 for lifetime.

Two things follow. LockedIn’s listing does not tell you which of its other prices renew, so you find out at the paywall. And Sparky’s lifetime price is nearly three times LockedIn’s. If you like to pay once and be done, LockedIn is the cheaper app by a wide margin.

Sparky’s free tier holds five active habits and never expires. Pro lifts the five-habit limit. LockedIn does not describe its free tier on the listing or the site. Both privacy labels declare data used to track you. LockedIn’s lists Purchases and Usage Data. Sparky’s lists those two plus Identifiers.

Which one should you pick?

Pick by how much you trust yourself with a price tag. LockedIn suits you if a camera counting push-ups keeps you honest and you can start without knowing what a habit pays. Sparky suits you if you want every rate printed, unused minutes banked, and the freedom to set your own prices, knowing you might abuse it.

Pick LockedIn for camera-checked push-ups and a cheap lifetime price. Its pixel-art style is something Sparky does not offer, and its iOS 18.0 floor reaches phones ours cannot. Before you rely on its exchange rate, find out what it is inside the app, because the listing will not tell you.

Pick Sparky if you want the price list before you start: 1 Energy for a glass of water, 10 for a wind-down routine, 60 minutes at most per session, and every unused minute returned. You will also be trusted to leave those numbers alone, which is the feature or the flaw, depending on you.

Sparky turns small habits into screen time you earn. Download it free on the App Store.