Drylendar Alternative: SoberBear vs Drylendar

What Drylendar does

Drylendar is a calendar. You open it, tap a day, log what you drank, and the grid fills in. Green means a day with no drinks, and the stated goal is simply to see more green over time.

Around that it adds notes, friends who are on the same path, Apple Health sync, an end-of-year recap, streaks, Lock Screen and Dynamic Island tracking, and — as of the release the day before we checked — full VoiceOver and Voice Control support, which is more accessibility work than most apps in this category have done.

It holds 4.3 stars from about 150 US ratings, which is a small sample. Its pricing is unusual and worth knowing about: $4.99 a month, $34.99 a year, or $59.99 once, for life. Nobody else here offers that.

One thing to check before you install: it requires iOS 18. That is a higher bar than any other app on these pages.

Where SoberBear is different

The two apps disagree about what you should be looking at.

Drylendar shows a record of your drinking. That is the right instrument for moderation, because moderation needs a per-day number to compare against. SoberBear has no drink log at all: it counts the days you drank nothing, and turns each one into hours of life expectancy, money against a savings goal, and a body timeline for what is changing in you at that point.

The practical difference shows up around week three. On a calendar, a day you did not drink still needs an entry. If you have stopped rather than cut down, that entry is a zero, and logging zeroes is a habit almost nobody keeps. A day counter has nothing to enter — it just keeps counting.

If you are moderating, this argument runs the other way and Drylendar wins it.

Where Drylendar is better

You can buy it once. $59.99 for life against a recurring subscription is a genuine advantage, and for anyone tired of subscriptions it may be the only fact that matters.

It syncs with Apple Health. SoberBear does not.

It logs what you actually drank. If you want to know that you had four on Friday and two on Saturday, SoberBear cannot tell you.

Friends, Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. None of which we have.

Which one

Take Drylendar if you are cutting down, if you want the calendar as a record, if Apple Health matters, or if you would rather pay once.

Take SoberBear if you have stopped and want the days counted for you rather than entered by you — and if you want each of those days shown as something you got back.

A note on ratings: Drylendar has around 150 of them. That is not a criticism, it is a young app moving quickly. It does mean you are relying on less evidence than with the older apps in this category.

What neither app is

Neither is treatment. If you drink heavily every day, stopping suddenly can cause seizures and, rarely, a life-threatening delirium tremens. Speak to a doctor before you stop — you may need medication to do it safely.