Try Dry Alternative: SoberBear vs Try Dry, Compared

What Try Dry does

Try Dry is the app of the Dry January campaign. It is published on the App Store by Alcohol Research UK — the charity now known as Alcohol Change UK, which created and runs Dry January.

Its listing describes a drink tracker. You log what you drink; it turns that into units, calories and money saved. You set your own goals, earn badges when you hit them, get a coaching email programme, see progress charts, and can take a quiz that scores how risky your drinking is.

It is free, it carries no ads, and it has no in-app purchases. It holds 4.7 stars from about 6,000 UK ratings, and version 1.8.18 shipped on 15 April 2026 — one of five releases in the eight months before that. This is a well-kept app, not an abandoned one.

If you want a free tracker from a charity that has run this campaign for over a decade, that is a good answer and you can stop reading here.

Where the two apps part company

They ask different questions.

Try Dry asks what did you drink. You log the drinks, and the app tells you what they cost you in units, calories and money. That is the right tool for cutting down, because cutting down needs a number to cut.

SoberBear asks what did you get back. It counts the days you did not drink, and turns each one into hours of life regained, money in a savings goal, and what your body is doing about it. There is nothing to log on a day you drank nothing, which is the point.

Neither framing is better in the abstract. They suit different jobs. If your goal is four units a week instead of twenty, counting is the job. If your goal is a streak, counting drinks means opening an app to record a zero every night, and most people stop doing that in week two.

What SoberBear has that Try Dry’s listing does not mention

Hours of life regained. A study of 600,000 drinkers put the cost of a drink at roughly 15 to 30 minutes of life expectancy. SoberBear runs that number the other way and shows you the hours you take back each week. It is an estimate, and it is labelled as one.

A body recovery timeline. What is changing inside you right now — sleep, skin, liver, mind — from day one through month three and past it, tied to the day you are actually on.

A private daily photo. Each evening’s check-in ends with a sober selfie. It stays on your device and is never shared. Over weeks it becomes the one piece of evidence that is hard to argue with.

Seventeen languages. Try Dry’s App Store page lists English only. SoberBear’s app is translated into seventeen, which matters if English is not the language you think in at 6pm on a hard day.

What Try Dry has that SoberBear does not

Being straight about this is the whole point of a page like this.

It is free. SoberBear is a subscription with a free trial. If money is the constraint, that is not a small difference, and no feature list changes it.

It tracks what you drink. SoberBear does not log units or calories. If you are moderating rather than stopping, SoberBear is the wrong shape for you.

It has a drinking risk quiz. A screening tool, free, from a charity. SoberBear has nothing like it and does not try to.

It has a coaching email programme. SoberBear sends reminders and milestones, not a course.

It is backed by an organisation, not a company. Alcohol Change UK is a charity with a public mission. We are a company selling a subscription. That is worth knowing when you decide who to trust.

What neither app is

Neither of these is treatment, and neither should be your only plan if you are physically dependent on alcohol.

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. No app on either side of this comparison replaces that.

So which one

Take Try Dry if it is free that you need, if you are cutting down rather than stopping, or if you want the official Dry January app.

Take SoberBear if you have decided to stop, and you would rather see what the decision is giving back to you than a record of what you drank.

You can also do the obvious thing: Try Dry costs nothing, so install it and find out. If, three weeks in, you find yourself opening it to log a zero, you already know which of the two you needed.