Free tiers and subscriptions
Free quit smoking apps, and the ones without a subscription
You hit a paywall mid-quit and you don't want to pay a monthly fee to stop smoking. Fair. Here is what's actually free, and where the free part usually stops.
Written by Lee H. Last reviewed 13 September 2026.
The conflict of interest first: I'm building The Long View, a quit smoking app of my own, and this site exists to support it. That makes me a bad source for "which app should you pay for," so this page isn't that. It's the other question: if you don't want to pay anything, monthly or otherwise, what can you actually use today, and where does each app's free tier stop being generous and start being a demo. Where a free, no-strings option is the better answer, I'm going to say so, including when that answer isn't mine.
What "free" actually means here
Almost every quit smoking app has a free tier. Almost none of them are free in the same way. Some give you a genuinely complete tool and only charge for extras like coaching chat or detailed analytics. Others give you a trial of the real product and put the actual quit-preparation program behind the paywall a few steps in. Both get called "free" on the app store listing, and the difference only shows up once you've already started using one. The rest of this page is mostly about telling those two apart.
If you don't want to pay anything, at all: quitSTART
quitSTART
- iOS
- Android
Free, with no in-app purchases and nothing to upgrade to. Built by the Tobacco Control Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute, part of the US National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with the FDA, and promoted through the CDC's "Tips From Former Smokers" campaign.
This is the one to lead with, because for a reader who refuses to pay a subscription, it's a genuinely complete answer. quitSTART gives tailored tips based on your own smoking history, mood and craving tracking, distraction games, milestone badges, and a "Quit Kit" you build yourself, and none of it sits behind a paywall because there isn't one to hit. It's easy to overlook next to apps with bigger marketing budgets and slicker onboarding, but "free, complete and backed by a federal health agency" is a strong offer. For a lot of people asking this exact question, it's simply the right answer.
Free tier or free preview: apps worth knowing the difference on
Kwit is the clearest example of a free preview. Kwit's own FAQ states the quit-preparation program, the core of the app, is capped at 3 of its 9 steps in the free version, with the remaining 6 behind Premium, alongside unlimited access to your own dashboard data, statistics and logbook history, which the free tier only gives you a limited slice of. That's a real free version, and reviewers have also noted it surfaces payment screens you have to close to keep using it, so it's worth knowing you're getting a sample of the product.
Smoke Tracker sits at the other end. Its free plan includes a streak counter, a health timeline, cost savings and achievements, a full and usable tool on its own, with its paid tier adding extras like an SOS craving mode, mood tracking and a journal, and the core experience stays free. EasyQuit's free version works similarly: a usable tracker with ads, where the paid EasyQuit Pro removes them and adds a few extras (craving statistics, a relapse assistant), and the basic tool stays free. Smoke Free's free tier, likewise, covers full time-smoke-free, money-saved and craving tracking, with its Pro subscription layered on top for daily Missions and an AI Quit Coach. None of these three make you feel the paywall while you're just trying to track a quit attempt.
One-time purchase versus subscription
If a subscription specifically is the problem, a few apps in this category sell a one-time unlock. EasyQuit Pro is listed on its own app store page as a flat one-time purchase. QuitNow! PRO is the same shape: a separate app bought once, alongside the free QuitNow! app, whose own PRO upgrade is a subscription. Smoke Tracker's paid tier is offered as monthly, yearly, or lifetime, so the subscription isn't the only door in even there. Kwit and Smoke Free, by contrast, sell their paid tiers as ongoing subscriptions with no one-time option that I found. Prices on all of these move, and app stores show different numbers in different regions, so treat the shape of the deal (one-time versus recurring) as the durable fact and check the current figure yourself before deciding. There are separate guides on the three apps people most often look to replace: Smoke Free, Kwit and QuitNow!.
There is a third shape, and as far as I can find nobody else in this category offers it: a subscription that ends because you finished. It is a recurring charge you cancel once you have stopped smoking, and you keep what you paid for. That is what The Long View does, and the section below says so as disclosure.
Where The Long View fits, and why I am not scoring my own app
This one is mine, so treat what follows as disclosure. The core is free forever, on every platform: your forecast and the time you have gained or lost, daily check-ins, one photo of your reason for quitting, the recovery curve, your smoke-free day count, your full history, a shareable milestone card and the next health milestone you are heading for. Premium adds money saved, widgets, the Watch and Wear apps, export, the quit plan, the full recovery timeline and sync across devices. The Mac and Windows apps are free to download and use. The full split is on the premium page. Premium is also built to stop: after 365 smoke-free days, counted up one smoke-free day at a time, you cancel and keep everything permanently at no charge. You cancel it yourself, because neither store lets a developer do that for you, and smoking again takes nothing back. Nobody should hold off on quitting, or on picking one of the apps above, on account of anything written here by the person who built one of them.
Nobody should hold off on quitting, or on picking one of the apps above, on account of anything written here by the person who built one of them.
What's free and working today: the calculators
One thing here doesn't need installing at all. The quit smoking calculator runs the same life-expectancy math The Long View is built around, in your browser, free, with no account and no email address asked for. It won't track your daily quit the way an app does, but if what you actually want right now is the number, that answer is one page away and costs nothing.
For the fuller picture of what each app is like to actually use, along with what it costs, see the best quit smoking apps, compared honestly.
None of the apps described here, and nothing on this site, diagnoses, treats or prevents any condition, and none of it is medical advice. Talk to a doctor or a quitline about stopping smoking. In the US, that is 1-800-QUIT-NOW.
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