The Best Breakup Apps in 2026, Compared Honestly

Quick answer: Pick by the shape of help you want. For a fixed program, Detach90 is 90 days for one $19.99 payment. For something that answers at 3am, No Contact AI and Breakup Buddy put a chatbot in front of you; Let it Go and Stumble put people. For counting days with nothing leaving your phone, ours is below with its price printed. Two apps the other lists still name — Mend and Rx Breakup — cannot be installed at all. The rest of what actually helps is not an app.

Every price, platform and feature below was read off that app's own App Store or Google Play listing on 21 August 2026. No star scores, no download counts, no rankings: those get invented constantly in this category, and none of them measures whether an app got anybody through a night.

We make one of the apps here. Its section says so, and it is held to the same three questions as the rest.

Two things surprised us while checking. The first is that the most-recommended breakup app in the world stopped existing in March 2024 and is still being recommended. The second is that the two lists ranking highest for this search were both written by an app that appears on them, in first place.

Which breakup app is best for what

There is no best one, only a best one for a job. Name the job first. Do you want a program with a start and an end, a voice at 3am, other people who are in it too, or a counter that keeps score of your days and asks nothing of you? Each of those is a different app, and the wrong one feels useless within a week.

• A structured program: Detach90 — 90 days of daily lessons and missions for one $19.99 payment, on iPhone and Android.
• Something that answers back: No Contact AI or Breakup Buddy. Both are chat-first, both keep a memory of what you told them, and both send your words to a server to do it.
• Other people: Let it Go has a community and sells chat sessions with human coaches. Stumble is a moderated community sorted by how far along you are, and it needs a very recent Apple device.
• Humour instead of therapy: Break-Up Boss, $2.99 once, no subscription — but nothing about it has changed since 2017.
• Counting days privately: Ghosted, ours, on Android for now. Compare it against the trackers in no contact apps, compared honestly, which covers that narrower field in full.

The best breakup apps, compared

Everything in this table came from the store listing, not from the app's marketing site. Where a listing gives a price range it is because the developer has configured that many different prices — ordinary practice in this category, and worth knowing it is happening to you at your least skeptical. Two rows are apps that no longer exist, kept because other lists still recommend them.

What each app actually is

Six apps you can install today, in the order of how much they ask of you. Read each one for the shape of the help rather than the feature count — a chatbot, a forum and a 90-day syllabus are three different products, and the only wrong choice is the one that does not match the hour you keep failing at.

No Contact AI

The most visible app on this search, and the one whose own website ranks it first. Underneath the marketing it is a competent no-contact tracker: a live day counter, lock screen widgets, a vault for unsent letters, and forty AI-guided exercises, built around a coach you can message. Its listing carries ten separate in-app purchases, from $3.99 to $69.99, which is what price testing looks like from outside. Its App Privacy card reports contact info, user content, identifiers, purchases and usage data, all linked to you, and used for advertising as well as app function.

Breakup Buddy

Chat first, everything else second. The listing describes a companion available around the clock with a long-term memory of your situation, CBT-shaped exercises, journaling with analytics, and a feed where people share links. Purchases are listed at $17.99 and $42.99, with $7.99 for extra tokens — a token model, so the thing you are buying is more conversation. iPhone only, iOS 17 or later; we found no Google Play listing. Its privacy card reports an email address, a user ID, usage data and crash data.

Let it Go

The one with actual humans in it. Alongside the streak tracker, journal and daily affirmations sit a community forum and paid sessions with people the app calls healers: $49.99 for six chats, $79.99 for ten, on top of subscriptions from $9.99 a month to $69.00 a year. Its listing also promises AI coaching as coming soon. On both stores. A forum at 2am answers a loneliness no software touches — and it means an account, other people's crises in your evening, and your business written somewhere others can read it.

Stumble

The newest thing here, and the most ambitious: a moderated community sorted into stages, avatar-first profiles, private journaling, daily mood check-ins, a support button, and what the listing calls AI-guided companions you can message anytime. Free, with Stumble Plus at $29.99. Two practical notes. It needs iOS 26.1 or later, so an older phone cannot run it, and its site links only to Apple. Its privacy card says the developer collects no data — read that against a product built on a community and a chat companion, both of which move your words off the phone.

Detach90

The cleanest deal in the category: one payment of $19.99, no subscription, on both stores. What you get is a 90-day path — daily lessons and missions, relief tools for the moment you want to text them, a no-contact tracker, a private journal. If a fixed program suits you better than an open-ended app, this is the one to try first. One caveat: the description says entries are kept on the device with no account, while the App Privacy card lists an email address, a user ID and product-interaction data. Both statements are on the same page.

Break-Up Boss

The oldest app on the list and the funniest — a mood wheel that hands you advice in the voice of a blunt friend, a screen for texting your ex where nothing sends, and daily pep talks. It costs $2.99 once. It also has not been updated since April 2017, its developer has never filled in Apple's privacy card, and the Google Play link on its own site now leads nowhere. Charming, cheap, frozen. Buy it for the writing, not for a tracker.

The apps you cannot install any more

Both of the roundups that rank highest for this search still recommend an app that is gone. That is the clearest sign of how little of this category gets maintained: nobody checked, because checking is work and a list only has to look complete. Two dead apps below, both still named in 2026, and one live app whose Android half has quietly disappeared.

Mend

Mend is the app the press coverage of this whole category was built on — Apple's Best of 2018, the New York Times, a real program with audio lessons and a days-since counter. Its makers announced on 29 February 2024 that they would sunset it on 31 March 2024. The classes platform that replaced it now says it is offline too. What remains is a blog, two podcasts and an ebook. Stumble's roundup, published in April 2026, still lists Mend as best for structured programs.

Rx Breakup

A 30-day, one-task-a-day program from 2015, written in the voice of a candid friend, and widely covered when it launched. Its Google Play listing returns a 404 in every country we checked, and a search of the US, UK and Australian App Stores returns nothing by that name. As far as we can tell it cannot be installed. No Contact AI's roundup, which ranks itself first, still lists Rx Breakup at number five.

Break-Up Boss on Android

The iPhone version is alive and still sells for $2.99. The Android version is not: the Google Play link printed on the app's own site returns a 404, in Australia and everywhere else we tried. If you read a list that says Break-Up Boss is on Android, that list has not been checked since about 2018.

Who wrote the list you are reading

Check the byline before you check the ranking, on this page too. Of the pages competing for this search, the two strongest are published by apps that appear in their own rankings — and both put themselves at the top. That is not fraud, and both apps are real. It does mean the order was decided by the same people who get paid when you tap install.

No Contact AI's comparison opens by naming No Contact AI the best breakup app in 2026 and heads its first entry with a number one. Stumble's list marks Stumble as its top pick, is written by Stumble's founder, and fills the rest with Headspace, Calm and a journaling app — meditation and journaling are both fine, but an app that is not about breakups is padding, not a recommendation.

Our disclosure is the same shape: Ghosted is ours, it is below, and it is described with its costs attached. What we can offer instead of neutrality is a method you can repeat. Every fact here has a store listing behind it, the sources are listed at the bottom, and the date we checked is printed at the top. Where we could not verify something, it is not in the table.

What to check in the first two minutes

Three questions, worth more than any ranking. They take about two minutes on the store page, before you have typed anything raw into an app, and they are the same three we invite you to run on ours. Nobody is running controlled trials in this category, so the differences that matter are structural: where your writing goes, what the app does at 1am, and how many prices it has.

Where does your writing live? Read the App Privacy card, not the marketing page. An app that requires an account has a server, and a server holds a copy of your worst week that outlives your interest in the app. Some listings here report no data collected at all; others list contact info, user content and identifiers linked to you.

What happens at 1am? The whole product is about ten minutes. Look for one tap from anywhere to something that helps — a timer, a page to write on, the reasons you wrote down when you were sure. Four taps and a scroll deep is not reachable on the night it was built for. The 1am urge to text your ex covers what that hour is made of, and the urge timer is the browser version of the ten minutes.

How many prices are there? The store lists every purchase a developer has configured. One price is a decision; ten prices is an experiment being run on you. Weekly plans are the tell — a $7.99 week is $415 a year. And never buy on a screen that appeared before you had used anything.

Ghosted, disclosed

Ours, so weigh this accordingly. Here is the architecture as fact rather than pitch. There is no account and no server of ours, so there is no second copy: the day count, the check-ins, the letters and the reasons you wrote down sit in a database on the phone. It all works in airplane mode. There is no AI in it — no chatbot, no coach, no model reading your journal.

One thing does leave, and our privacy policy says so: crash reports and a count of which ordinary screens get opened. They carry no content — not a line of your journal, not a letter, not a mood, not the day count — and the panic room, the letters drawer and the check-in report nothing at all, not even that you opened them. The privacy policy lists it item by item.

The price, printed like everyone else's: free to download, with the core — day counter, panic room, daily check-ins, crisis resources, a full export of your own data — free and staying free. Pro is optional and adds unlimited letters and full history. The Play listing shows in-app purchases from $9.99 to $69.99. There is never a trial, never a countdown, and never an offer that expires.

Now the costs, which are the same decisions seen from the other side. Ghosted is on Android today and the iPhone version is not out yet, so if you are on an iPhone tonight, one of the apps above is your answer and not ours. There is nobody to talk to inside it — no forum, no coach, no human on the other end. And there is no cloud backup, so a lost phone with no export takes the history with it.

How Ghosted helps

Ghosted counts the days since your last contact and marks the ones worth marking, without scoring you or shaming a reset. The panic button puts something between your thumb and their thread, and the letters drawer keeps what you wrote and did not send. It runs entirely on your phone — the app you open at 1am instead of their chat. If tonight is the first night, the first 24 hours is the shorter list.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best breakup app?

There is no single best one, and every list that names one was written by somebody with a stake in the answer, this one included. Decide by the job: Detach90 for a fixed 90-day program at one price, No Contact AI or Breakup Buddy for something that answers, Let it Go or Stumble for other people, a private tracker for counting days. Match the app to the hour you keep failing at.

Do breakup apps actually work?

No breakup app has been through a controlled trial, so nobody can honestly claim one works. What the research supports is the behaviour underneath. A 28-day diary study found that contact with an ex slowed the decline of both love and sadness, and a survey of 464 people found that checking an ex's profile went with more distress and less personal growth. An app makes that behaviour visible and slightly harder to break. That is the honest claim.

Are breakup apps free?

Most are free to download with a subscription inside, and the free tier is usually a day counter plus a taste of everything else. Two exceptions are worth knowing: Detach90 sells full access for a single $19.99 payment, and Break-Up Boss costs $2.99 once. Weekly plans are the ones to avoid on the first night — at $7.99 a week you are paying more than $400 a year.

Is the Mend app still available?

No. Mend announced on 29 February 2024 that it would sunset the app on 31 March 2024, and the classes platform that replaced it has since gone offline too. Its blog, ebook and podcasts are still up. Any 2026 list recommending the Mend app has not checked its own recommendations — which is a fair test to apply to the rest of that list.

Are breakup apps private?

It varies more than you would expect, and the answer is on the store page rather than the marketing site. Some listings in this category report that the developer collects no data at all. Others list contact info, user content, identifiers and usage data linked to you and used for advertising. Read the privacy card, and check whether the app made you sign up: the ones that never ask who you are cannot lose what they never had.

What is the difference between a breakup app and a no contact app?

Overlap, mostly, with a difference of emphasis. A no contact app is built around one number — the days since you last spoke — with tools attached for the moment that number is at risk. A breakup app is the wider category: programs, journals, communities, coaching, meditation. If the day count is the thing you want held, no contact apps compared honestly covers that field on its own.

Should I use an AI breakup coach?

Some people find one genuinely useful at 3am, when no friend is awake. The argument against is about shape rather than quality: a bot that always replies rewards the exact impulse you are trying to sit out, it will agree with you for six hours, and your words leave the phone to reach it. We built things that end instead — a timer that runs out, a letter that burns, a note read back at the bad moment.