I'm making a pay-once interval timer because every other one wants a subscription

2026-08-17T00:00:00Z

I'm making a pay-once interval timer because every other one wants a subscription

Bout is still in development and is not yet available. It is planned for iOS and Android at $4.99 once.

I wanted a Tabata timer. That's it. Twenty seconds of work, ten seconds of rest, times eight, with a bell so I didn't have to look at my phone. This is not a complicated piece of software — a decent developer could build the core of it in an afternoon.

So I went looking, and here's what's actually on offer: a market leader charging $9.99 a month for a countdown timer. A competitor with a free tier that works fine right up until you want to edit a timer, at which point it locks behind a $1.99/month-or-$12.49/year paywall — with a $35.99 "lifetime" option buried three screens deep for people who go looking for it. A boxing-specific timer asking $4.99 a week. A week. For a bell that rings every three minutes.

There's one genuine pay-once option in the category — Seconds, at $7.99 to unlock custom timers past your first save — and credit where due, it's a real alternative. But it's iOS-only, and $7.99 gets you a single platform.

None of this is because interval timers got harder to build. It's because subscriptions convert better than one-time purchases, so the entire category pointed itself at recurring revenue instead of at being a good timer.

Bout will be the other thing. $4.99, once, on iOS and Android both. You will be able to build any work/rest pattern you want — HIIT, Tabata, boxing rounds, EMOM, fully custom circuits — or start from a bundled preset. It will run with the screen off, announce phases out loud, duck your music instead of killing it, and have a full-screen color-coded display you can actually read across a gym floor, sweat and all. "Hey Siri, start Tabata" will get you into a timer without touching a screen. There's a colorblind-safe palette option because red/green as the only signal is bad design, not just bad luck.

No account. No network permission — the app will not be able to phone home, because it will never ask for the permission to. No ads. No "Bout Premium" waiting in a future update to relock something you already paid for.

If you're tired of paying rent on a kitchen timer with extra steps, Bout is being built for you.

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