Cold Turkey Blocker is genuinely one of the best focus tools ever built. It's also $45 for the Pro features most people actually need. FocusDragon gives you a comparable enforcement model — free, Mac-native, local-only.
Cold Turkey Blocker is a mature product with years of refinement. If you're already paying for it and happy, there's no urgent reason to switch. The pitch here isn't “we're better” — it's “you can get 90% of the strictness for $0 if you're on a Mac.”
Based on Cold Turkey's official pricing page and feature docs, as of April 2026.
Both products have a free tier. Cold Turkey's free Blocker is websites-only (no app blocking, no scheduled blocks, no application password, no strong locks) — those are Pro-only at $45 one-time. FocusDragon's free tier is the full product: app blocking, scheduling, every lock type. If you specifically want Cold Turkey Pro's feature set, FocusDragon gives you most of it for $0 on Mac. If you want Cold Turkey Writer or Micromanager (their two other products), those are separate paid tools with no FocusDragon equivalent.
Cold Turkey ships on both Windows and macOS. On Mac it installs a system extension and requests Full Disk Access — solid enforcement, but a heavier footprint that doesn't feel entirely native. FocusDragon is written in Swift and SwiftUI, uses launchd for daemon management, and installs at ~6 MB. Light, fast, battery-friendly. Tradeoff: you lose Windows support. If you're dual-platform, Cold Turkey is still your pick.
Cold Turkey has timer, scheduled, time-range, password, and Frozen Turkey locks. FocusDragon has all of those equivalents plus restart-count — requires N real system reboots before the lock releases. It's a specific tool for cool-off periods: 'block sportsbooks for 5 full reboots' is enough friction to outlast most cravings. Combined with Cold Turkey-style random-text unlock, it's a pairing Cold Turkey doesn't offer.
Both products store data locally — that's fair. FocusDragon goes further: the app has no network permission at all, can't phone home, has no account system, and no telemetry by default. If you enable telemetry, it sends aggregate events only (never site names or block contents). Cold Turkey is also local-first and doesn't collect stats, so this is a moderate differentiator — noted here for completeness, not as a major pitch.
Yes. Cold Turkey Blocker Pro is a $45 one-time purchase (or $49 for the unlimited-devices license). FocusDragon is free forever with every feature unlocked — no Pro tier, no trial period, no upsell.
Not a direct equivalent. Frozen Turkey can shut down or log out of your Mac on a timer, which FocusDragon doesn't do. Instead, FocusDragon offers a restart-count lock (requires N real reboots to unlock) and a date lock (locked until a calendar date). Different approaches to the same 'make this irreversible' goal.
Yes — Cold Turkey's random-text lock is configurable from 1 to 999 characters. FocusDragon has the same feature, plus a clipboard auto-clear so you can't paste the generated string. Functionally very similar.
No. FocusDragon is Mac-only and written natively in Swift. Cold Turkey supports both Windows and macOS. If you need cross-platform, Cold Turkey is the better fit; if you're Mac-only, native is usually faster and lighter.
Cold Turkey wins on a few dimensions: window-title blocking on Windows, Chromium Task Manager blocking, granular URL/channel/keyword rules, per-user targeting on shared computers, and a first-party Writer/Micromanager suite. FocusDragon wins on price (free vs $45), Mac-nativeness, and restart-count locks. Feature parity is closer than most comparison pages admit.
Not directly. Adding your list of domains and apps manually takes a few minutes. FocusDragon has preset categories (social media, news, gambling, adult) that cover most common blocks in one click.
Download FocusDragon and get the Pro-tier enforcement model — free, forever, every feature unlocked.
Download FocusDragon for Mac