Is Finch free?

Yes. Finch is free to download and, by its own written commitment, the core of it stays free. The question underneath is what Finch Plus costs and where that number lives, and the answer is the most scattered this format has found: one store prints it, the other prints nothing at all, the marketing site prints nothing, and the fullest version is in a help center article most readers will never open. Then there is the part with a consequence, which is that Finch uses the word “trial” for two different things.

Every price Finch publishes, and where

All of these were read on 14 September 2026, in the US, signed out and without the app installed.

Derived: twelve monthly payments at $9.99 come to $119.88, so the yearly plan at $69.99 saves $49.89 a year, about 42%, and works out at $5.83 a month. Finch does not publish that comparison, and the monthly and yearly figures are two lines of the same short article, so nothing here is buried. Note also that the gift is priced at exactly the ordinary annual rate, which is not always the case — Strava sells the same thing at the same price but without auto-renewal, and the gift page is where it says so.

One store prints the price. The other prints no dollar sign at all.

This is the part that corrects something the site had been saying. Google Play has an optional section below the description, and on a game it is headed In-game items and offers — which is where we found Crossy Road’s fourteen prices. On an ordinary app the same slot is headed In-app items and offers, and on Finch it carries one line:

“Finch Plus — 7-day trial, then $69.99/year.”

That is a trial length and a price, published by the developer, on the listing, before you install anything. It is more than most apps in this format print anywhere. Checking the same slot across the other subjects here found it on Duolingo as well and on nobody else: Calm, ChatGPT, Strava and Rocket Money have no such section. So it is a per-listing choice, the same way Apple’s promoted purchase slot is, and an absence still proves nothing.

Apple’s page is the opposite case, and it is worth being precise about how complete the silence is. On the US product page for Finch there is no dollar figure anywhere, and the words subscription, trial and Finch Plus do not appear on it at all — not in the description, not in the What’s New notes, not in the Information row, which says only “In-App Purchases: Yes”. There is no promoted in-app purchase section above the App Privacy panel, which is the one place Apple prints a price where a developer has configured one. A reader who only ever looks at the App Store cannot learn from Apple that Finch sells a subscription, let alone what it costs.

None of that breaks a rule. Neither store requires a price and Apple does not require the description to carry one. It is worth recording because the same company filled the slot on one store and left it empty on the other, which makes this a choice rather than a limitation.

Two trials, one word

This is the finding with a consequence, and it took three articles to see.

Finch has an article titled Finch Plus Preview Explained. It says the preview activates automatically after three days of using the app, that it is a temporary subscription gifted by the team, and then two reassurances: “Unlike a traditional free trial, you won’t be charged when the preview ends” and “There’s nothing you need to cancel.” The article never says how long it lasts — only “a limited time”.

Google Play’s listing advertises a 7-day trial that becomes $69.99 a year. Nothing on that listing mentions a preview.

The two are reconciled in exactly one place, a long general FAQs article, under a heading called Understanding Finch Trials:

• “3-Day Free Plus Trial: Ends automatically, no subscription.”
• “7-Day Free Trial: Turns into a subscription unless manually canceled.”
• “One trial per account/email. Charges before the 7 days may occur if trial was used previously, but our team is happy to help with providing a refund.”

So there are two offers, both called trials, and the article that distinguishes them is not the article named after the feature. Someone who reads the preview article, sees that a Finch trial does not charge and nothing needs canceling, and later accepts the seven-day offer on the strength of it, has been misled by a true sentence about a different product.

The third line is the one to act on, and it is the same shape as Strava telling students that an ineligible account is charged the full annual amount on subscribing: if you have used a Finch trial before, the charge can arrive before the week is up. Finch says its team will help with a refund, which is more than its own terms promise. Assume the shorter number and set a reminder.

What the free tier actually includes

Finch answers this in one article and answers it generously, which is worth saying before anything else. The opening sentence is a commitment rather than a description: “All of our core self-care features are (and will always be) free. You can take care of your birb, set goals, reflect, send vibes to friends, and enjoy seasonal events without paying a thing.”

That sentence is the reason this page reads differently from the other four in this format. Compare it with the clause that carries the Strava page, from that company’s terms: “Strava has the right to add, modify, or discontinue any free or subscription-only feature at any time.” Both statements are published by the company about its own free tier and they point in opposite directions. Finch’s promise sits in a help center article rather than in its terms, so it is a commitment of reputation rather than a contractual one — but it is in writing, it is dated by the article, and almost nobody in this category writes it down at all.

The published list of what Plus adds supports the claim rather than undercutting it. Customizing every goal emoji. A daily discounted shop item and more unlocked rare item and location slots. Extra seasonal rewards each day, a Micropet on day 20 instead of day 25, and every event outfit guaranteed if you take part daily. All of the good vibe options to send friends. Extra reflection prompts. Every soundscape, movement and breathing option with all durations, and all timer durations. Five newsletter updates a week instead of one. All quiz options.

Read that list against what this format usually finds. There is no ad removal in it, because there are no ads. There is no timer that converts waiting into a purchase, which is the mechanic Duolingo sells with Unlimited Hearts. The journaling, the mood tracking, the goals and the breathing exercises are on the free side; what is sold is variety, speed and decoration.

Three published ways to get Plus without paying

Every one of these is in Finch’s own help center, and two of them are unusual enough to be worth naming.

• The preview. Three days after you start using the app it gives you Plus for a while. No card, no charge, nothing to cancel.
• The Guardians raffle. Finch sells a second, more expensive subscription called Guardians, whose stated purpose is to sponsor other people’s subscriptions. The raffle it funds is described in plain terms: it is aimed at gifting free Finch Plus “to users who otherwise cannot afford it”, it runs toward the start of each month, you enter it inside the app, and once you have entered you are entered again automatically every month until you win, as long as you stay active. Winners may also be offered heavily discounted subscriptions. We have not seen a published number of winners, so treat it as a lottery rather than a plan.
• Wellhub. If your employer offers Wellhub, Finch says you may be able to activate Finch Plus through that plan at no additional cost. This is the same shape as Calm Health, the invitation-only app almost nothing written about Calm’s price mentions, and as ChatGPT for Teachers: the cheapest route to a paid product is often a benefits page rather than a pricing page.

The Guardians tier itself is the one price Finch does not publish anywhere we could reach. Its page on finchcare.com is a single screen reading “Become a Guardian — sponsor Finch Plus subscriptions for others, and gain exclusive benefits for yourself” with a button, and its help center article explains how to change or cancel a Guardians subscription without ever naming what one costs.

What Finch does not sell

On a page about cost, the absences matter as much as the figures, and two of them are worth stating because this app is fifth on Google Play’s top grossing chart for health and fitness while having neither.

There is no currency to buy. Finch runs two in-app currencies and its own article explains where both come from: Energy is earned by completing goals and self-care activities, and Rainbow Stones are earned through quests, seasonal event days, milestone achievements and goals completed after your bird returns from its daily adventure. Neither is described anywhere in the help center as purchasable with money, and Google Play’s In-app items and offers section lists exactly one item, which is the subscription. A shop that sells you a currency, and a timer that makes the currency run out, is the standard construction in a free app at this size; Finch has the shop and not the purchase. It even buys items back, at half the stones you paid.

There are no ads. Google Play carries no Contains ads badge, neither description mentions advertising, and no part of the Plus benefit list is about removing them. We run ads in four apps, so this is the line on this page we cannot match, and it is the reason the free tier of this app is unusually honest: the people paying $69.99 a year are the ones funding it.

Canceling, refunds, and the sentence in the terms

Finch sells Plus through Apple and Google, so the cancellation is theirs to process and the refund is theirs to refuse. Finch’s own article is short and accurate: iOS Settings, Apple ID, Subscriptions, Finch, Cancel Subscription; or the Play Store menu, then Subscriptions. “Canceling ends your Plus features at the end of the current billing cycle”, so nothing is lost on the day you cancel.

The Terms of Service say what almost every subscription’s terms say, which is that you will not receive a refund for the fees already paid for the current period. Two things sit alongside that and both are friendlier than the document. The help center invites anyone who subscribed by accident to email support, and the trials section says the team is happy to help with a refund where an early charge lands. Neither is a guarantee, and both are more than the contract offers.

The clause worth quoting is the one that explains the whole structure of this page: “Subscription plan details are available to you when you purchase a subscription.” That is the company stating, in its terms, that the price is a checkout-time disclosure. It happens not to be true of Google Play, where the listing prints it, and it is exactly true of Apple.

One more clause, filed where nobody would look for it: “Prices for our products are subject to change without notice” appears in the merchandise section and is about the hoodies, not the subscription. We are naming it here so the next person reading that document does not carry it across, the way we nearly did.

Three published answers about who this is for

Finch is a mental-health app with a cartoon bird, ten million downloads on Play alone and an audience that is visibly young. Three sources with authority say three different things about age, and all three are checkable.

• The App Store rates it 9+.
• Google Play rates it Everyone, with a Users Interact notice.
• Finch’s own Terms of Service say: “Our Services are not directed to children who are under the age of 13. Please do not use our Services if you are under age of 13.”

A store rating describes content; the terms describe permission, and the terms are the stricter of the two. Finch explains the gap rather than leaving it, which is the fairest version of this we have read: it says it would like to make some of the Services available to under-13s and that various countries’ laws require significant investment to demonstrate compliance, and it hopes to have the resources later. That is the same shape as the reward apps on this site carrying two different store ratings at once, and the rule is the same — print both, explain the gap, do not quietly pick the friendlier one.

The terms also carry a medical disclaimer that a page about a self-care app should not skip: the Services do not include medical care or mental health services and are not for emergencies, and anyone in crisis is told to call 911 or local emergency services. Finch is a habit tracker with a bird in it, and it says so.

The price that is itemized

As on every page in this format, the money price is the one a company can decline to print and the data price is published in detail. Here the two stores look at first like they disagree, and the privacy policy settles it, so this is one of the rare cases where the contradiction resolves.

Apple’s App Privacy panel has no “Data Used to Track You” section at all. It names identifiers as linked to your identity, and purchases, contact info, user content, usage data and diagnostics as collected but not linked to you. For scale, Duolingo declares eight tracked categories and eleven linked for an app that teaches Spanish.

Google Play’s data safety page says data may be shared with other companies, naming crash logs and diagnostics, app interactions, purchase history, device or other IDs and user IDs, and lists an email address among what is collected. Read cold, that is the opposite impression.

The privacy policy is what joins them, and it is the reason to read a third document rather than pick whichever panel suits the argument: “We do not sell, rent, license, or lease your personal information to third parties”, followed by the list of who does receive it — service providers including hosting, email, advertising and marketing, payment processing, customer support and analytics. Google’s form counts a service provider as sharing; Apple’s definition of tracking does not. Both declarations can be accurate at once, which is a better outcome than the game we found whose two store forms flatly contradict each other. Both stores also say data is encrypted in transit and that deletion can be requested.

The standing caution applies anyway: these panels are the developer’s answers to a form, not the store’s measurement of the app.

What Finch does better

This section is compulsory on every page here. On this one the hard part was keeping it short.

• It wrote down that the core will always be free. One sentence, in its own help center, in a category where the usual clause reserves the right to withdraw a free feature at any time.
• It sells no currency and shows no ads while sitting fifth on Play’s top grossing health and fitness chart. Four of our apps run ads and none of them is near that chart.
• It built a way for paying users to fund free ones, says so plainly, and runs it monthly. A raffle is not a solution to affordability, but it is a real mechanism with a published purpose, and nothing else in this format has one.
• It filled in Google Play’s optional price slot. Of the six apps whose listings we have checked for it outside games, two did: Finch and Duolingo.
• Its privacy declarations are the lightest here. Nothing under tracking on Apple, encryption and deletion on both stores, and a policy that names its service providers by function.
• It is enormous and genuinely well liked. 4.9 across 752,000 App Store ratings, Editors’ Choice, eighth in Health & Fitness; 4.9 across 622,000 reviews and over ten million downloads on Google Play. Nothing we make is in that conversation.
• It is a public benefit corporation and its mission statement is published in the privacy policy: to maximize positive impact on the world’s health and well-being through the creation of innovative products, services, education, content and community.

What we did not read, and are therefore not telling you

• Nothing behind a login or inside the app. We did not install Finch, so we cannot tell you what the paywall screen shows, whether the in-app price matches the store price — a question worth asking after the $10 gap on Calm — or how long the three-day preview actually runs.
• What a Guardians subscription costs. No surface we could reach publishes a tier or a figure.
• What happens to Plus-only unlocks when Plus ends. The cancellation article says the features stop at the end of the billing cycle and no article we found says what becomes of the extra shop slots or the items bought while subscribed.
• Any number for the raffle. How many people win each month, and how many enter, are not published.

How to check any of this yourself

Open both store listings before you trust either. The optional price slots are the first place to look: just above the App Privacy panel on Apple, and below the description on Google Play, headed In-app items and offers on an app or In-game items and offers on a game. Finch fills in one of the two. Apple’s silence is not evidence of anything except that the developer left the slot empty.

Then search the help center rather than the marketing site, because on this company the pricing, the trials, the cancellation route and the free routes are all in help articles, and the site that sells the app has none of them. And when two articles describe the same word differently, read both before acting on either — that is the habit the ChatGPT page arrived at, and here it is the difference between a free preview and a renewing subscription.