The facts, side by side
In alphabetical order. Each fact links to where it comes from: the tool’s own website or store listing, read on the day above, and for Timer by LogicFire.app its own pages. Prices put each free version beside ours; a paid plan is named as paid, in the currency its maker gives.
| Tool | Price | Sign-up needed | Platforms | What it keeps about you | Ads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classroomscreen | Basic is $0 a month and includes all 26 widgets. Pro is paid: $3 a month, “Billed annually at $36.00 (USD)”, with a 14-day free trial, and bought with a credit card it renews automatically each year. Outside Europe and the UK it charges in US dollars (pricing page). | No: “no login required” (pricing page). It can be used without an account, with a Basic account or with Pro (privacy policy). Its app opened with no sign-in when we tried it, saying screens aren’t saved without Pro (app). | A web browser: “Available on any device” (pricing page). | Its privacy policy: data about your visit and surfing behaviour, such as your IP address, browser, date and time; with a Basic account, your first and last name, email address and password; and Google Analytics (privacy policy). | None: “We do not advertise on our websites and our application.” (privacy policy) |
| Online Stopwatch | Free: “like all our timers, it's totally free” (countdown timer). Premium is paid, in US dollars: $10 for a one-off 30 days, $24 for 12 months or $96 a year for 30 group accounts, the last two with no auto-renewal (Premium page). | No: “We offer so much FREE content for everyone to use” (Premium page), and its egg timer opened with no sign-in when we tried it (egg timer). Premium uses your email address to log in (Premium page). | A web browser: “Simple timers should run fast on any device”, and “Any 64bit mobile device, Android 7+, or Apple device made 2015+ should work fine.” (help) | Its privacy policy: Google Analytics, and outside the EU, cookies “to show you personalised adverts based on the sites you've visited and your interests”. For regular users, apart from cookies, it doesn’t ask for or store personal information about you; for Premium users it stores the data you submit, such as your settings, options and lists (privacy policy). | Yes, from Google AdSense (privacy policy). A Premium account removes them (Premium page). |
| Time Timer | The app is free: “The Time Timer Mobile Apps are currently free for download on IOS and Android devices.” (free resources) Its free version lets you “Create up to 3 timers” and “Run multiple timers at once”. Its maker, replying to a review on the listing, says Premium features are “available through a yearly subscription, or as a one-time purchase with our ‘Enterprise’ Edition”, and the listing’s In-App Purchases row shows “Unlock all Time Timer features” at US$9.95 on the US App Store (App Store, US). The Enterprise Edition is a separate app, at US$29.99 on the US App Store (App Store, US). | Not stated for the app on the pages we read. Its privacy notice covers accounts set up “on our Sites”, its websites (privacy notice). | iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch (App Store, US) and Android (Google Play, Australia). Its site: “Available for mobile, tablet, desktop & smartwatch: iOS 16 or up, Android 10 and up” (its app page). | Its privacy notice, which covers its websites and its app: with an account on its websites, your name, email address, phone numbers and passwords; visitor sessions on its websites are recorded with a third-party tool; in the app you can opt out of Crashlytics data collection in Settings; and it says “We do not sell any customer information or share it with anyone who would use it to market to you. However, we may share your information with third party service providers in a way that may be considered a sale of your information under applicable U.S. Privacy Laws.” It shares your information with providers for purposes such as payment processing, customer service, e-mail deployment, advertising and marketing (privacy notice). Its App Store label: contact info may be linked to you, and usage data and diagnostics are collected without being linked to you (App Store, US). On Google Play, the developer says the app doesn’t share user data with other companies or organisations (Google Play, Australia). | Its Google Play listing showed no “Contains ads” label when we checked (Google Play, Australia). Its Enterprise Edition’s page says “NO ADS… EVER.” (Enterprise Edition) |
| Timer by LogicFire.app (visual timer) | Free (visual timer). | No, and it has no accounts (visual timer). | A web browser on a computer, phone or tablet, full screen with the Full screen button (visual timer). On a phone, add it to the Home Screen (guide). There’s no App Store or Google Play app yet. | In your browser, no history and no settings of its own. Its light or dark and theme buttons keep your choice only in the look cookie. It sends nothing once loaded (privacy page). Like every page, opening it makes a visit record, kept 90 days with your full IP address for up to 8 days, and, if you aren’t signed in, the site keeps the name of the site you came from (visit records, where you came from). | None, and no Google code (privacy page). Elsewhere, the focus timer, its guide, the essays, and the LogicFire.app home page and list of essays carry Google ads when they are switched on, and the home page loads Google’s ad code even when they are off. |
| Toy Theater | Free: “Our site is also entirely free” (about page). A paid membership lets teachers customise the site for their students (members’ about page): US$12 a month, “Cancel anytime” (members’ pricing page), renewing automatically each month (terms). | No: its classroom timer ran with no account when we tried it (classroom timer). Its membership needs an account (terms). | A web browser, “on all desktop computers, tablets, and mobile devices” (home page). | Its privacy policy: information collected automatically, such as device properties, IP address, MAC address and device identifiers, your mobile carrier and internet provider, the search terms used on its website, the pages you visit and how long you use it; Google Analytics; and, for a membership, the account holder’s username, password, name, age and email address (privacy policy). | Yes: it “may display advertising via Google’s AdSense service”, and its ads “are never targeted advertisements” (privacy policy). The classroom timer page showed an “Advertisement” label when we checked (classroom timer). The membership offers students “an ad free environment” (members’ pricing page). |
What the visual timer does
- The disc turns blue when you press Start, then shrinks clockwise towards zero at the top. The face is fixed, like a clock’s: an hour, or two hours for anything over 60 minutes (visual timer).
- Any length from 1 minute to 2 hours, each with its own address, such as /visual-timer/10.
- Links that set it up: the length, a label of up to 40 letters, starting as the page opens, a clear background for a stream, and light or dark (visual timer).
- No history kept, nothing sent once the page has loaded, and no ads (privacy page, ads).
Choose this if
What each one does better, in the same order as the table.
- Classroomscreen. Choose this if you want a whole classroom screen, not one timer: all 26 widgets, among them a Visual Timer you set by dragging and a Timer that repeats for rotations, on the free Basic plan, with no ads (pricing page, Visual Timer, Timer).
- Online Stopwatch. Choose this if you want animated classroom timers, such as an egg timer of falling digital sand, free with ads, or without ads for US$24 for 12 months (classroom timers, egg timer, Premium page).
- Time Timer. Choose this if you want the 60-minute red disk, or any length, as an app on iPhone, iPad, Mac or Apple Watch (App Store, US) or Android (Google Play, Australia), whose free version lets you create up to 3 timers and run more than one at once, or its free videos of the Time Timer counting down 5, 20 and 60 minutes (free resources).
- Timer by LogicFire.app (visual timer). Choose this if you want a disc that shrinks as the time runs down, full screen, with a link that sets the length and a label, no sign-up and no ads.
- Toy Theater. Choose this if you want a free countdown where you “choose a fun visual shape, and watch the time remaining”, with a full-screen setting, beside other classroom tools such as spinners and dice (classroom timer, teacher tools).
What Timer by LogicFire.app doesn’t do
- One timer per page. For a second one, open another tab.
- Up to 2 hours.
- Only a timer. There are no other classroom tools on the page.
- A quiet end. At zero it plays a short, quiet chime, and only with sound on. A link that starts the timer as the page opens stays silent until someone has tapped the page, because browsers keep sound off until then.
- No accounts or groups on the visual timer. The focus timer’s groups are up to 8 people, not a whole class (guide).
- No App Store or Google Play app yet. It runs in a web browser.
- No background sounds on the visual timer. Focus sounds are on the focus timer only (guide).
- No app or site blocker. It doesn’t stop anyone opening anything.
How this page is checked
Every fact about another tool comes from that tool’s own website or store listing, read on the day above, and links to it. We keep a dated record of each: the address, the words and a screenshot. Nothing comes from memory, reviews or other lists. Facts about Timer by LogicFire.app link to its own pages.
We check every fact again every three months. The day above changes only when a fact does.
The other tools’ names belong to their owners. LogicFire.app wrote this page; none of them wrote or checked it. Spotted a fact that has changed? Write to feedback@logicfire.app.