The free, open-source timer · Cuppa (F-Droid and Google Play)
Teafinity vs Cuppa
Choose Cuppa if you want a free, open-source, no-account, no-subscription timer that opens in one tap and gets out of the way. Choose Teafinity if you need the app to know what the tea is — 176 teas with real parameters, multi-infusion Gong Fu ladders, photo identification and a library in your language.
The short version
- Cuppa is the honest minimum, and there is nothing wrong with the honest minimum. It is free, it is open source, it has no account and no paywall.
- Teafinity is the opposite bet: a curated database where every tea already knows its own temperature, ratio, time and infusion ladder.
- If your tea drawer is three tea bags deep, Cuppa may genuinely be all you need. This page will say so.
Teafinity vs Cuppa, row by row
| Feature | Teafinity | Cuppa |
|---|---|---|
| Tea database | 176 core teas plus 80 seasonal, each with its own brewing data Browse the library Track what you own | Tea-type presets rather than a tea database — Cuppa is a timer, and does not market itself as a catalogue |
| AI identification | Yes — point the camera at leaves or packaging, answer in about 2 seconds How the tea ID works | No |
| Timer (multi-infusion?) | Yes — a Western timer and a full Gong Fu ladder that counts each infusion separately How the timer works | Yes, and it is excellent at it — a simple single-steep timer; multi-infusion Gong Fu ladders are outside the concept |
| Journal | Yes — completed steeps are logged automatically, with favourites and a collection How the journal works | No — deliberately. Cuppa does not try to be a logbook |
| Languages | English, German, French, Dutch, Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese, each a separate app experience | Community translations arrive through the open-source project; no published language count |
| Platforms | iPhone (with a home-screen widget and an Apple Watch companion) and Android | Android, distributed through F-Droid and Google Play |
| Price model | Free tier with 30 full teas and the timer · $29.99/year after a 3-day free trial · $3.99/week · one-time lifetime option See exactly what's free | Free, and open source — no subscription, no account |
What Cuppa publishes on its own site, checked August 2026. “Not published” means we could not verify it from their pages — not that the feature is missing.
teafinity.app
Where Cuppa is genuinely better
It is free, and it is free without an asterisk. No trial, no tier, no upgrade prompt. Teafinity has a genuinely useful free tier — 30 complete teas and the timer, forever — but it also has a paywall, and Cuppa does not. That is a real difference and it belongs at the top of this section, not buried.
It is open source. You can read the code, build it yourself, and install it from F-Droid without a Google account. For a certain kind of user that is not a nice-to-have, it is the whole requirement. Teafinity is closed source; we are not going to spin that into a virtue.
It is fast and small. One tap, one timer, done. Every feature Teafinity adds is weight Cuppa refuses to carry, and refusing is a legitimate design position.
Where Teafinity is different
The app knows the tea, not just the clock
A timer answers "how long". It cannot answer "how long for this". Teafinity ships 176 teas, each with its own temperature in °C and °F, grams per 250 ml, steep time, caffeine in milligrams and re-steep count — the difference between a gyokuro at 60 °C and a keemun at 95 °C is the difference between a good cup and a wasted one.
Multi-infusion timing
Cuppa times one steep. Gong Fu brewing is a ladder: rinse, then infusions that lengthen a few seconds at a time, five to eleven of them. Teafinity holds the whole ladder per tea and advances through it automatically — and you can try that mechanic here first, free and without installing anything, in the web gongfu timer.
Every tea in your language, and a camera
Teafinity is fully localized — every tea name, description and tasting note, not just the buttons. And photo identification turns an unlabelled tin into a brewing plan in about two seconds. Neither is something a deliberately minimal timer would ever add.
Which one should you install?
Choose Cuppa if…
- You want free and open source, full stop.
- You brew tea bags, or a small handful of teas you already know by heart.
- You want zero accounts, zero subscriptions and zero opinions from your software.
Choose Teafinity if…
- You buy loose leaf and the parameters actually matter to you.
- You brew Gong Fu, or want the ladder handed to you rather than assembled from blog posts.
- You are on iPhone, or you want the Apple Watch companion and the widget.
We would rather you install Cuppa and be happy than install Teafinity and resent the paywall. If you want to check whether the extra machinery is worth it before spending anything, use the free web tools and the steeping chart on this site — they run the same brewing data the app does, cost nothing, and require no install.
How we put these tables together
Every competitor cell describes what that company publishes on its own website, checked in August 2026. Where a cell says not published, not documented or not stated, it means exactly that — we could not verify it from their own pages — and never that the feature is missing. Apps change; landing pages change more slowly.
We do not install competitors, time their alarms and write up the results. That kind of comparison ages badly and tends to flatter whoever wrote it. We compare published claims against published claims, and we publish ours in full — all 176 teas, with their parameters, are on this website for free.
Teafinity's own figures come from the app itself: 176 core teas plus 80 seasonal, 30 of them free forever, 4.9★ from 33 ratings on the App Store. Our Android rating is lower than our iOS rating, and we explain why on the support page rather than hiding it here.
Teafinity times every infusion for you
The app loads this tea's exact schedule, rings even in your pocket, and logs every session — free on iPhone and Android.
The other comparisons
App names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. This page is written and published by the makers of Teafinity and is, unavoidably, not a neutral source — which is why every competitor section starts with what they do better.