A free Peak app alternative:
depth over breadth, no subscription on the core game
Peak is genuinely a good brain-training app. The design is polished, it has won Apple Design Award attention, and the academic collaboration with Cambridge Brain Sciences gives it more credibility than the average app in the category. The objections to it are not about quality. They are about price and shape.
Peak is subscription-only beyond a small free tier. The full Peak Pro experience runs around £4.99 a month or roughly £40 a year. And Peak is built around breadth: forty-plus mini-games across memory, attention, language, problem solving, and emotional control, all wrapped in a daily routine. That breadth is the appeal, and also the limit. If you want one specific cognitive skill trained well rather than five touched lightly, breadth costs you depth.
This page is for people who want a free Peak alternative specifically for visual memory. Blanked is the iOS option built around that one focus. The full game (six modes, 400+ levels) is free with no paywall on gameplay, sessions are two minutes rather than ten-to-fifteen, and the marketing avoids the broad-transfer claims the wider category has been criticised for.
The Peak subscription, briefly
Peak gives you a daily workout of three or four mini-games on the free tier. Peak Pro unlocks the rest of the catalogue, the deeper progress tracking, and the personalised "Coach" feature. Currently around £4.99 a month or £39.99 to £49.99 a year depending on region. Pricing changes; check the App Store for the live number.
That is a perfectly normal pricing model. It just is not what people mean by "free Peak alternative". Blanked is built around making the core game free indefinitely, with the optional Blanked+ subscription priced as a tip jar (ad removal plus cosmetics) rather than as a paywall.
Where Blanked is the better fit
- You actually want to get sharper at one specific skill. Visual recall in Blanked\'s case. Daily focused practice on one task produces stronger narrow gains than spreading across many.
- You do not have fifteen minutes a day. Peak\'s daily workout assumes you do. Blanked is two minutes by design, anchored to habit research rather than to engagement metrics.
- You want the full game free. No daily-game limit, no paywall on later levels.
- You like head-to-head friend challenges. Blanked sends the same scene to a friend so the scores are directly comparable. Peak has leaderboards but no identical-task mode.
- You appreciate the honesty posture. Blanked is explicit about what brain training does and does not do (see /does-brain-training-work). Peak is more careful than most but still leans on the broader "make your brain sharper" framing.
Where Peak is still the right pick
- You want training across many cognitive domains, not just visual memory.
- You enjoy a longer, more involved daily session and the polished Peak design.
- You value the academic association with Cambridge Brain Sciences specifically.
- You need Android. Peak is available on both platforms; Blanked is iOS-only at the moment.
- You enjoy mental-math and language games as part of the routine; Blanked does not cover these.
For the full side-by-side, see /compare/peak. For the wider field, the compare hub covers every major competitor.
How to switch from Peak to Blanked
- Cancel Peak Pro at least 24 hours before the next renewal: Settings → your name → Subscriptions → Peak Pro → Cancel.
- Download Blanked. The first session walks through the mechanic in about a minute.
- Set a tiny daily anchor: after morning coffee, on the commute, before bed. Two minutes is the whole commitment.
- Run the free visual memory test now to set a baseline, then again in three weeks to track real progress rather than app-specific level numbers.
Visual memory, free, two minutes a day.
One focused skill, trained well. No subscription on the core game.
Download Blanked freeFrequently asked questions
Is there a free version of Peak?
Peak has a limited free tier (a handful of games per day) with the bulk of the catalogue and Peak Pro features behind a subscription, currently around £4.99 a month or roughly £40 a year depending on region. If you want the full experience you pay; if you want a genuinely free alternative for visual memory specifically, Blanked is a strong fit.
What is the best free alternative to Peak?
On iOS, Blanked is the strongest free option for the visual-memory part of what Peak covers. Six modes, 400+ levels, no paywall on gameplay, and short sessions designed for actual daily use rather than long workouts. For broader cognitive training that matches Peak's catalogue breadth, BrainHQ has the strongest research backing but is also subscription-based.
Is Peak any good?
It is genuinely well-designed, Apple-design-recognised, and the academic association with Cambridge Brain Sciences gives it more credibility than the median app in the category. The main objections are the subscription model and the breadth-over-depth approach. If you want one focused skill (like visual memory) trained well rather than five touched lightly, Peak is not the most efficient choice.
How is Blanked different from Peak?
Blanked focuses entirely on visual memory rather than spreading across forty cognitive games. The full game is free with no paywall on gameplay. Sessions are two minutes rather than ten to fifteen. The mascot, Blink, gives the experience some personality where Peak is more clinical. The trade-off is breadth: if you want vocabulary or mental math practice, Peak covers more ground.
Will I lose progress if I switch from Peak?
Peak progress does not transfer between apps, so technically yes. In practice this is rarely an issue because the cognitive skill itself (visual memory, attention) stays with you; only the in-app levels reset. Run our free /memory-test before you switch to set a baseline, then again in a few weeks to track real cognitive progress rather than relying on app-specific level numbers.
Is Blanked on Android?
Not yet. Blanked is iOS-only with Android on the roadmap. Peak is available on both.
Keep reading
Related: the in-depth Blanked vs Peak comparison, the Lumosity alternative page, the broader free memory game for iPhone page, and the honest does brain training work? explainer.