Finch is a self-care pet for iPhone. Belly is a pet for Apple Watch. They sit close on the conceptual map, "take care of a pet by taking care of yourself", but they pick different surfaces, different mechanics, and different commercial models. Finch leans into structured mental-health work and ships subscriptions. Belly is free, watch-first, and driven entirely by your daily steps.
Quick Comparison
| Feature | Belly | Finch |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, no paywalls, no subscription | Free + Finch Plus subscription ($5.99+) |
| Designed for | Apple Watch only | iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision (no Apple Watch app) |
| Core mechanic | Steps from Apple Health → hearts → pet care + cosmetics | Self-care check-ins → pet adventures → journaling/breathwork |
| Pet animal | Pixel cat (more pets planned) | Birb (a baby bird) |
| Daily loop | Glance at your wrist, watch your cat react to your steps | Open the phone app, complete check-ins, send Birb on an adventure |
| Mental-health features | None (gentle habit-building through movement) | Mood tracking, breathwork, journaling, anxiety/depression quizzes |
| Languages | 40 supported | English-primary (some localization) |
| Last App Store update | Regular (multiple times per quarter) | Very active (sub-weekly cadence) |
| App Store rating | 5.0 (smaller sample) | 4.9 (~703K ratings, Editors' Choice) |
Belly: A Pet That Lives on Your Wrist
Belly is built for one surface: the Apple Watch face. There is no iPhone companion app and that's a deliberate decision, a phone is the wrong shape and the wrong attention budget for a pet you want to glance at, not log into. The form factor argument is simple: a wrist pet belongs on the wrist.
The core loop reads steps from Apple Health automatically. Walking earns hearts, which keep your pet healthy. Coins you earn (also from walking) buy hand-drawn outfits, seasonal backgrounds, toys, and health items. The watch complications, in rectangle, corner, and circle shapes, are free. None of this requires opening your phone.
Belly Strengths
- Free, no subscription, no paywalls. Optional cosmetic IAPs you can also earn entirely by walking.
- Watch-native interaction. Wrist-glance, not phone-open.
- Step-powered. Reads from Apple Health automatically; no manual logging.
- Rich watch complications across three shapes, your pet lives on your watch face.
- 40 languages. Genuinely useful outside the US.
- Social features. Six-digit friend codes, no accounts, compare step streaks with friends.
- No ads.
Belly Limitations
- No iPhone, iPad, or Vision app. If you don't own an Apple Watch, Belly isn't for you.
- No mental-health features (no mood tracker, no breathwork, no journaling). That's on purpose, Belly stays in the habit-building lane, not the clinical-adjacent one.
- A single pixel cat; more pets on the roadmap.
Finch: A Pet That Lives in Your iPhone Self-Care App
Finch is the runaway success story of the wellness-pet category. App Store Editors' Choice, 700,000+ ratings averaging 4.9 stars, sub-weekly update cadence, and a deep mental-health-oriented feature set. Its tagline says it plainly: "Take care of your pet by taking care of yourself."
The Finch loop is centered on your iPhone. You open the app, do a mood check-in, complete self-care tasks (breathing, journaling, quizzes, meditations, habit tracking), and your pet bird Birb embarks on adventures and returns with reflections. The mental-health framing is explicit: anxiety and depression screening quizzes are part of the toolkit.
Pricing is freemium-with-subscription. Free to download, with Finch Plus subscriptions starting at $5.99 adding deeper journaling, more pet customization options, and additional self-care content. A separate Guardian Program is $7.99. Pricing tiers extend up to $69.99 for longer-term commitments. The base experience is genuinely usable without subscribing, but the Plus content library is where most of the depth sits.
The platform footprint is important to flag: as of May 2026, the main Finch app supports iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple Vision. There is no Apple Watch version of the main Finch app. The same developer ships a separate Watch app called Finch Q, but that is a different product, a health-glance assistant, not the virtual pet experience.
Finch Strengths
- Genuine mental-health depth. Mood tracking, breathwork, journaling, mental-health quizzes, built by a Public Benefit Corporation, not a casual game studio.
- Very large community. 700K+ ratings, Editors' Choice, daily active community discourse on Reddit and TikTok.
- Active development. Updates ship multiple times per month.
- Pet adventures + reflections. Birb returns with insights and prompts, a narrative wrapper around the self-care work.
- Deep customization in Plus. Outfits, decorations, scenery, a substantial cosmetic library.
Finch Limitations
- No Apple Watch version of the main app. If you want the pet on your wrist, it's not available here.
- Subscription gating on the deepest content. Free tier is fine, but Plus is where most of the recently-added depth sits.
- Heavier app footprint (~470 MB), it's rich, but not lightweight.
- iPhone-first attention model. The daily loop expects you to open the phone, which is the opposite of the wrist-glance promise.
- Mental-health screening quizzes can feel heavier than some users want from a pet game, a deliberate design choice, but not for everyone.
Which Should You Choose?
Choose Belly if you want:
- A pet on your Apple Watch specifically, wrist-glance, not phone-open
- A walking-driven loop without journaling, quizzes, or mental-health screening
- Zero subscriptions, with optional cosmetic IAPs you can also earn by walking
- Rich watch complications and an actually-watch-native interaction model
- Your pet game in a non-English language (40 supported)
- A lighter, less clinical-adjacent emotional register
Choose Finch if you want:
- Genuine self-care depth (mood tracking, breathwork, journaling, anxiety screening)
- A pet adventure narrative wrapper around your daily check-ins
- A large, active community and Editors' Choice production polish
- An iPhone-primary surface and don't need Watch integration
- Comfort with a freemium-plus-subscription model
Use both if:
You're in the wellness-app crossover audience: Finch on iPhone for structured self-care work, Belly on Apple Watch for the wrist-glance daily nudge. They don't compete for the same surface, they complement.