We wondered if Ever Accountable was easier to set up than Covenant Eyes — so we timed real people installing both

We think Ever Accountable is simpler to set up than Covenant Eyes. But of course we think that — we built it. So instead of just saying it, we decided to find out.

We recruited seven people who had never used either app, sat them down, and timed them installing and setting up both apps from scratch — creating an account, connecting an accountability partner, and getting to a first report. To keep ourselves honest, we didn’t tell them which company was running the test, we alternated which app each person tried first, and we recorded every session.

Here’s what we found.

Ever Accountable was faster to set up — by about 5 minutes

On average, setup took 5 minutes 41 seconds on Ever Accountable versus 10 minutes 35 seconds on Covenant Eyes — roughly 1.9× faster, or nearly five minutes saved. Ever Accountable was faster for every single participant, on both iPhone and Android.

The gap was even bigger for the part that arguably matters most: how long it takes your accountability partner to actually see a report. That was about 3× faster on Ever Accountable. A big reason, in our testers’ words, was that Covenant Eyes asks the partner to download a second, separate app and wait for an invitation to be accepted before anything shows up.

What we’re already fixing

Testers liked that Ever Accountable was “easy to navigate” and “straightforward” — and they also pointed out rough edges. A few felt the subscription screen was slow to load, and some wanted a more polished design. We’re already working on both. Honestly, finding things like that is a big reason we run tests like this in the first place.

One thing to be clear about: this measured how easy and fast each app is to set up — not how well either one blocks or detects content. That’s a separate question, and it’s not what this test was about.

See the full data yourself

We published the complete study — every participant’s times, the methodology, what people got stuck on, and the raw data as a downloadable spreadsheet — so you can check our work:

Read the full setup-time study →

We’re planning to run this again with more people, so consider this version one.

If you want to feel the difference yourself, you can try Ever Accountable free for 14 days — and time it.

Covenant Eyes is a trademark of Covenant Eyes, Inc. This study was conducted independently by Ever Accountable and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Covenant Eyes.