What's the best free alternative to BlockSite?

Focuh is the closest free alternative if your frustration with BlockSite is the 3-site cap, the account requirement, or the upsell prompts. It blocks unlimited sites, requires no signup, and has no telemetry. LeechBlock NG is also a free alternative with more configurability but a steeper learning curve.

Why does BlockSite limit you to 3 sites on the free plan?

The 3-site cap is BlockSite's freemium gate — the free tier is designed as a trial that converts to a paid plan starting around $7/month. The cap is independent of how many sites you actually need to block. Many users hit it within the first week of use, which is the intended behavior from a conversion perspective.

Is Focuh really free, or is it freemium?

Focuh is genuinely free with no paid tier. There is no upgrade button, no premium feature gated behind a wall, no trial period. The team funds development through the also-free macOS Focuh desktop app, which has no paid tier either.

Will I lose my BlockSite blocklist when I switch?

Yes — Focuh stores its blocklist locally and there's no automatic import from BlockSite. The good news is migration takes about 60 seconds: copy your blocked domains from BlockSite's options page, paste them into Focuh's options page, set a challenge duration, and you're done.

Does Focuh sync across devices like BlockSite Premium?

No. Focuh is local-only by design — settings live in Chrome storage on the device, and there's no cloud sync. This is a trade-off: you give up cross-device sync, you get no account, no email, and no data on a server. For cross-device blocking, the free Focuh desktop app handles macOS-level blocking; the Chrome extension handles browsers.

Can I still block by category or by keyword?

Focuh blocks by domain, which matches how most users actually think about blocking ('block twitter.com', not 'block all social media'). Category blocking and keyword blocking are not supported — they tend to add complexity and false positives. For keyword or regex blocking, LeechBlock NG is the better choice.

BlockSite alternativeChrome extensionfreewebsite blockerproductivity

Free BlockSite Alternative — No Account, No 3-Site Limit (2026)

May 29, 20268 min readFocuh

If you've used BlockSite for more than a week, you've probably noticed two things: the free version only blocks 3 sites, and the upsell prompts keep growing. The Chrome Web Store description says "free" and the install button says "free," but the real product starts at around $7 per month.

This is a guide for the specific case where the free tier isn't enough for you and the paid tier isn't a fair trade. Focuh is the closest free, no-account alternative — and migrating takes less than a minute.

What people actually want when they search for a BlockSite alternative

Most people searching for a BlockSite alternative are not looking for "a different blocker." They're looking for one specific thing BlockSite stopped giving them:

Frustration	What you actually want
3-site cap on the free tier	A blocker with no cap
Mandatory account creation	A blocker with no signup
Upsell popups when adding the 4th site	A blocker that doesn't sell you anything
Concern about data collection	A local-only blocker
Paying $7/mo for a website blocker	A free blocker that's actually free

Focuh addresses all five at once. That's not because it's a better-engineered product — it's because it's funded differently. The Focuh team builds focus tools (including a free macOS desktop app) and the Chrome extension exists to bring people into that orbit, not to sell upgrades.

Focuh vs BlockSite — side by side

Feature	Focuh	BlockSite Free	BlockSite Premium
Price	Free, forever	Free	~$7+/month
Blocked sites	Unlimited	3	Unlimited
Account required	No	Yes	Yes
Telemetry / analytics	None	Yes	Yes
Remote code	None	Yes	Yes
Scheduling	Challenge duration (days–months)	Limited	Full
Password protection	No	No	Yes
Cross-device sync	No (local only)	No	Yes
Upsell prompts	None	Frequent	N/A
Source visible	Yes	No	No
Companion desktop app	Free Focuh for Mac	None	None

The honest read: if you want cross-device sync and password protection and don't mind paying, BlockSite Premium does more than Focuh. If you don't want those, the free tier of Focuh gives you more usable blocking than the free tier of BlockSite.

What you lose by switching

Switching is a trade, not a free upgrade. Here's the honest list of what Focuh does not have:

No cross-device sync. If you block 30 sites in Chrome on your work laptop, you'll need to block them again in Chrome on your home laptop. This is intentional — local-only means no account, but it also means no sync.
No password lock on the blocker itself. A Chrome extension can be disabled from chrome://extensions if you really want to. Focuh does not try to be unbreakable. For unbreakable blocking, use Focuh for Mac at the OS level instead.
No mobile app. Chrome extensions don't run on iOS Safari or most mobile browsers. This is a Chrome problem, not a Focuh problem, but it's worth knowing.
No category-based blocking ("block all social media"). You block specific domains.

If any of these are non-negotiable, BlockSite Premium or a different tool may be a better fit. For the majority of users — people who just want to block a list of sites for a defined period without paying — none of these losses matter.

Migrating from BlockSite in 60 seconds

The actual migration is fast.

Export your BlockSite blocklist. Open BlockSite's options page (chrome://extensions → BlockSite → Options). The "Block sites" tab lists your blocked domains. Copy them — there's no native export button, so a plain copy-paste from the list is fine.
Install Focuh. Add it from the Chrome Web Store (or the install link on our landing page).
Open Focuh's options page. Right-click the extension icon and select "Options," or paste chrome-extension://[your-id]/options.html into the URL bar.
Paste your domains. Add each domain to the blocklist. The extension accepts plain domain names like youtube.com or reddit.com — no need for http:// prefixes or trailing slashes.
Pick a challenge duration. 30 days, 91 days, 180 days, or a custom number. The challenge runs in the background until the end date.
Disable BlockSite so it doesn't double-block or surface conflicting redirects.
(Optional) Uninstall BlockSite. If you've fully switched, removing BlockSite removes its account-linked storage from your browser.

That's it. The whole thing fits in a coffee break.

Why "no account" actually matters

Account-required productivity tools have a quiet problem: the account is the leverage. Once you've created an account, you've handed over an email, accepted terms of service, and given the company a hook for upsells, retention campaigns, and re-engagement emails. None of this is unique to BlockSite — every freemium SaaS works this way. It's just an unusual amount of business infrastructure to attach to "stop me from opening Twitter."

Local-only tools opt out of all of that. There's no email to give up, no password to remember, no "we've updated our terms" to scroll through. It also means there's nothing for an attacker to compromise — no breach can leak a list of domains you find distracting, because the list never leaves your browser.

This is the same principle that makes SelfControl and LeechBlock NG trusted in their niches. Local-first is not the only valid design, but for a blocker, it's the one with the cleanest defaults.

When to use Focuh plus the Focuh desktop app

If you're on a Mac, the strongest free setup in 2026 is the combo:

Focuh in Chrome — blocks tabs in Chrome (and Brave, Edge, Arc).
Focuh for Mac — blocks at the OS level across every browser and every app.

Together they cover the workaround surface area: switching browsers, opening the native YouTube or Slack app, or checking a menu-bar Twitter client. Both are free. Both are made by the same team. Neither requires an account.

Install Focuh for the Chrome side. Download Focuh for the macOS side. If you only want one, start with the Chrome extension — it's where most of the distraction loop lives.

A short answer if you're in a hurry

If you bounced off BlockSite because of the 3-site cap or the account requirement, Focuh is the closest free, no-account alternative. It blocks unlimited sites, stores everything locally, and has no upgrade prompts because there's nothing to upgrade to. Migration takes about a minute. If you need cross-device sync or password-protected blocking, BlockSite Premium is still a valid option — just not a free one.

Switch to Focuh.