Ember FastingZero Plus costs $69.99 a year (verified on Zero's App Store listing, checked 7 September 2026). Ember costs $14.99 a year, or $29.99 once and forever.
That is a difference of roughly $55 every year, for as long as you fast.
This is not a takedown. Zero introduced a lot of people to fasting, and the app is well made. But the 2026 product is not the 2019 product, and if you are paying the difference it is worth knowing what it buys.
Ember Fasting is, deliberately, the simple fasting timer without the platform bolted on.
What Zero Plus includes
As of July 2026, the paid tier covers unlimited fasting history, advanced statistics, meal logging with macro estimates, hydration tracking, a habit tracker, the Zero Longevity Science content library, multiple themes, and integrations including HealthKit and Garmin.
What Ember includes
For the price of one streaming subscription per year:
- Unlimited fasting history
- Weekly statistics and trends
- All five protocols: 16:8, 18:6, 20:4, OMAD, and custom up to 168 hours
- Every widget style, including Lock Screen and StandBy
- 10 curated themes plus a custom accent colour
- 8 alternate app icons
- Zone, milestone and halfway notifications
- Apple Watch app (shipping in V1.1)
- HealthKit, iCloud sync and CSV export (V1.1)
Or pay $29.99 once and own it.
Where the $55 goes
Both apps cover the basics. Fasting timer, unlimited history and statistics are in Zero Plus and in Ember alike.
Two places Ember is ahead. Widget styles: Zero's are limited, Ember ships every size. Themes: Zero has them, Ember has ten plus a custom accent colour.
Four things only Zero has, and this is honestly where your $55 goes: meal logging, hydration tracking, a habit tracker, and the Zero Longevity Science content library.
Two Zero has that Ember has not shipped yet. HealthKit and Apple Watch are live in Zero today; both are on Ember's V1.1 roadmap and are not in the app as you read this.
Read honestly, $55 a year buys meal logging, hydration tracking, habit tracking and a content library.
Three of those are things a dedicated app does better. If you want a food log, MyFitnessPal or Cronometer are more capable. If you want habit tracking, Streaks does more. If you want longevity content, there are books.
You do not pay $70 a year for a fasting timer because you want a fasting timer. You pay it because Zero decided to bundle four products together and price the bundle.
What changed at Zero
Zero now trades as Zero Longevity Science. The direction is clear from the name: from fasting timer to longevity platform, with meal photo logging, a habit tracker, hydration tracking and a steady stream of editorial content.
That is a real product, built for a real audience. It is simply a different product from the one many people originally downloaded.
That gap is what Ember was built to fill.
The case for switching
If you fast because you want to fast, and in practice you press start, press stop, and glance at a widget, then the extra $55 a year is buying features you do not open.
Ember does that part, carefully, for $15 a year. Or $30 once.
The case for staying
If you genuinely use the meal logging, the habit tracker and the hydration tracking, and you read the content library, then Zero is the better fit and the bundle is doing real work for you. Switching would cost you things you use.
That is a smaller group than Zero's revenue implies, but it is not nobody, and if it is you then stay.
If you are paying $70 a year and using a fraction of it, Ember does that fraction well, for $15 a year, or $29.99 once and forever. No account, no ads, no upgrade prompt the moment you start a fast.
Zero's price checked on its App Store listing, 7 September 2026; its feature set as described there and in Zero's support documentation as of July 2026. Prices change; check before you decide.