Ways to track your prayers, compared
Updated by the Mudawem team
Prayer tracking tools fall into four groups: prayer time apps that tell you when, tracker apps that keep a record, paper trackers that live in a room, and ambient devices that show your status without being opened. They solve different halves of the problem. Most people who stay consistent end up using one that tells them when and one that tells them whether.
We make one of the products in the last group, so read the ambient row with that in mind. Everything below is written to be useful whether or not you buy anything from us, and the weaknesses listed for our own product are real ones.
The two different problems
Losing a prayer usually happens one of two ways. Either the window opened while you were occupied and you did not notice, or the day ended and you genuinely could not remember whether you prayed Asr. Those are separate failures and a tool that fixes one will often not touch the other.
- The when problem is solved well by almost every prayer time app. It is essentially a solved problem, and free.
- The whether problem is solved by a record you can see. It matters more than people expect, because the memory of a routine act genuinely does blur.
The four categories side by side
| Category | Typical cost | Solves | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prayer time apps | Free, often ad supported | When. Accurate times anywhere, qibla, adhan audio | The notification competes with every other notification on the same screen |
| Salah tracker apps | Free to about $40 a year | Whether. A record, streaks, statistics, sometimes app blocking | Still on the phone, and streak counters punish the first bad day |
| Paper and printable trackers | Free to about $25 | Whether, in a room, for a whole household | Only updates when you go to it, and a new one is needed each year |
| Ambient devices | One-time hardware cost | Whether, visible without being opened | Costs money, needs Wi-Fi, and you still mark each prayer in an app |
Prayer time apps
Muslim Pro, Athan and Pillars are the widely used examples. They compute times from your location, handle calculation methods, and give you adhan audio, a qibla compass and a Hijri calendar. For knowing when to pray they are excellent and there is little reason to pay for one.
The limit is structural rather than a flaw in any particular app. The reminder arrives on the device you are already being interrupted by, and it is dismissed with the same thumb motion as everything else. If the thing that keeps going wrong is that you swipe the notification away and forget, a better app in the same category is unlikely to fix it.
Salah tracker apps
This category has grown quickly. Just Pray, Deeny, My Salah Tracker and SalahLock are current examples, and they differ mainly in how hard they push. Some are plain logs. Some add streaks and points. Some, like SalahLock, block other apps during prayer windows using the phone's own screen time controls, which is the most direct answer anyone has built to the notification problem.
Two things to check before committing to one. First, whether it uses a streak or a rolling window, because a streak stops being motivating the moment it breaks and can quietly become a reason to stop opening the app. Second, what it does with your data, since prayer records are about as personal as data gets. An app that keeps everything on the device is a meaningfully different proposition from one that does not.
Paper and printable trackers
A printed monthly grid on the fridge, a salah planner, a whiteboard. Cheap, completely private, impossible to swipe away, and they work for a household rather than one person, which is why they are common with children. Ramadan trackers are the most popular version.
The weakness is that a paper tracker is only ever as current as the last time you walked past it and picked up a pen. It answers the whether question well when you are standing in front of it and not at all when you are not.
Ambient devices
The smallest category, and the newest. The idea is to put the status itself in the room rather than the reminder, so that the answer to "have I kept up" is visible without anyone asking for it.
This is what the Mudawem sign does. It sits on a shelf or wall-mounts, and glows green while every prayer that has come due in the last seven days is marked, or a soft red when one is not. You still mark each prayer in the free app; the sign is the display, not the tracker. It is $49.99 with a one-time payment, ships in the United States only, has no subscription, and one sign works with one account.
The honest weaknesses: it costs money where a paper chart does not, it needs Wi-Fi, and it does not remove the app step, so if what you want is to stop touching your phone entirely this is not that. It also shows a household one person's status, which some people like and some people very much do not.
Worth distinguishing from digital azan clocks, which are a different product. A Masjidal or similar wall display shows the upcoming prayer times and plays the adhan. That is the when problem, on a bigger screen. It does not track whether you prayed.
Which to choose
| If the problem is | Start with |
|---|---|
| You do not know the times where you live | Any free prayer time app |
| You notice the reminder and then get pulled away | A tracker app with app blocking during the window |
| You cannot remember later whether you prayed | Any visible record, paper or ambient |
| A broken streak makes you give up | Anything using a rolling window rather than a streak |
| You want your children to see it too | A paper chart, or an ambient device in a shared room |
| You want to spend nothing | A free prayer time app and a printed monthly grid |
The categories are not exclusive and the common combination is a free prayer time app for the when, plus one thing outside the phone for the whether. For more on why that split works, see how to pray five times a day consistently.
Common questions
- What is the best salah tracker?
- There is no single best one, because the tools split across two different problems. Prayer time apps such as Muslim Pro, Athan and Pillars solve knowing when, and are free. Tracker apps such as Just Pray, Deeny and SalahLock solve keeping a record, and SalahLock in particular blocks other apps during the prayer window. Paper charts and ambient devices such as the Mudawem sign solve the same record problem outside the phone. The right answer depends on which of the two failures you actually have.
- Is a prayer tracking device worth it compared to a free app?
- It depends on which failure you have. If you keep losing prayers because you do not know the times, a free app fixes that and a device adds nothing. If you keep losing them because a notification gets dismissed or because you cannot recall by evening whether you prayed, then something outside the phone helps, and that can be a printed chart for nothing or a device for a one-time cost.
- How much does the Mudawem prayer sign cost?
- The Mudawem sign is $49.99 with flat $5.99 shipping inside the United States, sold as a one-time purchase with no subscription. The companion app for iOS and Android is free and every feature in it is included. It ships to US addresses only, and one sign is paired to one account.
- Do salah tracker apps work?
- They work well for keeping a record and for noticing patterns, which is real value. They are weaker at the moment of follow-through, because they live on the device that is competing for your attention. The ones with app blocking during the prayer window address that most directly. Be cautious with streak counters, which stop helping the first day one breaks.
- What is the difference between a prayer sign and a digital azan clock?
- An azan clock displays upcoming prayer times and plays the adhan, so it answers when to pray. A prayer sign such as Mudawem does not display times or play audio; it shows whether the prayers that have come due have been marked complete, over a rolling seven-day window. One is a schedule, the other is a status.