The short answer: Goally is best for visual schedules and routines, Tiimo is the best visual planner (it won Apple's iPhone App of the Year in 2025), Thruday is a lighter, flexible day-planner alternative, Spoken is best for AAC if your child is nonspeaking — and Gentle Ally is the only app on this list built specifically for PDA. Almost every parenting app is designed for autism or ADHD in general; if your child has a PDA profile, that distinction matters more than any feature list.
No single app does everything, and the right choice depends on what your family actually struggles with. Here's an honest look at each — including what they don't do well.
Quick Comparison
| App | Best for | Designed for PDA? | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Goally | Visual schedules, routines & rewards (ages 2-8) | No — autism & ADHD broadly | Dedicated tablet + parent app (iOS, Android) |
| Tiimo | Visual planning & time awareness | No — ADHD & autism broadly | iOS, Android, web |
| Thruday | Flexible visual day planning | No — ADHD & autism broadly | iOS, Android, web |
| Spoken | AAC for nonspeaking kids & adults | No — AAC for speech needs | iOS, Android, Mac |
| Gentle Ally | In-the-moment declarative language | Yes — built for PDA caregivers | iOS (Android coming) |
Goally — Best for Visual Schedules and Routines
Goally builds apps and hardware for kids with autism and ADHD, aimed at ages 2-8. Its core strength is routines: parents manage visual, step-by-step schedules and reward points from a companion app on their own phone, and the child works through them on Goally's dedicated tablet — a deliberately dimmer, distraction-free device with no ads, no YouTube, and no web browser.
- Where it shines: Morning and bedtime routines, task sequencing, kids who respond well to visual structure and earned rewards. The dedicated device is genuinely useful if screens are a battleground.
- Where it falls short for PDA: Reward systems and fixed routines are exactly the kind of external demands that tend to backfire with Pathological Demand Avoidance. If your child has a PDA profile, expect to use Goally loosely — or find that schedules become another thing to resist. It's also the priciest option here: the tablet runs a few hundred dollars, with ongoing content plans after the first year.
Tiimo — Best Visual Planner
Tiimo was built with ADHD and autistic users in mind and won iPhone App of the Year at the 2025 App Store Awards — deservedly. It turns tasks into a clear visual timeline, and its AI planning feature breaks a messy list of to-dos into a realistic, structured day. It's designed for the person using it (teen or adult) rather than as a parent-managed system.
- Where it shines: Time blindness, executive functioning, older kids and teens who want to manage their own day — and parents managing their own ADHD alongside everything else. Because the plan belongs to the user rather than being imposed, it can sit better with demand-sensitive teens than parent-controlled schedules.
- Where it falls short for PDA: It's a planner, not a parenting tool. It won't help you navigate a refusal, a meltdown, or the hundred micro-negotiations of a PDA day. Younger children will need a parent driving it.
Thruday — Best Flexible Day Planner
Thruday describes itself as a visual planner for "ADHD, autism and forgetful brains," free to start on iOS, Android, and the web. Beyond visual planning and routines it adds mood tracking, focus tools, and the ability to share your planner with a parent or carer. Its flexibility — planning around real-life energy and attention rather than rigid schedules — is a quiet advantage for demand-sensitive kids, where plans feel more like a map than a set of orders.
- Where it shines: Families who want a free, flexible entry point to visual planning, and the carer-sharing feature for coordinating support.
- Where it falls short for PDA: A newer product with a much smaller user base than Tiimo or Goally. Like the others, it organizes the day — it doesn't help with communication, which is where most PDA days are won or lost.
Spoken — Best AAC App
Spoken is an AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) app for nonspeaking and minimally speaking people. It uses predictive text to build sentences quickly and reads them aloud with natural text-to-speech. If your child is nonspeaking — whether or not they have a PDA profile — AAC is a different and more fundamental need than anything else on this list.
- Where it shines: Fast sentence-building for literate users; far more affordable than traditional AAC devices; also available on Mac.
- Where it falls short: It's primarily text-based, so it best suits users who can read. Pre-literate children typically need symbol-based AAC (like Proloquo2Go) instead.
Gentle Ally — The Only App Built for PDA Caregivers
Full disclosure: this is our app. It exists because every app above helps organize a child's day, but none of them was built for PDA — and none helps with the hardest part of PDA parenting: what to say. When a direct instruction triggers your child's threat response, the whole day runs on declarative language — observations and invitations instead of commands. Finding those words mid-standoff, while staying regulated yourself, is genuinely hard.
You describe the situation (typing or voice), and Gentle Ally generates 5-6 declarative phrases tailored to your child's age, interests, and sensitivities. Phrases that work can be saved to a library organized by situation — bedtime, mealtimes, transitions — and a crisis mode gives instant calming scripts when things have already escalated.
- Where it shines: The in-the-moment communication problem no other app addresses, designed around PDA from the ground up rather than adapted to it. Especially useful for families still internalizing declarative language.
- Where it falls short: It doesn't do schedules, routines, or planning — pair it with Tiimo or Goally if that's also a need. Android is still on the way. And a general tool like ChatGPT can produce similar phrases if you're willing to prompt it each time — we've written an honest comparison in ChatGPT vs. a dedicated PDA app.
How to Choose
- Struggling with routines and transitions? Start with Goally (younger kids, parent-managed) or Tiimo (older kids and teens, self-managed).
- Struggling with what to say without triggering refusal? That's Gentle Ally's entire job — and the core PDA problem.
- Child is nonspeaking? AAC first — try Spoken if your child reads, or a symbol-based AAC app if not.
- Overwhelmed by full-featured apps? Thruday is the gentlest entry point for planning.
Most of these apps have free tiers or trials. Trying two side by side for a week will tell you more than any comparison post — including this one. And if you're still working out whether PDA fits your child, start with our guide to what PDA is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an app made specifically for PDA?
Gentle Ally is currently the only app built specifically for PDA caregivers — it generates declarative, low-demand language in the moment. Other excellent apps like Goally and Tiimo were designed for autism and ADHD more broadly and can work for PDA families with adaptation.
Do visual schedule apps work for children with PDA?
Sometimes, but with caution. For many autistic children, visual schedules reduce anxiety by adding predictability. For PDA children specifically, a schedule can register as a list of demands and increase resistance. Many PDA families find flexible, child-led planning works better than fixed routines.
Are these apps a replacement for professional support?
No. They're practical tools for daily life, not therapy. If your child is struggling significantly, an assessment and support from professionals who understand PDA and neurodivergence is worth pursuing alongside any app.