My QuitBuddy Review 2026: Australia’s Free Quit App

A My QuitBuddy app review is overdue for the Australian audience it was actually built for: My QuitBuddy is the free, government-published app most Australians are pointed to first, and it currently rates well on both app stores. Most reviews of quit-smoking apps online are written for a US or UK audience and mention Australia only in passing, which leaves a genuine gap for a reader who wants to know specifically what an Australian government app offers, what it costs, and how it fits with the country’s own free Quitline service. This review covers what the app is, who publishes it, its real store ratings, how it pairs with Quitline 13 7848, and how it compares with iQuit — so Australian readers can pick with facts, not guesswork.

What My QuitBuddy is

My QuitBuddy is described plainly by Quit Victoria as “an app that helps you get, and stay, smoke-free and vape-free,” and by Healthdirect as one that provides “helpful tips and distractions” alongside tracking. It offers three entry modes depending on where you are in your quit journey: “‘Quit Now’, ‘Continue Quitting’, or prepare to ‘Quit Later,’” letting you set personal goals and motivations before or after your quit date rather than assuming everyone starts at day one.

That flexibility around entry point is worth calling out, because a lot of quit apps assume you have already picked a quit date and just want a counter running. My QuitBuddy instead treats “still deciding” and “already quit but want ongoing support” as equally valid starting points, which matters for the many Australians who install a quit app before they have fully committed rather than the day after.

Who publishes it

My QuitBuddy is “published by the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing,” distributed through Healthdirect Australia’s information network. That is a genuine, currently active government publisher — not an abandoned legacy project — reflected in an actual recent update on both stores rather than a stale, years-old release.

On the App Store specifically, the developer account listing the app shows as “Department of Health, Australian Capital Territory,” a slightly different name to the federal department Healthdirect credits. That kind of naming variation between a store account and the department’s public-facing name is common for government apps built and maintained across different agencies and contractors over the years, and it does not indicate the app has been abandoned or handed off to a third party — both listings point back to the same official Australian government quitting resources.

The department that publishes the app also runs its own public awareness content:

Features: tracking, distractions, milestones

The core tracker lets you “view your progress, including a count of every day, hour and minute you stay vape or smoke-free and how much money” you have saved — a granular, real-time counter rather than a once-a-day summary. For craving moments, you can “nominate any ‘Danger Times’ and My QuitBuddy will send you notifications” ahead of the moments you already know are risky, plus a library of distractions “to occupy your mind and your hands.” There is also a social layer: you can “nominate friends or family who can help you in the tough times,” building a support circle into the app itself rather than leaving that entirely up to you to organize separately.

The “Danger Times” feature is worth highlighting specifically, because it flips the usual craving-tool model. Most apps wait for you to open them and log a craving as it happens; My QuitBuddy instead lets you flag in advance the hours or situations you already know are risky — a commute, a work break, a particular pub — so the encouragement arrives before the craving rather than after you have already reached for the app on your own initiative. That proactive timing is a genuinely useful design choice for anyone whose cravings follow a predictable daily rhythm.

What Australian users say (the real store ratings)

Checked live this session: on Google Play, My QuitBuddy is “Rated 4.6 stars out of five stars” from 2,974 reviews, with “100K+” downloads and an update dated “2 July 2026.” On the App Store, it holds an average rating of about 4.5 stars from 6,633 ratings, current version 6.1.3 released 2026-07-06, and is free. Both figures point the same direction: this is a well-reviewed, currently maintained app on both platforms, which is genuinely reassuring for a government-built tool, since public apps do not always keep pace with commercial ones.

The scale of the review counts also tells its own story: 100K+ downloads and nearly 3,000 Google Play reviews is a meaningful sample for a national government health app, not a handful of enthusiastic early adopters. Combined with a recent update date on both stores, it is reasonable to treat this as an actively supported product rather than something coasting on an old release.

Store ratings measure satisfaction with the app experience rather than verified quit success, so a high score is a good sign of usability and reliability, not a guarantee that any individual reader will quit using it — no app, free or paid, can promise that.

Quitline 13 7848 and what the service adds

My QuitBuddy is designed to work alongside, not instead of, Australia’s Quitline on 13 7848 — the free national telephone counseling service. Quit Victoria’s own site features My QuitBuddy as one of its recommended tools, positioning the app and the phone counseling as complementary: the app for structured daily tracking and craving distraction, Quitline for a real conversation with a trained counselor when you want to talk something through rather than tap through a screen. Calling costs the price of a local call, and counselors can also help with a personalized quit plan if you want more structure than the app alone provides.

This app-plus-phone-line combination is worth taking seriously rather than treating the app as a replacement for talking to someone. An app cannot ask follow-up questions the way a trained counselor can, and Quitline callback services mean a counselor can check in with you at a scheduled time, which is a different kind of support than a push notification, however well-timed.

Cost of smoking in AUD and what the tracker shows

One of the app’s clearest motivational levers is its running money-saved counter, working directly in AUD as you log your progress day by day. Because it counts by the minute rather than rounding to the nearest day, the number moves visibly even in your first session, which is a small but real behavioral nudge — watching a savings figure tick upward in real time is more motivating for many people than a static number updated once a day. If you want to see how that AUD savings estimate compares against nationwide Australian smoking-cost figures, current Australian smoking statistics are covered separately.

Entering your actual daily spend accurately when you set the app up matters more than it might seem, since an underestimated starting number understates every milestone that follows — take a minute to check your real pack price and daily count rather than accepting a rough guess the app might default to.

My QuitBuddy vs iQuit

If you want the AI coach, craving-forecast, and multi-currency savings dashboard alongside My QuitBuddy’s Australia-specific design, the best free quit-smoking apps and resources are compared in full here, and for the platform-specific picture, the best Android quit-smoking apps are ranked separately alongside the best iPhone options. My QuitBuddy is genuinely worth keeping regardless of what else you install — it costs nothing, it is government-vetted, and it is the app most Australian health services will already point you toward. iQuit sits well in the broader feature comparison of quit-smoking apps if you decide to run both side by side, and if vaping rather than cigarettes is your specific situation, Australia’s prescription-vape-vs-NRT rules are explained separately. If you’ve already looked at the general Australian quitting picture, how an app plus Quitline savings tracker works together is covered here too.

Neither app is a wrong choice, and they solve genuinely different parts of the problem: My QuitBuddy is the Australia-specific, government-endorsed default with a built-in bridge to Quitline, while iQuit adds a conversational coach and deeper craving analytics that neither My QuitBuddy nor Quitline currently offer. Running both costs nothing and does not create any conflict — logging the same quit attempt in two trackers is a minor duplication of effort, not a real downside, if the combination keeps you more engaged than either app alone would.

Frequently Asked Questions