MilkMode vs. Glow Baby: Which Breastfeeding App Should You Use?

Glow Baby is part of the Glow ecosystem, a suite of health and parenting apps with over 20 million users. It's been around for years, it tracks just about everything, and it has a built-in community of parents sharing tips and advice.

MilkMode is a breastfeeding timer. That's the whole app.

These are two very different products solving different problems. Here's an honest look at when each one makes sense.

Quick comparison

Feature	MilkMode	Glow Baby
Breastfeeding timer	Yes	Yes
Left/right tracking	Yes	Yes
Home Screen widget	Full feed control	Basic
Live Activities / Dynamic Island	Yes	No
Sleep tracking	No	Yes
Diaper tracking	No	Yes
Community forums	No	Yes
Ads in free version	No (no free version with ads)	Yes
Pricing	Free 7-day trial, then $4.99	Free w/ads, $69.99/yr, or $100 lifetime
Account required	No	Yes
Data privacy	On-device only	Cloud sync

The Glow Baby experience

Glow Baby is a big app. It tracks breastfeeding, pumping, bottles, diapers, sleep, growth, and milestones. It connects to the broader Glow ecosystem (Glow for fertility, Glow Nurture for pregnancy), so if you've been a Glow user since before baby arrived, staying in the family makes sense.

The community features are a genuine differentiator. You can browse forums, ask questions, and see what other parents are experiencing at the same stage. For first-time parents especially, that sense of "I'm not the only one" can be valuable.

The trade-off? The free version has ads. A lot of ads. Users report ads "popping up every time I try to do anything" and "constant ads when you're holding a crying baby and just trying to log a bottle." The interface is busy. And like most all-in-one apps, you have to navigate past features you don't need to get to the one you use most.

Glow also requires an account, syncs your data to the cloud, and each caregiver needs their own premium subscription to remove ads. The family plan runs ~$90/year. That's a lot of ongoing cost for a baby tracker.

The MilkMode experience

MilkMode was designed around a single question: what's the fastest way to start and stop a breastfeeding timer?

The answer is a Home Screen widget that does everything. You never need to open the app. Start a feed, switch sides, pause, finish, all from the widget. Live Activities put the running timer on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island so you can check duration without unlocking your phone.

There are no ads. There's no account to create. Your data stays on your phone. And it's free to download and use for 7 days, then just $4.99 to keep forever. One payment, no recurring charge, ever.

The ads issue

This is worth addressing directly. Glow Baby's free tier includes ads. Some parents find them intrusive, especially when they appear between logging actions. At 3am, when you're trying to log a feed as quickly as possible, an ad popping up is more than annoying. It's a real usability problem.

You can remove ads by upgrading to Glow Premium ($69.99/year, or $100 for lifetime access). If you want your partner to also be ad-free, that's the family plan at ~$90/year. If you're mainly using the breastfeeding timer, paying $70+/year for what is essentially ad removal feels steep. Over a year of breastfeeding, that's 14x what MilkMode costs.

MilkMode doesn't have a free tier with ads. It's free to download and you get the full app for 7 days. After that, it's a one-time $4.99 purchase. No ads, ever.

The privacy issue

This one is harder to ignore. In 2020, the California Attorney General reached a $250,000 settlement with Glow over security flaws that exposed users' sensitive personal and health data. The AG's office found that Glow's app had vulnerabilities that could allow unauthorized access to user information, including pregnancy and fertility data.

Mozilla's *Privacy Not Included project rated Glow's privacy practices as "pretty bad", citing concerns about data sharing with third-party advertisers and the amount of personal health data the app collects. Users have also reported difficulty getting their data deleted even after closing their accounts.

When you're logging your baby's feeding schedule, that data feels private. Because it is. Glow requires an account, syncs everything to the cloud, and has a documented history of privacy issues. MilkMode stores your data on your phone. No account, no cloud, no servers. Your baby's feeding data never leaves your device.

When Glow Baby makes sense

• You want to track everything (feeds, diapers, sleep, growth) in one app
• You value community features and want to connect with other parents
• You've been using Glow apps since pregnancy and want to stay in the ecosystem
• You need Android support (MilkMode is iPhone only)

When MilkMode makes more sense

• You just need a breastfeeding timer, not a full baby dashboard
• You want zero ads, no account, and data that stays on your phone
• You want the fastest possible way to log a feed (widget + Live Activities)
• You'd rather download free and pay $4.99 once than $69.99/year
• You don't want your baby's feeding data on someone else's servers
• You want a calm, focused experience instead of a feature-packed interface

The bottom line

Glow Baby is a solid all-in-one tracker. If you want one app for everything and you don't mind ads (or paying $69.99/year to remove them), it does the job. The community aspect is a nice bonus that most competitors don't offer.

But if you're one of the many parents who downloads a big tracker and only uses the breastfeeding timer, MilkMode does that one thing faster, cleaner, and without the noise. No ads, no subscription, no data collection, no upsells. Free to try, $4.99 once to keep, and your baby's data stays on your phone where it belongs.

For a broader look at alternatives, check out our roundup of the best Huckleberry alternatives.