Accountability vs. porn blocking: what 1,865 people found after 30 days

Does porn blocking work?

In a survey of 391 people, 80% reduced their porn use within 30 days of using a porn blocker. 19% quit porn entirely.

Before using the blocker, 54% of people were watching porn daily or more. After, that dropped to 15%. Blocking creates real friction. It works.

And this isn't a basic DNS filter that just blocks websites. Bulldog Blocker uses on-device AI to analyze the actual screen in real time — inside browsers, social apps, messaging apps, everywhere. It catches content that traditional blockers miss entirely. Even with that level of protection, only 19% quit entirely.

For most people, blocking alone doesn't finish the job. One person described it perfectly:

"I spent half an hour trying to bypass the blocker until my urges disappeared."

The blocker held. But that's not a sustainable way to live.

Porn blocker vs. accountability software: head-to-head

Here's the direct comparison:

In a survey of 1,865 people, accountability software users were 3.5 times more likely to quit porn entirely within 30 days than people using a porn blocker alone (66% vs. 19%). Blocking left 4.2 times as many people without any improvement (same or worse combined: 20.5% vs 4.9%).

It's not just porn use. Accountability software outperforms blocking on every quality-of-life measure we asked about:

The biggest gap is in the people around you. 77% of people using accountability software say their loved ones have benefited, compared to 53% of porn blocker users (n=1,865).

"I found myself socializing more often. I am working on myself more often. Feels like I am healing. I know it's not completely cured but I have hopes."

Data notes

Survey design. Both surveys asked the same core question: how often are you watching porn? People picked from a frequency scale — from "more than once a day" down to "never" — before and after using the product. We also asked about confidence, relationships, happiness, and hope. Surveys were sent approximately one month after each person started using the product.

Sample sizes. 391 people using the porn blocker and 1,474 using the accountability software answered both the before and after questions (1,865 total). 99 accountability responses flagged as poor quality by SurveyMonkey were excluded.

Collection period. The accountability survey collected responses from 2016 through 2022. The blocker survey collected responses from 2023 through 2026. These are rolling surveys sent to new people over time, not a single point-in-time experiment.

Who did this. This survey was designed and administered by Tyler Patterson, founder and CEO of Ever Accountable. We make both products compared here. We have a financial interest in these results. We've tried to be honest about what the data shows — including where it's not flattering.

Baseline difference. People using the porn blocker reported heavier use before starting: 54% were watching daily or more, compared to 28% of accountability software users. This suggests blocking may be especially attractive to people who need immediate intervention — and the 80% improvement rate among this heavier-use group is noteworthy.

Limitations. These results are self-reported, not observed behavior. People who respond to surveys tend to be more engaged, so the absolute percentages likely skew high — but both surveys share this bias, so the comparison between the two approaches still holds. The two surveys were conducted years apart. These are 30-day outcomes; we plan to study longer-term results in future surveys.

Check our work

We're publishing the raw SurveyMonkey exports so you can verify the data behind every number on this page.

• Blocker survey — full SurveyMonkey export (PDF)
• Accountability survey — full SurveyMonkey export (PDF)

These are unmodified exports showing aggregate results for every question — no individual responses, no identifying information. The survey totals include all respondents; our analysis filtered 99 accountability responses flagged as poor quality, so some counts differ slightly from the numbers on this page.

The headline comparisons (like "95% reduced" and "3.5x more likely to quit") were computed by matching each person's before and after answers. We can't publish individual responses without risking anonymity, but the aggregate distributions in the PDFs let you verify the underlying data.