| Feature | Arbitrium | Decisio |
|---|---|---|
| Methodology | Basic weighted scoring | AHP pairwise (Saaty scale) |
| Consistency validation | No | Yes — flags contradictions |
| AI criteria suggestions | No | Yes |
| Devil's Advocate (AI) | No | Yes |
| Pre-built templates | No | 15+ |
| Playbook (Recipes / Principles) | No | Yes |
| Outcome tracking | No | Yes — calibration score |
| Export | No | PDF, Excel, Markdown |
| iCloud sync iPhone + iPad | Limited | Yes |
| Ads / upsells | Possible | None |
| Price | Free | Free / $2.99-mo / $19.99-yr |
Choose a pizza place. Pick a color scheme. Decide between two Netflix shows. For low-stakes daily decisions, a free weighted-scoring tool is perfect. Decisio's depth is overkill.
Respect. Arbitrium is genuinely free. Just be aware that "free" software has a business model — usually ads, data collection, or an eventual paid tier. Read the app's privacy policy before giving it decisions about sensitive topics.
This is nearly every decision worth running through an app. Job offer (wrong choice = tens of thousands of dollars and a year of your life). Major purchase (wrong choice = thousands). Vendor selection (wrong choice = project delays). Relocation (wrong choice = years of regret). For any of these, a basic weighted-score tool without consistency checking is leaving money on the table.
Free decision apps take your input at face value. You say Salary is 40%, Location is 30%, Team is 30% — they compute the ranking. AHP forces you to compare criteria pairwise: is Salary more important than Location, and by how much? Is Location more important than Team? If those judgments don't reconcile, AHP's consistency ratio tells you. Arbitrium can't, because it doesn't ask the pairwise question.
Decisio's Playbook saves Recipes and Principles. Outcome Tracking records whether your past decisions worked out. Calibration Score shows your actual accuracy. That's a compounding asset — each decision you run through Decisio makes the next one a little better. Arbitrium is transactional: it helps you rank options once, then moves on.
Devil's Advocate reads your specific criteria, options, and scores, then argues against your top choice with concrete counterpoints. "Your #1 pick wins on compensation (your top-weighted criterion), but loses on career growth (your 2nd-weighted). You're trading future earning power for current comfort. Reconsider?" That's strategic push-back, not generic encouragement. Arbitrium doesn't have AI at all.
Free apps are never really free. They're funded through one of three models:
Decisio's free tier is genuinely usable (3 full decisions, all 15+ templates, Playbook, Outcome Tracking, no ads, no data selling). If you upgrade, it's $2.99/month — the honest price of a well-built, actively developed decision tool that doesn't need to monetize your attention.
Check the current App Store listing. Many "free" decision apps now use upgrade prompts, ads, or limited decisions per day. Read the latest App Store description and reviews for the current version before relying on the app for important decisions.
3 full decisions with Simple Scoring. All 15+ decision templates. Full Playbook and Outcome Tracking. No ads. No data selling. You can use it indefinitely at the free tier if 3 decisions is enough for you.
For decisions with 3+ criteria, yes. Pairwise comparisons on a 1-to-9 scale produce more accurate weights than direct-weight assignment (research from Saaty 1977 onwards). More importantly, AHP's consistency ratio catches logical contradictions in your own judgments — simple weighted scoring cannot detect these errors.
Not directly. If your existing app exports PDFs, you can read the criteria and options into a new Decisio decision manually. For decisions that matter, re-running them with AHP pairwise comparisons often reveals insights that the simpler tool missed.
Only for optional AI features if you're using OpenAI with your own API key. The core app — AHP, templates, Playbook, Outcome Tracking — works offline. On iOS 18.2+ with Apple Intelligence, AI also runs on-device without internet.
No account. No credit card. 7-day free trial on annual Pro.
Download on the App StoreiOS 17+ · Works on iPhone and iPad