What if I told you that you didn’t have a porn problem, but a pain problem?
That’s how the CEO of Relay, Chandler Rogers, describes porn addiction—and based on the research we have about addiction, his observation is spot on.
He’s used that insight to design an interesting and potent idea: an online porn addiction support group that operates out of an app. Writing this review was an interesting challenge because Relay is so unique that there isn’t a single word or phrase to describe it.
At its core, Relay is a platform that provides live meetings for men who struggle with porn addiction.
There is also a community of men who check in on each other and self-accountability progress checks. Oh, there’s an education component with courses taught by licensed therapists and psychiatrists who specialize in recovery.
The entire system is designed not only to help you stop watching pornography, but also to help you heal and understand why you can’t stop despite any emotional, sexual, relational, or—in some cases—physical damage that you have endured as a result.
This review will explore all of the features of Relay and give you an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the app.
Whether you found this article looking for a review of the Relay app or just searching for an online porn addiction support group gives you a plan to get your habits under control, you’ll learn about Relay can potentially help you.
But before we get into the features of Relay, there’s one thing that Relay is not, and we have to cover that first.
Disclosure of conflict of interest and affiliate compensation:
I write content for Relay and received a discount code to try the app. While I am committed to leaving an honest review that highlights both the positives and negatives of Relay—the app isn’t all candy and roses—it’s important that you know about my connections and affiliations.
If you sign up for Relay through any links on this page, I may receive a commission. To make sure that I do, use code EDLATI at checkout. \
Relay Is Not A Porn-Blocking App
Before we get into the features, we need to clear up the biggest misunderstanding people have about Relay.
Relay is not a porn-blocking app. In fact, they promote other porn blocking apps on their website.
It doesn’t lock your phone down, blacklist websites, or install digital handcuffs on your browser. It doesn’t even monitor your traffic.
If you’re looking for something like Covenant Eyes, Canopy, or Freedom—tools that restrict access and monitor activity—Relay isn’t trying to compete with that lane.
And that’s not because blockers are useless.
Restriction can absolutely help, especially early on. If you’re in a fragile stage of quitting, putting speed bumps between you and temptation is not only a smart move, but sometimes it’s a necessary one as well.
Porn blocking software can keep you in check and prevent impulsive relapses from happening during moments when you feel the urge to watch porn. Blockers buy you valuable time to regain control when you feel like you’re losing it.
But what happens when your sex drive comes roaring back: blockers don’t fix the thing that keeps making you want porn in the first place.
Porn blockers treat porn addiction like a technology problem—“If we just block the websites, the behavior stops.” But compulsive porn use isn’t fueled by access. It’s fueled by pain, stress, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, shame, and whatever else you’ve trained porn to solve for you.
That’s why a lot of guys “fail” with blockers even when the software works perfectly.
They hit a stressful week. They get into a fight with their partner. They feel rejected. They have a bad day. They’re tired. They’re alone. The urge spikes, and the brain now seeks relief.
If porn has been your go-to relief valve for years, you will find a workaround, loophole, a new source, or a device without the blocker—not because you’re weak, but because your nervous system is trying to regulate itself with the only tool it knows.
Blockers can slow you down. They can’t teach you what to do with the urge when it shows up.
Relay is designed to get to the root of the problem, rather than just addressing the symptoms. Relay’s goal isn’t to create a world where porn is inaccessible—it’s to create a life where porn is unnecessary.
That’s why Relay functions more like a rehab center in your pocket than a set of parental controls.
Instead of focusing on what you can’t do, it focuses on what you can do when the craving hits—who you talk to, how you interrupt the loop, how you handle the pain underneath it, and how you rebuild the parts of your life that porn quietly eroded.
This is also why Relay is hard to describe with one neat label. It’s not “software.” It’s a support system: live meetings, peer accountability, structured check-ins, and professional education. All of this is designed to replace secrecy with connection and compulsive coping with healthier outlets.
Porn blockers try to win by controlling your environment. Relay tries to win by changing how you interact with it.
Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about what Relay actually offers. Let’s walk through the app, starting at the sign-up page.
Relay addiction app sign-up process
Upon signing up, you’re immediately greeted by a video message from Chandler Rogers, the founder of Relay. I’ve tried out a lot of apps designed to help men quit porn, and I’ve never been greeted with a video message upon starting.
That, alone, gives you a glimpse into the level of care that has gone into Relay and the sincerity of the mission.
Relay prides itself on showing that there is a team of real people behind the app who have struggled and know what it’s like. Unlike other apps and most programs, at Relay, you work with real clinicians and therapists on a clinical program that blends human empathy and hard science.
No other apps welcome you aboard with reassurance that “you don’t have a porn problem, a masturbation problem, an infidelity problem, or whatever it is you’re dealing with. You have a pain problem.”
When I initially started my journey through addiction recovery—both with alcohol and pornography—I never put much stock into the idea of underlying issues. To me, it was always more important to stop the behavior and figure out the “why” afterwards.
With that said, the further along in my sobriety and recovery journey I go, the more I see how much my underlying issues and past traumas have played a role in leading me to where I am today.
Knowing that Relay takes this approach so seriously that their founder delivers a video message on it when you sign up, immediately puts Relay at the top of porn recovery and porn blocking apps and programs.
Rogers concludes the video message with, “We’re not just here to help you quit a behavior, but to help you become a healthier, whole version of yourself.”
These words are not just fluff, as you soon will see.
A debatable issue about the Relay sign-up process
I told you this review would be honest, and that includes any negative impressions I have. Well, it’s time for the first one.
Right after Chandler’s welcome message, you’re prompted to leave a 5-star rating. I have mixed feelings about asking people to rate the app before they even leave it.
On the one hand, as someone who has created online content for over a decade and has been on well over 300 podcasts, I understand how important reviews are.
Reviews not only make people feel confident about the product, service, or show, but they also help others discover it because good (and many) reviews trigger the algorithm to show your product in the top results in the category you service.
Not only that, but people forget to leave reviews, and they are less likely to leave a positive review than a negative one—especially the more satisfied and engaged they are with the app.
I call this “The Lineman Principle.”
In American football, the only time you hear a lineman’s name announced is when he does something wrong. For people not familiar with the sport or non-Americans, “The Goalie Principle works as well.”
If Relay wants to gain more reviews—especially positive ones—it makes the most sense to ask for them upfront and specifically request 5-star reviews.
With that said, some people might reason—and rightfully so—that asking for a review before the product is actually used is a bit dishonest.
At the very least, potentially inaccurate. I know the app is great because I’ve used it and been behind the scenes as well, but someone who signs up after a Google search or reading an interview with the founder or a profile on the company does not know that.
To offset this possibility, you can always change your review. Also, Relay offers a free 30-day trial, so these are fair trade-offs. I suppose this isn’t so much a negative as it was surprising, but given that you aren’t married to whatever review you leave AND you get to try before you buy, most users—myself included—won’t mind.
Faith vs Science path of recovery in Relay
After signing up, you then fill out a questionnaire. The purpose of this questionnaire is to determine the best approach for you once you are inside the app.
All of the questions are the standard information you’d put down when trying to attack a habit.
They ask how long you’ve been struggling, when was your last relapse, the longest you’ve been able to refrain from using pornography, and they even ask if you’re currently working with a therapist or have tried in the past.
Along the way, they sprinkle in stellar reviews of Relay and the results members have achieved, which motivates you. When you see someone who has already had success, that gives you faith you’ll be able to do the same, and it’s important to get off to the right start.
One thing that immediately stood out to me is the question, “Is a faith-based approach important to you?” You’re then presented with the options “Yes, I’d prefer a faith + psychology-based approach,” “No, I’d prefer psychology only,” and “I don’t care either way.”
This approach signals two important things about Relay’s approach:
First, Relay recognizes that pornography addiction is an issue that affects people, regardless of their religious affiliation. That might sound obvious, but it’s a distinction many recovery programs still fail to make.
Too often, help is packaged in a way that assumes belief first and healing second, which quietly filters out people who are already struggling and hesitant to ask for help.
When I wrote my book Sober Letters to My Drunken Self—a book about my emotional journey through sobriety—I wanted a recovery framework that could be accessed by anyone—Christian, agnostic, atheist, or somewhere in between—because addiction doesn’t check your worldview before it shows up.
People don’t start watching porn because they lack theology; they start because they’re lonely, stressed, bored, anxious, or trying to escape something. If the doorway to recovery requires a specific belief system, many people will never walk through it.
By explicitly offering a psychology-only option, Relay removes that unnecessary barrier. It communicates, “You don’t have to agree with us about God to get help here.” That matters because shame already keeps people silent; adding ideological friction on top of that just ensures more people stay stuck.
In that sense, this isn’t a concession—it’s an act of practicality and compassion, and it immediately makes the app usable by a far wider range of people who genuinely want to change.
Second, Relay does not give a “faith-only” approach. This consideration is practical and realistic because, as much of a believer as you or I may be, the reality is that faith alone does not accomplish everything. A research-backed, science-based method performs best when integrated with proven psychological and behavioral tools, not when it attempts to replace them (Kelly et al., 2020).
Research on recovery consistently shows that outcomes improve when people have both a coherent meaning system (which faith can provide) and structured, repeatable interventions that address behavior, cognition, and environment (Captari et al., 2018).
Faith can meaningfully support recovery, but it works most reliably when paired with evidence-based methods like behavioral tracking, cognitive restructuring, accountability systems, and habit-change frameworks.
Relay’s refusal to offer a “faith-only” path reflects an understanding that belief without structure leaves too much to chance, while structure without meaning often fails to sustain long-term change.
While Relay’s founder is a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints, and that clearly influences his approach, it seems that Relay has decided to “split the difference,” so to speak.
By offering science without faith, but not vice versa, they present the routes that are most accessible to everyone and most likely to help you break bad habits and rebuild yourself.
Once you complete the initial onboarding, you’re shown many messages from members about their struggles and how Relay has helped them.
Then you select a check-in time in the app using a feature we’ll discuss shortly,
Inside the Relay App
So after you finish all of the onboarding, you enter the app. The dashboard is clean and simple, with 5 options. I’ll cover each one so you know what to expect and share my thoughts on them.
Today
This is the dashboard you will see every time you log in to Relay. It prompts you to perform your check-ins, which are crucial to tracking your progress.
You can see there are tools on the side for journaling, pulse check, and logging urges. Two of this self-explanatory: “journaling” is where you go to journal, and “urge log” is where you go log any urges you have to watch porn. The “pulse check” isn’t as obvious, but it’s just a place for you to log your current mode and reflect specifically what you’re feeling good about.
Warnings and systems are helpful, but you also need to celebrate the good things happening in your life and recovery. Writing them and then being able to look at them later can serve as a handy source of motivation.
I also want to note that as part of the pulse check, you can “throw a red flag in the chat” if you’re feeling down, bad, or stressed and you’re worried that it might affect your recovery or put your streak in danger. Other team members will be able to talk to and connect to help you through it.
That camaraderie is an incredibly useful aspect of Relay and, by itself, is worth the money alone. But there’s more.
Team
Remember the question Relay asks you: whether you have a faith+science recovery path or one with science alone? Relay uses that information to form teams, and these are the individuals you see here.
The community is a great place for the magic to happen. In my own helping men who struggle with pornography addiction, the community has always been the most transformative aspect.
This surprised me—but given everything we know about the healing and protective powers of human connection and relationships, it shouldn’t have.
As Johan Hair famously said, “The opposite of addiction is connection.” The particular addiction doesn’t matter. Any compulsive consumption seems to be either diminished, offset, or neutralized by connection.
Live Relay Meetings
Relay has live meetings run by peer facilitators who are veteran members of the community (similar to other peer recovery models). These are people who have been down the road of recovery and help create that environment for others coming in.
I like this approach because the last thing a person in recovery needs to feel is judgment. While qualified professionals with degrees and credentials obviously know their stuff, there is still a feeling of talking to an outsider who doesn’t get it.
If you’ve ever been to an AA meeting, the same idea is at play. While AA is more about sharing than education, the members with more time in sobriety tend to end up as default (or in some cases, official) leaders. It works the same way in Relay, but with more of a designation.
The are 4 meetings a week to cater to different time zones and, because of the sensitive nature of addiction, Relay allows you to decide how anonymous you wish to remain. You can keep your camera off and sit back to observe, or turn it on and interact.
I think the ability to remain completely anonymous is great, because it’s something that in-person meetings can’t accommodate. I’m not familiar with other apps and online support groups in this space, but this makes a great alternative to in-person AA and NA meetings. Interesting, before Relay pivoted to focus entirely on porn addiction, they did cater to substance abuse as well, so I wonder if this is a useful carryover from their previous iteration.
Just keep in mind that the trade-off for anonymity is that it lessens the level of connection you can achieve. Obviously, there are still tremendous benefits to participating in the live group meetings, but this is something to keep in mind. Either way, you have the option, and that’s the most important thing.
The meetings are well structured, respectful, and you aren’t just there to talk and share. There are readings of the week and journaling prompts to go along with them. For example, the week I was working on this review, the reading for the week was “Porn Wasn’t Random: Predator, Pacifier, Punishment.”
Paying for the Relay Live Meetings
Now, despite paying to join the Relay program, you still have to pay in-app to participate in the live meetings. However, it’s not an exorbitant price, and I’d imagine they’re losing money.
You have two payment options:
A 6-week pass and an annual pass. Both give you unlimited access during the time period of your purchase.
The 6-week pass offers a “choose what you can pay” option, with a minimum of $42 and a maximum of $84. The year-long pass is $399.
This amount covers the cost of running the meeting. My initial reaction was a bit of surprise, seeing as how a customer might expect meeting attendance to be included in the charge.
However, upon further reflection, I saw the amount as a fair price—and even at a tremendous discount for what you’re getting.
The meetings are not run by professionals who command the going rate for their services, but people still need to be compensated for their time.
Based on everything I know about what it takes to run this type of program and operation, that money helps. If you doubt this, let’s do some quick math:
The meetings are held four days a week. Let’s pretend you only went to one meeting. We’ll also assume the most expensive scenario, where you pay the maximum of $84.
In the 6-week option, that’s $14 a live meeting.
In the year-long pass option, that’s $7.60 a meeting.
Compared to the going rate for group therapy, this is a significant discount.
I don’t know Relay’s exact accounting structure, but they’re clearly not making a killing from hosting these meetings—especially when I’d imagine that the different peer recovery specialists are also being paid for their time per meeting.
It’s still a bit annoying to join a $150/yr recovery program and then, when you get to one of the most crucial parts of the recovery process—group meetings—to have to pay again. It surprised me, so I’m sure other customers aren’t alone.
If I were Relay, I’d just include that cost in the initial membership.
However, I can also make an educated guess about their reasoning. The live meetings require a live human to lead them and deliver the lessons. It’s a lot easier to plan and schedule if you know how many attend based on who put their money behind their commitment.
It also ensures that you take the meetings seriously and do the required work because you paid a little more to attend. Based on the reviews of Relay’s Live Meetings, it seems to be worth it.
Relay tracks your progress
On the progress tab, you get to check in and see how things are going. This is part of the self-accountability that Relay aims to implement to help you keep yourself off porn as opposed to relying on blockers.
Relay a system called “Recovery Zones” to set up a roadmap for your recovery. There are three zones. The inner circle is abstinence, and constitutes the behaviors you want to avoid entirely.
The middle circle is called boundaries, and these are the behaviors that are risky and lead towards things you want to avoid entirely, like watching porn. And the final, outer circle is called self-care. This circle covers the positive behaviors that replace the negative ones that you’re trying to break.
You set your personal behaviors when you first enter the progress tab.
Relay introduces this idea with the analogy of a cliff.
Abstinence behaviors are the cliff you want to stay far away from, risky behaviors are the border around the cliff’s edge that, if you get too close, it’s dangerous, and self-care behaviors are the ones that make you not interested in the cliff at all because you’re too busy doing other things.
Learning About Addiction
The learning tab starts with two in-depth courses to help you understand what the problem is and to arm you with the tools to combat it:
The Science of Recovery by Daniel Hochman, MD, a psychiatrist with years of experience working with consulting rehab facilities, detox centers, the military, and outpatient clinics. He currently has a holistic private practice.
Renewal: A Holistic System to Overcome Compulsive Sexual Behavior by Chris Chandler (LMHC, CSAT) with over 20 years of experience as a licensed clinical counselor running addiction recovery groups, trained by Dr. Patrick Carnes, a pioneer in the world of addiction recovery.
Relay does not allow you to skip ahead to any part of the course you want—sorta.
We’ll get to that shortly, but there is a good reason that Relay does it this way. At least, this is my thought on why Relay does it this way.
If these courses were purely informational, I’d understand the complaint and side with it.
However, as Chris Chandler says in the first video of the Renewal course, “Information does not equal transformation…Information + application = transformation.”
The idea behind these courses is to get you to make real progress and do the work on yourself.
This means following the steps and not moving on until you’ve completed each one. This, by no means, implies that you’ve mastered every lesson. Rather, it forces you to be deliberate, really get your money’s worth, and do the work to make real change.
Often, the best way to help a person is to force them to do what they don’t want to do and tell them what they don’t want to hear. Relay has taken—what I believe is a positive and helpful—relatively unusual step in this instant-gratification world by forcing you to slow down and digest the material.
If you’re serious about recovery from porn addiction—and I’m assuming you are, which is why you’re even reading this in the first place—then forcing the sequential completion of the course is a necessary feature, not an annoying bug.
However, if you really want to, you can just mark each video complete and skip.
Without giving away the content for free, here is what I can tell you from my experience in the course so far:
You will come to understand not just what forces in your early life shaped your current compulsive behavior, but why you are unable to get things in control despite desperately wanting to.
I was prepared to just skip this course and give an impersonal review, but then Chris Chandler gave an analogy about a tree and drilling holes in it that made me stop and keep watching.
I’ve always had an interest in the role that trauma plays in addiction. I’ve made a YouTube videobased on my own research around how my early childhood of abuse and poverty in the projects heavily contributed to my future alcoholism. So when I saw that, I paused and went through more of the course.
How Relay Tracks Progress
On the progress tab, you get to check in and see how things are going. This is part of the self-accountability that Relay aims to implement to help you keep yourself off porn as opposed to relying on blockers.
Relay a system called “Recovery Zones” to set up a roadmap for your recovery. There are three zones.
The inner circle is abstinence, and constitutes the behaviors you want to avoid entirely. The middle circle is called boundaries, and these are the behaviors that are risky and lead towards things you want to avoid entirely, like relapsing and watching porn.
And the final, outer circle is called self-care. This circle covers the positive behaviors that replace the negative ones that you’re trying to break.
You set your personal behaviors when you first enter the progress tab.
Relay introduces this idea with the analogy of a cliff.
Abstinence behaviors are the cliff you want to stay far away from, risky behaviors are the border around the cliff’s edge that, if you get too close, it’s dangerous, and self-care behaviors are the ones that make you not interested in the cliff at all because you’re too busy doing other things.
The idea is that each day, you check in—either by going directly to the progress tab or clicking it from the “today” screen on the dashboard.
My final thoughts on The Relay App
Relay has provided a comprehensive support program for men who want to change who they are, not just stop what they’re doing.
As long as you remember that Relay is not going to keep you from doing porn, you’ll be motivated to take advantage of the tools that will transform your life.
I wish the live meetings didn’t cost extra, but I completely understand why they do. And, compared to what you’d pay for the meetings outside of the app, you’re getting an incredible deal.
So I suppose as long as you go into Relay fully aware that you’ll need to spend money—and don’t mind giving a positive 5-star review before you try it—there really aren’t any negatives.
I reviewed the Quittr App, which tries to do something similar, but it lacks the education components and has no live meeting option. They function more like a porn blocker with some additional bells and whistles.
I recommend you go with Relay if you want to do more than just block porn. You get to take courses put together by addiction professionals, work with a group of men on a similar recovery path to your own, and these men check on you in the community and at the live meetings.
If this sounds like a tool that can help you in your journey to be free of porn, give Relay a 30-day free trial by signing up at my link here.
References
Kelly, J. F., Humphreys, K., & Ferri, M. (2020). Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-step programs for alcohol use disorder. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2020(3), CD012880.
https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD012880.pub2
PMID: 32159293
Captari, L. E., Hook, J. N., Hoyt, W., Davis, D. E., McElroy-Heltzel, S. E., & Worthington, E. L. (2018). Integrating clients’ religion and spirituality within psychotherapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 74(11), 1938–1951.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22681
PMID: 29749009
