What is AakhriSutta?
AakhriSutta is a free quit-smoking tracker made for India. Instead of asking you to stop overnight, it builds a weekly taper — a ceiling on cigarettes per day that steps down until it reaches zero — and you drag that curve into a shape you believe you can actually hold.
The app is in Hinglish, counts money in rupees, and is designed around the observation that cravings are contextual rather than constant: balcony-with-chai is a different problem from three-drinks-in, and the app learns which of yours is which.
Is AakhriSutta free?
Yes. There is no paid tier, no trial, and no card. You sign in with a phone number and nothing else — no name, no email.
Is it better to quit smoking cold turkey or gradually?
The honest answer is that the research does not strongly favour either. A Cochrane review pooling 22 studies and more than 9,000 people found moderate-certainty evidence that gradual reduction and abrupt quitting produce broadly similar quit rates, though some individual trials favour quitting abruptly.
So the deciding factor is usually not which method is better in a trial — it is which one you will actually attempt. Roughly half of smokers try cutting down first regardless of what the guidelines say. AakhriSutta is built for those people rather than trying to talk them out of it.
How long does a nicotine craving last?
A craving is a wave, not a rising tide. It builds, peaks within the first few minutes, and has usually faded well inside ten — which is why the app's craving screen draws that shape with a marker showing how far through it you already are.
Once you have logged a few, it stops being a general claim and starts quoting your own median back at you, which is considerably more convincing.
How many cigarettes should I cut per week?
Step weekly, not daily. Daily targets are noise — the difference between eleven and twelve on a Tuesday tells you nothing, and missing one by a single cigarette feels like failure.
As a rough shape, a 15-a-day smoker aiming at zero in ten weeks steps roughly 15, 13, 11, 9, 8, 6, 5, 4, 2, 1, 0 — bigger cuts early while motivation is high, gentler steps at the tail where the remaining cigarettes are the hardest ones. AakhriSutta solves that curve for your own baseline and target, and you can drag any week to change it.
What happens if I smoke more than my daily limit?
Nothing punitive, and nothing resets. Going over dents the curve rather than deleting the month; cigarettes-not-smoked is cumulative and only ever goes up.
If you go over your ceiling several days running, the app offers to hold the current week rather than pushing you further behind an unreachable number — a plan you can only fail is a plan you leave.
Do I have to create an account? What does the app collect?
You sign in with a phone number, verified by OTP. That number is the only identifier stored. No name, no email, no photos, no location, no contacts.
What it does store is what you log: cigarettes and when, the triggers you tag, your one-to-five rating of whether each was worth it, cravings and how they ended, and any nicotine replacement you record. There is no feed, no followers and no shared streaks — public accountability makes people hide relapses, and a hidden relapse is worse than a logged one.
Is it on the Play Store or the App Store?
No. AakhriSutta is a progressive web app: you open it in a browser and add it to your home screen, where it behaves like any other installed app — full screen, its own icon, no browser chrome.
On Android, Chrome offers to install it directly. On iPhone, use Share, then Add to Home Screen.
Is the app in Hindi?
It is in Hinglish — Hindi and English mixed the way people actually speak, written in Latin script. So you will see lines like "Kitne saal ka saath tha?" rather than either formal Hindi or corporate English.
The interface is not currently available in Devanagari or in other Indian languages.
Does it track nicotine patches, gum or lozenges?
Yes. You can record the type, strength and time of any nicotine replacement, and mark whether a dose was a substitution for a cigarette you would otherwise have smoked.
The app will not tell you what to take. Any nicotine replacement information it shows is limited to the published ranges on the packet, and anything involving other medication, pregnancy or a heart condition is a question for a doctor.
How much money will I save if I quit smoking in India?
It depends on your pack price and how much you smoke, and the number is usually larger than people guess. At a pack of 10 for ₹110 and 15 cigarettes a day, that is about ₹165 a day — a little over ₹60,000 a year.
The calculator on this site works it out for your own pack price, and the app tracks the running total against a goal you name, because "₹18,000 towards the Spiti trip" is a considerably better motivator than an abstract saving.
Does it work without an internet connection?
It installs like an app and opens instantly, but the screens load your data from the server, so you need a connection to log something or see your numbers. Anything you try to log while offline will need sending again once you are back.
Is this medical advice?
No. AakhriSutta is a habit tracker. It does not diagnose anything, does not prescribe anything, and is not a substitute for talking to a doctor — particularly if you are pregnant, have a heart condition, or take medication that nicotine or its replacements can interact with.
Where can I get real help quitting in India?
The National Tobacco Quitline is 1800-11-2356, free, 8am to 8pm, run by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare with regional-language counselling. The government's mCessation programme registers you by missed call on 011-22901701 and supports you over SMS.
If the problem has stopped being about cigarettes, Tele-MANAS is on 14416, around the clock, in English and 20 regional languages.