Sunnyside Reviews: A Drink-Less App Not Meant for Alcohol Use Disorder

Sunnyside at a glance

Sunnyside suits people who drink most days and haven't been diagnosed with AUD

Sunnyside fits someone who drinks most days, wants a number to aim for each week, and will answer a text every morning. In the study Sunnyside cites, about two-thirds of members said they drank every day when they joined.⁹ The app alone costs less than any medication program on this page that posts a price.

Pick something else if you:

• get shaky, sweaty or anxious when you stop drinking. Sunnyside's site directs people with severe withdrawal to SAMHSA's helpline or 911.⁴
• have been diagnosed with alcohol use disorder, since the terms exclude you.¹
• want an FDA-approved naltrexone tablet at a known dose. Your own doctor can prescribe generic naltrexone.¹⁰

The app runs on texts and a weekly drink plan

Sunnyside started in June 2020 as Cutback Coach, a text-message system for planning drinks. Each week you set a drink target. Each day you log what you drank, and in the version studied in 2020 and 2021, morning texts asked for the previous day's total.⁹ Peer coaches answer texts 7 days a week, and the program adds videos, readings and an online community.² Sunnyside lists itself as a partner of Moderation Management.⁴

The pitch has shifted. The App Store listing still calls Sunnyside "the only alcohol tracking, planning, and coaching app focused on mindful drinking and moderation, not sobriety."⁶ The website now offers "moderation or sobriety" and puts doctor-prescribed medication first on its How It Works page.^4,11

The coaches are peers, not clinicians: Sunnyside describes them as people who have been through it themselves.² Licensed clinicians appear only in Sunnyside Med.

The 33% study: what it measured, and who ran it

Sunnyside says members cut their drinking by 33% on average.¹² The figure comes from one peer-reviewed paper, published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research in 2024.⁹

Without a comparison group, the study can't separate the app's effect from people cutting back on their own after deciding to change. People who stopped logging drop out of the later weeks, and they may differ from those who kept going.

Sunnyside's blog post on the study says "we weren't involved in the research and analysis."¹³ The paper's author list includes Nicholas Allen of Cutback Coach, Inc., the company behind Sunnyside, and two of the other four authors, Nehal Vadhan and Hayley Treloar Padovano, sit on Sunnyside's clinical advisory board.^9,12

The same blog post says "81% of Sunnyside members are women." In the paper, 81.0% is the share of women among the 4,410 members who chose to give their sex, under a tenth of the sample.^9,13

For the medication itself, Sunnyside's Results page reports weekly drinks falling from 23 to 12.5 over 12 weeks. That figure covers 158 active Med members who logged on more than half of days, self-reported, with no comparison group.¹⁴ The Med homepage's 96.7% figure, from a 2023 in-house survey, is "not tied to the compounded medication."²

Sunnyside Med: compounded naltrexone plus vitamin B6

Sunnyside Med is an online prescription service. Clinicians from OpenLoop Healthcare Partners, PC and its affiliated practices review your answers and prescribe; Sunnyside's consent form is OpenLoop's.⁵ Two compounding pharmacies are named as partners: Triad Rx in Daphne, Alabama, and Foothills Professional Pharmacy in Tempe, Arizona.² Services are offered in all 50 states and DC, though Sunnyside says some may not be available everywhere.²

What to weigh before you sign up:

• Compounded, not FDA-approved. Sunnyside's own disclaimer says compounded drugs are not FDA-approved.² A compounded drug isn't the same as an FDA-approved generic, and the FDA doesn't verify its safety, effectiveness or quality before it's marketed.¹⁵
• The B6 claim has no source. The FAQ says "we add Vitamin B6, which may improve absorption, reduce side effects and replenish a vitamin that's depleted by alcohol use." The page cites no study for this.² FDA's drug databases list no product combining naltrexone with pyridoxine (vitamin B6).¹⁶
• One dosing complaint. An October 2026 Trustpilot reviewer said a refill was written for "only 1 capsule daily," leaving half a dose for 90 days; Sunnyside replied that its team was fixing it.³
• The labeled use is alcohol dependence. The Sunnyside homepage calls naltrexone "FDA-approved to support alcohol moderation." The FDA label approves naltrexone tablets for the treatment of alcohol dependence and opioid blockade.^4,17 The Med page itself says "Sunnyside and Sunnyside Med are not designed to treat alcohol use disorder (AUD)."²
• The 28% claim is a different measure. The Med page says COMBINE participants cut heavy drinking days by "28% compared to placebo," and in one footnote dates the trial "Anton et al., 1999."² COMBINE was published in 2006. Its 28% is a lower risk of having a heavy drinking day over time (hazard ratio 0.72), most evident in people who got medical management without the added behavioral therapy, at 100 mg of naltrexone a day, in volunteers who had recently stopped drinking.¹⁸ Sunnyside says most of its members keep drinking when they start.²
• Compounding doesn't change the warnings. It is still naltrexone: not for anyone taking opioid pain medicine, methadone or buprenorphine, with a label warning about liver injury and about overdose if opioids are used after stopping.¹⁷

FDA-approved generic naltrexone tablets are sold in the US with a prescription.¹⁰

What Sunnyside costs

$8.25 a month is $99 a year (our math), which matches the price Sunnyside charged early members: $79 a year from October 2020 and $99 a year from January 2021.⁹

The $50 intake fee isn't on the Sunnyside Med homepage. It comes from co-founder Ian Andersen's Trustpilot reply, dated September 23, 2026, to an August 2026 review by a customer who expected to pay $50 for a trial and was billed $50 plus $297. He wrote that the checkout screen explains "the $50 is a one-time fee for the medical intake process."^2,3

For a year of Sunnyside Med, that's $50 plus four quarters at $297, or $1,238 (our math). Sunnyside's Med FAQ says "Doctors recommend using naltrexone for at least a year."²

Cancelling takes a text or an email, a day ahead

Sunnyside's terms (last updated May 13, 2025) set these rules for subscriptions bought from Sunnyside¹:

If you subscribed through Apple or Google, cancel in that store's subscription settings. Then keep the confirmation. Two Trustpilot reviewers in 2025 and 2026 said renewals or reactivations surprised them; in both cases Sunnyside replied that it was a misunderstanding and, in one, that it had refunded the account.³

Privacy: ads use your browsing, not your drink log

The privacy policy lists ways to limit ad tracking, such as privacy browsers, blocking plug-ins and industry opt-out tools. Set them up before you take the sign-up quiz.¹⁹

Ratings: app users are happier than Trustpilot reviewers

What the rating sites showed on October 17, 2026:

App ratings mostly reflect the tracking app, which has existed since 2022 on iPhone.⁶ Trustpilot's recent one-star reviews are mostly about Sunnyside Med: the first bill, a half-dose refill, a $99 charge the reviewer didn't recognize, and a long-time app user who said Med coaching felt automated.³ Co-founder Ian Andersen answers many of them by name.³

We found no BBB profile for Sunnyside or Cutback Coach. Accounts from people who took naltrexone, whichever program prescribed it, are on our naltrexone reviews page.

Sunnyside Med and Oar charge the same for the first three months

With intake fees, the first three months cost $347 at both Sunnyside Med and Oar (our math). Our Oar Health review and Reframe review cover their terms.

How we checked

• Read on October 17, 2026: Sunnyside's homepage, About, How It Works, Results, terms, privacy and health-data policies, telehealth consent and two blog posts, plus Sunnyside Med's homepage and FAQ. We didn't download the app, start the intake or contact Sunnyside.
• Study: the 2024 paper's PubMed record and full text; our capture stopped before the discussion.
• Ratings: Trustpilot, Apple and Google Play, the same day. A BBB name search for Cutback Coach found nothing.