The best habit tracker apps, sorted by what you actually want

Comparison 8 min read · We make one of these

Short answer

There isn’t a best one. There are about seven good ones built for genuinely different things, which is why ranking them 1 to 10 produces a list nobody can act on.

One question sorts them faster than any feature table: what do you want the app to do on the day you miss? Punish you, forgive you, charge you, or hand you something you keep. Every app below answers that differently, and it’s the only difference that survives month two.

A note on our bias: we make Addley, and it’s first rather than buried at the bottom where burying it could pass for modesty. The other six are written the way we’d want someone to write about ours, and there are two of them we’d recommend over our own for particular people. Prices move constantly and the app stores often disagree with the companies’ own sites, so this describes how each one charges rather than quoting a number that’ll be stale by January.

If you want the month to add up to something

Addley — ours

You pick something you’re saving for before you start. The practices you log move real money toward it, so by the end of the month you’re not looking at a completed grid — you’re looking at a total, next to a picture of what it’s for.

It’s your own money in your own account, and you make the transfer yourself. Nothing is automated and nobody pays you for showing up. What’s different isn’t the tracking — every app here tracks. It’s that when the month ends there is something to show for it besides a filled-in grid.

On the day you miss: nothing bad. Grace days are banked automatically and spent for you, and milestones you’ve already reached are dated and permanent — they don’t come undone when a streak does.

Pick it if you’ve abandoned trackers before and suspect the reason is that nothing came of them. Not if you want a community, or you only want one number on a screen.

If you want it to feel like something cares

Finch

You look after a small bird, and it grows as you look after yourself. It is by a distance the most-searched habit app there is, and the affection people have for it is real rather than manufactured.

What deserves credit: the free version is genuinely the product. The subscription adds outfits, soundscapes and extra content — not the thing that helps. That’s rarer than it should be.

It’s also the closest app here to ours, and worth saying so plainly rather than hoping you don’t notice. Both give you a creature that’s yours. Both refuse to punish you for a bad week. Both have a free tier that isn’t a trial in disguise.

Two real differences. Finch’s bird responds to how you’re doing; our Sprout deliberately doesn’t — it never wilts, celebrates or ranks, because we didn’t want a second thing you could feel you’d let down. And Finch doesn’t connect any of it to money, which is the whole of what we built.

Pick it if gentleness is the thing you’re missing, and you want company in it. Not if you want the month to produce something countable at the end.

If you want it to be a game

Habitica

Your habits are a role-playing game. You take damage for missing things, you level up, you can join parties with other people and fight bosses together. It has been going for years and has the most committed community of anything here.

Free, properly. The optional subscription is cosmetics and supporting the team, not unlocking features.

Pick it if game mechanics genuinely motivate you and you want other people involved. Not if that sounds exhausting — for a lot of people it’s one more thing to maintain.

If you want the simplest possible thing

Streaks, or Loop

Streaks is Apple-only and deliberately capped at a couple of dozen tasks. It’s a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, which in 2026 is almost a political statement.

Loop is Android-only, free, and open source. No account, no upsell, no company. If you want a habit tracker that will never ask you for anything, this is the one.

Pick either if you already know what you want to do and just need a grid to tick. Not if you want the tracking to lead anywhere.

If you want to be told what to do

Fabulous, or Atoms

Fabulous is coaching more than tracking — guided programmes that build a morning routine step by step. Some people need the structure and it delivers it well.

Atoms is the official Atomic Habits app, so it applies that book’s system directly. If the book worked for you, this is the book as software. It’s also comfortably the most expensive thing on this page.

One caution on both: subscription pricing here is unusually hard to pin down — the app stores and the companies’ own sites have listed different numbers at the same time. Check what you’re actually being charged before the trial ends.

If you want money on the line

Beeminder, or Stickk

These are the only other habit apps built around money, and they work the opposite way round to ours. You put cash at stake, and when you fail they take it. Beeminder charges your card and raises the amount each time. Stickk has you sign a commitment contract, sometimes with the money going to a cause you actively dislike.

It works for some people, and we don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’s just a different theory of why people show up: fear of loss rather than anything to look forward to.

Pick one if deadlines only work for you when they cost something. Not if you already have a complicated relationship with money and guilt.

What to check before you commit to any of them

1What does the free version actually do?The useful question isn’t whether it’s free, it’s whether the free tier covers what you’ll actually keep up with — usually fewer things than you set up on day one. Ours is four practices and one challenge, with the reward mechanic included rather than held back. Loop and Habitica are free in full, and Finch’s free tier is the product rather than a preview of it. Whatever you pick, find the cap before you build a month of data inside it.

2What happens when you miss a day?Open it and look before you need to know. A tracker that zeroes your record is the single most common reason people stop using one — not the missed day itself, but what the screen says the next morning.

3Can you get your data out?A year of logs is worth something. Check for an export before you have one worth exporting, not after.

4Is anything private actually private?If you’d track anything you wouldn’t say at work, check what’s shared by default and what leaves the app. This matters more than any feature on the list and almost nobody looks.

Questions

What’s the best free habit tracker app? Ours — if “free” should include the thing that makes the app worth using. The reward goal is in the free tier rather than held back for the paid one, and Sobriety and Cycle sit outside the practice limit entirely. You get four practices, a reward goal and a challenge. If you’d rather have no limits at all, Loop is free and open source with nothing to buy, and Habitica’s membership is cosmetics rather than features — both are less restricted than we are, and that’s a fair reason to pick them.

Do habit tracker apps actually work? They work as a reminder and a record. What they can’t do is supply the reason. Most abandoned trackers weren’t badly designed — the tracking just stopped connecting to anything the person wanted, usually around week three.

Which one should I pick if I’ve quit several already? Then the grid isn’t your problem. You already know how to tick a box — what ran out was the reason. Most of these apps differ in how they look rather than in what happens when the month ends, which is nothing. Ours is the one where the month produces something: a real figure, in your own account, toward a thing you picked before you started. If you’ve abandoned three trackers, that is the variable you haven’t changed yet.

App icons are the property of their respective owners and are used here to identify the products discussed. Addley is not affiliated with any of them.