9 Best Habit-Tracking Apps to Reach Your Goals
In the new year, it’s easy to fall off the bandwagon with resolutions and healthy habits. Fortunately, you can maximize your healthy habits and stay on track for a productive and prosperous New Year with these habit-tracking apps. Here are some of our top picks for habit-tracking apps.
1. Goalify
Goalify was developed to help you reach your goals and be more consistent in getting there. It’s an innovative app that you can use to quickly, easily, and effectively record any number of goals or other tasks that you’d like to complete. Goalify is one of the best habit-tracking apps, offering reminders, helpful tips, and custom push notifications.
The clearly-presented statistics make your strengths and weaknesses clear, making it easy to review your success. With Goalify Free Edition, you can track up to 3 habits. With the premium version ($3.99/month), you can have unlimited habits, groups with an unlimited number of members, training plans, and moment-by-moment coaching. They also offer Goalify for Professionals, a premium version to help you optimize your work productivity and workflow.
2. Habitica
If your strategy is to turn everything into a game to use your competitive nature to your advantage, or if you’re a video game fanatic, then this is the app for you. Habitica is a free habit-building and productivity app that treats your real life like a game.
With in-game rewards and punishments to motivate you and a solid social network to inspire you, Habitica can help you achieve your goals. If you fail to complete a positive habit, your character will take damage and lose some of their abilities. Check off tasks to level up your avatar and unlock in-game features such as battle armor, mysterious pets, magic skills, and even quests! You can battle monsters with other Habiticans, too!
While Habitica is free, if you have a whole crew or household who wants to get in on the action, their group plans grant you exclusive access to a private task board and chat area dedicated to you and your group members! It’s $9.00/month + $3 for each extra member. If you want access to more exclusive features just for you, the premium version is $4.99/ month.
3. Tally
Tally prides itself on its simple, sleek design that does exactly what it promises: tally your habits. As the “anything tracker,” you can journal notes for motivation, install a widget for quick logging, and see all your stats at once. The app is free to download, but you can purchase a one-time upgrade with unlimited tallies for $6.99 or a yearly subscription for $29.99. This app is available only on the App Store for iPhone and Apple Watch.
4. Beeminder
Are you what people would call a “numbers and data person?” Are you someone who’s highly motivated by the thought of losing money? Beeminder may be the right fit for you. With Beeminder, everything can be quantifiable. Whether it’s your weight, pushups, minutes spent on Facebook, points on Duolingo, Beeminder can help you keep track of the numbers.
Answer with your number when Beeminder asks — or connect a device/app (like your Apple Watch) to auto-report — and they’ll plot your progress with a Bright Red Line to your goal. Keep all your data points on the good side of your red line. If you cross the line, they charge your payment method!
Core Beeminder is the most basic tier (free), and you can track up to three goals, cap pledges, and schedule breaks. However, with “InfiniBee,” for $8/month, you’ll get premium features like unlimited goals, unlimited goal types, and an auto-canceling subscription. With “BeePlus,” for $16/month, you can set custom goals, employ an SMS bot, get weekends off, and access the graph editor. With the highest tier, “Beemium,” for $50/month, you can get extra features like a 50% charity option and goals with no pledges. Available for iOs and Android!
5. Strides
With Strides, get organized and track anything you want to build the perfect routine, and stay motivated with charts and reminders to achieve your goals. With four unique tracker types (by habit, target, average, or project), you can track anything that matters to you, and it’s easy to customize to fit your needs. They use the SMART goals concept, meaning you create specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based goals. This is only available for iOs on the App Store. While the basic app is free, the premium version is $4.99 per month or one year for $19.99.
Habit-Tracking Apps So You “Don’t Break the Chain”
Many apps base their accountability concept on Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret “Don’t break the chain!” As a Seinfeld fan, I was instantly intrigued. Every time you complete a habit, your chain grows longer. Eventually, you will build a very long chain. Your only job now is to keep the chain growing.
6. Everyday
While Everyday also uses the “don’t break the chain” strategy of productivity, it adds an element of visual appeal with a beautifully color-coded board that quickly overviews your goals and streaks. As a creative, I can appreciate the added touch of aesthetics. Give me color or give me death.
The app is free, and with the basic version, you can track up to 3 habits, have access to all colors, unlimited data storage, availability on all devices, yearly data visualizations, set email/push notifications, and sort, skip or break habits. With the next tier, Premium ($2.50/month billed annually), you can create unlimited habits to track. If you really love Everyday, you can get lifetime access with a one-time purchase of $99.
7. Done
Is there anything more satisfying than marking tasks as “done?” Done helps you create healthy routines by helping you set goals, tracking your progress, viewing trends over time, and then motivating you with streaks/chains, all in a simple, clean, package. With a simple interface and color-coded progress bars.
You can even use the infamous “mark the calendar with a red X” system that Seinfeld used. Done’s standout feature lets you set a goal for MULTIPLE times a day, not just once. And you can enable tracking for both building habits AND quitting habits. If you’re a note-taker, the daily journal feature lets you keep notes about your routine! Available for iOs, it’s currently rated #13 in productivity in the App Store.
8. HabitBull
This free app is a combination of eliminating negative habits like smoking or nail-biting and adding positive habits like fitness, meditation, or reading. This is another heavily data-integrated app, so you can easily visualize your progress over time in color-coded charts or graphs. You can track up to 100 habits, each with its own calendar. You will also have access to a community of other like-minded people on their specialized discussion forums and get motivated! Available for iOs and Android. It’s free to download, but a premium subscription is $4.99/month or one year for $19.99.
9. Streaks
If maintaining a “streak” of anything gives you an instant boost of serotonin, then Streaks may be the app for you! Sometimes, the idea of “keeping the streak going” is motivator enough to keep up the good habits. Whether it’s walking the dog, flossing your teeth, eating healthy, or practicing Spanish, Streaks will help you check off your daily goal so you can keep the chain going!
If you break the streak, it will reset to zero days. You can even connect this app with Apple Health to monitor your progress! One of their newer features includes shared tasks, so you can hold other “Streakers” accountable. This is one of the few apps we’ve listed that costs money ($4.99 to download), but it’s also #5 in the Health and Fitness category on the App Store.
Make it Happen with the Right Habit-Tracking Apps
A 2020 poll of 2,000 Americans found that it takes 32 days for the average person to finally break their resolution(s) — but 68% report giving up their resolutions even sooner than that. Ready to beat the odds? As we roll into a new year, there’s no better time to eliminate bad habits and build some new, healthy ones! Which habit-tracking apps are you ready to use to develop healthy daily habits, increase productivity, and reach your goals? Try one of these habit-tracking apps, and get ready to become the healthiest version of yourself!
