Best habit tracker without a subscription
You wanted an app that lets you check a box when you do the thing. The app wanted a credit card before it would let you add a fourth habit. If you have hit that wall a few times, searching for a habit tracker without a subscription starts to feel personal, and fair enough: a daily checklist should not cost more over a year than the things it helps you do.
The good news is that the no-subscription options are genuinely strong now. Some apps are free forever at their core, some charge a single one-time price, and the best Android option is free and open source. This guide covers what to check before you download, then five apps that respect your wallet, each with its pricing model stated plainly.
One thing up front, because this page is written by the team behind Unlooped: our app does offer an optional Premium subscription. We are including it anyway, because everything essential is free forever with no subscription required, and we will be exactly as honest about the other four apps as we are about our own.
What "no subscription" should actually mean
When an app calls itself free, it can mean three very different things, and only some of them deserve your trust.
Free forever at the core. The essentials work without paying, permanently. Not a seven day trial, not three habits and then a paywall. You could use the app for years, never pay, and never feel squeezed.
One-time purchase. You pay once, up front, and own the app. No renewal, no surprise charge, no feature that quietly moves behind a new tier. This model has become rare, which makes the apps still using it worth celebrating.
Open source. The code is public, the app is free, and the incentive to squeeze you simply is not there. These apps are usually less polished, but they are honest by construction.
The red flags are just as recognizable: a free download that caps you at two or three habits, a trial that converts to a charge unless you remember to cancel, reminders or widgets locked behind the paywall. Before you commit to any tracker, ask one question: could I use this fully for a year without paying, and without the app making me feel bad about it?
5 Habit Trackers You Can Use Without a Subscription
1. Unlooped: Everything Essential, Free Forever
Unlooped is a private-first habit tracker for iPhone with two modes: build mode for habits you want to grow and quit mode for habits you want out of your life. The free tier is the whole product for most people: unlimited habits in both modes, reminders, all eight widgets across your Home Screen, Lock Screen, and StandBy, the free Apple Watch app with three complications, mood and journal notes, milestones, and iCloud sync. There is no account and no email signup. Your data lives in your own private iCloud, never on our servers, and there are no ads or analytics SDKs watching you.
Full honesty: an optional Premium subscription exists. It adds an on-device AI Coach powered by Apple Intelligence, Smart Insights, Personalized Rewards, Private Habits behind Face ID, and Weekly Goals. Nothing essential sits behind it. If you never pay, you never hit a wall. Requires iOS 18.6 or later.
Free forever; Premium $1.99/month or $9.99/year
2. Streaks: The One-Time Purchase Classic
Streaks has been an iPhone favorite for years, and its pricing is as clean as its design: pay once, own it. You track a focused set of daily habits with satisfying check-offs, tight Apple Health integration, widgets, and an Apple Watch app. It fits iOS so naturally it feels like Apple could have made it. Two things to weigh: the number of habits is capped, so heavy trackers may feel the ceiling, and the entire experience is built around unbroken chains. If a snapped streak tends to push you into all-or-nothing thinking, that design choice matters more than the price does.
Paid app, one-time purchase
3. HabitKit: A Tidy Grid With a Lifetime Option
HabitKit shows each habit as a grid of colored tiles that fills in as you log, a quietly satisfying picture of your month at a glance. It leans hard on widgets, so logging rarely requires opening the app at all. The free version covers basic tracking, while more habits and deeper customization sit behind a paid upgrade. Helpfully, the developer has offered a one-time lifetime unlock alongside a subscription, so you can escape recurring billing and still get the full feature set. A good pick if you think in pictures and want your consistency to be something you can see.
Freemium; one-time lifetime unlock available
4. Loop Habit Tracker: Completely Free on Android
If you are on Android, Loop Habit Tracker is the easy recommendation. It is free, open source, and ad free, with no paid tier at all: no trial, no locked features, no upsell screens. Instead of fragile all-or-nothing streaks, it calculates a habit strength score that dips with misses and recovers with consistency, which is a kinder and more accurate picture of real behavior. The interface is functional rather than beautiful, and there is no iPhone or Apple Watch version, but as a zero-cost, zero-strings tool it is hard to beat.
Free and open-source
5. Done: Simple Counting, Small Free Tier
Done keeps things simple: set a target, tap to count, watch the totals build. It handles habits you do multiple times a day, and it supports both building good habits and limiting ones you want less of. The free tier covers only a small number of habits, so treat it as a generous trial rather than a full free product. Unlocking more requires a paid upgrade, which the developer has offered in both subscription and one-time forms at various points. Worth a look if tap-to-count matches the way your brain likes to log.
Free for a few habits; paid upgrade to unlock more
How to choose
If you never want to pay anything: Loop Habit Tracker on Android, or Unlooped's free tier on iPhone. If you would rather pay once and be done with it: Streaks, or HabitKit with its lifetime unlock. If you want the most complete free experience on iPhone, Unlooped is the pick, since unlimited habits, widgets, reminders, and the Watch app all cost nothing.
One honest note to close the list. Every app needs some business model to survive, and a subscription is not automatically a bad sign; recurring revenue funds the updates that keep an app working through every new iOS release. The question worth asking is not whether a subscription exists but whether the free or one-time tier stands on its own. Every app on this list passes that test in its own way.
Start on the App Store.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best habit tracker without a subscription?
It depends on your platform and how you prefer to pay. On iPhone, Unlooped gives you unlimited habits, widgets, reminders, and an Apple Watch app free forever with no subscription required, and Streaks is a well loved one time purchase. On Android, Loop Habit Tracker is completely free and open source.
Is Unlooped really free without a subscription?
Yes. Unlimited habits in both build and quit modes, reminders, all eight widgets, the Apple Watch app, mood and journal notes, milestones, and iCloud sync are free forever, with no account and no ads. The optional Premium subscription only adds extras like the on-device AI Coach, Smart Insights, and Private Habits behind Face ID.
Are one-time purchase habit trackers worth it?
Often, yes. You pay once, you own it, and the app keeps working whether or not you ever spend another cent. The tradeoff is that apps without recurring revenue sometimes evolve more slowly than subscription apps, so buy for what the app does today, not for a promised roadmap.
Why do most habit trackers charge a subscription?
Ongoing development, support, and infrastructure cost money, and subscriptions are the steadiest way for a small team to pay for them, so a subscription is not a scam by itself. The fair test is whether the free tier is genuinely usable or just a locked demo. An app that gives you the essentials free and charges only for extras is treating you fairly.
Do free habit trackers sell your data?
Some free apps earn money through ads or analytics instead of payments, which can mean your usage data feeds advertising systems, so check the privacy label on the App Store before downloading. Unlooped has no account, no ads, and no analytics SDKs, and your data syncs through your own private iCloud rather than our servers. Open source apps like Loop Habit Tracker let anyone inspect exactly what they collect.