Colors
Best habit tracker apps: an honest buying guide
Published 6 August 2026 · Updated 7 August 2026
Disclosure, before anything else. Colors is our app. This list includes it, and says plainly where the others are better. Facts checked August 2026.
We have not tried to win every category, because we do not. One of the categories below, the best free tier, goes to a competitor, and it is not close.
The short answer
| If you want | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| To see which habits you did | Colors | One calendar, a color per habit, each day split into what you finished |
| To pay once and never again | Streaks | $5.99 one-time, no subscription |
| Sync across devices, and stats | Habitify | iOS, Android, Mac and web, with deep analytics |
| Android today, or a GitHub-style grid | HabitKit | Ships on Android, one heatmap per habit |
| The most generous free tier | HabitKit | 4 free habits against everyone else’s 3 |
Best for seeing which habits you did: Colors
Almost every tracker answers the question “did you do it?” A day is done or not done, green or grey, and if you keep five habits the day is a row of five ticks.
Colors answers a different one. Each habit gets a color, and the month calendar draws each day as a ring split into the habits you completed that day. Four habits done is a day with four colored arcs, one habit done is a filled disc in that habit’s color. A month is a picture rather than a tally, and you can see the fortnight the gym stopped happening without counting anything.
Nobody else in this list draws it that way, which is the honest reason this category exists. It is also a taste: if you would rather have a number, this is not an advantage.
Free for 3 habits, showing this month and the previous one, with one reminder; Premium is $4.99/mo, $29.99/yr with a 7-day trial, or $49.99 lifetime. US pricing, may vary by region. iPhone only today.
Best if you would rather pay once: Streaks
$5.99, once, and it is yours. No renewal, nothing to cancel, no subscription to resent in eighteen months.
Streaks is built around streak counts (how many days in a row each task has survived) and it goes deep on Apple: iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, Mac and Vision, with widgets and Apple Health integration, all in the one purchase. If your habits are health habits and you want them sitting alongside the rest of your Health data, it is the only app here that does that.
The catch is that there is no free tier, so the $5.99 is also the trial, and it caps at 24 tasks.
Over three years it costs $5.99 where a yearly subscription elsewhere costs around $90. That is not a small difference and we are not going to pretend it is. Full comparison →
Best for cross-device sync and statistics: Habitify
If you want the same habits on your phone, your laptop and the web, this is the straightforward answer: iOS, Android, Mac and web, kept in sync.
It is also the strongest of these on analytics. Completion rates, trends, the statistics of your own consistency. If you enjoy that kind of feedback, Habitify goes further than the rest.
Syncing requires an account, which is not a criticism so much as arithmetic: your habits have to live somewhere both devices can reach. If that trade is fine with you, you get something local-only apps cannot offer: your history survives losing your phone.
Free for 3 habits and 3 reminders; paid from around $2.49/mo up to $64.99 lifetime, which is a cheaper monthly entry than Colors and a more expensive lifetime. Full comparison →
Best on Android today, or for a GitHub-style grid: HabitKit
HabitKit draws each habit as a heatmap: a grid of squares, one per day, in the pattern GitHub made familiar. A year of one habit as a block of color is genuinely satisfying to look at, and if that is the picture you want, this is the app that draws it.
It is on iOS and Android now. Colors is iPhone only with Android planned, so if you are on Android this is the recommendation and the rest of the page is academic.
It also keeps your data on the device and needs no account, which puts it in the same small category as Colors on privacy. $1.99/mo, $19.99/yr or $41.99 lifetime, cheaper than Colors at every tier. Full comparison →
Best free tier: HabitKit, not us
HabitKit’s free tier allows four habits. Colors’ allows three, and also shows only the current month and the previous one, with one reminder.
So if your question is “how much can I get without paying”, the answer is HabitKit, and it is not a close call. We would rather say that here than have you find out after installing.
Streaks has no free tier at all. Habitify matches our three habits and gives three reminders where we give one, so its free tier is more generous than ours too.
How to choose
Four questions settle this faster than any list can.
Do you need it on Android, a Mac or the web? This eliminates most of the field immediately. Android today means HabitKit or Habitify. Mac or web means Habitify. Apple-only means everything here is available to you.
Does it matter to you whether your data leaves the phone? A habit journal is often a record of medication, sobriety, therapy or mental health, which is a different kind of file from a to-do list. Colors and HabitKit keep it on the device with no account; Streaks keeps it on the device with Apple Health integration; Habitify syncs it, which requires an account and a server. There is no correct answer, only a trade, and if you want sync, an app holding your data is the price of it. We wrote about what to ask before installing anything.
Do you want to see what you did, or only whether you did it? Streaks counts runs. HabitKit draws one grid per habit. Habitify computes statistics. Colors paints one calendar where each day shows which habits you finished. These are genuinely different questions and you probably already know which one you ask yourself.
Subscription or one payment? Streaks is the only one here that is purely pay-once at $5.99. The others sell subscriptions with a lifetime option, from $41.99 (HabitKit) to $64.99 (Habitify). If subscriptions annoy you on principle, that narrows it to one.
Who Colors is for, and who it is not for
It is for you if you keep several habits at once and want to see them together; if a calendar you can read at a glance appeals more than a dashboard; if you want to start without paying or making an account; and if you would rather nothing about your habits existed on anybody’s server.
It is not for you if any of these matter:
- You are on Android. Not shipped yet. HabitKit or Habitify.
- You want your habits on more than one device. There is no sync in version 1, because there is no account and no server. Your backup is your iPhone backup plus a CSV export on Premium. Habitify is the answer here.
- You want Apple Health integration. Colors does not connect to Health. Streaks does.
- You want the largest free tier. HabitKit gives four habits to our three.
- You want to pay once and cheaply. Streaks at $5.99 is a fraction of our $49.99 lifetime.
If none of those are dealbreakers, the calendar is the thing to try, and three habits are free for as long as you want them.
Colors is our app. Facts checked August 2026 from public listings; if something is outdated, tell us at hello@getcolors.app.