Flowdayz vs Habitica: an honest comparison

You set it up on a Sunday, and it was the best evening you had spent with a habit app in years.

An avatar. A class. Nine Dailies, each given a difficulty, because the hard ones pay better. By Wednesday you had a level, a pet, and a small pile of gold you had genuinely earned.

Then work happened for four days. When you opened it again, your character was dead.

The obvious reading is that you are not a game person, or that gamification is a gimmick that wears off. Neither is quite right. Habitica is not a gimmick. It is an open source project that has been on the App Store since July 2015, it is free with no habit limit, and plenty of people have used it every day for years.

What happened is arithmetic, and Habitica publishes it.

At a glance

	Habitica	Flowdayz
Core mechanism	Unlimited Habits, Dailies and To Do's, scored as a retro role playing game	One planned action a day, sized to your schedule
On a day you miss	Your character loses health. At zero health you lose a level, all your gold and a piece of equipment	Uncounted; the cumulative total is unchanged
Repeated misses	The Daily turns redder, and a redder Daily costs more damage the next time it is missed	Nothing accumulates against you
Social	Parties, where your missed Dailies damage the people questing with you	None; you are never compared to anyone
Where it runs	iPhone, Android and the web	iPhone and Android
Price	Free, with optional subscriptions from $4.99 a month	$49 a year, or $8 monthly

How Habitica works

Habitica is made by HabitRPG, Inc. and its code is public, which is why almost everything below can be quoted from the company rather than inferred about it.

You build a character. Your real tasks become three kinds of in-game object, and Habitica's own FAQ describes the split. Habits are things you might do several times a day or on no schedule at all. Dailies repeat on a schedule you set. To Do's happen once.

Completing things pays out gold, experience and equipment. Levels arrive. Pets arrive. You can join a Party and take on a quest with other people, and the quest progresses as the party completes its tasks.

Two of those three task types can cost you health. Negative Habits do, and so do Dailies. In Habitica's own words: "Missing Dailies causes you to lose HP, but the more difficult they are, the better the rewards."

How Flowdayz works

Flowdayz is a feel good app. You learn what actually makes you feel good and what gets you into flow, usually the smallest things, and the app helps you get there every day. It starts from a different assumption: you already know roughly what would help, and the problem is that the plan was calibrated to a week you are not actually having.

You answer a short set of questions once. It builds a routine around your real schedule, shows one action at a time, and then gets out of the way. There is no character, no list of nine to clear, and nothing that keeps score of you.

What happens on a day you miss

Nearly every habit tracker answers this question with a change to a display. A counter goes back to zero. A score dips. A weekly target closes unmet. Whatever the app took, it took from a number on a screen, and there are about four different rules for the day you miss in circulation.

Habitica's answer is different in kind, and its own help page states it without hedging.

If your HP reaches zero, you'll lose one level, that level's stat point, all of your Gold, and a piece of equipment that can be repurchased.

A character starts with 50 health points. So a bad week does not reset a display. It reaches back into things you had already banked and removes them, and what it removes was paid for by days you actually kept.

That is a coherent design position, and Habitica is more honest about it than most of this category manages. Stakes work. A cost you do not want to pay will get some people through a Tuesday that nothing else would.

It has a failure mode, and the failure mode is the reason most people who leave Habitica leave it. The cost of a bad week is rarely that somebody stops wanting the habit. It is the fortnight that actually happened becoming a debt, and the app turning into the part of the day that feels bad.

Flowdayz stores the second version, deliberately. A missed day is not counted, and it is never subtracted from what came before it.

The part that compounds

This is the mechanic worth understanding before you commit a month to it.

Habitica's tasks carry a colour, and the colour is the task's value. Its FAQ is specific: Dailies "change color based on how often they are completed, becoming more blue as they're completed or more red if they're missed."

Redness is not decoration. Habitica's guidance on avoiding health loss recommends class skills that "reduce a Daily's redness, lowering damage taken if missed".

So the Daily you keep missing becomes the Daily that costs the most to miss. The charge rises exactly where you are already struggling, which means the bad month is priced higher than the good one. Nothing about that is a comment on your discipline. It is an arithmetic property of the design, and it is doing precisely what it was built to do.

Habitica knows this, which is the most telling thing in its documentation. There is a button in Settings called Pause Damage, described in the FAQ as being for a holiday, a rest, "or for any other reason you might need a break". There is a help page whose title is the question "How do I prevent losing HP?"

You do not build either of those unless the damage is a thing your users need a way out of.

Where Habitica is the better choice

When it is the game that gets it done. Some people genuinely respond to a level, a pet and a party, and shrug off a dead character as a bad run. If that is you, this post is not about you, and there is nothing else in the category built to this depth.

When you want it free. Habitica is free, unlimited, and its own listing says it can be fully enjoyed that way. Flowdayz has no free tier at all. On price this is not close and it would be odd to pretend otherwise.

When you want people beside you. A Party is a small group whose quest progress depends on everyone's tasks, and Habitica's FAQ confirms that you still take damage from a Party member's missed Dailies even while your own damage is paused. That is real accountability with real people in it. Flowdayz has nothing of the kind.

When you want it open. The code is public and the app runs on iPhone, Android and in a browser. Flowdayz is a phone app on iPhone and Android, and that is all it is.

Where Flowdayz is the better choice

If you have been round this loop a few times, downloaded something in January, built a real run, lost a week to work and quietly stopped opening it by February, then the stake is the mechanism. Take the stake away and the loop has nothing to run on.

It also suits people who do not want a task list looking back at them. Flowdayz shows one action, sized to the day you are actually having, and when something keeps getting missed it reduces the size of the ask rather than raising the price of missing it.

Count the days you keep, not the days you missed. Nothing on screen goes down.

What Flowdayz does not have

Stated plainly, because these are real and worth weighing.

• No free version. A subscription, after a seven day trial. Habitica costs nothing.
• No game. No avatar, no levels, no pets, no gear, nothing to collect.
• No community. No parties, no quests, no shared tasks, nobody else in it at all.
• No web or desktop app. Phones only.
• No unlimited task list. One action a day, which is the wrong product if you want a dozen things tracked, though the number itself is worth a second look.
• Not open source.

Price

Habitica is free. Optional subscriptions are $4.99 a month, $14.99 for three months, $29.99 for six months, or $47.99 a year, and they buy cosmetics, a monthly currency and convenience rather than access.

Flowdayz is $49 a year, about $4 a month, or $8 monthly, after a seven day trial. There is no free tier and no upsell after it.

A year of Habitica's most expensive plan costs roughly what Flowdayz costs, and Habitica's free version costs nothing at all. If price decides it, it has already decided.

Decide it in twenty seconds

Three questions that decide it

Does a real stake move you, or flatten you? Be honest about the answer you have, not the one you would prefer. If the possibility of losing a level is what gets you to the gym, Habitica is built for you and Flowdayz is not.

What do you want to happen on the fourth bad day in a row? Habitica's answer is that it costs more each time. Flowdayz's answer is that nothing happens, and the count picks up whenever you do.

Do you want other people in it? A Party is genuine accountability and some people need it. If the thought of anyone else seeing this makes you want to close the app, start with one action instead.

There is no character to bring back. There is only the next ordinary Tuesday, with one thing on it that fits.