Flowdayz vs Habitify: an honest comparison

The monthly report is genuinely lovely. A calendar of filled squares, a current streak, a total in minutes, a small figure telling you this month beat last month.

You look at it for about four seconds.

Then you close it, because there is nothing to do with it. You already knew you had done the walks. The number confirming it does not answer the thing you actually opened the app to find out, which is whether any of this is making your days better.

The obvious reading is that you need better data. More habits tracked, the health integration switched on, the notes filled in properly this time. That reading is why people move from one tracker to another every few months and arrive somewhere identical.

At a glance

	Habitify	Flowdayz
What it measures	Whether you completed the habits you entered	Which small things made the day better, and how many minutes went into them
Core loop	Enter habits, schedule them, check them off	One planned action a day, sized to your schedule
On a day you miss	A daily streak ends unless the day is skipped, and the month's Failed count can rise	Uncounted; the cumulative total is unchanged
Automatic tracking	Apple Health and Google Fit can fill things in	None; nothing is inferred from your phone
Where it runs	iPhone, Android and the web	On your phone, with no browser or desktop version
Price	Free for three habits, then $2.49 a month billed annually or $59.99 once	€42 a year, or €7 monthly, after a seven day trial

Habitify prices in dollars and Flowdayz in euro, and both stores charge their own regional prices, so read the two columns as prices rather than as a subtraction.

How Habitify works

Habitify is a tracker in the most literal sense, and it is unusually good at it. You enter the habits you want, give each one a goal and a schedule, and check them off as the day goes. Its own site describes it as running on iPhone, Android and the web, and the sync between them is the thing people who like it tend to mention first.

The App Store editors, quoted on Habitify's own homepage, put the appeal well. The interface is simple and organised, with all your habits presented in a calendar and ordered chronologically, so you can see your day measured out in goals.

Around that sits real depth. A built in timer. Notes. Mood tracking. Apple Health and Google Fit sync, so a run or a step count can complete a habit without you touching it. Apple and Google calendar integration. API access with Zapier and IFTTT, which almost nothing else in this category offers. Monthly challenges and leaderboards, if a bit of competition is what moves you.

The reporting is the centrepiece. A month opens into four numbers, and Habitify's help centre defines them plainly. Success is the number of days you achieved your habit goal in the month. Failed is the number of days you marked as failed. Skipped is the number you marked as skipped. Total is the amount, in whatever unit your goal uses.

Streaks come in three kinds, for daily, weekly and monthly goals, and the definition is the ordinary one.

Basically, a streak refers to a continuous chain of days during which you successfully complete your habit and achieve your goal.

There is a Skip option, and it exists to protect the streak on a day you cannot or do not want to perform the habit. That is a kinder piece of design than most of this category bothers with, and it is worth saying so before anything else.

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 it helps you get there every day.

It starts from a different assumption. Not that you are failing to comply with your list, but that the list itself was written on a Sunday evening by somebody guessing.

So it shows one action at a time, sized to the day you are actually having. When you finish, it asks a question a tracker does not ask, which is whether that felt good or whether today was not the day. The record counts minutes invested rather than days in a row, and it surfaces the three things that worked best for you rather than a completion rate across everything.

The list is the part nobody checks

A tracker is a measuring instrument, and a measuring instrument inherits whatever you point it at. Point it at eleven habits chosen for how sensible they sounded and you get eleven very accurate completion rates for eleven things that may or may not be doing anything.

This is not hypothetical. The thing that predicts whether you are still doing something in October is not whether it is good for you, it is whether the doing of it is any good. Almost everybody chooses on the first and finds out about the second the hard way, in about week three.

A completion rate cannot tell you which items were the wrong ones, because it was calculated from the assumption that they were right. Ninety per cent on a habit that does nothing for you is ninety per cent of nothing, arrived at diligently.

Habitify does hold the raw material for the other question. Mood tracking is there, described on its own site as tracking your emotional health and understanding its effects on your habits. What it does not do is the joining. Two honest datasets sit next to each other and the analysis is left to you, on an evening when you are tired, which is the same evening you wrote the list.

Flowdayz makes that join the product rather than an exercise for the reader. It is the whole reason the app asks how the thing felt, rather than only whether it happened.

What happens on a day you miss

Habitify's answer is comparatively gentle, and it should be credited as such. The daily streak ends if you do not check in or you check in as failed. Skip protects it. Nothing is confiscated, nothing turns into damage, and the month's other numbers carry on regardless.

But the month now holds a Failed count, and a Failed count is a small permanent record of the fortnight when work happened. There are about four different rules for the day you miss in circulation, and this is one of the milder ones. It is still a number that goes the wrong way.

Flowdayz does not have that number. A missed day is not counted and it is never subtracted from what came before. Nothing on screen goes down, and the cost of a bad week is rarely that somebody stopped wanting the habit.

Where Habitify is the better choice

When you want to spend nothing. Habitify's pricing page offers three habits and cross platform sync free forever. Flowdayz has no free tier at all. If that is the deciding factor then it has already decided, and three habits is enough to find out whether the whole idea suits you.

When you want it everywhere. iPhone, Android and a browser, synced. Flowdayz is a phone app with no web version and no desktop app.

When you want the tracking to fill itself in. Apple Health and Google Fit can complete habits for you, and the API with Zapier and IFTTT will do the rest. Flowdayz has nothing of the kind and infers nothing from your phone.

When you do not want a subscription. Habitify sells a lifetime licence at $59.99, billed once. Flowdayz is a subscription and only a subscription.

And one more, honestly. If numbers are the thing you enjoy, if a good chart is genuinely part of why you keep going, Habitify is built for that and this post is not about you.

Where Flowdayz is the better choice

If you have tracked things properly for months, have the data to prove it, and still could not say which two of them actually made a difference, the instrument was never the problem. More precision about the wrong list produces a more precise wrong list.

It also suits people who do not want a list looking back at them. One action, sized to the day that is actually happening, and when something keeps getting missed the app asks for less rather than recording the miss more carefully.

What Flowdayz does not have

Stated plainly, because these are real and worth weighing.

• No free version. A subscription after a seven day trial. Habitify's free tier is free forever.
• No browser or desktop app. Phones only.
• No automatic tracking. No Apple Health, no Google Fit, no step counts completing anything for you.
• No automation. No API, no Zapier, no IFTTT.
• No one off purchase. No lifetime licence at any price.
• No unlimited habit list, which is the wrong product if you want a dozen things measured, though the number itself is worth a second look.
• No leaderboards or challenges. You are never compared to anybody, which is a loss if competition is what moves you.

Price

Habitify is free for three habits, described on its own pricing page as free forever, with cross platform sync included. Premium removes the limit and adds advanced reminders, an off mode for breaks, calendar integrations, Apple Health and API automation, at $2.49 a month billed annually, or $59.99 billed once for lifetime access.

Flowdayz is €42 a year, or €7 monthly, after a seven day trial. There is no free tier and no upsell after it.

Over three years the lifetime licence is the cheapest thing in this comparison by a distance, and the free tier costs nothing at all. On price this is not close.

Decide it in twenty seconds

Three questions that decide it

Do you already know which things are yours? If you do, the job is measurement and Habitify does measurement better. If you do not, no amount of it will tell you.

What would you do with a completion rate of sixty per cent? If the answer is a plan to raise it, Habitify is the right shape. If the answer is a quiet suspicion that the habit was wrong rather than the effort, that suspicion is the useful thing and nothing in a report will confirm it.

When something stops working, do you want to know sooner or track it more accurately? Those are different products. If it is the first, start with one small thing and let the app find out which one is yours.

There is no report to fix. There is only the next ordinary Tuesday, with one thing on it that fits.