Fabulous is a routine coach. It starts you on one habit, adds more over weeks through guided “journeys”, and wraps the whole thing in a lot of explanatory content.

For some people that structure is the difference between a routine and an intention. For others the content is the part they skip, and they’re paying for packaging.

If you’re the second kind, here are nine alternatives worth knowing about.

First, a correction. Fabulous does not cost $100 a year

An earlier version of this page was built entirely on that number. The headline, the comparison table and the verdict all leaned on it, and it was wrong.

Here’s what’s actually checkable. Fabulous: Daily Habit Tracker, from Fabulous, is free to download on the US App Store as of 11 August 2026, rated 4.4 across 88,631 ratings.

The paid tier is where it gets murky. Reviews and pricing round-ups from 2026 put the annual subscription in the region of $40 to $50, with promotional pricing moving it around and some users reporting higher one-off charges. That’s a normal price for this category, not an outrageous one. Routinery, Productive and most paid habit apps sit in the same band.

So the “it’s expensive” argument doesn’t survive contact with the actual number, and I’m not going to keep making it. If you’re leaving Fabulous, leave it for fit, not for price.

Check the price in the App Store listing before you subscribe to anything on this page. Every figure I found while writing this disagreed with at least one other source, which is exactly why the number below the table is a link and not a dollar sign.

How this list is sourced

Every developer name, star rating and rating count below was pulled from the US App Store on 11 August 2026. How each app behaves comes from its own store listing.

Prices are not in the comparison table. With one exception, noted where it applies, all of these are free to download and charge through subscriptions that change by region and promotion.

The real reasons people leave Fabulous

Strip out the price complaint and four reasons remain, and they’re better reasons.

  1. The pace. Journeys are deliberately slow. If you already have a routine and you want to track it, being told to focus on drinking a glass of water for a fortnight is friction, not scaffolding.
  2. The reading. There’s a lot of content before the doing. Some people take it. Some people tap through it and then wonder what they’re paying for.
  3. The free tier is a demo. Not unusual, but worth knowing before you install.
  4. You want a schedule, not a coach. Fabulous answers “what habit should I build”. A lot of people already know that and need “remind me at 7am and show me the streak”.

Note the 4.4 rating. Only one app on this page scores lower, and that one has a fraction of the ratings behind it. 4.4 is not a bad score. Across 88,631 ratings it does suggest the fit splits people more than a 4.8 app does.

Pick your category first

  • You want the routine walked through step by step, with timers → Routinery
  • You want your whole day laid out visually → Structured or Tiimo
  • You want gentleness, not pressure → Finch
  • You want the opposite: points, gear, consequences → Habitica
  • You just want a tracker → Productive, Habitify, Streaks

Comparison

Developers, ratings and rating counts verified on the US App Store, 11 August 2026.

AppDeveloperRatingRatingsApproach
Finch: Self-Care PetFinch Care Public Benefit Corporation4.9738,118Gentle, pet-based
Structured: Daily Planner Todounorderly GmbH4.8163,865Visual day timeline
Productive - Habit TrackerMosaic S.r.l.4.691,092Flexible scheduling
StreaksCrunchy Bagel Pty Ltd4.827,344Capped habit list, one purchase
Strides: Habit Tracker + GoalsGoals LLC4.819,106Habits plus measurable goals
Tiimo: To-Do List Plannertiimo ApS4.618,743Visual, time-blind friendly
Routine Planner, Habit TrackerRoutinery Corp.4.717,578Timed routine sequences
Habitify: Habit TrackerUnstatic Ltd Co4.67,050Same habits on Mac and phone
Habitica: Gamified TaskmanagerHabitRPG, Inc.4.23,090Full RPG

For reference, Fabulous itself sits at 4.4 across 88,631 ratings.

If you want the routine walked through

Routinery (listed as Routine Planner, Habit Tracker): 4.7 stars, 17,578 ratings

Listed on the App Store as “Routine Planner, Habit Tracker”, which is why searching “Routinery” can be confusing.

This is the closest mechanical match to what Fabulous actually does at the moment of use. You build a morning or evening sequence, and the app runs it: each step gets a countdown, then it moves you to the next one. Fabulous coaches you into a routine; Routinery just runs the one you already decided on.

Switch here if the guided-journey content is the part you skip and the step-by-step execution is the part you use.

If you want the whole day visible

Structured (unorderly GmbH): 4.8 stars, 163,865 ratings

Lays your day out as a vertical timeline. Tasks, habits and calendar events sit in one column so you can see the shape of the day rather than a list of checkboxes.

Switch here if your problem isn’t motivation, it’s that you can’t picture where the routine fits.

Tiimo (tiimo ApS): 4.6 stars, 18,743 ratings

Same broad idea, built with a heavy emphasis on visual cues and clear timing. Widely used by people who lose track of how long things take.

If you want gentle

Finch: Self-Care Pet (Finch Care Public Benefit Corporation): 4.9 stars, 738,118 ratings

The most-rated and highest-rated app on this page by a wide margin. You care for a bird, and completing your own routine is what feeds it. The tone is deliberately soft: it doesn’t punish you for missing days.

That tone is the whole product. If you already run on self-criticism, an app that adds another thing to disappoint is the wrong tool, and this is the one on this list built to avoid that.

Switch here if Fabulous’s coaching voice felt like homework.

If you want the opposite of gentle

Habitica (HabitRPG, Inc.): 4.2 stars, 3,090 ratings

Your habits become an RPG. Character, gear, quests, a party of other people, and actual damage when you skip.

Two honest notes. The rating is the lowest here and the rating count is small, so treat the star average with more caution than the others. And it’s cross-platform including web, which almost nothing else on this list is.

If you just want a tracker

Productive - Habit Tracker (Mosaic S.r.l.): 4.6 stars, 91,092 ratings

Flexible scheduling, clean design, streaks and statistics. No journey, no coaching, no narrative. The default answer for “I know what my routine is, just track it”.

Streaks (Crunchy Bagel Pty Ltd): 4.8 stars, 27,344 ratings

The one genuine exception to the subscription problem. Its App Store listing shows a $5.99 one-time price rather than a free download with a subscription behind it. Pay once, own it.

The constraint is deliberate: it’s built around a limited number of tracked habits rather than an unlimited list, which forces you to decide what actually matters. That’s a feature if you over-add habits, and a dealbreaker if you don’t.

Habitify (Unstatic Ltd Co): 4.6 stars, 7,050 ratings

Worth knowing if you want the same habit data on a Mac and a phone rather than just a phone.

Strides (Goals LLC): 4.8 stars, 19,106 ratings

Handles habits and measurable targets in the same app, so “meditate daily” and “get to 80kg” both live in one place.

What you actually lose by leaving

Be honest about this before you cancel. None of the nine apps above give you Fabulous’s coaching layer. What you lose:

  • The explanation of why each habit is sequenced where it is
  • Someone else deciding what habit comes next
  • The narrative that carries you through the boring weeks

Nothing on this list replaces that. They all assume you already know what you want to do.

If that assumption is wrong for you, if the reason your routines fail is that you never know what to build next, then the coaching is the product and switching to a tracker will not help. That is the actual case for keeping Fabulous, and it has nothing to do with price.

Building the routine yourself

If you’re going the tracker route, the sequencing Fabulous does is not complicated. It’s roughly this:

Weeks 1-2. One habit. Not three. The smallest version of the one that matters most.

Weeks 3-4. Add a second, attached to the first. The end of habit one is the cue for habit two.

Weeks 5-6. Add a third to the chain.

Week 7 onward. Cut whatever you’ve been faking and adjust the timings that keep failing.

The reason to do this slowly isn’t ceremony. It’s that adding four habits at once means when it collapses you have no idea which one was the problem.

Free sources for the reasoning behind it: Atomic Habits by James Clear covers habit stacking directly, and there’s no shortage of free material on cue-routine-reward. The information isn’t behind Fabulous’s paywall. The packaging is.

The awkward questions

Does your history transfer? No. None of these import Fabulous’s data, and Fabulous doesn’t export to them. Every switch starts at zero.

Does that matter? Less than it feels like at 3pm on the day you’re considering it. A streak is a motivational device, not an asset. But if a 400-day streak is the only thing keeping you going, that’s a real reason to stay put, and it’s fine to say so.

Android and desktop? Most of this list is iOS-first. Habitica is properly cross-platform including web. Habitify covers Mac. Check the store listing for your device rather than assuming.

Can I cancel and keep using it? You drop to the free tier, which is a demo. Assume you lose access to the journeys you paid for.

FAQ

How much does Fabulous actually cost? It’s free to download. The annual subscription is commonly reported around $40 to $50, moving with promotions. Check the in-app price, because that’s the only number that’s true for you specifically.

Is Fabulous worth it? If you use the coaching, plausibly. If you tap through the content to reach the checkboxes, you’re paying for a tracker at coaching prices and almost anything on this list does that job.

What’s the closest thing to Fabulous? Routinery for the timed step-by-step execution. Nothing replaces the guided journeys.

What’s the best free alternative? Finch, on the numbers: 4.9 stars across 738,118 ratings, free to download, with a genuinely usable free tier.

Is there anything that isn’t a subscription? Streaks. Its App Store listing shows a $5.99 one-time price, which is rare in this category now.

Why is Fabulous rated lower than most of these? 4.4 across 88,631 ratings is a solid score, just the lowest here. A coaching product with a strong opinion about pace will always split people more than a neutral tracker does.

Related reads:

Disclosure: SimpleStreaks, ZenBreath and Affirm are mine

I build iOS apps, and SimpleStreaks, ZenBreath and Affirm are three of them.

All three are kept out of the comparison table, out of every ranked section and out of the FAQ answers above, because scoring my own products against apps I compete with isn’t a fair test. SimpleStreaks in particular competes directly with the trackers in this list. Judge them on their App Store reviews rather than on this page.

— Dolce