Free daily planner apps: what free means, starting with ours

"Free" on a planner's website means one of three things: a free plan you can stay on, a trial that ends, or an app that comes with an account you already have. They are worth different amounts, so it helps to know which one you are looking at before you move your day into it.

We make Dayboard, which has the first kind. This page sets out exactly what our free plan includes and why it exists. After that it lists what "free" means for other planners people ask about, using what each company publishes on its own site as of 5 October 2026. Where we give an opinion, we say it is ours.

What Dayboard's free plan includes

The free plan is called Daily. It gives you:

• 2 Dayboards, for example one for work and one for everything else.
• 4 widgets on each Dayboard.
• Any of the 18 widget types. None is reserved for paying customers, so Tasks, Notes, Quick Links, Calendar, Focus Session, Habit Tracker and the rest are all available.
• Your boards saved to your account, so they open on any device where you sign in.

Signing up does not ask for a card.

When a board already has 4 widgets and you try to add a fifth, Dayboard shows an upgrade prompt. Nothing that is already on the board changes or gets locked.

What the paid plans add

Control costs $6 a month or $61 a year. It raises the limits to 5 Dayboards with 12 widgets each and adds public sharing links and CSV export. Flow costs $19 a month or $194 a year, allows 8 Dayboards with 24 widgets each, and adds team sharing for up to 10 members. The first time you subscribe to a paid plan, it starts with a 14-day trial. The full table is on the pricing page.

Why there is a free plan at all

Dayboard was built by our founder for his own use before it was a product. He has explained the price himself:

The longer version of how it started, with the browser tabs and the abandoned bookmarks, is in our post on keeping a daily planner simple.

Is the free plan enough?

We think it is for one person planning their own day, and here is the reasoning so you can disagree with it.

A working day needs a short task list, somewhere for notes, the links you open every morning and a view of your calendar. That is four widgets, which is one free Dayboard. The second board covers the other half of your life, or a side project.

You are likely to want Control when one of these becomes true:

• You have a third area that deserves its own board, such as a client or a second product.
• You want more than four things visible at once, for example a Focus Session timer next to the basics.
• You want to share a board with someone through a public link.
• You want your data out as CSV.

What the free plan will not do

What "free" means for other planners

Free tiers change often, and lists that describe them go stale. So this table sticks to what each company says on its own page, with the link. Check it before you rely on it.

Our take on reading a free tier

These are opinions from building our own, not rules.

• Count what you have against the cap. Todoist's free plan allows 5 personal projects and TickTick's allows 9 lists; ours allows 2 boards. If you already run more than that, you will meet the limit in the first week.
• Check that the feature you are choosing the app for is in the free version. In Todoist the calendar layout is part of Pro. In Structured, recurring tasks and calendar import are part of Pro. In Dayboard, public sharing links and CSV export are part of Control.
• Treat a trial as a different thing from a free plan. A trial is a good way to test a paid product properly. It is not somewhere to keep your day for free.

We compare how these apps plan a day, as opposed to what they cost, in our post on choosing a daily planner app.

Questions people ask