HabitNow alternative on iOS

Quick verdict

HabitNow is one of the few trackers that sells you the whole app for a single payment and then leaves you alone. Its scheduling engine is more flexible than most paid competitors, and if your daily driver is an Android phone it is the one I would buy. miniHabits is the iOS answer to the same instinct: pay once, own it, no account.

What HabitNow does better

Scheduling. Specific weekdays, a number of times per week, every N days, monthly patterns, and per-habit time slots. Very few apps let you say “three times a week, but not on Sunday, starting in March” without a fight.

One purchase. Premium is a single payment rather than a subscription, which in this category is rare enough to be a feature.

Tasks and habits in one place. HabitNow keeps a to-do list next to the habits, so a day that mixes routine and one-off work fits in one screen.

Timers and reminders. Per-habit countdown timers, flexible notifications, and a calendar view that shows the whole month.

Where it stops being a good fit

The platform. HabitNow is an Android app first, and the iOS experience is not where the work goes. If you carry an iPhone, you are the second audience by design, and the Apple-specific pieces (interactive widgets, Live Activities, the Dynamic Island, HealthKit) are either absent or thin.

The interface is dense. That is a fair trade for the flexibility, but the first-run screen shows a lot at once, and setting up a habit involves more decisions than some people want to make.

Statistics are per habit and mostly calendar shaped. No weekday bias across all habits, no time-of-day distribution, no correlations.

A missed day resets the streak.

How miniHabits handles the same job

The scheduling is close: three times a week, every other week, custom days, and retroactive entry so you can log last Tuesday without the completion rate going wrong. Blocks group four habits into a morning routine you check with one tap at a fixed trigger.

The Apple side is where the difference sits. Interactive widgets write straight to the store with no app launch and no sync round trip. Timer habits run as Live Activities on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. HealthKit habits fill themselves from steps, sleep and workouts, so the walking habit needs no tap at all.

Missing a day is survivable: five consecutive days bank a shield, up to three, and a miss spends one so the chain holds and the log still shows the miss.

And the one-payment instinct is intact. Lifetime Pro is 34,99 € with a 30 day money back window, the yearly option is 25 €, and the free tier covers ten habits with every tracking mode.

Pricing compared

Migrating your data

HabitNow can export a backup file and CSV. The CSV is the route: one date and one value per line is what the miniHabits importer wants, and habit names come across as the label.

If you have already sold the Android phone, screenshots plus our migration prompt in any LLM will produce importable JSON from what you have left.

FAQ

Does miniHabits track tasks? No. It is habits only, which is why the data model can be opinionated.

Can I schedule every other week? Yes, plus three times a week, custom days and retroactive entry.

Is there an Android version of miniHabits? Not yet. Web app in August 2026, Android after that. The roadmap has the details.

The honest recommendation

If you are on Android, buy HabitNow, or install Loop if you want free and open source. Both are better answers than anything I can offer you on that platform.

If you are on iOS and you wanted HabitNow’s deal (pay once, no account, flexible schedules) with the Apple features actually used, that is what miniHabits is. The Strides comparison is the next one to read if you track goals with targets rather than plain habits.