Habitify is one of the better habit trackers on the market: clean design, apps on every platform, flexible schedules, and the pleasant data-nerd extras — time-of-day filters, mood notes, streak stats — that make daily check-ins feel rewarding.
It is also a subscription for what is, underneath, a list of dates with checkmarks. Premium runs about $5/month or a larger one-time unlock, your data lives in their cloud behind an account, and the app phones home through the usual analytics SDKs. Streakly is a $15-once desktop tracker with no cloud at all. Here is the honest comparison.
What Habitify does well
Habitify gets the daily experience right:
- True multi-platform — iOS, Android, web, macOS — with instant sync between them.
- Flexible scheduling: daily, weekly quotas, time-of-day sections and reminders.
- Motivating stats, streaks and mood tracking with a polished UI.
- A working free tier if you track only a few habits.
If checking habits off on your phone throughout the day is the whole point for you, Habitify is genuinely good at that.
Where the subscription model hurts
The subscription shape is the problem: $5/month is $180 over three years for storing checkmarks — and habits are precisely the long-horizon data you want to keep for a decade, which makes rent-forever the worst possible pricing model for it. Stop paying and features fall away; the streaks you built live in an account you are leasing.
There is also a privacy dimension people rarely consider: a habit tracker knows when you sleep, whether you exercised, what you are trying to quit. That is intimate data to keep in anyone's cloud, attached to your identity, in an app carrying analytics SDKs. A tracker with zero network calls makes the entire question moot.
Streakly: the pay-once alternative
Streakly is a $15, one-time purchase. The desktop habit tracker you buy once — streaks, heatmaps and schedules that match real life. Streakly's streak engine survives real life: weekday-only habits skip weekends without breaking, N-per-week habits count weekly quotas across boundaries, vacation mode freezes streaks, and an unfinished today never kills a streak early. Around it: numeric goals with partial counts, GitHub-style year heatmaps, native reminders, per-day notes, drag-to-reorder, and one-click JSON + CSV export of everything.
The source code is MIT-licensed at github.com/bensblueprints/habit-tracker — free to build and run yourself, forever. Buying the packaged version on Whop gets you the signed installer, 1-click setup and updates. Either way, there is no account, no telemetry and no renewal date.
Head to head
| Streakly | Habitify | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $15 once | ~$5/mo (Premium) |
| Cost over 3 years | $15 | ~$180 |
| Where your data lives | Your machine / your server | Their cloud, behind an account |
| Usage limits | None — unlimited use | Habit cap on free tier; premium gates |
| Works offline | Yes | Partially |
| Source code | MIT, on GitHub | Closed |
Who should stay with Habitify
Stay with Habitify if phone-first tracking with cross-device sync is essential — Streakly is a desktop app with no mobile client, and if your check-ins happen at the gym or on the bus, that decides it.
Switch if you live at a computer, want your history in a file you own, and are tired of streak engines that break a weekday-only habit over a weekend. Streakly's engine is fair by design, and your entire history is one human-readable JSON file.
Making the switch
Step 1 — Buy once on Whop. One-time $15 — the cheapest app in the suite, tied with Deepdesk.
Step 2 — Create your habits. Icon, color, schedule and optional numeric goal — reorder your today list by dragging.
Step 3 — Check in daily. Tick habits (or count reps), keep streaks alive fairly, and watch the year heatmap fill in.
Common questions
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/habit-tracker. $15 buys the packaged Windows installer and updates.
Why is the streak engine "fair"?
Because most trackers punish you for their own bad math. In Streakly, a weekdays-only habit doesn't break over the weekend, an N-per-week habit counts weekly quotas across week boundaries, skip days freeze streaks, and an unfinished today never kills a streak prematurely. The engine is a pure zero-dependency module with its own test suite.
Is there a phone app or sync?
No — Streakly is desktop-first with no cloud, which is exactly why it can promise zero network calls. Your entire history is one JSON file; sync it yourself via Dropbox, Drive or Syncthing if you want it on two machines. If phone-first tracking matters most, Habitify is the better fit.
The bottom line
Subscriptions make sense when a service does ongoing work for you — hosting, syncing, multi-region infrastructure, human labor. They make much less sense when the work happens on your own hardware and the monthly bill is just a toll booth. Streakly is our bet that for this job, most people are better served owning the tool: $15 once, three months of Habitify costs the same as Streakly does once — your streaks shouldn't have a renewal date.
Streakly is part of OneTimeSuite — 56 desktop and self-hosted apps built on the same principle: your hardware does the work, so you should not pay rent on it. Every app is a one-time purchase with MIT-licensed source on GitHub, no accounts and no telemetry. Want everything at once? OneTimeSuite Complete bundles the whole suite for a single flat $997.
Try Streakly — $15, one time
Signed installer on Whop, or build it free from the MIT source. Your call.
Browse the whole pay-once suite or all comparisons.