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Habitica
Open source task manager that runs your habits, dailies and to-dos as a role-playing game
As of 30 August 2026, Habitica has a free plan and paid plans start at $4.99/month. A task manager where finishing to-dos earns experience and gold and skipping dailies costs health. Softwr lists it under Productivity. Habitica is made by Habitica Inc, launched in 2013, available on Web, iOS, Android.
Overview
What Habitica does
Habitica is a task manager built as a role-playing game, made by a small company that publishes its server and client code openly. Work is split into three lists: Habits, which you score up or down whenever they happen; Dailies, which are scheduled and expected; and To-Dos, which are one-off. Completing anything earns experience and gold, levelling unlocks classes, gear, pets and mounts, and there is an in-game shop to spend on. It runs in a browser and as iOS and Android apps. The whole thing is free, and the optional subscription buys gems, monthly item sets and better drop rates rather than any task feature, so paying never unlocks the ability to manage your work. The mechanic that actually changes behaviour is not the reward, it is the party. Missed Dailies drain your health, and in a party fighting a boss they also damage everyone else, so the consequence of skipping your routine is visible to people who will mention it. Conventional task managers have no way to make a lapse cost anything, which is why they get abandoned quietly. Habitica makes abandonment a visible event. That is a genuinely different design and it is the reason people who bounced off every other list app stay with this one. It is bought, where it is bought at all, by individuals: people who struggle with motivation or routine, students, and small groups of friends who want mutual accountability. The trade-off is that nothing verifies anything. The economy runs entirely on self-report, so the day you tick a Daily you did not do is the day the mechanics stop meaning anything and you are left with a plain checklist. Underneath the game, the task features are thin: no dependencies, no attachments, no nested projects, and reminders that are less dependable than a dedicated task app. It is a motivation system with a to-do list attached, not a to-do list with motivation added.
What people use it for
- You have abandoned every plain to-do list and need an external consequence for skipping a routine.
- A small group of friends or a study group wants mutual accountability without a project tracker.
- Building daily habits such as medication, exercise or practice, where the streak matters more than any deadline.
- You want a task tool you can export from and in principle self-host, rather than one that holds your data.
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Habitica.
- Nothing verifies a completed task, so the entire reward economy runs on self-report, and the first time you tick a Daily you did not do, the health and gold mechanics stop meaning anything and the app becomes a checklist with a cartoon on it.
- Missed Dailies cost health whether you were ill, travelling or on holiday, so returning after a week away can mean death, a lost level and stripped gear, which is the point at which many users abandon the account rather than rebuild it.
- The task features are thin next to conventional managers, with no subtask dependencies, no file attachments, no nested projects and limited recurrence rules, so anything more structured than a flat list has to be kept somewhere else.
- Development is carried by a small core team with volunteer contributors, so mobile releases, sync fixes and platform updates arrive slowly and reported bugs can sit on the community boards for a long time.
- There is no organisational layer at all, meaning no admin console, no single sign-on and no way to provision or remove members, so a company cannot adopt it centrally even where individual employees rely on it.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Habitica
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- HabiticavsOmniFocus 3
OmniFocus 3: Professional task management for complex workflows
- HabiticavsThings 3
Things 3: The award-winning personal task manager
- HabiticavsBrain.fm
Brain.fm: Scientifically-designed music to enhance focus and productivity
Pricing
What Habitica costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Free
Free
- Basic habit and task tracking
- Character creation
- Community features
Membership
$4.99 /mo
- Premium items and gear
- Extra experience
- Pet and mount system
- Priority support
Capabilities
Features
Three task types
Habits, Dailies and To-Dos are scored differently rather than sharing one list
Health and damage
Missed Dailies cost hit points, and reaching zero costs a level and equipped gear
Parties and quests
Shared boss fights where your missed tasks deal damage to teammates
Classes and skills
Warrior, mage, healer and rogue abilities unlock as you level
Pets and mounts
Collectible rewards that drop randomly from completed tasks
Challenges
Shared task lists published by other users that you can join
Custom rewards
Spend in-game gold on real-world treats you define yourself
Group plans
Paid plans for a party or family with shared tasks
Data export
JSON of your user data and CSV of task history
Open source
Server and clients published on GitHub and self-hostable
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Habitica actually free?
Yes. Every task feature is free with no time limit. The subscription buys gems, monthly mystery items and higher drop rates, so not paying never costs you access to your own lists.
Can I get my data out?
Yes. Habitica exports your user data as JSON and your task history as CSV, and the code is open source, so the data is genuinely portable even though nothing else will import the game state.
Does it work offline?
Badly. The mobile apps queue some actions, but scoring, drops and party activity need a connection, and long offline stretches tend to produce sync conflicts.
Can a team at work use it?
There are paid group plans for parties, but no admin console, no single sign-on and no company billing, so it suits a group of willing colleagues rather than a managed rollout.
Behind it
Who makes Habitica
- Company
- Habitica Inc
- Based in
- San Francisco, CA
Keep looking
Where to go from Habitica
- Habitica alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Habitica pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Habitica badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Productivity softwareThe full category
- Best Productivity softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Productivity software for
Compare Habitica with
- Todoist
- OmniFocus 3
- Things 3
- Brain.fm
- TickTick
- Kahoot
- Any.do
- LibreOffice
- Milanote
- Bring!
- DocuSeal
- Lazy
- Circleback
- Day One
- DeskTime
- Focus@Will
- Focusmate
- DocuSeal
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Free, then $9/mo14 researched notesSubscription streaming of instrumental music channels intended to be worked to rather than listened to
Free, then $4.95/mo13 researched notesVirtual co-working platform for accountability and productivity
Free, then $8/mo10 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Habitica, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Habitica
Habitica alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Habitica pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Habitica
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Habitica badge
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