The best habit trackers for counting, not just checking (2026)

The checkbox problem

Open almost any habit tracker and the mental model is the same: a habit is a thing you either did or didn't do today, and the app's job is to draw a satisfying chain of green marks. That works for "floss" or "no soda." It quietly fails for a whole other class of goals.

Say the goal is 100 push-ups a day, and — like most people — you do them in sets: twenty here, thirty after lunch, the rest before bed. A checkbox can't hold that. The right question isn't "did you do push-ups?" but "how many, so far?" — a running total you nudge upward through the day until it hits the target. Same for an eye-exercise routine you run in a few timed sessions, or a daily step goal you'd rather have counted for you than tick off by hand.

That's a different feature. Call it a counted habit: a numeric daily target you log incrementally, not a binary you flip once. A surprising number of well-known trackers simply don't have it, and among the ones that do, "counting" comes in grades — from a real target with custom increments down to a fixed +1 tap with no goal line at all.

Filter for counting and the field narrows fast. Then two costs the App Store listing hides decide the rest: the free-tier habit cap (the number that actually pushes you to pay), and whether you actually own your data (the difference between using an app and being trapped in one). This guide is organized around those three things.

Who this is for

You've got a handful of habits — realistically five to ten — and at least some of them are quantities: reps, minutes, glasses, steps, pages. Some are plain checks, and that's fine; you don't need counting on everything, you need an app that offers it on the habits that call for it without making the simple ones worse. You'd like streaks and reminders like everyone else, but the thing that actually disqualifies most apps for you is that they can't count past one.

If every habit you track is genuinely yes/no, you have far more options than this guide covers, and some of the apps we send to the "wrong job" pile at the end are excellent for you. This is specifically for people whose list won't fit inside a column of checkboxes.

How we evaluate

Five things, in rough order of how much they'll matter to you:

1. Habit-type flexibility. Can a single app mix plain checks, counted habits, and timed habits, and let each habit be its own type? An app that forces everything into yes/no is out; an app that only counts and can't do a simple check is a counter, not a tracker.
2. The free-tier cap. How many habits before the wall — and it's almost always a small number. For a 5–10 habit list, the cap, not the premium features, is the real paywall.
3. One-time vs subscription. Getting past the cap is either a purchase you own or a bill you pay forever. We say which, with current prices dated, because that gap is the whole ballgame over three years.
4. Apple Health. If "steps" is one of your habits, you want it counted automatically, not typed in. Health integration is the difference.
5. Data ownership. Can you export your history as a portable file — and can you do it without an active subscription? This is where a tracker either respects that your streak data is yours or holds it hostage. More on this below; it's the axis most buyers skip and most regret.

We're lighter on the usual sustainability hand-wringing here than we'd be for, say, an ebook reader — habit history is small, simple data, and a clean export neutralizes most of the "what if it disappears" risk. Which is exactly why the export question does so much work in what follows.

All prices are US App Store, US dollars, as of 2026-08-05, and app versions and metrics are dated inline. Prices shift and promos are constant — treat the figures as a snapshot, not a contract.

Currently worth using

Awesome Habits — the best all-rounder

If you want one app that does the whole mix and lets you actually own it, this is the pick. Counted habits work the way the push-up example wants them to: you choose what a tap does, so one tap can add a custom amount (say +20), and counts accept decimals. It has real timers — down to the second — for the eye-exercise and meditation kind of habit, and it can pull a metric like steps from Apple Health onto a numeric target you set. Developed by one person (Michal Tuma) since 2020, actively shipped (v7.4, 2026-07-06).

Pricing. Freemium. Premium is $22.99 lifetime, or $4.99/mo, or $12.99/yr. Premium unlocks unlimited habits, full statistics history, and customization.

The cap. Free tier is 3 habits — enough to evaluate, not to live in. The lifetime unlock is the reason it's here: it clears the cap without a recurring bill.

Counting & timers. The strongest combination in this group — custom-amount counting plus true timers in one app.

Data ownership. Free CSV export, available on the free tier — one of the few apps here that lets you leave with your history without paying a cent.

Awesome Habits on the App Store →

Streaks — the best value, and you own it outright

Streaks is the one app here with no subscription at all: $5.99, once, forever. It's an Apple Design Award winner, on the store since 2015 and still shipping (v11.3.7, 2026-07-28), with excellent timers and the best Apple Health auto-completion in the roundup — link a task to steps or a workout and it checks itself off when you hit the goal.

The catch is precisely the counting. Streaks tasks are done/not-done. A single task can be marked complete multiple times a day (up to 12), which covers "drink water 8 times," but there's no free-number field, so it cannot represent a "100" target you build up from sets. For quantified reps it's the wrong tool; for a list of checks and timed habits and Health-driven metrics, it's the best-value option by a distance.

Pricing. $5.99 one-time. No subscription, no further IAPs; the purchase includes everything, up to 24 tasks.

Data ownership. Free CSV import/export, and because you bought the app outright, neither the app nor your data is tied to a recurring payment. This is the cleanest data-ownership story in the guide.

Streaks on the App Store →

Strides — the most serious number goals

If counting is the whole point for you, Strides has the richest model. Beyond plain Habit (yes/no or a daily number), it offers Target (a cumulative number toward a deadline, with a pace line), Average (a rolling number, e.g. 8 glasses/day), and Project milestones. Log values through the day and they sum toward the goal — exactly the push-ups-in-sets pattern, dev-confirmed. It syncs steps and other metrics from Apple Health and gives you unlimited reminders. It has no built-in timer, though; durations get typed in as minutes. On the store since 2013, actively maintained (v19.12, 2026-07-26).

Pricing. Freemium. Strides Plus is $79.99 lifetime, or $4.99/mo, or $29.99/yr. Plus unlocks unlimited trackers, cross-device sync, trends, and export.

The cap. Free tier is 3 trackers.

Data ownership. Export exists but is a paid Plus feature — a CSV, one file per tracker type — so getting your data out requires either the subscription or the (steep) lifetime unlock.

Strides on the App Store →

Habit Tracker (by Nico Schroeder) — counter + timer + the widest Health sync

The most feature-complete newcomer. It has dedicated counter and duration habit types (plus simple and negative), and the broadest Apple Health metric list of anything here — steps, distance across several activities, workouts, water, mindful minutes, sleep, and more — with CSV export. The honest asterisk is age: it was first released on 2026-07-01 and is still v1.3, so it has none of the track record the older entries carry.

Pricing. Freemium. Lifetime $29.99, or $4.99/mo, or $19.99/yr (a $5.99 weekly SKU also exists — ignore it).

Data ownership. CSV export is listed as a feature.

Habit Tracker on the App Store →

Habitify — does everything, but you'll pay forever

Habitify technically ticks every box: quantity habits, timed habits, plain checks, Apple Health sync, and it's the only genuinely cross-platform option here (iOS, Android, Mac, Watch, and a web app). It's also the priciest and stingiest on the free tier, and — the part that matters most for this guide — it puts your export behind the paywall.

Pricing. As of April 2026 it runs three tiers. Plus is $29.99/yr (annual only) and lifts the caps. Pro is $8.99/mo, or $49.99/yr, or $119.99 lifetime, and adds checklists, automation, advanced timers, and the deeper health integrations. (A legacy $59.99 lifetime SKU is still sold; note that the app's own pricing page still shows the old two-tier model, so trust the App Store, not the website.)

The cap. Free tier is 3 habits and one reminder each — the tightest here.

Data ownership. CSV export exists (plus a full .sqlite backup), but behind a paid plan — you can only extract your history while you're subscribed. That's the cleanest example in this roundup of the subscription-plus-locked-export trap.

Habitify on the App Store →

Do Habits — built for counting across the day, and it lets you leave

Formerly "Done," now published by Kodeon, Inc. (v4.2.0, 2026-08-02), this is the app most explicitly designed around the pattern this guide opens with: set a numeric goal and log it multiple times a day until you hit it, with Apple Health feeding a steps habit automatically. It has no timer type, so timed eye-exercise sessions aren't its strength, and it moved from a one-time purchase to subscriptions under new ownership — a change some long-time users resent.

What redeems the money story is the export: CSV with totals and timestamps, free, not gated behind Premium. So even though it pushes a subscription, your data isn't hostage to it.

Pricing. Freemium. Lifetime $19.99; or Premium $59.99/yr (very frequently promo-discounted, sometimes to ~$19.99); a legacy $8.99 one-time unlock still exists. Premium's job is to remove the habit cap.

The cap. Free tier is 3 habits.

Do Habits on the App Store →

Honorable mentions

Good apps that miss one thing this specific use case wants:

• HabitKit — the nicest visualization here (a GitHub-style contribution grid), counted habits, and a cheap $29.99 lifetime past its 4-habit free cap. But no timer and no Apple Health, and its "export," though free, is a device-transfer backup file, not a portable CSV — fine for moving phones, not for owning your data in a form you can read. Local-first and private; v1.15.2 (2026-06-01).
• Productive — real numeric Target/Average habits and an in-app timer, with a genuinely cheap $3.99 one-time unlock alongside its subscriptions. But it has no Apple Health integration — users have been asking for years — so steps are manual, and no data export surfaced anywhere. Its free tier caps at 5 habits; now a Bending Spoons property (v3.26.39, 2026-03-19).
• HabitMinder — the standout for the timed half of the use case: guided in-app sessions plus Siri numeric logging ("log 15 squats"), numeric targets, and Health reading of steps, workouts and sleep. One-time $19.99 or $9.99/yr past a 3-habit free tier, and its CSV export appears to be free (it isn't among the premium-gated features).
• Habit Tracker by InnerGrow — the most-updated and most-installed of the bunch, with unit goals, a focus timer, and Apple Health, at a bargain $9.99 lifetime. The disqualifier for data-conscious buyers: we found only an iCloud backup, no portable export — and a backup that only restores into the same app isn't ownership.
• Tally (by Agile Tortoise, makers of Drafts) — if you want a dedicated counter rather than a habit system, this is the one: custom increments (+2/+5/+10), target values, decimals, Apple Watch, and CSV export, from a reputable 10-year developer at honest pricing (free to use; Pro $9.99/yr or $39.99 lifetime). It has no streaks or reminders by design, which is exactly why it's the right tool when all you want is a +1/+10 button toward a daily number.

Skip for this — good apps, wrong job

None of these are bad. They just can't do the counting this guide is about.

• Habitica — a beloved, open-source, gamified RPG that turns habits into a leveling game, with unlimited habits free (its subscription is purely cosmetic). But its "counter" is a fixed +1 tally with no numeric target and no progress bar, there's no Apple Health, and its free CSV/JSON export only works from the website. Superb for motivation, not for hitting a quantified daily number.
• Finch — an unusually generous, kind self-care app with a big free tier. Goals are check-off only — no counting, no Health — and its "export" downloads your journal writing, not your habit history, with backups that only restore into Finch. Wonderful for what it is; not a quantified tracker, and a weak data-ownership story.
• Way of Life — a clean yes/no/skip "chain" tracker with portable CSV/Excel export, though that's a Premium feature, and zero counting, timers, or Health. Out the moment a habit needs a number.
• The weekly-subscription counter. There's a "Tally Counter: Habit Tracker" that does have custom step sizes and CSV — and charges $4.99 per week, roughly $259 a year, for a tap counter, from a thin, months-old listing. It's the cautionary tale, not a pick. When a utility this simple asks for a weekly subscription, walk. (Use Tally above, or the $5.99-once options, instead.)

The two things the App Store won't tell you

Everything above collapses into two questions the store listing is careful not to answer.

The free cap is the real paywall. Nobody upgrades a habit tracker for the analytics. They upgrade because they added a sixth habit and hit a wall — the free tiers here cap at 3, 4, or 5 habits, and a realistic list is bigger than that. So the honest way to read pricing isn't "what do premium features cost," it's "what does clearing the cap cost, and is it a purchase or a lease." The apps that let you own the answer — Streaks at $5.99 once, Do Habits at $19.99 lifetime, Awesome Habits at $22.99, Habit Tracker (InnerGrow) at $9.99 — are a categorically better deal over three years than the ones where unlimited habits mean paying every month forever. The one exception that buys unlimited-free honestly is Habitica, and it does that because its paid tier sells hats, not features.

Export is the ownership test — and it's rarer than it looks. A year of streaks is data you accumulate and get attached to; the question is whether it's yours. A free, portable CSV settles it — the data is small and simple, and you can walk anytime. The trap is the inverse, and it has two flavors. One is subscription plus locked export: Habitify will hand you a CSV, but only from a paid plan, so you must keep paying just to be able to leave. The other is the fake export — a proprietary backup file that only restores into the same app (HabitKit, InnerGrow) or an export that quietly omits the thing you care about (Finch exports your diary, not your habits). A backup that can only feed itself back into the vendor isn't ownership; it's re-lock-in with a reassuring button.

Score the two honestly and the field splits roughly into thirds. A handful hand you a free, portable file — Streaks, Do Habits, Awesome Habits, and (from its website only) Habitica. Several put export behind the paywall — Strides, Way of Life, Habitify — so you pay to leave. And the rest offer a fake export: a proprietary backup that only feeds itself back in (HabitKit, Habit Tracker by InnerGrow), one that omits your habit history entirely (Finch exports your diary, not your streaks), or nothing at all (Productive). That's the real state of data ownership in habit trackers in 2026, and it's a stronger reason to prefer a one-time-purchase app than any feature on the box. It's the same lesson the lifetime-subscriptions trap and app expiration date pieces keep arriving at: every app you pick will eventually end, so pick one you can walk away from with your data intact.

At a glance

Bottom line

• "One app for the whole mix, and I want to own it." → Awesome Habits. Custom-amount counting, real timers, Health, and a $22.99 lifetime unlock.
• "I want to pay once and never think about it again." → Streaks. $5.99, no subscription, superb timers and Health — as long as you don't need to count reps past a check.
• "Counting is the whole point." → Strides for the richest number goals, or Do Habits for count-across-the-day with a free export.
• "I want a plain +1/+10 counter, not a habit system." → Tally.
• "I want everything and don't mind subscribing." → Habitify — just know your export is only available while you keep paying.

Pick for the habits you actually have, not the feature list. And before you pour a year of streaks into any of them, press the export button once — if you can't, or you'd have to pay to, you don't own that data yet. That's the difference between using a habit tracker and being kept by one.