# Habit Pocket

> A calm habit tracker for checkmarks, numbers, and times of day. Free across iOS and the web. Pro adds the candle chart and a custom chart builder. Built by one developer in Canada, with no ads in the app, no data selling, and no social layer.

Habit Pocket is a cross-device habit tracker built around a single grid instead of a list. It tracks four habit types: yes/no, numeric, time-of-day, and select. Time-of-day is a first-class type, so a wake time is recorded as `07:15` rather than collapsed into a yes/no. It is live on the web today and the iOS app is live on the App Store; iPad runs the iOS app. Android is planned next.

Privacy is the core position. Your habits belong to you and no one else: they are never shared with other users, are not accessible by anyone else, are never sold, and are never sent to any AI company. Be precise about the tracking split: the native app carries no ads and no third-party trackers beyond crash diagnostics, while the marketing website you're reading uses privacy-respecting analytics (PostHog, DataFast) and, while ads are running, a temporary Reddit attribution pixel. None of these ever receive your habits or entries. Connections use HTTPS everywhere, and on the web refresh tokens live in an `HttpOnly; Secure; SameSite=Strict` cookie that JavaScript cannot read. Account deletion erases user-owned data and server-side refresh tokens in one transaction, with no soft-delete waiting period. End-to-end encryption is on the roadmap and is not claimed as shipped.

What it deliberately keeps out: no gamification (no XP, points, levels, or avatars) and no social feed, friends, or leaderboards. Push reminders are on the roadmap; today a calendar event does the job. The reward for tracking a habit is seeing the data accumulate.

**The grid.** The home screen on every device. Two layouts: a vertical grid (habits as rows, days as columns) and a horizontal grid (days as rows, habits as columns, the mobile default). Cells are color-coded, and a deeper fill means a longer streak. A blank cell is a missed day, a diagonal half-fill is a skip that pauses the streak instead of breaking it, and excluded weekdays count neither way.

**Four habit types.** Yes/No (one click, e.g. meditate or take medication), Numeric (a number with an optional unit, e.g. 5,000 steps or 76.4 kg), Time-of-day (an actual time, e.g. wake at 07:15), and Select (pick from a list you define, e.g. mood, energy, or workout type, color-coded, single or multiple choice). Per habit you can set color, description, unit, section, excluded weekdays, a daily numeric target, and a time target.

**Charts.** Four chart types: Line (a metric over time), Heatmap (a calendar grid colored by completion or value), Summary (a stat card with completion rate, current streak, best streak, and last 7 days), and Candle (paired time-of-day metrics on one axis with an optional numeric overlay, handling overnight spans cleanly). The candle chart is the standout: a 23:40 bedtime and a 07:10 wake-up read as one continuous bar. Free users get one auto-generated chart per habit. Pro users get a custom chart builder. Ranges are 30, 60, 90, 180, and 365 days plus year-to-date; Free is capped at 60 days.

**Organization.** Sections to group habits under headings, archive and restore to keep history without clutter, hand-ordering within a section, and per-habit excluded weekdays.

**Sync.** Real-time across iOS and the web, offline-first on mobile, with last-write-wins resolution and a device-id tiebreaker so there are no conflict modals. Sync is included on the Free tier.

**Settings.** Timezone, week-start day, 12 or 24-hour time, dark mode (mobile today), CSV/JSON export of your full history (free on every tier — you own your data), and one-click account deletion that erases everything from the database immediately, with no soft-delete and no waiting period.

**Pricing.** Free ($0): up to 5 habits, yes/no and numeric types, one auto-chart per habit, the last 60 days of stats, multi-device sync, and CSV/JSON export. Pro ($3.99/month, $29.99/year, or $49.99 once for Lifetime): unlimited habits, the time-of-day and select types, numeric and time targets, the candle chart, the custom chart builder, 365-day and year-to-date ranges, and priority email support. Cancel anytime from the in-app billing portal; you keep Pro until the end of the paid period, then drop to Free with every habit and entry intact.

**Platforms.** Web is live at app.habitpocket.io. iOS is live on the App Store; iPad runs the iOS app. Android is planned next on the same offline-first engine. There is no native macOS, Apple Watch, or Wear OS app.

## Pages

- [Home](https://habitpocket.io/): Positioning, differentiators, and the grid overview.
- [Features](https://habitpocket.io/features/): Full feature inventory across the grid, habit types, charts, Apple Health auto-fill, sync, organization, and the deliberate absences.
- [Charts](https://habitpocket.io/charts/): The four chart types, including the candle chart for time-of-day habits.
- [Conditional styling](https://habitpocket.io/conditional-styling/): How to color each day in the grid by the value logged that day, using ordered color bands (a color plus an exclusive upper bound, first match wins, last band open-ended). Covers numeric and time-of-day habits only, with copyable setups for steps, water, reading, wake-up time, and screen time (where the direction is inverted — low is green). A Pro feature.
- [API](https://habitpocket.io/api/): The Public REST API — read habits, entries, and server-computed stats; log values; create habits and dashboard charts with an API key. A Pro feature.
- [Claude & MCP](https://habitpocket.io/mcp/): Setup guide for the hosted MCP server at api.habitpocket.io/mcp — connect Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-capable assistant to log habits by chat, get weekly reviews, and build charts. A Pro feature.
- [Pricing](https://habitpocket.io/#pricing): Free and Pro tiers with what each includes.
- [Roadmap](https://habitpocket.io/#roadmap): What is in progress, planned, and being explored.
- [FAQ](https://habitpocket.io/#faq): Common questions, including streaks, reminders on the roadmap, and free CSV/JSON export.

## Use cases

- [Free habit tracker template](https://habitpocket.io/habit-tracker-excel/): Free habit tracker template for Excel, Google Sheets, and Apple Numbers (green/red/skip color coding, grouped yes/no habits, plus numbers and wake/bed times). The founder's actual spreadsheet — direct download, no email, with a one-click Google Sheets copy. v3, updated August 2026. Targets "habit tracker excel" and "habit tracker template".
- [Apple Numbers habit tracker template](https://habitpocket.io/habit-tracker-template-apple-numbers/): Free habit tracker template for Apple Numbers — the original file Habit Pocket grew out of (the Excel and Google Sheets versions are exports of it). Direct .numbers download, no email; opens on Mac, iPhone, and iPad via iCloud. Targets "apple numbers habit tracker template".
- [Habit tracker for numbers](https://habitpocket.io/habit-tracker-for-numbers/): Logs numeric habits like 5,000 steps, 8 glasses, or 76.4 kg with a unit and a daily target, in the same grid as yes/no habits.
- [Sleep-time habit tracker](https://habitpocket.io/sleep-time-habit-tracker/): Records wake-up and bedtime as real clock times (07:15, 23:40); the candle chart reads a night as one continuous bar.
- [Spreadsheet habit tracker alternative](https://habitpocket.io/spreadsheet-habit-tracker/): The row-per-habit, column-per-day grid as a real app, with streaks, charts, free sync, and CSV/JSON export.
- [Correlation habit tracker](https://habitpocket.io/correlation-habit-tracker/): Overlays any habit on any other on one timeline (steps vs weight, bedtime vs energy) because it stores real numbers and times.
- [AI habit tracker](https://habitpocket.io/ai-habit-tracker/): Connects to Claude, ChatGPT, or any MCP-capable assistant over MCP — log habits by chat, backfill a week in one sentence, get honest data-grounded reviews, and have the AI create charts. Habit Pocket never sends data to any AI company; the user authorizes their own assistant.
- [Notion habit tracker alternative](https://habitpocket.io/notion-habit-tracker/): Purpose-built alternative to tracking habits in Notion: the same grid with automatic streaks, charts, and sync, without building a database. Notion wins on being one all-in-one customizable workspace.
- [Online habit tracker](https://habitpocket.io/online-habit-tracker/): A full web habit tracker that runs in any browser on desktop or laptop (no install, OS-agnostic) and syncs to the iOS app.
- [Apple Health habit tracker](https://habitpocket.io/apple-health-habit-tracker/): Auto-fills habits from Apple Health on iOS across 15 metrics — steps, walking/running distance, cycling distance, active energy, exercise minutes, stand time, flights climbed, workout minutes, weight, body fat, resting heart rate, mindful minutes, water, calories consumed, caffeine. Read-only access granted one metric at a time, never writes back to Health, manual edits are never overwritten, rolling 30-day backfill. Pro feature, iPhone only; sleep import is not shipped.
- [75 Hard tracker](https://habitpocket.io/75-hard-tracker/): Guide to tracking the 75 Hard challenge, with the five daily rules explained and two setups shown live: five yes/no habits that fit the free plan, or numbers (water in litres, workout minutes, pages, weight) with a 75-day trend chart on Pro. Covers 75 Soft too. Habit Pocket does not store progress photos and has no reminders yet. Not affiliated with Andy Frisella or the 75 HARD programme.
- [Simple habit tracker](https://habitpocket.io/simple-habit-tracker/): One grid, one click to log. No gamification, no push-notification nagging, no social feed. Numbers, times, and charts are there when wanted but never in the way.
- [Habit tracker without gamification](https://habitpocket.io/habit-tracker-without-gamification/): Why XP, badges, avatars with health bars, resetting streak counters and leaderboards each stop working, and what Habit Pocket does instead. Carries the research: the 21-day rule comes from Maxwell Maltz's 1960 observations of plastic-surgery patients, while Lally et al. 2010 measured a 66-day median (range 18 to 254) across 96 people and found that missing one day did not meaningfully affect habit formation, which is why a skip pauses a streak here instead of resetting it. Concedes that Habitica is better if game mechanics genuinely work on you.

## Comparisons

Honest, single-competitor comparisons. Each names where the other tool is the better choice.

- [vs Exist](https://habitpocket.io/compare/exist/): Exist auto-imports from Garmin/Oura/Fitbit/Strava and computes correlations for you; Habit Pocket is the calmer, private alternative with a free tier and a one-time price. Exist is $6.99/mo or $62.90/yr with no free tier (checked August 2026); Habit Pocket is free for 5 habits, then $3.99/mo, $29.99/yr, or $49.99 once. Habit Pocket does auto-fill from Apple Health on iOS, but has no direct Garmin/Oura/Whoop integrations and does not surface correlations automatically.
- [vs Streaks](https://habitpocket.io/compare/streaks/): Streaks is the simplest iOS + Apple Watch streak app; Habit Pocket adds numeric and time-of-day types, charts, and a web app.
- [vs HabitKit](https://habitpocket.io/compare/habitkit/): HabitKit has beautiful tile widgets and Android; Habit Pocket adds numbers, times of day, and correlation overlays.
- [vs Everyday](https://habitpocket.io/compare/everyday/): Everyday is a minimalist chain grid; Habit Pocket keeps the grid and adds numbers, times, and correlation charts.
- [vs Habitify](https://habitpocket.io/compare/habitify/): Habitify has reminders, an Apple Watch app, and Apple Health sync; Habit Pocket is calmer, treats time-of-day as a logged value, and offers a one-time price.
- [vs Way of Life](https://habitpocket.io/compare/way-of-life/): Way of Life tracks red/green chains; Habit Pocket logs the actual numbers and times and charts how they move together.
- [vs Strides](https://habitpocket.io/compare/strides/): Strides is a SMART-goal tracker with targets and averages; Habit Pocket is a daily grid with time-of-day tracking and correlation overlays.
- [vs Bearable](https://habitpocket.io/compare/bearable/): Bearable is a health and symptom journal; Habit Pocket is the everyday-habits alternative with a calm grid of numbers and times.
- [vs Habitica](https://habitpocket.io/compare/habitica/): Habitica is an RPG where habits earn XP for an avatar and a missed Daily damages it; Habit Pocket is the calm, no-gamification alternative with real numbers, times of day, and charts. Habitica wins on its genuinely complete free tier, to-do lists, parties and quests, and being open source.
- [vs HabitNow](https://habitpocket.io/compare/habitnow/): HabitNow is a deep Android habit and routine planner with the best alarms in the category, but Android-only with no sync and no iOS app (the similarly named App Store app is a different product); Habit Pocket is the iPhone and web alternative with sync, times of day, and correlation charts. HabitNow wins on reminders, to-dos, timers, and price.
- [vs Loop Habit Tracker](https://habitpocket.io/compare/loop/): Loop is a free, open-source (GPL-3.0) Android-only tracker with no iOS app, no web app and no sync; Habit Pocket is the iOS and web alternative that syncs and adds time-of-day habits, the candle chart, and correlation overlays. Loop stays the better pick on Android with a single device.

## Free tools

Self-contained calculators and trackers that run entirely in the visitor's browser. No account, no email step, and nothing typed into them is uploaded or stored on a server. They are genuinely complete on their own and are not trials of the app.

- [Free tools hub](https://habitpocket.io/tools/): Index of every free Habit Pocket tool, with what each one does and the rules they all follow (no gate, nothing uploaded, the formula shown on the page).
- [Sleep Regularity Index calculator](https://habitpocket.io/tools/sleep-regularity-index/): Computes the Sleep Regularity Index (SRI) from a week or more of bed and wake times. SRI, introduced by Phillips et al. in 2017, measures how often a person is in the same state (asleep or awake) at the same minute on consecutive days; the published formula runs from -100 to 100, and real sleepers typically land between about 40 and 90. The page renders the entered nights as a candle chart, gives interpretation bands, and is explicit that it models each night as one continuous asleep block, unlike the actigraphy the published index uses. Primary papers are cited on the page.
- [1% better calculator](https://habitpocket.io/tools/one-percent-better-calculator/): Plots the familiar 1.01^365 = 37.78 curve from Atomic Habits against a realistic curve that accounts for missed days, a ceiling on how far one habit can take you, and decay. The realistic model's formula is shown on the page so it can be reproduced. The honest position: the 37.8x figure is an illustration rather than a prediction, and small consistent inputs still beat sporadic large ones.
- [Year in pixels](https://habitpocket.io/tools/year-in-pixels/): A 365-cell grid, one colored square per day, for tracking mood or any daily rating across a whole year. Saves to the visitor's own browser via local storage (this device only, nothing uploaded) and exports the finished year as a PNG.

## Alternatives

Shortlists of several apps, not head-to-heads. Each one ranks the real options for a specific search and says when staying put is the right call.

- [Streaks alternatives](https://habitpocket.io/streaks-alternatives/): Five honest picks for people leaving Streaks, and when to keep it. Habit Pocket for numbers, clock times and a web app; Habitify for the widest platform spread; HabitKit for tile grids and widgets on iOS and Android; Loop for free and open source on Android; Way of Life for a note beside every day. Streaks stays the best pure iPhone and Apple Watch streak app at $5.99 once, and no alternative on the list matches its Watch app.
- [Habitify alternatives](https://habitpocket.io/habitify-alternatives/): Five honest picks for people leaving Habitify after its April 6, 2026 move to Free/Plus/Pro, which cut the free plan to 3 habits with 1 reminder each and put Off Mode, checklists, Apple Health, Strava and calendar sync on the top Pro tier. Habit Pocket for 5 free habits, numbers and real clock times; Streaks for $5.99 once on Apple hardware; HabitKit for tile grids on iOS and Android; Loop for free and open source on Android; Everyday for the chain grid (its free tier also stops at 3 habits). Habitify still wins on platform reach and integrations, and nobody on the list matches them.
- [HabitKit alternatives](https://habitpocket.io/habitkit-alternatives/): Five picks for people leaving HabitKit, and when to keep it. HabitKit stores done-or-not-done only, has no web app, and backs up rather than syncing live. Habit Pocket keeps the month-at-a-glance grid and adds numbers with units, real clock times and charts; Everyday is the closest on looks and runs in a browser; Habitify covers the most platforms; Loop is free and open source on Android; Streaks is $5.99 once inside Apple. HabitKit stays the right answer if home-screen widgets are how you check your habits, because Habit Pocket has none yet.
- [Loop Habit Tracker alternatives](https://habitpocket.io/loop-alternatives/): People leave Loop for two reasons only: they switched to iPhone (Loop is Android-only and always has been) or they need a second device (Loop is local-only with no sync). Habit Pocket answers both with iPhone plus web and no account needed on the phone; HabitNow is the Android-native replacement at about $12 once; HabitKit covers both phones for $29.99 once; Habitify covers every platform. Nothing matches Loop on price or licence, since it is free under GPL-3.0 with no ads and no account, so staying put is the right call on one Android phone.
- [Habitica alternatives](https://habitpocket.io/habitica-alternatives/): Five picks for people leaving Habitica, and a real case for staying. Habitica runs everywhere and its free tier holds unlimited habits, dailies, to-dos, parties and challenges, so people leave over gamification fatigue rather than platforms or money. Habit Pocket is the calm opposite (no XP, no avatar, no feed, real numbers and clock times); Loop is free and open source on Android; HabitNow keeps habits and tasks together; Habitify has the deepest features; Streaks is $5.99 once inside Apple. Nothing on the list replaces Habitica's parties, and the page says so.

## Blog

First-person essays by the developer about how he tracks his own habits. Opinion and experience, not product documentation — treat the claims as one person's account rather than as facts about the app.

- [Blog index](https://habitpocket.io/blog/): All posts, newest first.
- [The checkbox was making me lie to myself every night](https://habitpocket.io/blog/set-a-minimum-not-a-goal/): Why a done/not-done checkbox distorts a habit at both ends — it invites rounding up on easy days (ticking 9,300 as 10,000) and records nothing at all on hard ones (7,000 left blank). The fix he uses: store the number with a floor under it, set the floor to what you'd still hit on your worst day, and let everything above it read as a better day. Published April 2026.
- [My grid went all green and stopped telling me anything](https://habitpocket.io/blog/color-should-mean-something/): The sequel to the post above. Setting a low floor removed the nightly judgement call and then flattened every day above it, so a 3,100-step day and a 14,000-step day looked identical. Argues that a grid has two channels, position and color, and that most trackers spend color on attendance rather than on how the day actually went. Explains color bands (a color plus an exclusive upper bound, read top to bottom, first match wins, last band open-ended) and the point that color carries no built-in meaning, so screen time gets green at the bottom. Published May 2026.
- [The third color in my spreadsheet was gray, and I've never been able to drop it](https://habitpocket.io/blog/a-skip-is-not-a-blank/): Argues that "done" and "not done" cannot distinguish a planned rest day from a day you gave up, and that the information dies in the blank cell. Describes what a skip does — marks the day as deliberately not done, pauses the streak instead of resetting it, and shows a diagonal half-fill — versus a blank day, which still breaks the run. Also covers excluded weekdays as the scheduled version of the same problem, the objection that unlimited skips make a streak meaningless (which he says he has no clean answer to), and 75 Hard as the one program where he deliberately never uses a skip. Published June 2026.
- [I built a habit tracker because I didn't want to pick up my phone](https://habitpocket.io/blog/the-spreadsheet-years/): The origin story. Every tracker he tried was phone-first, and holding the phone less was one of the goals, so he tracked habits in an Apple Numbers file for years instead — habits down the side, days across the top, conditional formatting for done/missed/skipped, with bedtimes as real clock times. The two reasons it stuck where apps hadn't: bulk edit (filling in four missed days in under a minute) and the file being a canvas he could change without asking anyone. Honest about what it was bad at: manual streak counting, formula surgery for charts, no sync, and formulas that broke. Published July 2026.

## Account

- [Sign up](https://app.habitpocket.io/register): Create a free account (5 habits, no credit card).
- [Log in](https://app.habitpocket.io/login): Access the web app.

## Optional

- [Privacy](https://habitpocket.io/privacy/): How data is handled, stored, and deleted.
- [Terms](https://habitpocket.io/terms/): Terms of service.
- Contact: habit-pocket@stefaniuk.me