The 5 Best Sunsama Alternatives for ADHD (Cheaper, Free, and Less Ritual-Heavy)

Sunsama is a good planner. I said so in my Sunsama review for ADHD, and I still mean it. But it costs real money every month, it has no free plan, and the whole thing runs on a daily planning ritual. Rituals are exactly the thing ADHD brains drop first when life gets loud.

So this post is for the person who tried Sunsama, liked the idea, and then watched the subscription renew on an app they hadn't opened in three weeks. Here they are.

Quick answer: what is the best Sunsama alternative for ADHD?

The best Sunsama alternative for ADHD depends on why Sunsama didn't stick. If the price was the problem, try TickTick or Amazing Marvin. If the daily planning ritual was the problem, try Saner.AI or Reclaim, which schedule for you. If you're a visual planner, try Structured. If your real issue is that tasks live in your head, your inbox, and many notes apps, try Saner.AI

Quick guide version:

• Cheapest paid option: TickTick Premium
• Best well rounded option: Saner.AI
• Least planning effort: Reclaim
• Most customizable: Amazing Marvin
• Best for scattered capture: Saner.AI

Why do people with ADHD leave Sunsama?

Before picking a replacement, figure out what broke. Otherwise you'll buy the same problem with a different logo. (Ask me how I know. Actually, don't.)

Here are the reasons I hear most often, roughly in order:

• The price. Sunsama's billing help page lists $22 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, with a 14-day trial and no free plan. For many people that's fine. For anyone already paying the ADHD tax on late fees and forgotten subscriptions, it stings.
• The ritual. Sunsama asks you to plan each morning and shut down each evening. On good days, lovely. On bad days you skip it, and after four skipped days the app feels like a judgmental roommate.
• It won't decide for you. Sunsama makes you pick what goes in today. If choosing is the hard part, the app hands the hardest job right back.
• Work only. It's built around work tools like Slack, Gmail, and Asana. Laundry and dentist appointments feel like guests.

Sunsama alternatives at a glance

Reclaim: free auto-scheduling, with limits

Reclaim protects time on your Google Calendar for tasks, habits, and focus blocks, then moves those blocks around as your week changes. The Lite plan is free forever, which makes it the cheapest way to test whether auto-scheduling suits your brain at all.

Where it's strong:

• A real free plan, with no card required
• Defends focus time so meetings can't eat your whole week
• Handles recurring habits (lunch, a walk, email batches) well

Where it falls short:

• The free plan only schedules one week ahead and syncs one calendar
• It's a calendar layer. Your actual task list still lives somewhere else.

Good fit if: you want to test "let the app decide" before paying money for it.

TickTick: the budget all-rounder

TickTick is a task manager with a calendar view, a built-in Pomodoro timer, and a habit tracker. It doesn't have Sunsama's guided daily ritual, but you can fake one in five minutes.

In my TickTick review for ADHD I priced Premium at $49.99 a year or $4.99 a month on the US App Store. That's roughly what Sunsama costs for three months.

How to rebuild Sunsama's ritual in TickTick:

1. Make a list called "Today" and a smart list that shows only tasks dated today.
2. Each morning, drag three to five tasks into Today. Not fourteen. Three to five.
3. Open the calendar view and drag each task into a time slot.
4. At the end of the day, move anything unfinished to tomorrow, or to "Someday" if it's been rolled over three times.

Where it falls short: it does nothing to stop you overloading the day. That's on you. Sunsama's main ADHD feature is a warning that your plan is too big, and TickTick doesn't have one.

Amazing Marvin: cheap and endlessly bendable

Amazing Marvin costs $8 a month or $96 a year, with a 14-day trial and a 50% student discount on request, per Marvin's pricing page. It's one plan with every feature, and there are a lot of features: "strategies" you switch on and off, like daily planning, time tracking, reward points, and procrastination helpers.

Where it's strong:

• You can switch on a Sunsama-style daily plan and switch off everything else
• Built with ADHD users in mind, and it shows
• Less than half of Sunsama's yearly price

Where it falls short:

• The settings are a rabbit hole. You can lose a Saturday configuring it and finish zero tasks. (Nobody I know has done this. Everybody I know has done this.)

Good fit if: you like tweaking systems and the tweaking itself keeps you engaged. More detail in my Amazing Marvin review.

Structured: a visual timeline you'll actually look at

Structured shows your day as a vertical timeline with colorful blocks and icons. It's free to download, ad-free, and the core timeline, inbox, and subtasks work without paying. Pro pricing varies by region, so check the in-app banner. I covered the details in my Structured review.

Good fit if: you can't feel time passing and need to see where the afternoon went. It's weak on work integrations, so it's a better fit for life admin than for a Slack-heavy job.

Some people leave Sunsama because the plan was fine but the inputs were a mess. Tasks were scattered across emails, meeting notes, voice memos, and that one sticky note on the fridge. No daily ritual fixes that. You need a place where loose thoughts become tasks without you sorting them by hand.

Saner.AI: for everything you need from Sunsama

Saner.ai works the other way round from Sunsama. You dump notes, emails, and half-formed thoughts into it, and it pulls out what you actually committed to and drafts a plan for the day that you edit. You aren't the one building the plan from scratch every morning. You're the one correcting it.

Where it's strong:

• Captures messy input (notes, email, calendar) in one place
• Drafts a daily plan instead of making you start from a blank page

• Free plan available, paid plans at $8 or $16 a month, with 20% off yearly

Where it falls short:

• It's a younger product, so some integrations and polish lag behind
• The free plan's monthly AI limit runs out quickly if you lean on it daily

Good fit if: your biggest problem happens before planning, at the "where did I write that down" stage. Pair it with a weekly ADHD brain dump and you'll have far fewer mystery tasks.

If you're weighing several AI-first options, my roundup of the best AI task manager for ADHD compares them head to head.

Does a planning app actually help ADHD?

No app treats ADHD. The strongest evidence that planning skills help comes from therapy trials, not app studies.

• A randomized trial by Solanto and colleagues in the American Journal of Psychiatry (2010) tested a 12-week group therapy that targeted time management, organization, and planning in adults with ADHD. It produced significantly greater improvement in inattention symptoms than supportive therapy.
• A randomized trial by Safren and colleagues in JAMA (2010) gave cognitive behavioral therapy to adults whose ADHD symptoms persisted despite medication. 67% responded, versus 33% in the relaxation-and-education comparison group, and the gains held at 12-month follow-up.

Those are skills programs delivered by trained clinicians. An app can make a skill easier to practice. It can't teach the skill by itself, and it can't replace treatment. If your symptoms are wrecking work or relationships, talk to a clinician.

How do I switch from Sunsama without losing everything?

Switching tools is its own ADHD trap. You can spend a full week migrating and feel very productive while producing nothing. Keep it small.

1. Export or screenshot your active tasks only. Not your archive. If it's been sitting there for two months, it can stay behind.
2. Pick one alternative and start its trial today. Not three trials. One.
3. Set a phone reminder for two days before the trial ends. Label it with the price so future you feels the stakes.
4. Move only this week's tasks. Everything else goes into one "Inbox from Sunsama" list you'll sort later. (You won't, and that's fine.)
5. Run one week of your new setup before cancelling Sunsama. Overlapping costs one billing period at most. Losing a working system costs more.
6. Do a 10-minute weekly review on Friday. My weekly planning guide has a template you can steal.

How do I choose a suitable Sunsama alternative

Answer one question: what made you leave Sunsama, or not want to start it?

• "It's too expensive." TickTick, then Amazing Marvin.
• "I skipped the morning planning." Reclaim or Saner.AI
• "I need to see my day." Structured.
• "My tasks are everywhere." Saner.ai.

FAQ

Is there a free version of Sunsama?

No. Sunsama has a 14-day trial and then a single paid plan, per its billing help page. Reclaim, TickTick, Structured, and Saner.ai all have free plans.

What is the cheapest Sunsama alternative?

Among paid plans here, TickTick Premium is the cheapest at about $50 a year on the US App Store. Amazing Marvin is next at $96 a year. Free tiers from Reclaim, Structured, TickTick, and Saner.ai cost nothing.

Is Saner.AI better than Sunsama for ADHD?

Sunsama helps you plan by hand without overloading. Saner.AI plans for you. If deciding drains you, Saner.AI wins. If you want to plan everything meticulously everyday, Sunsama is for you

Can a planner app replace ADHD treatment?

No. The planning-skills evidence comes from clinician-delivered therapy, such as the Solanto 2010 trial. Apps can support those skills day to day. They aren't medical treatment. See our medical disclaimer.

What do people on Reddit recommend instead of Sunsama?

The names that come up most are the ones on this list: Saner.AI, Amazing Marvin, and TickTick. Reddit threads tend to favor whatever worked for one person. Use the decision guide above to match a tool to your specific reason for leaving.

Your next step

Don't read another comparison. Do this instead:

• Name the one reason Sunsama didn't work, or why you're hesitating.
• Pick the matching tool from the decision guide.
• Start one trial today and set the reminder before you close the tab.
• Plan tomorrow with three tasks. Three. You can always add a fourth.

The best planner is the one you still open on a bad day.

Pick for that day, not your best one.