Mini Loops

Habitica vs Finch: which one should you use

Updated 31 August 2026

Short answer

Choose Habitica if you want one place to hold everything you have to do, and if a game is what makes you open it. It is a role-playing game whose quests are your real tasks, free to download, with in-app purchases, with a subscription at £4.99 a month or £45.99 a year, on iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision.

Choose Finch if you want a short daily check-in rather than a task list to run. It is a self-care app in which a pet grows as you complete daily exercises, free to download, with in-app purchases, with Finch Plus, listed from £4.99 to £69.99, on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Apple Vision.

They are aimed at different jobs

Most comparisons of these two treat them as rivals in one category. They are not really in the same category, and noticing that answers the question faster than any feature table.

Habitica takes the list of things you have to do and wraps it in a game. There are dailies, to-dos and habits as separate kinds of entry, a character who levels up, gear to collect, and other people to play alongside. Its own description says that when you do something in real life and check it off, you receive gold, experience and items when you check a task off.

Finch starts from the other end. Its exercises are short, the daily shape is a check-in in the morning and a reflection at the end of the day, and the pet is the thing that grows while you do them. Goals sit inside that rather than being the point of the app.

So the first question is not which app is better made. It is whether you want something that holds twenty commitments or something that asks you a few short questions a day.

What each gives you for turning up

Habitica gives you numbers that go up, objects to collect and, if you join a party, other people who notice. That is a lot of feedback for one completed task, and for the people it suits it is the reason the app gets opened at all.

Finch gives you a small amount of visible growth in something that is not you. The design intent, read off the listing, is that looking after the pet is easier to do than looking after yourself directly.

Both are borrowing motivation from somewhere other than the habit. That is a legitimate design and it works for a great many people. It is worth knowing you are doing it, because borrowed motivation has to keep being paid for: the game has to stay interesting, and the pet has to keep mattering.

Who each one suits

Habitica suits you if your problem is volume. You have coursework, chores, work tasks and three things you keep meaning to start, and none of them is being held anywhere. It also suits people who have kept a game going for months before, because that is direct evidence about you rather than a guess.

Finch suits you if the daily thing you want is small and reflective, and if a list of outstanding tasks makes you close an app rather than open it. It is also the gentler of the two by design, which matters if a demanding app is what put you off the last one.

Neither suits you if you already know exactly which one thing you want to be doing daily and it keeps not happening. Both apps will accept that one thing and hold it competently. Neither is built to ask why yesterday did not work.

The pattern that beats both

Here is the sequence worth recognising, because it is the common way these apps end rather than a criticism of either. You set up eight things. It goes well for two weeks. Then a week arrives that is not like the others: you are away, or ill, or someone else's schedule takes over. You come back to a character who has not moved or a pet you have not fed, and now there are two jobs waiting instead of one.

The habits research is fairly clear about the cause, and it is not willpower. Habits are held in place by a stable context, and when the context changes the behaviour that depended on it goes with it. Wood, Tam and Witt found exactly that in students who changed universities: the habits that survived were the ones whose surroundings survived.

Wood, W., Tam, L., & Witt, M. G. (2005). Changing circumstances, disrupting habits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(6), 918–933. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.6.918

What follows from that is a plan that can be changed when the week changes, and a smaller number of things to change. A habit on a schedule that moves needs to be attached to something that moves with it, and starting fewer things is what makes that possible to do at all.

Mini Loops holds one habit, asks what got in the way, and proposes a change to the plan when the same obstacle repeats. See it on the App Store.

How to decide in one question

Ask what you were doing the last time an app like this stopped being opened. If you had too many entries and fell behind on all of them, Habitica will do that again, because holding a lot is what it is for. If you found it twee, or the character felt like another obligation, Finch is the more demanding of the two on that axis and not the less.

If the honest answer is that you only ever wanted one thing to stick, neither app is wrong so much as aimed elsewhere, and one habit at a time is the shape to look for.

Common questions

Is Habitica or Finch better?

They are built for different jobs, so neither is better in general. Habitica manages a whole task list and turns it into a game with levels, gear and other players. Finch is a self-care app built around short daily exercises and a pet that grows as you do them. Pick by which of those two descriptions is the thing you actually want.

How much do Habitica and Finch cost?

Both were free to download with in-app purchases on the UK App Store on 31 August 2026. Habitica listed a subscription at £4.99 a month or £45.99 a year. Finch listed Finch Plus at a range of prices from £4.99 to £69.99, without stating on the listing which duration each row buys. Check your own store before paying, because these change.

Do Habitica and Finch have streaks?

Habitica lists streak counters on colour-coded tasks among its features, so a run of days is something the app shows you. Finch's listing describes growing a pet through completed exercises rather than counting consecutive days. Read each app's current listing rather than taking either as settled, because feature lists change.

Which is better for one specific habit?

Neither is aimed at that. Both are built to hold a list of things, and a list is the right shape when you have many small commitments to keep visible. If your problem is one habit that keeps not happening, the useful question is what got in the way of it, which a list cannot ask.

Can I use Habitica and Finch together?

People do, because they overlap less than two habit trackers would. It is still two apps to open every day, and the daily admin is the cost most people underestimate. If you try it, give one of them the whole job for a fortnight first, so you find out which one you would keep.

This page is published by Mini Loops, which makes a third habit app, so read it with that in mind. Prices, platforms and mechanics above were read from each app’s own UK App Store listing on 31 August 2026 and are recorded with their sources. They change without notice, and nothing here is a judgement about how well either app works. Check the App Store for what either does today.