A habit tracker with no subscription
A checkbox and a streak counter is not a service that needs renewing every month, which is why a recurring charge for one grates so much. It is also a category where the ground keeps shifting: apps bought outright have had the one-off option withdrawn and replaced with an annual plan. This page covers how to find a tracker that will not start billing you, and how to keep your data portable in case it does.
Why habit apps drift towards subscriptions
A one-off purchase pays the developer once and then has to cover support, operating-system updates and server bills for years. For an app with real running costs, that maths does not work, and subscriptions are the honest fix.
The problem is when there are no running costs to cover. A tracker that stores everything on your phone is not paying for your data month after month. DoHabits replaced its one-off paid upgrade with an annual subscription, which left people who expected a one-time purchase facing a recurring plan instead — a change in business model, not in cost.
So the useful question is not "does this cost money" but "does this cost money every month, and what is that money paying for?" Sync and backup are a real answer. More rows in a list is not.
Three ways to end up with no subscription
Buy one outright, while you still can. A paid app with a one-off price and local storage is a good deal. Just accept that the model can change under you.
Use something free and open source. Loop Habit Tracker is free, open source and keeps its data on the phone. It is Android-only, which decides it for a lot of people.
Use something with no per-person cost to recover. tickbook runs in the browser and keeps your habits in that browser, so there is no account to maintain and no server holding your data. There is no subscription and no paid tier for one to upgrade to.
Keep the exit open
Whatever you pick, the thing that protects you is export. An app that can write a CSV of your history can be left at any time, and the pricing change that annoys you becomes an afternoon of admin rather than years of lost data.
Check for export on day one, not the day you want to leave. Then actually use it occasionally: a file on your own drive is the only copy no one can reprice.
tickbook exports to CSV or JSON in one click, and imports CSV, JSON and the ZIP archive Loop's "Export as CSV" produces — so moving in is as easy as moving out.
Frequently asked questions
Is a free habit tracker going to start charging later?
It can, and several have. The protection is not a promise but an export: if you can take your history out as a file, a pricing change costs you an afternoon instead of your data.
What does tickbook charge for?
Nothing. There is no subscription, no one-off purchase and no paid tier. There is an optional thank-you box, and skipping it changes nothing on the page.
Can I pay once instead?
There is nothing to buy. If you want to leave something anyway there is a pay-what-you-want box at the bottom of the front page, but it buys no features because there are no features behind it.
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