Sunsama Alternatives in 2026: Lower Price, Less Planning, or Free

Sunsama is a paid daily planner built around a ritual: each morning you choose what you'll work on, give it time on your calendar, and each evening you close the day out. People searching for an alternative usually hit one of four things: the price with no free tier, the daily effort of planning by hand, wanting something simpler on a phone, or realizing the real problem was never the plan but the messages piling up around it. Below is a fair account of Sunsama, then four options matched to those situations, with every price and feature linked to the company that publishes it.

What Sunsama does well

Sunsama describes itself on its homepage as a task manager, calendar and daily planner in one, for designers, engineers, founders, product managers and operations leads. The product is shaped around the working day rather than around a project list:

• Morning planning. You pick the day's tasks, set goals and keep the workload realistic, then timebox tasks onto your calendar as blocks.
• During the day. Focus mode, Pomodoro timers, break reminders and the option to mute distracting apps, per the homepage.
• Evening shutdown. A reminder to wrap up, daily highlights with AI summaries of the work, and analytics on where the time went, plus Weekly Objectives for longer goals.
• Calendar sync. Two-way sync with Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar and Apple's calendar, according to the homepage.
• Integrations. The pricing page lists 20, including Asana, ClickUp, GitHub, Jira, Linear, Notion, Todoist, Trello, Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zapier.
• Platforms. Apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and iPadOS, and Android, per the pricing page.

Sunsama also does some of the scheduling for you. Press the X key on a task and Sunsama's auto-scheduling finds a free slot inside your working hours without overlapping any event. If a task runs long or you finish early, the auto-rescheduler shifts your other tasks to close the gap, and it never moves meetings. What it won't do is plan the whole day without you: you still choose what goes in.

If you use Outlook or Windows, work on Linux, or pull tasks from Jira and Asana every morning, Sunsama covers all of that in one app, and staying put is a reasonable answer.

What Sunsama costs

Sunsama has one self-serve plan. On its pricing page, Pro is $17 a month billed yearly ($204 a year) or $22 billed monthly, with unlimited integrations and AI, MCP (a way to connect AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Claude) and Zapier access. Enterprise, with SSO, SCIM and audit logs, is priced by contacting the company. There's a 14-day trial with no credit card.

There's no free tier, and that's deliberate: the same page says Sunsama doesn't have a free forever plan "and doesn't plan to." One thing to check before you buy: the FAQ further down the page quotes $25 a month, or $20 on a yearly plan, which doesn't match the plan card above it. The checkout screen is the figure to trust.

Why people go looking

Reviews of Sunsama, and the planners competing for its users, keep coming back to the same handful of reasons:

• The bill. $204 a year is a real commitment for a personal planner, and there's nothing free to fall back on.
• The ritual itself. Some people want a plan drafted for them rather than building one each morning.
• Something lighter. A student or freelancer may want a visual day on their phone, not 20 integrations.
• The wrong problem. If the day falls apart because of unanswered email and promises made in meetings, a better time-blocking tool won't fix it.

Four alternatives, and who each one is for

Ellie: the closest match for less money

Ellie is a daily planner made by one independent developer, built on the same idea as Sunsama: dump everything in, pick what fits today, and timebox it around your calendar. Unfinished tasks roll over. Its homepage lists calendar sync with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Outlook, two-way sync with Notion, imports from Todoist, Slack messages turned into tasks, Zapier, and a built-in AI assistant that also works with ChatGPT and Claude through MCP.

On Ellie's pricing page, Pro is $9.99 a month, with a yearly plan that gives two months free (Ellie's own Sunsama comparison puts it at $99.99 a year) and a $299.99 lifetime option. Students, teachers and nonprofits get half off. There's a 7-day trial and no free plan. Ellie runs on the web, Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad; the pricing page says there's no Android app right now.

Pick Ellie if you like Sunsama's way of planning and mainly want to pay about half as much, and you don't need Android, Linux or a long list of work-tool integrations.

Morgen: a plan proposed for you, approved by you

Morgen is a calendar app with a task list and an AI Planner. According to the AI Planner page, it builds a suggested plan from your tasks (Morgen's own plus those from Notion, Todoist, ClickUp and other connected apps), weighing priority, due dates and time estimates against your free time. You preview it, adjust it, and nothing goes on the calendar until you approve. If a new meeting later clashes with a planned task, Morgen notifies you and can reschedule it in one click. Plans work best when you set up Frames, recurring blocks that say which kinds of work belong when.

Morgen's pricing page puts Individuals at $15 per month when you commit to a year, $30 otherwise, and Team at $10 a seat billed yearly or $25 monthly, with a two-seat minimum. Morgen offers a 14-day trial without a card, and no free plan. It connects Google Calendar, Outlook and Microsoft 365, and iCloud, and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, mobile and the browser (the Team plans don't list the browser app). The same page offers 15% off the first year for people switching from Sunsama, by contacting Morgen.

Pick Morgen if the morning planning session is the part you'd drop, and you'd rather review a draft of the day than build one.

Structured: a free visual timeline

Structured puts your tasks and events on one visual timeline for the day, on iPhone, Apple Watch, Android and the web, per its homepage. The app is free to download and use. The free feature list includes timeline and inbox tasks, subtasks, notes, color coding and syncing across devices.

Structured Pro adds calendar import, recurring tasks, Replan for unfinished tasks and Structured AI, sold monthly, yearly or as a one-time purchase. The Pro help page says the price depends on your region and currency, so check it in the app. Some Pro features are uneven across platforms: Replan is iPhone and iPad only, and Structured AI isn't on the web.

Pick Structured if you want to see your day at a glance on your phone and pay nothing, and you don't need tasks pulled in from work tools.

Merlin: when the day slips because of email, not the plan

Merlin runs on macOS and reads the inbox and calendar of a Google account. It isn't a timeboxing planner: it doesn't put task blocks on your calendar or walk you through a morning plan. It looks after the part of the day planners leave out, the people waiting on you.

Merlin keeps one to-do list that combines tasks from Linear, Notion and Todoist with action items from your meetings, and when you tick one off it closes the task in the original app too, once you confirm. Anything you promised someone, or they asked of you, stays against that person's name until it's done. A morning digest and a brief before each meeting come built in, and you can describe other routines in plain words (every Friday, or whenever a certain email arrives). Ask Merlin to send an email or book something, and it lays out exactly what will happen and waits for your yes.

The limits matter here: Merlin needs a Mac and a Google account. There's no Windows, Linux or phone app, and no Outlook support. On Merlin's pricing page, the free tier never expires, asks for no card and comes with 5,000 monthly credits; the Pro tier costs $29 monthly, or $278 when paid annually.

Pick Merlin if your plan for the day is fine on paper but replies, follow-ups and meeting promises keep pushing it off course, and you work in Gmail on a Mac. It can also sit beside a planner rather than replace one.

Sunsama and four alternatives in one table

Every price is in USD. "Yearly" after a monthly figure is the rate when you pay for the whole year up front; "a year" is the yearly total.

How to choose

Start with what made you search, then check the platform you can't give up.

• You like the ritual but not the price: Ellie, at $9.99 a month, unless you need Android or Linux.
• You want the plan made for you: Morgen's AI Planner, and ask about the discount for Sunsama users.
• You want to pay nothing: Structured's free app, adding Pro later if you want your calendar in it.
• You're on Outlook, Windows or Linux and use many work tools: stay with Sunsama, or try Morgen, which also covers all three.
• Email and promises are what derail the day: Merlin, if you're on macOS and a Google account, running next to whichever planner you keep.

If you're new to planning on Google Calendar itself, our guides to using Google Calendar and automating it cover what's free before you pay for anything.

Before you cancel Sunsama

Sunsama's pricing FAQ says you can cancel at any time and keep access until the end of the billing cycle. A few steps make the move smoother:

1. Finish or move this week's timeboxed tasks. If you chose to put timeboxes on Google, Outlook or iCloud, Sunsama's timeboxing guide explains they appear there as events, so tidy those too.
2. Make sure tasks that came from Asana, Notion, Todoist or another tool are up to date there, so nothing exists only in Sunsama.
3. Start the new tool's trial while Sunsama is still active, and run both for a few days.
4. Cancel once the new routine holds; you keep Sunsama until the billing period ends.