Tracking productivity is nearly impossible without the right approach to goal setting. This is where goal tracking apps can help you get to the finish line faster.
You can choose from among the best goal tracking apps listed in this guide to set personal milestones, push the envelope, or climb the corporate ladder.
Take a look at these 12 best free goal-tracking apps and see which one fits the bill as per your needs.
What are Goal Tracking Apps?
Goal-tracking apps are digital tools that help you:
- Set, monitor, and achieve your personal and professional goals
- Leverage useful features such as task management, reminders, etc.
- Stay focused on your goals by converting them into actionable tasks
From staying on top of your daily habits to capitalizing on productivity boosts, these apps double up as your helpful sidekick.
Whether you’re looking for the best personal goal-tracking apps or professional goal-tracking apps, we’ve got you covered.
12 Best Free Goal Tracking Apps in 2024 (Free & Paid)
Despite the best intentions, the sheer day-to-day workload can get to us.
If you are having trouble balancing your personal and professional life, it’s time to get your hands on the right goal-tracking app.
Get organized and manage time like a pro with these 12 best free goal-tracking apps:
1. Nifty: For Tracking Goals that Seamlessly Blend Into Your Workflow
They say – your goal setting is only as good as their level of integration into your current workflow.
Nifty is one such project management tool that empowers you to create trackable goals that can be effortlessly integrated with your work, across projects and departments.
Whether you want to meet timelines or measure targets, this all-in-one productivity app offers a host of helpful features such as time tracking, task tracking, goals, forms, and so on.
Key features:
- Clear goal filters: You can track goals by tasks, task lists, or unique data (read: custom tags, fields, and assignees).
- Automated goal data: If you create goals based on custom tags, fields, and assignees, the Goals feature will automatically add and remove tasks.
- Track KPIs: Use custom tags to create goals that automatically update to measure an individual’s or team’s performance.
- Custom fields for goal setting: The more detailed your goals, the higher the chances of achieving them on time and on point. Nifty comes with multiple fields such as assignees, tags, dependencies, dates, and more to help you add specific information relating to your goals.
- Comments and attachments: Goals need to be descriptive and shareable. Nifty allows you to add comments, tag others, and upload files to better describe the goals to the team.
- Chat: The app also offers an inbuilt chat feature so that you can have all the goals-related conversations in a centralized place.
| Pros | Cons |
| Allows team to set their own project goals and complete tasks on time | Does not allow users to edit previous time logs entered |
| A versatile project management tool with extensive goal-tracking and time-tracking features | |
| Extremely easy to use and set up with an intuitive user interface |
Pricing:
- Free: $0, forever
- Personal: $5/month, per user
- Pro: $10/month, per user
- Business: $16/month, per user
- Enterprise: Contact sales
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2. ClickUp: For Tracking Goals with Different Views
ClickUp Goals is a robust goal setting app that helps you to consolidate your goals-related data.
You can track goal progress as well as habits on the fly. Plus, it allows you to customize based on any role or use case.
Key features:
- Habit tracking templates: ClickUp offers ready-to-use habit-tracking templates to set goals and break them down into smaller, more achievable actions.
- Task automation: The platform offers 100+ automation to streamline workflows, routine tasks, project handoffs, and so on.
- Tie tasks to goals: ClickUp goal tracking app allows you to track progress with numerical, monetary, true/false, and task Targets. You can easily add tasks from different teams into a Goal and get everyone on the same page.
- Goal management: It helps you to organize your goals into easy-to-use folders. You can create folders to track sprint cycles, OKRs, weekly employee scorecards, etc.
| Pros | Cons |
| Free version available for unlimited users | Does not allow you to export Dashboards |
| Offers offline and online modes; Docs allows remote and in-house teams to collaborate effectively | Has a steeper learning curve in comparison to its competitors |
| Provides multiple views such as Kanban, Agile, Scrum, etc. |
Pricing:
- Free Forever: $0
- Unlimited: $7/month per user, billed annually
- Business: $12/month per user, billed annually
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
700+ teams migrated from ClickUp last month to Nifty.
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3. Habitica: For Gamifying Your Tasks (and Life) On-the-Go
Habitica happens when a video game meets real-world goal setting.
Offering in-app rewards as well as punishments, Habitica allows you to gamify your daily life.
Create avatars, add tasks/goals/chores you want to work on, check off tasks and earn magic skills, mysterious pets, quests, and battle armor, fight off monsters, and use gold/experience/items that can be used in-game!
You can also seek support and inspiration from a community of active social users.
Quite simply, Habitica is a free habit-building and productivity app that makes goal-tracking fun and addictive for the right reasons.
Key features:
- Automatic task setting: This flexible habit tracker app automatically sets up repetitive tasks for your daily, weekly, or monthly routines.
- Traditional to-do list: Set up a traditional to-do task list for activities that need to be done only once.
- Customization: It offers color-coded tasks and streak counters so that you can see everything you’re doing at a glance. The app follows a leveling system to help you visualize your overall progress easily.
- Gamified styling: The app provides multiple options for collectible gear and pets to suit your personal style. You can also choose from among a variety of inclusive avatar customizations such as wheelchairs, skin tones, hairstyles, and more.
- Email reminders: Get email reminders and push notifications to complete quests on time.
| Pros | Cons |
| Adds a creative spin to task tracking, allowing you to fight monsters and win quests in the process | The app can be buggy sometimes, according to users, since it is an open-source app |
| Follows a reward system to award users for completing goals | A monthly subscription is pricey |
| Offers routine content releases and seasonal events to keep the experience fresh | Not ideal for users looking for a more serious goal-tracking app |
Pricing:
- Free
- For details on the paid version, contact the team
4. Reclaim.ai: Free Goal Tracker App
Reclaim.ai is not a goal tracking app – it is a ‘smart’ calendar app that helps you to manage your schedule more efficiently.
The app integrates with your existing calendar and uses AI to automatically find time for your priorities.
This way, you can achieve your goals by ensuring you have time set aside for them.
Key features:
- Calendar integration: The app syncs with your existing calendar (Google Calendar, Outlook) to manage your schedule.
- Time blocking: It automatically blocks off time for your top priorities based on your goals and preferences. The Habits feature, for instance, helps you to block time for things you do regularly.
- Tasks: It allows you to auto-schedule tasks within your Google Calendar by priority.
- Smart suggestions: The goal-setting app recommends optimal times for tasks based on your schedule and habits.
- Adaptive planning: It adjusts your schedule dynamically based on changes and priorities.
- Goal tracking: It helps you track progress towards your goals by allocating time for them.
- Focus time: It blocks off uninterrupted time for deep work and focused tasks.
- Time tracking: You can analyze time spent across meetings, tasks, habits, and more and improve your work-life balance.
| Pros | Cons |
| Works well for individual and team goal-setting | Only supports Google Calendar (not Outlook) |
| Offers multiple habit templates for various roles and teams such as personal, engineering, product, etc. |
Pricing:
- Lite: Free
- Starter: $8/user per month
- Business: $12/user per month
- Enterprise: $18/user per month
5. Todoist: For Adding Greater Focus and Organization to Your Goal-Setting Methodology
Todoist stands out as a user-friendly task management app.
This goal-setting app simplifies the tedious process of adding, organizing, and prioritizing tasks across different projects.
At its core, Todoist focuses on creating and managing to-do lists, offering features like due dates, reminders, labels, and filters to help you stay on top of your goals and tasks.
Key features:
- Goal-setting: It allows you to use features such as “Projects” and “Sections” to set specific goals and organize tasks into project folders.
- Habit-tracking: You can keep track of recurring tasks to build and maintain daily or weekly habits.
- Tasks: It allows you to easily set due dates, create labels, assign priorities, and organize tasks.
- Prioritization: You can also label tasks as p1, p2, p3, or p4 to indicate their priority level.
- Visual progress: The “Karma” feature allows you to gain Karma points and achieve new Karma levels as you successfully complete tasks on time in Todoist.
- Note-taking: You can also add notes and comments to tasks for additional context and details.
- Syncs across devices: It allows you to access to-do lists seamlessly across iOS, Android, and desktop platforms.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy-to-use to-do app | Does not provide time-blocking functionality or detailed stats and reports on tasks |
| Allows easy collaboration with teams | Does not provide a native calendar view of tasks |
| Offers dozens of third-party integrations such as Google Calendar, Slack, Trello, and more | No native note-taking features are available |
Pricing:
- Beginner: $0
- Pro: $4 per month, billed yearly
- Business: $6 per member/month, billed yearly
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6. Strides: To Track Anything, Anywhere at Your Fingertips
Want to track your goals and habits in one place? Strides is for you.
Strides‘ Dashboard keeps a log of your tracked habits and sends reminders for your upcoming tasks, goals, etc.
All you need to do is set a target by adding a goal value or a specific date. The app will do the rest and enable you to convert your goal into a habit.
Key features:
- Goal setting: Create specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals with customizable parameters like start date, end date, and milestones.
- Progress tracking: Monitor your progress towards goals with synced, up-to-date data for charts and statistics, including progress percentages and visual representations of goal completion.
- Habit tracking: Track daily habits with customizable frequency and reminders for daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or custom schedules, and form positive habits.
- Charts: Leverage progress bars that effectively illustrate your streaks, success rates, etc., in the form of easy-to-understand line charts, calendars, and more.
| Pros | Cons |
| Flexible interface; great app for habit tracking, making it ideal for personal use | Can be overwhelming for beginners; not a good choice for users wanting a simple goal-tracking app |
| Four tracker types: Habit, Target, Average, and Project | Unavailable for Android users; only available for Apple devices |
| The dashboard offers a 360-degree overview of the tasks | Does not offer task management or time-tracking features, which are often found in other goal-tracking apps |
Pricing:
- Free version available
- Strides Plus starts at $4.99 a month
7. GoalsWon: For Accountable Goal Tracking
GoalsWon is a unique goal-tracking app that involves an expert human coach to:
- Drive direct and personalized accountability
- Review your goals and submit results daily
- Give you tailored tactics and support for a disciplined approach to working
Key features:
- Real-life accountability coach: The app connects you with a real-life human coach to help you set daily goals and habits and keep you accountable for said goals.
- Goal planning features: It offers a host of useful goal planning features, such as analytics, visual charts, graphs, etc., to track progress.
- Constant support: You can get personalized 24×7 support from a dedicated accountability coach at your fingertips.
| Pros | Cons |
| Adds an element of accountability to goal-tracking | The monthly plans are expensive |
| The human coach advises users and offers support based on repetitive behavior | |
| Offers great custom reporting and progress tracking features |
Pricing:
- 14 days free: $60 USD/month (billed yearly)
- 7 days free: $90 USD/month (billed monthly)
Try the free Goal tracking app, Nifty
8. Hive
Hive is among the best goal tracking apps that empowers teams to track productivity and goals.
The app’s biggest advantage lies in its collaboration features. Teams can use it to share updates, take meeting notes, and so on.
The centralized dashboard is excellent for visualizing progress and keeping everyone on the same page.
Key features:
- My Actions view: It allows you to keep track of all your upcoming tasks and actions (grouped by project) in a single place.
- Gantt chart view and project overview: Teams can choose between these two views to track project progress.
- Goal setting: Hive is ideal for hybrid work, allowing users to create hundreds of goals for the team with complete visibility into who is working on what.
| Pros | Cons |
| The Dashboard is interactive in nature | Steep learning curve |
| Integrates with 1000+ tools such as Gmail, Zoom, Dropbox, etc. | Lacks data export option |
Pricing:
- Free: $0
- Starter: $5/month per user, billed yearly
- Teams: $12/month per user, billed yearly
- Enterprise: Customized pricing
9. ATracker: Best Goal Tracking App For Tracking Time Spent on Goals
ATracker is a time tracking app that offers in-depth insights into how (well) you spend your time.
You can track the time spent on repetitive tasks and daily habits so that you don’t end up wasting time on unproductive activities such as watching TV, commuting, and so on.
Assess the time spent in a visual manner and get a better grip on your day.
Key features:
- Time spending history: View task entries in the list or calendar view.
- Reporting: Create reports in various formats, such as pie charts, bar charts, and goal progress, and share via email as well as social networks.
- Goals: Set daily and weekly goals based on tasks and tags.
- Multi-device access: Track your time from any device – be it mobiles, tablets, or computers.
- Widget and watch: iOS users can start and stop a task without unlocking their device.
| Pros | Cons |
| Start and stop tracking tasks with a tap | The free version offers a restricted number of tasks |
| UI customization helps you to personalize the background, style, and icons based on specific colors and themes | The iOS premium version is double the cost of the Android premium version |
| Easy to set up with plenty of advanced options |
Pricing:
- Free version available
- Upgraded ATracker (Android): $2.99 one-time cost
- Upgraded ATracker/ATracker PRO (iOS): $4.99 one-time cost
- Premium: $2.99 one-time cost
10. GoalsOnTrack: For Goal Tracking S.M.A.R.T Goals
GoalsonTrack is a comprehensive tool that keeps all your goals together and motivates you to make progress every day.
All you need to do is set SMART goals, and the tool will break down long-term goals into milestones or sub-goals for you. This level of organization allows you to reach personal goals and business goals flexibly and accurately.
Key features:
- Calendar view: You can view tasks in a weekly, monthly, or daily view. Plus, you can sync tasks with your calendar (such as iCalendar or Google Calendar) and use it offline.
- Habit tracker: It helps you develop new habits and tracks progress based on how frequently you engage in tasks.
- Reports: Use reports to review progress on a monthly, weekly, or daily with visual graphs. You can track goals accomplished, tasks completed, habits checked, and hours spent.
- Journaling: You can journal your thoughts and assess your wins/losses.
| Pros | Cons |
| Allows users to set S.M.A.R.T goals easily; offers a timer for powerful time management | Does not offer traditional time slots on the calendar |
| The Dashboard is easy to view and comprehend | |
| Easily view tasks of the day | |
| Offers 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee; users can cancel at any time |
Pricing:
- Costs $68 per year (about $5/month)
11. Apple Notes: Best goal tracking app for Personal goals
Apple Notes is a note-taking app developed by Apple for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS devices.
While it is not specifically designed as a goal-tracking app, its versatility and ease of use make it useful for capturing goals.
Key features:
- Attachment support: You can attach checklists, images, scanned documents, web links, handwritten notes, or sketches to your notes and add context to your goals.
- Checklists: You can create checklists, such as creating a grocery list, a wish list, or a to-do list, and check off items in real-time. You can also format these lists by applying different text styles, such as heading or body, bulleted lists, and more.
- Sync across devices: Your notes sync across all your Apple devices, so you can access your goal-tracking information wherever you are.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use and integrates with other Apple devices | Does not offer advanced goal-tracking features |
Pricing: Free to use
12. Streaks: For Forming Good Habits, To-Do Style
Streaks is a popular habit-tracking app available on iOS devices (such as iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, iPad, etc.).
You can use it to build and maintain positive habits by tracking their progress over time.
As you complete a task, your ‘streak’ is extended.
Key features:
- Customizable goals: You can set custom goals and tasks for specific days.
- App icon widget: The app’s icon widget demonstrates the latest progress.
- Integration: The app easily integrates with the iOS Health app to help you create healthy habits.
| Pros | Cons |
| Offers a clean and easy-to-use interface | Not available for Android users |
| Available in multiple languages such as English, Arabic, Finnish, French, Danish, Dutch, German, Greek, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, etc. | Users are restricted to 12 tasks a day; the learning curve is steep |
| Incentivizes users on completing goals | Does not offer custom task status icons |
Pricing:
- Requires a one-time payment of $4.99
Choose the Best Goal Tracker App for Your Team
Sticking to your schedule takes proper time management and planning – both of which are specialties of goal-tracking apps.
Whether you want to maintain self-discipline or stay accountable for your work, a goal-tracking app is well worth the investment.
Be mindful of the apps detailed in this guide and make an informed decision. Good luck!
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