7 Productivity Apps That Are Worth the Premium Subscription

If you’ve gotten attached to a free app, only to find your favorite features behind a subscription paywall, you may be wondering: should I just subscribe and call it a day, or stick to the free version?

These productivity-focused apps can be downloaded for free and have subscription options that are either affordable or worth every dollar you spend. Here’s all you need to know about these apps, how much they cost, and if they offer a free trial option.

Notion for Note-Taking

Notion (iPhone, Android) is a note-taking and organization app that can be used for personal, professional, or academic purposes. With its extensive library of templates for all three categories, you don’t have to bother making anything from scratch. Your notes can look as detailed as possible with the app’s advanced style, block, embed, and attachment options, including elements like block equations, calendar view, web bookmarks, and several graph options.

Notion integrates with apps like GitHub, Figma, Loom, Adobe XD, Slack, and Zoom, among others, so it’s easier to embed content in your notes from third-party resources. Like any good note-taking app, Notion’s interface allows for intuitive note-taking, formatting, and organization. You can enable notifications so items from your to-do lists and planners can act as reminders.

Notion syncs on browser, Mac, and Windows.

The app offers a Plus subscription that allows for:

• Unlimited file uploads
• Collaboration with 100 guests
• Site customizations
• 30-day page history

With a Notion AI core subscription, you can access the app’s AI assistant. Notion’s AI can help improve your writing and answer any queries you may have, as well as help draft emails, tables, diagrams, code, and more. Finally, there’s the Plus & Notion AI subscription, which includes the Plus features along with Advanced AI features, such as meeting notes, research mode, and enterprise search.

While Notion’s mobile app is completely free and offers a good chunk of core features, the subscription tiers are best suited for users who want to level up their work or study with advanced collaboration, AI assistance, and customization.

Todoist for Task Management

Todoist (iPhone, Android), which was named one of 2025’s top to-do list apps by The New York Times, is a task manager that can help you organize your schedule, track tasks, and note all your projects in one neat planner. You can browse through work, personal, and other productivity templates to create detailed task management layouts and manage your schedule with the app’s built-in, customizable calendar. Rescheduling tasks and adding deadlines can be done easily with Todoist’s intuitive interface, which I find to be extremely smooth to adjust to.

Todoist is well-optimized for mobile, and when you switch between browser view or other devices (iPad, Apple Watch, Wear OS, and tablet), your calendar and projects stay synced. The app offers Siri support for iPhone and widgets for both iPhone and Android. You can track your daily goals by completing tasks every day, and track “Karma” points to level up your productivity.

The app offers a Pro subscription, which lets you:

• Set reminders and deadlines
• Invite up to five people for collaboration
• Build 150 custom views for filters
• Use eight themes
• Use the calendar layout and task durations
• Backup data

Productive for Habit Tracking

Productive (iPhone, Android) is a free habit tracker that can help you build a sustainable routine from scratch. This app focuses on habit management through daily, time-based habits spread on a weekly calendar view. With simple swipe gestures, you can log or skip habits every day, and see your routine progress with a productivity tracker that levels up as you build habits. Productive is a good starting place if you’re trying to start a new challenge to build habits (for instance, Sugar-Free or Alcohol-Free challenges), where you can invite friends and work towards the same goal.

Productive also offers a library of in-app resources and articles to help you learn more about healthy eating, exercising, productivity, and motivation. A premium subscription, which is useful if you find Productive effective for checking your habits and patterns, gives you access to:

• Unlimited habits and challenges
• Location-based reminders
• Stats and weekly data
• Habit trends

Finch for Self-Care

For self-care, one of the best apps (with a good value subscription plan) to try is Finch (iPhone, Android). This motivation app has you raising a virtual pet through goal completion and quests. The app’s interface, which resembles a colorful game, is vivid and fun to use, with tabs like quests, shop, and bag immersing you in caring for yourself and your pet.

As you complete simple goals that you can customize and repeat, your pet keeps growing while going on adventures. Finch’s gamified concept is helpful if you like apps that gamify productivity and repeat tasks, and I find that the responsibility of raising my virtual pet keeps me coming back to the app often.

The app hosts weekly quests to help you further your self-care, with journals and emotion checks contributing to your energy levels and your pet’s growth. You can also acquire micro-pets for your pet as you progress, and earn daily rewards and outfits through treasure chests. Finch offers mini-self-care pockets through features like timers, movement monitors, soundscapes, reflections, and first aid kits that help regulate emotions.

The app’s Plus subscription (which also offers deals and promotions) is made for users who are addicted to the gamified habit tracking of the app, and want features like:

• Access to all exercises and mailbox content
• Better deals on shop items
• Tag emojis
• Shuffle prompts

DailyBean for Journaling

DailyBean (iPhone, Android) is a simple journaling app to help record and monitor your daily mood and productivity. The app uses cute icons (beans) to log your daily mood for the day, and offers a variety of icons to choose from. You can log details about your emotions, support system, weather, work, and chores while attaching pictures from your day and adding notes about the day.

With a monthly calendar view that displays your mood timeline, you can track your mental well-being over time. Monthly and annual reports track your mood flow and bar. The interface is uncluttered, creating a relaxing virtual diary space to capture your emotions.

A Premium Pass gets you in-depth analysis of your daily life, device sync, ad-free editing, and picture recording. You can also access sleep analysis, mood by sleep, exercise analysis, and several icons and themes. A DailyBean subscription, offering a relatively affordable monthly option, would be best suited for you if you’re trying to gain more insights about your mood and emotions and manage them effectively and accessibly.

Focus To-Do for Task Completion

For a handy Pomodoro timer, try Focus To-Do (iPhone, Android), a productivity app that brings a to-do list and reminders to your focus sessions. The app is designed for task management, with features like events, tasks, projects, and tags helping you organize everything on your agenda. As you create new tasks, Focus To-Do allows you to allot timers to each task, along with due dates, reminders, and repeats.

The Pomodoro timer, which is the app’s focus, is a neat, distraction-free one, with timer and fullscreen modes, white noise options, and Strict Mode to enable app blocking and exit prohibition. Focus To-Do projects are also easy to manage, with tag options, sub-tasks, and time tracking to record your productivity.

With a Premium subscription, you can use:

• Strict Mode
• Unlimited projects
• Tags
• Calendar View
• Cloud backup and device sync
• Custom Pomodoro timers
• Repeating tasks and reminders

Along with these features, you can also access more themes and new features. The subscription is an affordable option if you want to get value for money by managing everything from focus sessions and projects to digital detox using one app instead of multiple apps.

Structured for Daily Planning

Structured (iPhone, Android) is a powerful scheduling app to use if you’re not a big fan of your phone’s native calendar app. This all-in-one planner, calendar, and habit tracker helps you visualize your schedule with its core feature, a visual timeline, which strings your daily tasks together in a chronological order. As you complete tasks, you can check off and update this timeline, which I find motivates me to get work done more productively.

Tasks can be recorded and organized neatly in your app inbox with colors, time, subtasks, and notes. Structured’s interface design makes it easy to navigate between your calendar, timeline, and inbox, and you can also use additional features like Energy Monitor, Replan, and Cycle Sessions to manage projects quickly. Structured supports Siri and Shortcuts, widgets for iPhone and Android, and iCloud sync.

The Pro subscription can be beneficial if you’re someone who is looking for better sync across external calendars and reminder apps. Features include:

• Calendar import (iCloud, Google, Outlook)
• Reminder sync (Apple Reminders, Outlook)
• Recurring tasks
• Custom alerts
• AI assistant: Custom schedules built through prompts
• Custom icons and color palette

Honorable Mention: Spotify + YT Premium

Something I cannot live without when being productive is a solid work playlist to help me power through the most mundane of tasks. Having a premium subscription for a music streaming app that skips ads has, therefore, been a must for my workday. While I find Spotify Premium (iPhone, Android) to be perfect for creating ad-free work playlists, YouTube Premium (iPhone, Android) has been my go-to for lo-fi streams and YouTube-only releases that I enjoy. With both apps offering AI-powered playlists, you can create custom productivity playlists in seconds.

I always sign up for a free trial, if I can find it, before committing to an app subscription. To manage your app and streaming subscriptions, you can use an app like Bobby (iPhone) or Subscriptions (Android) and keep an eye on every subscription fee you spend every month.