OurHome Alternatives: 6 Apps Like OurHome, Compared (2026)
Quick answer: if your children have outgrown the points and you now want the whole household in one place, Homsy is the closest replacement — assignment, rotation and completion tracking for adults and kids alike, plus a calendar OurHome's cannot match. If you want meal planning and a recipe box, Cozi. If you want location sharing, FamilyWall. If what you actually valued was the allowance, Greenlight or BusyKid do that part properly with real money. And if OurHome is still motivating a seven-year-old, stay where you are.
OurHome does one thing very well: it turns chores into a points economy that young children take seriously. Tasks earn points, points buy rewards a parent has defined, and a leaderboard keeps the whole thing visible. For children roughly five to twelve it genuinely works.
People go looking for alternatives for two reasons, and they are not the same reason. Either the children got older and the points stopped landing, or the adults in the house need task management that OurHome was never built to give them. This page is the field. If you want the one-on-one detail instead, Homsy vs OurHome puts a single app against OurHome feature by feature, and is OurHome worth it is the honest read on staying put.
Why People Look for Apps Like OurHome
Four complaints come up again and again.
The gamification has a lifespan. Most children engage hard between six and ten and then stop. Teenagers read points-for-chores as childish, and the household that built its whole system inside OurHome has to rebuild it somewhere else.
Adults get nothing from it. The app assumes a parent-child structure. Two adults splitting housework end up assigning each other points and claiming rewards, which is the wrong shape for the problem.
The calendar is thin. OurHome has a family calendar, but it is an add-on rather than a core feature — no per-member color coding, no iCal subscriptions, so the school calendar and the sports schedule gets typed in by hand.
It is mobile-only, and the sync shows its age. No web app, a dated interface, and changes that do not always appear on the other phone as fast as you would like.
If none of that is biting, stay. Moving a household onto a new app costs an evening and a round of persuading everyone in the house, and that is not worth paying for a change you do not need.
The 6 Alternatives at a Glance
| App | Kid rewards | Chore assignment | Calendar | Shared lists | Free tier | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OurHome (for reference) | Yes, core feature | Yes, kid-focused | Basic | Yes | Yes, with premium tier | iOS, Android |
| Homsy | No | Yes, with rotation | Yes, per-member colors | Yes | Free for 2 members, no ads | iOS, Android, Web |
| Cozi | No | No | Yes, color-coded | Yes | Yes, with ads | iOS, Android, Web |
| FamilyWall | No | Basic | Yes | Yes | Yes, limited | iOS, Android |
| Greenlight / BusyKid | Real money, not points | Chores as the mechanism | No | No | No | iOS, Android |
| Tody | No | Cleaning only | No | No | Yes, limited | iOS, Android |
| Google Calendar | No | No | Yes | Via Keep or Tasks | Yes, fully | Everything |
1. Homsy — the closest full replacement
Homsy covers the coordination half of what OurHome does and adds the part OurHome never built: a system that treats adults as household members rather than as the people who hand out the points.
Every chore has a named owner, a schedule and a completion record. Rotations cycle a job between people automatically, so the bathroom never lands on the same person twice running — the fairness question gets handled without anybody having to police it. Children can be household members with their own tasks; they just see tasks, not a score.
The calendar gives each member their own color, offers week and agenda views, and subscribes to external iCal feeds, so the school calendar arrives on its own. The shared shopping list syncs in real time, and the whole app works offline and catches up when signal returns. It runs on iOS, Android and the web, which OurHome does not.
Honest trade-offs. There is no points-and-rewards system and no allowance tracking — if the gamification is the reason your household functions, this is not a direct replacement. There is no family messaging and no location sharing. Meal planning is still coming. The free plan covers two members with every feature and no ads; three or more needs a paid plan.
Best for: households where the children have aged past stickers, or where the adults need the same task system the kids are on.
2. Cozi — if you want the calendar and a recipe box
Cozi has been the default family organizer since the mid-2000s, and it is stronger than OurHome on everything except chores. Colour-coded shared calendar, shopping lists, a recipe box and a meal planner, on iOS, Android and the web.
Where it does not beat OurHome. Cozi has no chore management at all. Its to-do list is flat — you cannot assign the bathroom to a named person, repeat it every Tuesday, or look back and see who did it. Swapping OurHome for Cozi trades the one thing OurHome is good at for a better calendar. The free tier carries ads; Cozi Gold removes them for $39.99 a year. The Cozi alternatives page covers the same field from the other direction.
Best for: families whose chore problem has resolved itself and whose real need is the weekly schedule and the meal plan.
3. FamilyWall — if you want location sharing and messaging
FamilyWall is the broad one: shared calendar, lists, family messaging, location sharing, photo albums, and finance tracking on the premium tier. Over 5 million downloads and a 4.8-star rating say the approach lands.
Location sharing is the genuine differentiator and the reason to pick it — no other app here offers it. Built-in messaging keeps family logistics out of the general group chat.
Where it does not beat OurHome. Task management is basic — no rotation, limited recurring logic, and nothing at all for motivating a child. Per-member color coding and iCal subscriptions are absent. The free plan is thin enough that most households end up on Premium, around $50 a year. No web app.
Best for: families with teenagers, where knowing where everyone is matters more than who cleaned what.
4. Greenlight or BusyKid — if the allowance was the point
If what you actually valued in OurHome was the allowance tracking, the dedicated children's finance apps do that job properly. Greenlight and BusyKid connect completed chores to a real debit card and a real savings balance rather than to a points total, which is a more honest lesson than "50 points buys Friday's movie".
Where they do not beat OurHome. They are not household apps. No family calendar, no shared shopping list, and no coordination between adults — you are now running two tools, and both cost money. Chores exist inside them only as the mechanism for paying out.
Best for: families whose primary goal is financial education, with chores as the means.
5. Tody — if the real problem is cleaning, not motivation
Tody tracks how dirty each room has got and tells you what to clean next, room by room, based on how long it has been since the last pass. It is excellent at that one job and takes the argument about whether something needs cleaning off the table.
Where it does not beat OurHome. It does nothing else. No calendar, no shopping list, no rewards, no children's interface. You will still need a second app for the rest of the household. Homsy vs Tody covers where a cleaning tracker stops being enough.
Best for: households whose one real problem is the standard of the cleaning, not who agreed to do it.
6. Google Calendar plus Keep — the free-for-everyone option
A shared Google Calendar is free, unlimited in members, works on every device, and everyone already has an account. Add Google Keep or Google Tasks and you have lists as well.
For a large household with no budget, this is the most functional free answer here — OurHome's free tier gives more household features, and Homsy's free tier stops at two people.
Where it does not beat OurHome. No chore management, no rewards, no assignment, no rotation. Colours attach to calendars rather than to people, so per-member coloring means maintaining a calendar per person. The lists live in a different app from the schedule. Homsy vs Google Calendar covers where that patchwork gives out.
Best for: big households that need a shared schedule and refuse to pay anything.
Which One Should You Actually Pick
Work backwards from the complaint that sent you looking:
- "The points stopped working on my teenager." Homsy. Clear assignment and visible completion, with no score attached.
- "The adults need to be on the same system as the kids." Homsy.
- "I mostly want the calendar and the meal plan." Cozi.
- "I need to know where my kids are." FamilyWall.
- "It was the allowance I cared about." Greenlight or BusyKid, and something else for the household.
- "Nobody agrees on what counts as clean." Tody.
- "I refuse to pay anything." Google Calendar plus Keep.
- "My six-year-old is racing to earn points." Stay on OurHome. Nothing here does that better.
Then apply the only test that matters: install two, run each for a week, and keep whichever one the household opens without being asked. A simple app everybody uses beats a rich app one person maintains.
The full family organizer roundup scores the same apps on price and feature depth, and the best chore chart apps comparison narrows it to the chore side alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best OurHome app alternatives in 2026?
Homsy is the closest full replacement — chore assignment with rotation for adults and children alike, a per-member color-coded calendar with iCal subscriptions, real-time shared lists, and a web app OurHome does not have. Cozi is the pick if you want a stronger calendar plus meal planning. FamilyWall if you want location sharing. Greenlight or BusyKid if the allowance was the feature you valued.
Are there any free apps like OurHome?
Yes. Google Calendar with Google Keep is free for any household size on every device. Cozi has a free ad-supported tier with a calendar and shopping lists. Homsy is free with every feature and no ads for households of up to two members, with no trial to expire. None of them reproduces OurHome's points-and-rewards system, which remains the thing OurHome does that the free options do not.
What is the closest app to OurHome?
On chores, Homsy: assignment by person, recurring schedules, automatic rotation and completion tracking, for every member of the household rather than the children only. The gap runs the other way too — Homsy has no points, no reward shop and no allowance tracking, so a household that runs on those is not getting a like-for-like swap.
Is there an OurHome replacement app that works for teenagers?
Homsy. Teenagers tend to reject points-for-chores as childish, and what works instead is plain assignment: this task is yours, it repeats on Tuesdays, everyone can see whether it was done. That is what Homsy does, and it is the same system the adults in the house are on, which is most of the reason it holds up past thirteen.
Does any OurHome alternative keep the kids' rewards system?
Not among the household apps. Cozi, FamilyWall, Homsy and Google Calendar all leave gamification out. The nearest thing is Greenlight or BusyKid, which replace points with actual money paid onto a card — a different mechanism, and arguably a better one for older children, but it means running a second app for the calendar and the lists.
Can I move my OurHome data to another app?
Not directly. OurHome has no export for chores, lists or point balances, so a move means retyping the recurring tasks in the new app. That takes twenty minutes or so and is a decent excuse to drop the chores nobody has done since last spring. Calendar events are the same story — most households rebuild the handful that recur and let the rest go.