Every roundup of productivity apps for freelancers ranks the same seven tools on the same axis: price and features. That axis is close to useless for a one-person business, because the subscription is the smallest number in the whole decision.
I priced the entire category — every paid tier of every app below, one seat, annual billing — and it comes to $617.98 a year. At the $77/hour floor rate I use in how much to charge as a freelancer, that is eight billable hours. One working day. For all seven.
The bill that actually hurts is the one nobody puts on the comparison table: the minutes you spend every day feeding the system instead of doing the work. So this list is ranked by upkeep, and the recommendation at the end is mostly free.
The subscription is not the bill
Here is the arithmetic that reframed this whole category for me. Assume 48 working weeks, five days each — 240 working days. Now assume your stack asks for a few minutes of daily maintenance: triaging the inbox of your task app, re-dragging tasks that slipped, tidying tags, deciding again what today looks like.
| Daily upkeep | Hours per year | Cost at $77/hr | vs. the entire paid stack ($617.98) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 minutes | 20 h | $1,540 | 2.5× |
| 10 minutes | 40 h | $3,080 | 5.0× |
| 15 minutes | 60 h | $4,620 | 7.5× |
| 20 minutes | 80 h | $6,160 | 10.0× |
| 30 minutes | 120 h | $9,240 | 15.0× |
Even the lightest possible upkeep — five minutes a day, which is nothing — costs two and a half times more than buying the paid tier of all seven apps at once. At fifteen minutes a day you have spent a week and a half of billable time on the tools that were supposed to give you time back.
This is a model, not a measurement: your rate is different and your days are messier. But the ratio holds at any rate, because both sides scale with the same hourly number. Upkeep dominates price by roughly an order of magnitude, always.
Which gives the only selection rule that matters here.
Rule one: count upkeep minutes, not features
A productivity app earns its place if it removes a recurring decision. It loses its place if it adds one. Features are how vendors compete; decisions are what you pay in.
That rule kills a lot of popular advice. It is why I do not recommend building an elaborate second brain, and why the tool that wins each category below is usually the one with the fewest knobs, not the most.
One boundary before the list. This is about your own attention and admin — capture, focus, notes, planning. It is not about wiring tools together (that is automation tools for freelancers) and it is not about tracking client deliverables (that is project management tools for freelancers). Different job, different shortlist.
[PLACEHOLDER: nota de experiencia propia]
The three things that actually go wrong in week one
You forget what you promised in passing
Not the deliverables — those are in the contract. The small ones: the extra revision you agreed to on a call, the file you said you would resend, the intro you offered. These are also where scope creep starts, because an undocumented promise gets remembered differently by each side.
Todoist is still the best answer, for one boring reason: typing a task takes about a second and requires no decision. Type “send Ana the revised deck friday 4pm” and it parses the date. Nothing else in the category has a lower capture cost.
The free Beginner tier gives you five personal projects, three filter views, 5 MB uploads and one week of activity history. Pro is $7/month billed monthly or $60/year ($5/month), which took effect on 10 December 2025; it lifts you to 300 projects, 150 filters, 100 MB uploads, calendar layout, task duration and full history. Business is $8/user/month or $72/user/year and is irrelevant to a solo operator.
Five projects sounds tight until you notice that most freelancers need one per active client plus one for admin. If you run three or four clients at a time, free is genuinely enough. [AFFILIATE: todoist]
TickTick is the alternative if you want tasks, habits and a pomodoro timer in one app instead of three. It costs $49.99/year and — unusually — has no monthly option at all on its pricing page. Free gives you 9 lists, 99 tasks per list, one attachment per day, two reminders per task and five habits; Premium raises those to 299 lists, 999 tasks, 199 attachments and 299 habits, and unlocks the calendar views, filters and timeline. [AFFILIATE: ticktick]
Pick Todoist if capture speed is the whole job. Pick TickTick if consolidating three apps into one is worth $50 and a slightly slower add box.
You cannot start
This is the failure mode people misdiagnose as laziness and treat with a better task list. A better task list does nothing here; the tasks were already written.
Freedom blocks apps and sites across unlimited devices. What surprised me is how much the free tier does: blocking, custom blocklists, desktop app blocking, focus sounds, website exceptions — all free. The cap is that free sessions are Start Now only and max two hours.
Two hours is a full deep-work block. So the free tier does not withhold the capability; it withholds recurring sessions, scheduled sessions and Locked Mode. In other words, Premium sells you the removal of a daily decision — the decision to start. That is worth money to some people and nothing to others, and only you know which.
Premium is $8.99/month, $39.99/year, or $199 once for Forever. Annual over monthly saves $67.89 a year. Forever pays back against the annual plan at 4.98 years — call it five. That is a long horizon for a category with this much churn, so I would take the $39.99 and revisit.
Your calendar never has room for the work
Meetings expand into whatever space you leave them. Reclaim defends focus blocks automatically and reschedules them when a call lands on top.
The Lite plan is free forever for one user and includes all five scheduling agents, focus time, habits, buffer time and smart meetings. Its wall is a one-week scheduling range, one calendar sync, one scheduling link and limited integrations. For a freelancer who plans a week at a time, that wall is invisible. Starter is $10/seat/month billed annually ($12 monthly) and Business $15 annually ($18 monthly), both priced for teams you do not have.
If you need booking links rather than calendar defense, that is a different shortlist — see scheduling tools for freelancers, where the free tiers break along completely different lines.
The two that only show up in month six
You keep re-solving the same problem
The third time you write the same onboarding email from scratch, or re-derive the same export settings, you are paying a tax that no invoice shows.
Obsidian is the outlier of this entire list: the app is free with no limits, no sign-up, and — this is the part people get wrong — no commercial license required. The $50/user/year commercial license exists, and the pricing page says outright that you are not required to buy it; it is a way to support development. Sync is $4/user/month billed annually ($48/year) or $5 monthly. Publish is $8/site/month annually. Catalyst is a $25 one-time supporter license.
Your notes are plain markdown files on your own disk. That matters more than any feature: it means the exit cost is zero, which is not true of anything else here. The upkeep risk is the opposite one — Obsidian will happily let you spend a weekend building a system instead of writing notes. Resist it. Folders and a search box are enough.
If you would rather have the notes and the client boards in one place, the trade-off is laid out in Notion vs Trello for freelancers.
You end the day unsure what you actually did
Sunsama is a daily planning ritual with a calendar attached: it walks you through choosing today’s work, timeboxing it, and closing the day. It is also the most expensive thing in this article by a wide margin — $22/user/month monthly, $204/user/year annually, raised in 2026 after five years flat.
Two things about that price are worth knowing. First, the advertised annual discount is 20%, but $22 × 12 = $264 against an actual $204, which works out to 22.7% — slightly better than the sticker. Second, Sunsama has no free tier and says it never will, on the stated grounds that free plans distort what a product gets built for. You get a 14-day trial with no card up front, and then it is $204 or nothing.
$204 a year is 2.6 billable hours. If the ritual reliably gets you to the end of the day knowing what you did, it pays for itself in a fortnight. If you already know what you did — because you track it, as in tracking billable hours — it is an expensive second copy of information you have.
Get the free Freelancer Tool Stack
The tax nobody counts: the switch itself
Raycast is a launcher. It sounds like the least serious tool here and is quietly the one with the best upkeep-to-payoff ratio, because it has no upkeep at all: you install it, and typing three letters replaces hunting through a dock, a clipboard, a snippet file and a calculator.
Free covers the core — clipboard history (3 months), snippets, quicklinks, window management, calculator, the full extension store, and five Raycast Notes. Its FAQ states explicitly that the free plan is fine for organisational and commercial use, which is rarer than it should be. Pro is $10/month or $8/month billed annually ($96/year) and adds Raycast AI, cloud sync, dictation, unlimited notes and custom themes; the Advanced AI add-on is another $8/month.
Buy Pro for the AI and the sync if you want them. Do not buy it to be more productive — the free tier already did that part.
[PLACEHOLDER: captura]
What every free tier in this category actually withholds
Once you line them up, a pattern appears that I have not seen anyone name. In invoicing or CRM software, the free tier is functionally crippled — it will not take a payment, or it will not brand a document. Here, the free tier does the job. What it caps is containers or memory.
| Tool | What the free tier caps | What the paid tier actually sells | Cost to remove it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Todoist | 5 projects · 3 filters · 1 week of history | Capacity and full history | $60/yr |
| TickTick | 9 lists · 99 tasks each · 5 habits | Capacity, calendar views, filters | $49.99/yr |
| Reclaim | 1-week scheduling range · 1 link | A longer planning horizon | $120/yr |
| Freedom | 2-hour sessions · Start Now only | Recurring sessions and Locked Mode | $39.99/yr |
| Raycast | 3-month clipboard · 5 notes | AI, cloud sync, dictation | $96/yr |
| Obsidian | Nothing — no caps, commercial use free | Sync between devices | $48/yr |
| Sunsama | No free tier by policy | The product | $204/yr |
Six of the seven caps are the same shape: somewhere between five and ten containers, or about a week of memory. Todoist gives 5 projects and 1 week of history. TickTick gives 9 lists. Reclaim gives a 1-week horizon. Trello, from the same family of tools, gives 10 boards; Notion gives 7 days of page history. That is not a coincidence — it is the number at which a vendor has calculated you will feel the wall without feeling cheated.
The practical consequence: you will hit these walls by container count, not by usage intensity. One project per client with five clients breaks Todoist Free. Nothing about the volume of your work changed; you just signed a fifth client.
Side by side
| App | Job it does | Daily upkeep | Free tier usable? | Paid, per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Todoist | Capture | ~2 min | Yes, under 5 projects | $60 |
| TickTick | Capture + habits + timer | ~4 min | Yes, under 9 lists | $49.99 |
| Freedom | Blocking distractions | ~1 min | Yes, 2-hour blocks | $39.99 |
| Reclaim | Defending focus time | ~0 min | Yes, one week ahead | $120 |
| Obsidian | Notes you keep forever | ~2 min | Yes, entirely | $48 (sync only) |
| Sunsama | Daily planning ritual | ~15 min by design | No free tier | $204 |
| Raycast | Removing the switch | 0 min | Yes | $96 |
Sunsama’s fifteen minutes are not a flaw — the ritual is the product. But by the table at the top of this article, that ritual costs about $4,620 a year in attention on top of the $204 subscription. It has to be worth more than that to you, and for a lot of freelancers it simply is not.
The stack I would run, and the one upgrade worth making
At $0: Todoist Beginner for capture, Reclaim Lite defending two focus blocks a week, Freedom Free for two-hour sessions, Obsidian with no sync on one machine, Raycast Free. Total upkeep, honestly measured: about four minutes a day.
The single upgrade I would actually buy is Obsidian Sync at $48, and not for a feature. It is the one that stops you emailing yourself files, which is a real daily decision, and it is the only $48 here that buys something you keep — the notes remain plain files whether you pay or not.
The second upgrade, if you pass five active clients, is Todoist Pro at $60 — but buy it when you hit the fifth project, not before. Total: $108 a year, or 1.4 billable hours.
What I would skip, at least at first: Sunsama, unless you have specifically diagnosed “I don’t know where my day went” as your problem; TickTick alongside Todoist, because two capture apps means capture happens in neither; and any AI add-on, until the base tool has survived three months of your actual work.
Who should skip this whole category
If your problem is that you have too few clients, no productivity app fixes it — that is a pipeline problem, and it lives in the wider freelance software stack, not here.
If your problem is that you cannot see where your hours go, start with time tracking instead. Planning tools assume you already know how long things take. If you do not, they will help you plan wrong faster.
And if your problem is repetitive admin — the same three emails, the same intake form, the same invoice chase — the answer is automating those workflows, not organising them more neatly. Organising repetitive work makes it tidier. It does not make it go away.
The verdict
Todoist — for anyone whose failure mode is forgetting small promises. Free is enough under five projects. Skip it if you already capture reliably somewhere else; a second inbox is worse than none.
TickTick — for anyone consolidating tasks, habits and a timer. $49.99 flat, annual only. Skip it if you already run Todoist and are shopping out of boredom.
Freedom — for anyone who has the list and cannot start. Free handles two-hour blocks. Skip Premium unless the thing you need is a session that starts without you deciding.
Reclaim — for anyone whose calendar fills with other people’s meetings. Lite is free forever and its one-week horizon fits how freelancers plan. Skip the paid tiers; they are priced for teams.
Obsidian — for anyone tired of re-solving solved problems. Free, uncapped, commercial use included, files you own. Skip it if you will build a system instead of writing notes; you know if that is you.
Sunsama — for anyone who ends days without knowing what they did, and who wants a ritual rather than a database. $204 a year and fifteen minutes a day, both real. Skip it if you already track your time, or if $204 feels like a decision rather than a rounding error.
Raycast — for everyone on a Mac, at the free tier, today. Skip Pro until you specifically want the AI or cloud sync.
Get the free Freelancer Tool Stack
The 18 tools that run a one-person business — invoicing, contracts, time, AI writing, automation and money. One checklist, no fluff.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free productivity app for freelancers?
Raycast, because it has zero upkeep and its free tier is explicitly cleared for commercial use. If you mean a task app specifically, Todoist’s free Beginner tier covers five personal projects, which is enough for three or four active clients plus an admin list.
How many productivity apps should a freelancer actually use?
One per failure mode you have actually experienced, and no more. Most solo operators need two: something to capture commitments and something to protect focus time. Adding a third before the first two have survived a busy month is how upkeep costs get out of hand.
Is Sunsama worth $204 a year for a freelancer?
It is worth it if your specific problem is ending days without knowing what you did, and you want a guided ritual rather than another database. At a $77/hour rate the subscription is 2.6 billable hours, so price is not really the objection — the fifteen minutes a day the ritual asks for is the real cost, and that is roughly $4,620 a year in attention.
Do I need to pay for a commercial licence to use these apps for client work?
Not for the ones here. Obsidian’s pricing page states that a commercial licence is encouraged but not required, and Raycast’s FAQ confirms its free plan is available for organisational use. Always check, though — it is not the norm across software, and a few vendors do restrict free tiers to personal use.
Should I pay monthly or annually for productivity apps?
Annually, once a tool has survived three months of real work. The discounts are meaningful: Freedom saves $67.89 a year, Todoist and Raycast each save $24, Obsidian Sync saves $12, and Sunsama’s annual plan works out to 22.7% off rather than the 20% advertised. Before three months, pay monthly — most productivity apps get abandoned inside the first quarter.
Is a lifetime deal like Freedom Forever worth it?
Freedom Forever is $199 against $39.99 a year, so it breaks even at just under five years. That is a long bet on a category where tools get abandoned or acquired regularly. Buy the annual plan, and reconsider the lifetime option only after you have renewed twice.