Sunsama Review 2026: Pricing, Pros, Cons and Alternatives

Sunsama is a daily planner you pay for from day one, and it says so with some pride. Its pricing page carries a manifesto arguing that free-forever plans create bad incentives, that whole-dollar prices beat $24.99 tricks, and that there will be no Black Friday sale.

That narrows the buying question. You are not choosing between tiers; you are deciding whether the habit of planning each day inside Sunsama is worth roughly a dollar per workday, and whether to commit for a year to save 20%.

This review prices the one individual plan on both billing options, adds up a first year against Motion, Akiflow, Reclaim.ai, TickTick and Todoist, and names the people who should not buy it.

Every Sunsama figure comes from Sunsama's pricing page, checked on November 4, 2026, and every rival price from that vendor's own pricing page on the same day.

Toolradar data: among the 99 calendar tools tracked on Toolradar, the software directory we run, 63% have a free plan and Sunsama does not; its monthly price ranks 23rd of the 31 with a verified entry price, against a peer median of $12 a month, as of November 3, 2026.

Sunsama is also listed as an alternative to 19 other tools, 12th of the 99. For the wider field, see our best daily planner apps ranking.

Sunsama is a paid digital daily planner that puts tasks and calendar events in one plan for the day, made by Summay, Inc., a Y Combinator company.

It pulls work in from the tools where it already lives, Asana, ClickUp, GitHub, Gmail, Google Calendar, Jira, Linear, Microsoft Teams, Notion, Outlook, Slack, Todoist, Trello and others, then asks you to choose what fits in today and drag it onto your calendar as timeboxes.

The product is built around rituals more than lists. A guided morning plan sets a realistic workload, a focus mode with a Pomodoro-style timer and app muting runs during the day, and a daily shutdown records what you finished, so the day has a defined end.

The pricing card lists AI, MCP and Zapier access on the paid plan, and Sunsama states it is SOC 2 compliant. Apps exist for iOS and iPadOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. For the directory listing, see the Sunsama profile on Toolradar.

A day in Sunsama has three steps, and the value depends on doing all of them. In the morning you review the backlog pulled from connected apps, pick today's tasks and give each a time estimate. Seeing those estimates next to the meetings already on your calendar is what keeps the workload realistic, which is the whole promise of the product. You then drag tasks onto the calendar as timeboxes, or let auto-scheduling place them.

During the day, focus mode shows one task with a timer, and new requests from Slack, Teams or email can be turned into tasks without leaving the plan. At the end of the day, the shutdown ritual logs what got done and records your progress. Weekly objectives sit above the daily plan for people who review progress once a week.

That structure is also the cost. Sunsama asks for a planning session every morning and a shutdown every evening, and a person who skips the rituals pays for a calendar view they already had.

If you want a tool that reshuffles your calendar automatically with no daily review, an AI scheduler such as Motion or Reclaim.ai fits better; our AI scheduling apps ranking compares them.

Sunsama sells one individual plan, Pro, on Sunsama's pricing page, read in US dollars on November 4, 2026. It costs $17 a month billed yearly, which the pricing FAQ states as $204 a year, or $22 a month billed monthly.

The yearly option is 20% off by Sunsama's own label. Every feature is in that one plan; Enterprise, for SSO, SCIM and audit logs, is priced by contacting the company. The trial lasts 14 days with no credit card, and Sunsama does not offer a free plan or a lifetime deal.

A first year for one person, by our arithmetic on each vendor's printed prices: Sunsama costs the printed yearly total above, or $264 on monthly billing. Akiflow Pro costs $228 billed yearly (printed) or $408 at $34 a month.

Motion's Pro AI plan for one person costs $348 at $29 a month billed annually, or $588 at $49 a month. Reclaim.ai Starter costs $120 on yearly billing, TickTick Premium $49.99 and Todoist Pro $60. Sunsama is the cheapest of the three dedicated planners on either billing option; the three tools with free plans cost less and also do less daily planning.

Monthly or yearly? On monthly billing, the tenth month takes your total past the yearly price. If you are not confident you will still plan in Sunsama after nine months, monthly is the safer bet; past that, yearly saves $60.

Sunsama's FAQ says a cancelled subscription keeps working until the end of the billing cycle. For a team, each person added to a workspace is billed at the same per-person rate and prorated in the first month, so five people on yearly billing come to $1,020 a year.

Price history: an archived copy of Sunsama's pricing page from January 12, 2025 showed $20 a month on monthly billing and $16 a month billed annually, so the monthly price is up 10% since then.

Methodology: we read the pricing pages of Sunsama, Motion, Akiflow, Reclaim.ai, TickTick and Todoist on November 4, 2026, used list prices only (Akiflow's one-hour coupon banner is a limited-time offer and is left out), and multiplied monthly prices by 12 where a vendor prints no yearly total.

Sunsama suits a professional whose day is a mix of meetings and tasks scattered across several tools: an engineering manager with Jira and Linear tickets, a founder answering Slack and email, a consultant juggling client work.

It rewards people who will do the morning plan and the evening shutdown every day, and who want a calm list rather than an algorithm moving blocks around. Teams that need IT approval get a SOC 2 statement and an Enterprise tier with SSO.

Skip it if you want something free or close to free: a task list with dates covers most people, and our Todoist review and Todoist vs TickTick comparison price those.

Skip it too if you want the calendar to reorganize itself without a daily review, since Motion and Reclaim do that work for you. The closest like-for-like rival is Akiflow, which also has no free plan.

And if you mainly manage projects for a team rather than your own day, a project tool such as Asana, Linear or Trello is the purchase to make first; Sunsama sits on top of those, not in place of them.