Streaks earned its reputation. It won an Apple Design Award, it's been polished for a decade, and its Apple Watch app is genuinely one of the best. You pay $5.99 once and it's yours across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch with no subscription. If that setup already works for you, there's no reason to move.
People start looking for a Streaks alternative for two reasons, and both show up in its reviews. The first is the 24-task ceiling — Streaks caps you at 24 habits, full stop, and heavy trackers hit that wall. The second is that there's no free tier and no forgiveness for the day you simply forgot: you buy in up front, and an unplanned miss ends the streak.
init.Habits is a terminal-style habit tracker for iPhone with a free tier, earned streak freezes (shields), GitHub-style heatmaps, and 23 editor themes. It's not a like-for-like Streaks clone — it's iPhone-only today where Streaks covers your whole Apple ecosystem — so here's the real comparison, as of July 2026, with Streaks' wins left in.
At a glance
| init.Habits | Streaks | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iPhone (synced web coming) | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision |
| Price | free tier; Pro €3.99/mo, €24.99/yr, €34.99 lifetime | $5.99 once — no subscription |
| Free tier | 10 habits, 2 routines, full stats | none — paid up front |
| Habit limit | 10 free, unlimited on Pro | 24 tasks, total |
| Streak protection | earned automatic shields + vacation + sick mode | manual pause for planned breaks |
| Heatmap | GitHub-style, per habit | calendar + progress rings |
| Tracking modes | checkbox, counter, number + unit, timer, Apple Health | checkbox, timed, quantity, Apple Health, negative |
| Routines | yes — grouped habits, own schedule | no — one flat board |
| Apple Watch / Mac | not yet — iPhone-first | yes — native, acclaimed Watch app |
| Themes | 23 editor palettes + custom editor | one clean design |
| Account | anonymous or Sign in with Apple; JSON export | none — iCloud sync |
Both are single-purpose apps done well: no feed, no followers, no ads. The split is what each optimizes for. Streaks is the pay-once, whole-Apple-ecosystem veteran. init.Habits is the free-to-start iPhone tracker that forgives an unplanned miss and turns your year into a heatmap.
What they share
More than the usual comparison admits. Both handle timed habits (a real countdown for meditation or focus), both auto-complete habits from Apple Health, both work without an account, and both keep your data private with no social layer. If you read that Streaks "only does checkboxes," that's out of date — Streaks 4 added timed tasks and better HealthKit years ago.
So the differences aren't about which app has a timer. They're about price, ceilings, and what happens on a bad day.
1. Pay once, or start free — and the 24-task ceiling
Streaks' pricing is its best trick: $5.99, one time, no subscription, forever. Over three years that's cheaper than almost anything with a monthly fee, init.Habits included. If you hate subscriptions, that alone can decide it, and it should count in Streaks' favor.
The catch is the ceiling. Streaks limits you to 24 tasks — a deliberate design choice that keeps the app simple, and a hard stop if your list is longer. init.Habits starts free with 10 habits and 2 routines (full stats included, no trial clock), and Pro lifts the cap entirely for €34.99 once, or €24.99 a year. You can try the whole thing before paying anything — with Streaks you pay to find out.
2. Apple Watch and Mac — where Streaks is simply ahead
No spin here: Streaks lives on your wrist and your desk, and init.Habits doesn't yet. Streaks' Watch app has complications and rich notifications, it runs natively on Mac and iPad, and it syncs through iCloud with no account to manage. If you check habits from your Watch or your Mac more than your phone, Streaks wins this outright.
init.Habits is iPhone-first. A synced web app is on the way, and native Watch and Mac are not shipped. If cross-device Apple coverage is the whole point for you, stop here and buy Streaks — a comparison that hid this wouldn't be worth reading.
3. Missing a day: a planned pause vs an earned shield
Both apps protect a streak, but differently, and the difference is the reason most switchers move.
Streaks lets you pause a habit for a planned break — going on holiday, recovering from an illness — so those days don't count against you. That's genuinely useful. What it doesn't cover is the ordinary unplanned miss: the Tuesday you meant to and just didn't. In Streaks, that day breaks the run — and for a lot of people one broken day reads as failure and the habit quietly ends there.
init.Habits covers both. Vacation mode and sick mode handle planned breaks the same way. On top of that, every 7 days of actually hitting your goal earns a shield (you hold up to 3), and a shield spends itself automatically on a day you miss — no tapping, no planning ahead. Your 90-day streak survives the day life got in the way, and the streak-freeze mechanics explain exactly how the earning works.
4. Your year as a heatmap, in your editor's theme
Streaks visualizes progress with calendars and progress rings — clean, familiar, effective.
init.Habits draws each habit as a GitHub-style contribution heatmap: a year of filled squares where the gaps are the point. It also looks like a code editor. Monospace type, aligned columns, [✓] marks, and 23 palettes recreated faithfully — Dracula, Nord, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox, Solarized and more — with a custom theme editor and a community marketplace. 8 are free. Streaks has one clean look; if you've ever picked an editor theme on purpose, the themes are half the reason people stay.
5. Routines and a little progression
Streaks is a flat board of up to 24 tasks. init.Habits groups habits into routines — a "morning" or "gym day" bundle with its own schedule, timer and reminder — so a morning routine is one unit, not five loose entries. There's also an optional progression layer: XP, levels, and 30+ achievements. It never gates anything and you can ignore it, but on a low day, "160xp to the next level" is one more nudge to open the app.
Where Streaks wins
The honest list:
- Apple Watch, Mac and iPad. Native, mature, and excellent — init.Habits has none of this yet.
- One-time price. $5.99 forever beats any subscription over time. init.Habits is free to start but costs €24.99/year or €34.99 once for the full feature set.
- A decade of polish. An Apple Design Award and years of refinement. init.Habits is newer, with a smaller (happy) review base.
- Negative habits. Streaks has dedicated "don't do this" tracking that init.Habits handles less directly.
What you give up for those wins: a free tier, earned automatic shields, the GitHub-style heatmap, editor themes, routines, and room for more than 24 habits.
Switching from Streaks
There's no import — Streaks keeps its data in Apple Health and iCloud, not an open file. In practice the move is quick:
- Recreate your active habits in init.Habits. The free 10 slots cover most real lists; if you were bumping the 24-task ceiling, Pro removes it.
- Backfill the last week or two — any past day can be edited, so your grid and streak don't start from zero.
- Reconnect Apple Health for the habits that auto-complete (steps, sleep, mindfulness), same as you had in Streaks.
Migration is a good moment to trim, not clone — how many habits you should track covers where the line is.
FAQ
Is init.Habits cheaper than Streaks?
To start, yes — init.Habits is free for 10 habits with full stats, while Streaks costs $5.99 before you can use it. To own long-term, Streaks is cheaper: $5.99 once versus init.Habits Pro at €24.99/year or €34.99 lifetime. The trade is a free trial-forever tier and more features against a single low payment.
Does Streaks have a streak freeze like shields?
Partly. Streaks lets you pause a habit for a planned break so those days don't count. It doesn't have an earned, automatic freeze for an unplanned miss — that's init.Habits' shields, which spend themselves on the day you forget.
Does init.Habits work on Apple Watch and Mac like Streaks?
Not yet. init.Habits is iPhone-first with a synced web app coming; native Apple Watch and Mac aren't shipped. Streaks covers iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Vision today, so if you track from your wrist or desk, Streaks is the better fit right now.
Can I track more than 24 habits?
Yes. Streaks caps every user at 24 tasks. init.Habits includes 10 on the free tier and removes the limit entirely on Pro, which is the single most common reason power users move over.