Disclosure: I make Zympl. I’ve tried to be fair to Sunsama here, and it’s a good product. Every fact about it below comes from Sunsama’s own pricing page, help center, and changelog as of September 2026. If something has changed since then, email me and I’ll fix it.
Sunsama more or less created the category of the “mindful daily planner”: a guided ritual each morning, a realistic workload, and a shutdown at the end of the day. A lot of people who find Zympl were looking at Sunsama first, usually for one of two reasons. Either the price stopped them, or they wanted something more personal than a work dashboard. Here is how the two actually compare.
Zympl vs. Sunsama at a glance
| Zympl | Sunsama | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $3.99/month or $29.99/year | $22/month or $204/year ($17/month) |
| Free trial | 14 days, everything unlocked | 14 days, no card required |
| Free plan | No | No |
| Platforms | Web; iOS and Android in development | Web, macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android |
| Daily task planning | Yes: opens on today, recurring tasks, projects | Yes: guided daily planning ritual |
| Time blocking | Yes, on a day timeline | Yes, drag tasks onto your calendar |
| Time tracking | One-tap timers; weekly and monthly reports by project and task | Planned vs. actual time per task; timer or manual entry |
| Habits | Yes: check-off, count, and timed habits with streaks and reminders | No native habit tracker |
| Goals | Daily, weekly, monthly, and lifetime time goals | Weekly objectives |
| Notes | Markdown notes with folders and smart folders | Notes on tasks |
| Journal | Daily markdown journal | Daily shutdown ritual (no journal) |
| Integrations | None: it’s built as a self-contained personal planner | 20+: Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack, Gmail, Asana, Jira, Linear, Notion, Todoist, and more |
| AI | None | AI time estimates, “Sunny” assistant, MCP server |
Prices in USD as of September 2026.
Where Sunsama is the better choice
Sunsama is genuinely strong in a few areas, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise.
- Integrations. This is Sunsama’s center of gravity. If your tasks arrive as Jira tickets, Asana assignments, flagged emails and Slack messages, Sunsama pulls them into one list so you can plan the day from a single place. Zympl doesn’t try to do this.
- Calendar sync. Sunsama shows your Google or Outlook meetings beside your tasks and lets you drag work into the gaps. That matters most when meetings take up much of your day.
- Native apps everywhere today. Sunsama has desktop apps for Mac, Windows and Linux, plus mobile apps. Zympl is web-only for now. The iOS and Android apps are in development and included in the subscription, but they aren’t out yet.
- AI features. Sunsama predicts time estimates and has an assistant that can work with Claude and other AI tools through an MCP server. Zympl has no AI features.
- The guided ritual. Sunsama walks you through planning each morning and shutting down each evening, step by step. Some people need that structure to build the habit in the first place.
Where Zympl is the better choice
- Price. Sunsama’s annual plan is $204 a year. Zympl’s is $29.99. Sunsama’s own pricing page makes a thoughtful case for why it costs what it does. Still, “I like it but can’t justify $200 a year” is the most common complaint about it, and the reason many people go looking for alternatives.
- Habits and goals. Sunsama plans your work. Zympl also holds the rest of your day. There are habits you can check off, count (8 glasses of water) or time (20 minutes of reading), with streaks that don’t punish you. There are also time goals such as “four focused hours a day” or “ten hours a week on the side project.” In Sunsama you’d need a second app for these.
- Writing. Zympl has a proper notes tab with folders and a dated daily journal beside the plan. Sunsama’s shutdown ritual is reflective, but it isn’t a place to keep writing. If you run a five-minute end-of-day journal, Zympl has a home for it.
- Time reports. Both apps record actual time. Zympl puts every timer on a day timeline and rolls it up into weekly and monthly reports by project and task. You can see where the month actually went, not just whether today ran over.
- Nothing to connect. Sunsama’s best days depend on its integrations being set up and working. Zympl has nothing to connect: you open it and type the first task.
Time tracking: the feature both get right
Most daily planners let you plan time but never record it. That leaves you with no way to learn that your “one-hour” tasks really take two. Sunsama and Zympl are two of the few that do both. I’ve written about why that loop matters in time blocking vs. time tracking.
The difference is emphasis. Sunsama compares planned against actual time task by task, so you can see today’s plan was too optimistic. Zympl builds up a history: a timeline for each day, then totals by project and task across weeks and months, measured against the time goals you set. Sunsama tells you how today went. Zympl tells you how the month went.
Who should pick which
Choose Sunsama if…
- Your tasks mostly come from team tools like Jira, Asana, Linear or Slack.
- Your day is shaped by meetings, and you need your calendar beside your task list.
- You need native desktop and mobile apps today.
- Your employer pays for it, or $17–22 a month is easy to justify.
Choose Zympl if…
- You plan your own day, whether you’re freelance, a student, or it’s side projects and life admin.
- You want habits, time goals, notes and a journal in the same place as your tasks.
- You want to see where your hours go over weeks and months.
- You like the idea of Sunsama but not paying around $200 a year for it.
Switching from Sunsama to Zympl
There is no importer, and for a daily planner you usually don’t need one. Sunsama’s tasks are mostly copies of work that lives in other tools, so it stays there. What’s worth moving is your recurring tasks, your active projects, and anything on today’s and tomorrow’s list. That takes about fifteen minutes. The 14-day trial gives you two full weeks to plan real days in Zympl before you decide.
If you’re still weighing options, I’ve also written up the best Sunsama alternatives, including several that aren’t Zympl.