Ellie Planner is a daily planner app with a clean, minimal design focused on structured daily task management. It takes a deliberate approach: you have a fixed number of tasks per day (the "Big 3" and supporting items), with the idea that constraints create focus. The pricing model is unusually flexible, offering a genuine free tier alongside a standard subscription and a lifetime option that has become popular with users who dislike recurring fees.

This guide breaks down exactly what each plan costs, what it includes, and whether the price makes sense for different types of users.

Key Takeaways

• Ellie's free plan is genuinely usable, not artificially limited to push upgrades

• Pro adds the most important power-user features: calendar integration, recurring tasks, subtasks, and timebox mode

• The $299.99 lifetime deal breaks even against the monthly plan in about 30 months

Ellie Planner Pricing Overview

Ellie offers three pricing options. Here is what each costs and covers:

• Free: $0/month. Unlimited task creation, iOS and Web access, Braindump feature

• Pro Monthly: $9.99/month. Everything in Free, plus timebox mode, Google Calendar and Apple Calendar integration, unlimited labels, subtasks, recurring tasks, and due dates

• Lifetime: $299.99 one-time. All Pro features, permanently, with no future monthly fees

Students can get 50% off the Pro subscription by contacting Ellie's support team directly.

What the Free Plan Actually Includes

Ellie's free plan is more functional than most "free" tiers in productivity apps. You get unlimited task creation, access to the iOS app and the web version, and the Braindump feature, which lets you capture everything into an unstructured list before pulling it into your daily plan.

What the free plan doesn't include: calendar integration (meaning your tasks and calendar events remain separate), recurring tasks, subtasks, labels, due dates, or timebox mode. For users who want a simple, uncomplicated daily task list without calendar integration, the free plan may be enough. For users who rely on Google Calendar or Apple Calendar as their primary scheduling tool, the missing integration is a significant gap.

What Ellie Pro Adds

The Pro plan at $9.99/month adds the features that turn Ellie into a more complete productivity system:

Timebox mode. This is Ellie's most distinctive Pro feature. It allows you to assign time blocks to tasks directly within the app, rather than managing tasks and calendar separately. For users who time-block their day, this is the core Pro value.

Calendar integration. Ellie Pro connects to Google Calendar and Apple Calendar, showing your calendar events alongside your task list. This gives you a unified view of your day without switching apps.

Recurring tasks. Free users have to recreate recurring tasks manually. Pro adds automatic recurrence with flexible scheduling options.

Subtasks and labels. For breaking complex tasks into steps and organizing items across projects or contexts.

Due dates. Free tasks exist without time context. Due dates let you assign specific deadlines and surface overdue items appropriately.

Is the Lifetime Plan Worth It?

The $299.99 lifetime plan breaks even against the $9.99/month plan in exactly 30 months (2.5 years). If you plan to use Ellie Pro for longer than that, the lifetime purchase costs less in total. If you're uncertain, a few months on the monthly plan before deciding is a reasonable approach.

The risks of a lifetime plan are the same for any software: the company could discontinue the app, shift to a subscription model for new features, or change direction. Ellie is a small independent app. It has a dedicated user base and active development, but it does not have the institutional backing of a large tech company.

The lifetime option also appeared with a much lower introductory price in Ellie's early days (under $100 in some periods), so the current $299.99 represents significant price growth. Users who got in early at launch pricing got a much better deal. The math is still favorable long-term at the current price, but less dramatically so than it once was.

Is Ellie Planner Worth the Price?

Ellie is well-designed, fast, and opinionated in a way that works well for a specific type of user: someone who wants a focused daily task list with minimal friction, a clean aesthetic, and calendar context in a single view. The timebox mode is genuinely useful for time-blockers who don't want the overhead of a full calendar app.

Where Ellie falls short is in features that other AI planner apps have made standard: there is no AI scheduling, no task prioritization assistance, no wearable integration, and no automatic rescheduling. Ellie's philosophy is manual control and daily intentionality, which is the right approach for some users and frustrating for others who want more automation.

Compared to other pricing in the category, $9.99/month is on the high end for what Ellie offers without Pro features, and mid-range when the full Pro feature set is considered. The alternative Amie pricing, for instance, offers a more feature-rich app at a similar or lower price point, though with a different design philosophy. Akiflow is more expensive but adds deep integrations. The best Ellie alternatives cover the full range for users who want to compare before committing.

What Ellie Doesn't Do

Knowing what Ellie doesn't include is as useful as knowing what it does, especially before paying for Pro.

• No AI scheduling or automatic task placement

• No team features or task sharing

• No wearable or health data integration

• No integration with project management tools (Notion, Linear, Asana, Jira)

• No Android app (iOS and web only)

• No natural language task input with time parsing

For personal task management focused on daily planning on Apple devices, these are often acceptable limitations. For users who need integrations, Android support, or AI assistance, they're blocking.

If You Want AI-Powered Scheduling Instead

Ellie is a manual planner. You decide when to do things and block the time yourself. If you'd rather have a system that reads your schedule, energy levels, and task list and suggests an optimal day for you, a different category of tool is more appropriate.

Lifestack takes that approach: it reads sleep and recovery data from wearables like Oura Ring, Apple Watch, Garmin, and WHOOP, then builds your daily schedule around your measured energy levels. Tasks get placed when you're best equipped to do them, not just when there's blank space in your calendar. This is a meaningfully different model from Ellie's intentional-but-manual approach. Lifestack is $7/month or $50/year with a 7-day free trial, available on iOS, Android, and Chrome extension.

The right choice depends on whether you prefer deliberate manual control or intelligent automation. Both have real users who prefer them for real reasons. Digital planner apps that sit between these poles also exist if you want something in between.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Ellie Planner cost?

Ellie Planner offers a free tier at no cost, a Pro subscription at $9.99/month, and a lifetime purchase at $299.99. The free tier includes unlimited tasks, iOS and web access, and the Braindump feature. Pro adds calendar integration, timebox mode, recurring tasks, subtasks, labels, and due dates.

Does Ellie Planner have a free trial?

There is no explicit free trial for Pro, but the free plan provides genuine access to the app indefinitely. You can evaluate Ellie's core workflow and design before paying. The features that require Pro (especially calendar integration and timebox mode) are the main things you'd want to test before committing, which the free tier won't demonstrate.

Is the Ellie lifetime deal still available?

As of 2026, yes. The $299.99 lifetime plan is listed on Ellie's pricing page. Prices have increased over time since launch, and Ellie has not publicly indicated the lifetime deal will be removed, but it's not guaranteed to remain available indefinitely.

What is Ellie Planner's timebox mode?

Timebox mode is a Pro feature that lets you assign specific time blocks to tasks within Ellie's interface. Instead of maintaining a separate calendar for time blocking, you can mark when in the day you plan to do a task and see your day as a structured time map. It is one of Ellie's most distinctive features and a core reason many users choose Pro over the free plan.

Is Ellie Planner available on Android?

No. Ellie is available on iOS and via a web app. There is no native Android app. For users who need cross-platform support including Android, Ellie is not the right tool regardless of pricing tier.

How does Ellie compare to Things 3 in terms of price?

Things 3 pricing uses a one-time purchase model per platform ($9.99 iPhone, $19.99 iPad, $49.99 Mac), with no free tier and no subscription. Ellie has a free tier and a subscription model, which makes it more accessible to start but potentially more expensive long-term depending on how many devices you use and how long you stay subscribed. The apps have different design philosophies: Things 3 is a deeper project and task manager, while Ellie focuses tightly on daily planning.