Finch alternatives
A self-care app where finishing your daily goals feeds a pet bird.
5 of its 7 core features can be rebuilt with AI. Here is one, working, below.
- They makeRevenue estimate on Sensor Tower
- $1M a month
- You pay
- $70 a year
- AI can rebuild
- 5 of 7 core features
Try it
Visual demo only. Copy the prompt below to get the app.
Build it yourself
Real files on your machine, a real database, and it is yours. This one carries the interface as well — the layout, the colours and the shape of the real app, read off its own screens.
Each opens with the prompt loaded and waiting — nothing is sent until you press enter. It is copied at the same time, in case the app is not installed.
Build me a local self-care app with a pet bird I own, to replace Finch. - A web app I run on my own machine: a single Node process serving one page, data in a SQLite file next to it. - Model it properly: goals, a completion row per goal per date, mood check-ins, journal entries, journeys and their findings. The bird's energy is derived from today's completions, never stored. - Goals recur daily, with a one-off flag that retires one when it is done. A streak is a query over dated rows, not a counter. - Journeys: send the bird when energy is high enough and it returns with a finding drawn from findings.json without repeating until the list is exhausted, kept in a collection. - A daily reflection prompt from a prompts.json of at least thirty, answers stored as dated rows, the journal searchable through FTS5. - Optional: a command that asks an LLM (key from .env) to draft new findings and prompts into those files for me to edit. This is what Finch pays a content team for. - One command to export the journal to dated Markdown files, one to back up the SQLite file. - Binds to localhost only. No accounts, no telemetry. This is a diary. - Skip: seasonal outfits and events, and friend trees. Both are other people, not code. - Include a README with setup, where the database lives, and the format of the two content files. ## Look and feel Finch's own — pastel lavender and sky blue, big rounded shapes, gentle and low contrast, the bird the largest thing on screen. Cheerful, never shouty. Generous spacing, clear hierarchy, big tap targets, phone-readable type, system font. Keep the text dark enough to read at a glance: the softness of a palette belongs to the shapes and the fills, never to the words. Nothing I need to read — dates, numbers, labels — in pale grey on white.
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Feature by feature
Every feature, whether AI can rebuild it, and what you would be signing up to keep running if you did. The paid app does that last column for you, and that is most of what the money buys.
| Feature | Core | AI can rebuild | You'd maintain |
|---|---|---|---|
| A daily goal list you tick off | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| A pet bird that gains energy from finished goalsThe whole trick is that the bird is a progress bar with a face on it. That part is a drawing and a number. | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| Sending the bird on a journey it comes back fromThe mechanic rebuilds in an afternoon. The reason it stays interesting is that someone keeps writing new ones. | Yes | Partly | You would write the little things it finds, and after a fortnight you would have read them all |
| Mood check-ins | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| A daily reflection prompt and a journal of the answers | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| A streak and a week view of how you did | Yes | Yes | Nothing |
| New outfits, seasons and rare items every weekThis is the moat, and it is a content team, not a feature. | No | No | You would be looking at the same bird in the same hat forever |
| Friend trees and sending support to strangers | No | No | Nobody else would be in there |
| Guided breathing and therapy-style exercises | No | Partly | You would write them yourself, and they would not have been reviewed by anyone |
| A reminder to check inNot available to a page. | Yes | No | Nothing |
What you give up
- new outfits, journeys and seasons arriving every week
- the friends and strangers you send support to
- years of reflections kept somewhere safe
- the nudge that actually gets you to open it
Why people still pay
The bird is not the product. The product is that somebody writes new things for it to do every week, which is why people still open Finch in month eight. A habit tracker you abandon in month two is worth nothing, however well built.
Or use one somebody already built
Free and open source. No prompt, no building, no subscription.
- Habitica
- The original habits-as-a-game app: your to-do list levels up a little character, and it is open source and free to use. Harsher and more RPG than Finch, but the same idea done first. (web, ios, android)
- Loop Habit Tracker
- No pet, no story, no subscription. Just habits, streaks and honest charts, free and open source with nothing to sign into. (android)
- Finch free tier
- Most of what people describe when they recommend Finch is free: the bird, the goals, the journeys, the journal. Plus is mostly cosmetics and extras. (ios, android)
Other apps people are freeing
Questions
- Can AI really replace Finch?
- 5 of its 7 core features, yes. The demo above is what one prompt produced. What it cannot do is on this page too.
- What does Finch cost?
- About $70 a year on the Finch Plus plan. The bird, the daily goals, mood check-ins, journeys and the journal are all free. Plus buys more customisation, extra pets, insights and the members-only items.
- Is there a free alternative to Finch?
- Yes: Habitica, Loop Habit Tracker, Finch free tier. They are listed below, and they are somebody else's finished work rather than yours.