Free means five different things in this category, and one of them is a plan only one person can use. Two apps that show up on nearly every "best chore app for couples" list are single user until you pay, which makes them the wrong answer to the question people are asking. Here's what free covers in each one.
Written by the team at Lyven · prices checked 31 July 2026.
Every paid app here caps its free plan somewhere, and for a couple the cap usually lands on something you need daily: sharing at all, syncing to a second device, or how many recurring chores you're allowed.
Sweepy and Tody are single user until you pay. Nipto stops at five recurring task groups. Homsy covers two people but caps recurring chores, tasks and lists. Cozi is ad supported. FairShare and Maple have no ongoing free tier at all.
Lyven is free for life if you join during the beta, with the whole system and nothing held back. That's the honest comparison, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it.
Sweepy's free version is single user. Sharing with a partner is the paid feature.
Tody's free version has no cloud sync, so it lives on one device. Your partner can't see it, which amounts to the same thing.
Both are good cleaning apps and both are honest about it in their own pricing. The problem is that they get recommended in couples roundups on the strength of having a free tier, and for a couple that free tier isn't a cheaper version of the app. It's a different product, with the one thing you came for sitting behind the paywall.
So the first question to ask about any free plan here isn't what it includes. It's whether your partner is in it.
Checked against each app's own site and store listing in late July 2026.
| App | What you get free | What free doesn't cover | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lyven Free for life |
The whole system for two people: every job with one owner, the weekly check in, the shopping list and meals. | Nothing is held back. Households join in waves, so you start on the waitlist. | Nothing, for beta households. Ever. |
| Homsy | Shared chores with rotation, a calendar and lists for a household of two, with real time sync. No card, no time limit. | Unlimited recurring chores, tasks, notes and lists. Also extra members, task attachments, custom colours, Google Calendar sync and the whiteboard. | Pro, about US$5.99/mo or US$29.99/yr |
| Cozi | Calendar, lists and chores for the whole family, shared across devices. | An ad free experience. The free tier is ad supported. | Cozi Gold, US$39/yr |
| Nipto | The shared points game with your partner, up to five recurring task groups. | More than five groups, unlimited history, the advanced stats. | About US$1.99/mo or US$12.99/yr |
| Sweepy | A cleaning schedule for one person. | Sharing with anyone. Multi user is the paid feature. | About US$3.99/mo or US$20/yr |
| Tody | A cleaning schedule on a single device. | Cloud sync, so your partner can't see it. | Premium Solo US$9.99/yr, Duo US$24.99/yr |
| FairShare | A seven day trial. | Everything after day seven. There's no ongoing free tier. | US$8.99/mo or US$59.99/yr |
| Maple | No free tier. | n/a | About US$5 to US$10/mo, shown in app |
App pricing changes often and varies by country and by store, and several of these publish no single figure. Treat these as a guide and check before you buy. A fuller feature by feature breakdown of all nine is on the compare page.
Every job in the house, from the school forms to the bins to booking the dentist, gets one owner. Not shared, not rotated. That owner carries the noticing and the planning as well as the doing, weighted by how much real effort the job takes.
That's fused with the shopping list and the meals, so it's part of the daily running of the home rather than a separate thing to maintain. There's no scoreboard and there are no points, because a split that has to be scored is a split someone has to keep score of.
The reason that matters here: most free plans in this category are free versions of rotation or points. Rotation needs someone tracking whose turn it is, and that's usually the partner already carrying more. Handing that person a free app doesn't move the load, it just moves where they do the tracking.
Not free for a while. Not free until we've got enough users. Not a discount with an expiry date on it. Free, for as long as you use it.
When Lyven opens to everyone there'll be paid tiers adding depth, things like projects and outsourcing. Beta households aren't being moved onto them. You keep what you have.
We're putting that on the page rather than in a footnote, because "free" in this category usually has a clock on it and you should be able to tell which kind you're looking at.
The one honest caveat: households join in waves while we're in beta, so you start on the waitlist rather than downloading it this afternoon. That way each new household gets looked after properly as it lands. The Split Check needs no account and works right now.
A cap on the number of recurring chores is easy to miss when you sign up and impossible to miss two months in. Recurring chores are most of what a household actually runs on: the bins, the washing, the shop, the lunchboxes. A free plan that limits them is limiting the part you came for, even when everything else about it is open.
This is worth checking inside the app rather than on the pricing page. Marketing copy tends to describe a free plan by what it includes, while the upgrade screen is where you see what it doesn't. The two don't always leave you with the same impression.
Homsy is the broadest app here: chores with rotation, a shared calendar, shopping lists and utility tracking in one place, on iOS and Android, and its free plan does cover two people rather than one. If you want the widest feature set and the caps don't bother you, it's a reasonable pick.
The difference from Lyven isn't the price. Rotation needs someone holding the schedule, and it resets the noticing every cycle. Lyven gives each job a single owner who keeps it, noticing included, which is the part built to stop the split drifting back. The detail is in Lyven vs Homsy.
The free two-minute Split Check weighs every job by how often it comes up and how much effort it really takes, then shows you where your household sits right now. No sign-up, no account.
Find your fair →Every paid app in this category caps its free plan somewhere, and for a couple the cap usually lands on something you need daily. Sweepy and Tody are single user on their free plan, so a couple can't share them at all without paying. Nipto stops at five recurring task groups. Homsy covers two people but caps recurring chores, tasks and lists. Cozi is ad supported. FairShare and Maple have no ongoing free tier. Lyven is free for life for any household that joins during the beta, with the whole system and nothing held back.
On the free plan: Homsy (two members, with caps on recurring chores, tasks and lists), Cozi (ad supported) and Nipto (capped at five recurring task groups) all let two people share. Sweepy's free version is single user and Tody's free version has no cloud sync, so it stays on one device. FairShare is a seven day trial rather than a free tier, and Maple has no free tier. Lyven is free through the beta with the whole system and no per person tier.
Sharing is the feature people will pay for, so it is a common place to put the paywall. That is a reasonable business decision and it isn't hidden, but it does mean a free plan can look generous in a review and still not do the one thing a couple downloaded it for. It is worth checking before you both spend an evening setting one up.
For beta households, yes. If you join during the beta, Lyven stays free for your household for life, with the whole system and no per person tier. When Lyven opens to everyone there will be paid tiers adding extra depth, such as projects and outsourcing, but beta households keep what they have and don't move onto them. During the beta households join in waves, so you start on the waitlist.
The honest ones: households join in waves during the beta, so you start on the waitlist rather than downloading it today. It is built for two adults, so multi member households are a later phase. And it is a young product, so it has fewer years of polish than something like Cozi. What there isn't is a card, an ad, a trial clock or a feature held back to make you upgrade.
They were checked in late July 2026 against each app's own site, store listing and upgrade screen. App pricing and free plan limits change often and vary by country and by store, and a published pricing page doesn't always match what the app itself shows when you go to upgrade. Treat these as a guide and check inside the app before you buy.