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The best free chore app for couples is Lyven: free to use, with the whole system and no per person tier. The test for everything else on this list is whether two people can share it without paying, and two apps that show up on nearly every "best chore app for couples" list can't. Here's what free covers in each one.
Written by the team at Lyven · prices and free plan limits checked in each app's own paywall on the Australian App Store, 21 September 2026 (Cozi and Maple not re-checked).
Lyven is free to use, with the whole system, nothing held back and no per person tier. Both of you, from the first day.
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 keeps the deck free and charges for the Visualizer and extra Brain Dumps. Maple has no free tier and is closing. 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.
Prices and free plan limits read off each app's own paywall on the Australian App Store on 21 September 2026. Cozi and Maple not re-checked.
| App | What you get free | What free doesn't cover | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lyven Free |
The whole system for two people: every job with one owner, the weekly check in, the shopping list and meals. | Nothing is held back. You can set your home up now. | Nothing today. Any paid extras later would be optional. |
| 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: AU$5.99/mo, AU$29.99/yr or AU$79.99 lifetime on the Australian App Store (about US$3.99/mo or US$19.99/yr). One subscription covers the household. |
| Cozi | Calendar, lists and chores for the whole family, shared across devices. | Ads, month view, search, more than one reminder, planning past 30 days, and telling the family about a new event. | Cozi Gold, A$59/yr in Australia |
| Nipto | The shared points game with your partner, up to five recurring task groups. Ad supported. | Unlimited scheduled tasks, the full history and stats, and an ad free app. One premium account covers the team. | AU$2.99/mo, AU$19.99/yr or AU$29.99 lifetime on the Australian App Store (about US$1.99/mo or US$12.99/yr) |
| Sweepy | A cleaning schedule for one person. | Sharing with anyone. Inviting a member is a Pro feature, along with smart scheduling and multiple homes. | Pro: AU$5.49/mo or AU$29.99/yr after a free trial, on the Australian App Store (about US$20/yr) |
| Tody | A cleaning schedule on a single device. | Syncing and sharing. Sync to a second device is Premium; sharing with a partner needs Premium+ Duo. | Premium Solo AU$14.99/yr; sharing with a partner needs Premium+ Duo, AU$39.99/yr (about US$24.99), on the Australian App Store. 30 day free trial. |
| FairShare | The card deck and the partner link. No card cap found on a free account (85 cards in the deck); Brain Dumps are the capped feature. | The Full Visualizer, Pattern Memory and more Brain Dumps. FairShare+ starts as a seven day trial, then bills automatically. | FairShare+ at AU$14.99/mo or AU$229.99 lifetime on the Australian App Store (about US$8.99/mo). No annual plan on the paywall; a one time AU$59.99/yr offer with a 24 hour timer appears when you dismiss it. One subscription covers both partners. |
| Maple | No free tier, and closing on 31 December 2026. | 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.
Three pairs from this table are also compared head to head, with Lyven left out of the picture: Cozi vs Cupla on shared calendars, Nipto vs Tody on points, and Sweepy vs Tody on cleaning schedules.
Free without an app at all is also worth naming: the chore chart template and the 68 job chores list are both printable PDFs with no account and no email form.
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 a trial. Not a discount with an expiry date on it. Both of you, the whole system, no card.
We may add paid extras later. See Foundation membership.
Everything Lyven does, and what each part costs.
We're saying so 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.
You can set your home up in a couple of minutes, with no app store hunt. The Split Check needs no account and works right now.
A free offer in this category is worth checking rather than taking on trust. Who built Lyven, and what it will never ask you for has who we are, where we are, and how your data is handled.
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.
One more thing worth checking if you're not in the US: where an app is built, and which country's privacy law its data sits under. The Australian comparison sets that out app by app.
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 →
Lyven, if you want the whole system free: it is free to use, with nothing held back and no per person tier. 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 keeps the deck free and charges for the Visualizer and extra Brain Dumps. Maple has no free tier and is closing.
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's free plan lets you connect a partner, with Brain Dumps capped and the Visualizer paid. Maple has no free tier and is closing. Lyven is free to use 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.
Lyven is free to use, with the whole system and no per person tier. We may add paid extras later, and nobody is charged without choosing to. See Foundation membership. You can set your home up now.
Yes. Lyven has no subscription: it is free to use, with the whole system for both of you, no card, no ad and no trial clock. We may add paid extras later, but nobody is charged without choosing to. Every paid app on this page caps its free plan somewhere, usually at sharing with a partner or at a number of recurring chores, and that is where the subscription starts.
The honest one: it is built for two adults, so multi member households are a later phase. What there isn't is a card, an ad, a trial clock or a feature held back to make you upgrade.
They were read off each app's own paywall on the Australian App Store on 21 September 2026, which is the only place that shows what a free plan excludes. 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.