A cheaper Sunsama alternative that drafts your day

Sunsama walks you through planning each day by hand. If you'd rather have the plan drafted for you, and pay a lot less, that's where ClaroCal comes in.

Why people look for a Sunsama alternative

Sunsama has a real following, and for good reason. It’s a calm, deliberate daily planner that pulls tasks from your other tools and walks you through choosing what to do today. People who stick with it tend to love the ritual.

The two things that send people shopping are the price and the manual effort. At $25 a month (or about $17 a month billed yearly), it’s one of the pricier planners out there, and there’s no free plan, only a 14-day trial. And the planning is by hand: Sunsama gives you a thoughtful process, but you still drag every task into the day yourself.

If you don’t want to run a planning ceremony every morning, that’s the gap.

What Sunsama is genuinely good at

The intentionality is the whole point, and it works. Sunsama makes you confront how much you’re actually committing to in a day, which is a real fix for over-scheduling. It pulls tasks from Todoist, Asana, Trello, Gmail, and more into one place, and the daily and weekly review flows are well designed.

If the act of planning by hand is what keeps you honest, Sunsama earns its price and ClaroCal won’t replace that feeling. Some people genuinely want the manual ritual.

Where ClaroCal is different

ClaroCal takes the opposite approach to the same goal. Instead of walking you through planning, it drafts the day for you: connect Google Calendar, add your tasks, and ClaroCal places them around the meetings you already have. You can adjust it, but you don’t start from a blank canvas every morning.

Price is the other big difference. The free plan syncs with Google Calendar hourly. Basic is $7.99 a month, or $59.88 for the year (about $5 a month), with 15-minute sync and a 14-day trial. That’s roughly a third of Sunsama’s monthly price, with a free tier Sunsama doesn’t offer.

See the full ClaroCal vs Sunsama comparison, or the best time blocking apps guide for the wider field.

The honest trade-offs

ClaroCal is automatic where Sunsama is deliberate, and that won’t suit everyone. If the manual review is the part that helps you, ClaroCal’s drafted plan can feel like it’s doing the thinking you wanted to do yourself. Sunsama also integrates with more task sources, while ClaroCal is built around Google Calendar.

But if you’ve found yourself paying $25 a month for a ritual you keep skipping, a tool that just hands you a plan, for less, is worth a look.

Last reviewed June 2026.