ftns.ai vs Daylio: A Private Fitness Habit Game vs a Two-Tap Mood Diary

This Daylio review is for anyone who uses Daylio, or is weighing it up, and wonders if it is worth it and what to pair it with. Short answer: if you want a quick, private diary where you pick a mood and a few activities in two taps and watch patterns build up over months, Daylio does exactly that and does it well. If you want a private game about showing up for workouts, walks, rest days, sleep and food, ftns.ai does a different job. Many people could use both.

We have already compared ftns.ai with Finch, a self-care app with a little bird you look after, and mapped the wider family of care-loop apps. Daylio is one of the biggest names among simple daily check-in apps, so it gets its own look.

What is the Daylio app?

Daylio is a micro-diary for iPhone and Android: you pick how your day felt from a simple mood scale, tap the activities you did, and it turns your entries into charts, a calendar and a Year in Pixels view.

You can add a note or a writing template, change the moods and emojis, pick activity icons and colour themes, and use a dark mode. Stats run weekly, monthly and yearly and show which activities and moods tend to appear together. There are goals with reminders, achievements and CSV export; PDF export is part of Premium.

It sits between a diary and a mood and habit tracker app, and exercise can be one of your activities. It is listed on the App Store by Relaxio s.r.o. and on Google Play by Habitics.

What Daylio is genuinely good at

• It is fast: an entry takes a couple of taps, no typing.
• It is flexible: you choose the moods, the activities and the icons.
• Its stats are a real strength: long-term patterns are easy to see.
• It is private by design: there is no account, and entries are stored on your phone.
• There is a free version to keep using; Premium is optional.
• It is very well rated: 4.8 stars from about 62K ratings on the US App Store, and 4.7 stars from about 464K reviews on Google Play (both checked 28 October 2026).

Is Daylio free? What does Daylio Premium add?

Yes. Daylio has a free version you can keep using, and an optional upgrade called Daylio Premium. Its help center mentions a free seven-day trial to test it.

Daylio says the free version stays unlimited, and you can downgrade later without losing data. Premium adds advanced stats, unlimited moods and goals, 2,000+ extra icons and emojis, custom note templates, more reminders, automatic backups, PDF export, extra colour themes and, on iPhone, PIN lock.

Daylio’s help center refers to both subscriptions and a one-time lifetime purchase. Prices are shown in the app before you buy and vary by country and plan.

Is Daylio private? Where do your entries live?

Daylio is built to be private: there is no account, your entries are stored on your phone, and backups are optional and go to your own cloud storage.

Its privacy policy says there is no account option, so Daylio cannot see your entries, and your data and calculations stay on your device. Backups go to your own Google Drive on Android or iCloud Drive on iPhone, which Daylio cannot access, or to a backup file you export yourself. Its help center says backups travel over encrypted connections and are stored encrypted by Google or Apple.

You can lock the app with a PIN, fingerprint or Face ID. Its App Store privacy label lists only data not linked to you, and its Google Play listing says no data is shared with third parties.

Both apps keep your day-to-day entries on your phone. ftns.ai saves your logs, workouts and twin in protected files on your phone, nothing read from Apple Health leaves it, and it uses location only when you start a run, to draw a route that stays on your phone. Unlike Daylio, it has an account: a small account profile syncs so another phone recognises your progress. More in where your data lives.

Is Daylio worth it?

It is worth it if a quick daily check-in and long-term patterns are what you want, and the free version lets you find out at no cost. If your real goal is to keep showing up for exercise, it records that you did it; it does not make the habit itself the game.

Daylio is a diary, not advice. If how you have been feeling is worrying you, talk to a qualified health professional; an app is not the right place for that.

What ftns.ai is for

ftns.ai is a fitness habit game for iPhone. Your twin, a living 3D avatar of you, reacts when you log and rebuilds weekly from what you actually tracked. It is not a body scan; here is what a digital twin is.

One Life Score, 0 to 100, comes from six categories: nutrition, training, recovery, sleep, mood and consistency. A mood check is one of the things you log in ftns.ai too, alongside meals, workouts, water, sleep and steps, but it is one input to a fitness game, not a diary.

Your coach builds a workout plan when you ask, from your goal, pace, equipment and excluded exercises. Offered, never imposed: a finished plan waits in the coach inbox until you choose to add it. Your coach is a game feature, not a health professional.

Both apps have streaks, and they work differently. In Daylio, a goal’s streak breaks if you miss the repetitions you set, while your level stays. In ftns.ai, you set your own goal frequency and streak freezes cover the days life gets in the way. Rest isn’t a miss, and XP never decreases. Ever. More on that in is it okay to miss a day.

It is also private. No social feed, no friends list, no leaderboards. More in why there is no social side. It is one paid membership.

ftns.ai vs Daylio at a glance

Daylio details from its official site, help center and privacy policy and its US App Store and Google Play listings, checked 28 October 2026.

Who should pick which, and using both

• Pick Daylio if you want a fast, private diary for how your days feel, love seeing a whole year at a glance, want something free to start, or are on Android.
• Pick ftns.ai if you want the exercise habit itself to be the game, not a line in a diary; rest days that count instead of costing you; and a coach who builds a workout plan when you ask.
• Use both if you like each: Daylio for a quick daily diary of how you feel and what you did, ftns.ai to keep your fitness habit visible and rewarding. The two apps don’t connect to each other.

Comparing routine and habit apps? See ftns.ai vs Fabulous, or read how to stay consistent with working out.

A Daylio alternative for your fitness habit

If you are looking at Daylio alternatives, or apps like Daylio for fitness, a private fitness habit game is a different kind of tool: it rewards showing up rather than recording how the day went.

If that sounds like you, try ftns.ai. It is a paid iPhone membership, free for 7 days, then $14.99/mo or $167.99/yr, so you can see whether the habit sticks before you pay.

One app remembers how your days felt. The other just wants you back tomorrow.