Best Apps for Setting and Tracking SMART Goals (2026)

Last updated: 2026-09-20

Quick answer: Strides is the closest thing to a purpose-built SMART app, since its Target tracker holds a number and a date in the same object and its store listing walks through SMART setup step by step. Todoist has a goal counter, but the unit it counts is tasks finished. TickTick puts a target amount on a habit, so "read 2 pages a day" has a home in it. Notion hands you a number property with a progress bar. You build the rest. Routinery has no target field and no due date field, which is why the table below puts it on the execution side. Achievable and relevant stay with you in every one of them.

Type a goal into a productivity app and you usually get a text field. That field will hold anything. "Get fit" goes in. So does "run 10k in under an hour by April 12." The software treats both the same way, and the acronym on the whiteboard does nothing until some part of the interface holds each piece separately. So this comparison asks a narrow question of five apps: which SMART letters get a real field, and which ones stay in your head.

What the goal research measured: two field experiments, one from 1975 and one from 1982

The evidence behind the S in SMART comes from two logging-industry field experiments, and both are narrow enough that it's worth stating what they actually covered. Truck drivers were told to do their best, and their loads sat well under the legal limit for years. Once the instruction became a specific percentage of legal capacity, compliance moved from 60 percent to 90 percent over nine months, saving $250,000 in the 1975 experiment as Locke and Latham summarize it in their own retrospective. A second study in the same industry swapped the unit. Instead of a load percentage it gave drivers a daily trip count, and that version ran for $2.7 million in savings across 18 weeks in 1982. Neither is recent, and neither should be presented as new. What changed between them is the interesting bit for anyone choosing software. One pinned down the quantity. The other took the same idea and cut it into daily units, which is the S and the T arriving separately, and those two are the pieces an app can hold on your behalf.

The five apps side by side: price, platforms, and store rating

We make Routinery. It sits in the table on the same columns as the other four, in the same order, and the section below states what it has no field for.

Which SMART letters get a real field: the audit

Measurable is the letter that splits these five, and it splits them on units. Four of them will store a number, and only two of those numbers describe the goal itself.

There's a reason to care about that distinction beyond tidiness. When researchers logged keystrokes on 105 programming assignments and compared the real elapsed time against what students reported afterward, the reports ran high 78 percent of the time, with a median ratio of 1.45 between reported and actual. Median measured effort came to 5.1 hours against 8.3 hours reported. It was one course, 33 students, and the authors say plainly that other settings might behave differently. The direction still travels. Looking back at what you did is a different operation from recording it as it happens, and the M in SMART is asking for the second one.

Strides: the only listing here that says SMART out loud

Strides ships four separate tracker types instead of one flexible object, and that's what makes it fit this particular search. A habit tracker for yes/no logging, an Average tracker for a repeating number, a milestone calendar for project timelines, and a Target tracker described in its own store listing as a way to hit a goal by a specific date. The listing also advertises SMART goal setting with step-by-step guidance, which none of the other four do. Templates come bundled, and reminders are unlimited. The problem is reach. There is no Android build, only a waitlist on the company's own site, so an Android user can stop reading here.

Todoist and TickTick: two things both called a goal

Todoist's goal lives in Productivity settings and starts at 5 completed tasks a day and 25 a week. You can change either number or set both to zero to switch the feature off. That counter measures throughput. It tells you whether you cleared your list, and it stays quiet about whether the list was pointed at anything. Todoist's contribution to the T is sharper. Its Deadline field is documented as a separate thing from the date you schedule work on, described as a one-time fixed date by which a task must be completed, and it arrives with Pro and Business, so the free tier doesn't carry it. There is no built-in timer either, which the official help article on Pomodoro use confirms by pointing you at other tools.

TickTick puts the number somewhere else entirely. A habit in TickTick can be set to "achieve it all" or to reach a certain amount, and picking the second one lets you type a daily quantity. Pages, glasses, reps. That shape works for anything you repeat. A goal with one finish line in March has nowhere to sit in it. The free tier caps you at 5 habits, which arrives faster than you'd think once each tracked quantity needs its own slot. TickTick also carries a Pomodoro timer, which Todoist doesn't.

Notion: a number property and the system you build around it

Notion has no goal tracker, and it has the parts for one. Its documentation describes the number property as something that accepts numbers and can be formatted as currency or as progress bars, useful for tracking counts or completion, with formula properties calculating from other properties in the same database. Assemble those and you get a tracker matching your own definition of progress, including definitions no vendor would ship. The failure mode is an abandoned database with three entries in it. Notion's annual price is the highest on this list by a wide margin, and the free tier tightens once a workspace has two or more members, so the setup cost is real in both time and money. If Notion's blank page is the wrong starting point, our best goal tracker apps roundup compares a different lineup on whether a deadline-aware tracker is worth adopting at all.

Routinery: no target field, so it works on the step instead

Routinery has no place to type a target number and no place to type a due date. We checked the App Store description, the public update notes, and the product site, and none of the three mention a numeric goal, a target date, or a progress percentage. It has a daily, weekly and monthly habit tracker with completion analytics, routines you can schedule by day of the week and time of day, and a voice-guided timer that walks through each step while the routine runs. So it answers a narrower question than the others. Did the run happen at 7am? If your goal has a number and a date, Strides holds both and Routinery holds neither. Two routines are free, with unlimited checklists, and the subscription opens the rest.

Achievable and relevant: the two letters that stay with you

Nothing in any of these five decides whether a goal is sized right for you. That judgment happens before the app opens. A 2025 qualitative study asked 27 people what they did when they couldn't meet the standard they'd set for themselves, and the pattern was dropping the activity instead of scaling it down. Half the workout wasn't on the menu. An over-sized A therefore tends to produce a zero in the log, which reads identically to a zero from losing interest. The study is small and skewed toward women and white participants, and its authors treat the idea as a first look with no prevalence figure attached, so the mechanism is what carries over here.

Relevant is even further outside what software can see. A goal tracker will happily hold a target you no longer care about and will keep sending reminders about it in April.

Three weeks in: what the self-monitoring numbers look like

Setting a goal and still logging it in week three are different problems. In a 21-day study of 97 people doing dietary self-monitoring, adherence split cleanly by how much support each group had, running 0.55 in the unsupported group against 0.83 in the intensively supported one, with tailored feedback landing in between. All three declined over the 21 days. The unsupported group fell fastest. That study was run on a weight-loss program. Carrying it across to goal apps is our inference, and its authors make no such claim, so treat the direction as suggestive and the numbers as belonging to dietary logging. An app that pings you and shows a pace line is running a thin version of that middle condition, and an empty spreadsheet is the unsupported group.

How to choose: start from the letter you keep losing

The goal has a number and a finish date. Strides is built around exactly that pairing, provided you're on an Apple device.

The goal is really a project with a hard cutoff. Todoist's deadline field separates when you plan to work from when the thing is actually due, which is the distinction that keeps a long project honest.

The goal is a daily quantity you want to repeat. TickTick's habit goals take an amount per day, and its timer covers the sessions that need one.

You want the tracker to match your own definition of progress. Notion will do it, at the highest price here and with the setup on you.

The plan is fine and the execution isn't. Routinery times the steps and talks you through them, and it won't tell you whether the number is on pace.

Getting started: put one goal into the fields the app actually has

Take a single goal and write it out before you download anything. Give it a unit, a quantity, and a date. "Read more" becomes "read 20 pages a day through October." Then check whether your chosen app has a field for each of those three, because if it doesn't, you'll end up holding the missing piece in your head, which is the arrangement the recall study above should make you nervous about. For goals that need breaking into weeks before any of this makes sense, our guide on how to plan goals quarterly and break them into daily tasks covers the step that comes first. And if you're starting from nothing, there's a case for why it pays to track first when you start with a habit app before you commit to a target at all.

Frequently asked questions: SMART goal apps

What are the best apps for setting and tracking SMART goals in 2026?

Strides is the closest match, since its Target tracker holds a number and a target date together and its listing includes step-by-step SMART guidance. Todoist suits goals that break into tasks, because its deadline field is distinct from the date you schedule work on. TickTick fits repeating daily quantities through its habit goals. Notion works when you want to define progress yourself and accept the setup cost. Routinery covers the execution step, since it has no target or due-date field at all. Which one wins depends on the letter your goals keep failing.

Does any app handle the achievable and relevant parts of SMART?

Those two are judgments you make before opening anything. No target field can tell whether 10k in under an hour is reasonable for you this year, or whether the goal still connects to something you want. That gap matters more than it sounds. A 2025 qualitative study of 27 people found that when an ideal standard felt out of reach, participants tended to skip the activity entirely instead of scaling it back, so an over-sized target often yields nothing at all. Sizing the goal stays a manual job in all five.

Which of these apps lets me set a numeric target?

Four of the five, with different units. A Strides Target tracker takes the goal's own unit. In TickTick the number lands on a habit once you pick the reach-a-certain-amount option, so it has to be a per-day quantity. Notion will hold whatever you define in a number property, which can be displayed as a progress bar. Todoist counts completed tasks instead, defaulting to 5 a day and 25 a week, which measures throughput and says nothing about the goal's own unit. Routinery has no numeric target field, and logs habit completions daily, weekly or monthly.

Are these SMART goal apps free?

All five have a free tier and the limits differ sharply. Strides calls itself free forever and publishes no tracker cap, with Plus adding unlimited trackers, sync between devices, and data export. Todoist gives you 5 personal projects free, though deadlines sit behind Pro or Business. TickTick allows 5 habits, 19 lists, and 99 tasks per list before Premium, while Notion's free plan tightens the moment a workspace has two or more members. Routinery includes 2 routines with unlimited checklists. For a SMART setup, the deadline and target caps will bite you long before the headline price does.

Do I need a dedicated SMART app, or will a to-do list work?

A to-do list works when the goal decomposes cleanly into tasks with dates, which covers most project-shaped goals. It works badly when progress is a quantity that accumulates, because ticking items off says nothing about how much you accumulated. The two logging studies above ran that same split, one on a load percentage and one on a daily trip count. Pick the tool by which of those two shapes your goal has, and skip the dedicated app when the task list already carries the number you care about.

About the author. Written by the Routinery team. Routinery is one of the five apps in the table above, and its two missing fields are listed in the same audit table as everyone else's.