Monthly Goal Review Templates in Apps (2026)

Last updated: 2026-10-04

Quick answer: Of the six apps we compared, Day One and Notion document a ready-made monthly review template, and the other four apps' documentation doesn't describe one. Day One's free plan includes a gallery with a monthly reflection and a goal check-in, and Notion's marketplace lists a free community template for rating each month. TickTick publishes a monthly review guide built around its Month View. Todoist and Sunsama are built around weekly reviews, and Routinery shows weekly and monthly stats for your routines.

A monthly review compares what you meant to do with what you actually did. Journal apps like Day One hand you prompts for the writing. The record of finished tasks lives in a to-do app. Few apps below connect the two.

We read the help center, template pages and store listing for six apps. Where a company's documentation stops, we say so. One of the six, Routinery, is ours, so we held it to the same columns and wrote its gaps into its section.

Goal review research: what studies say about looking back

No study we found tested a monthly review on its own. A 2026 rapid review of 13 studies on goal-setting support for older adults looked at programs meant to promote social connection or reduce loneliness in adults aged 60 and over. It found seven recurring components of goal-setting support in those programs, and "ongoing monitoring, feedback and goal review" was one of them. It reports no effect size.

Effect sizes come from weight-loss research. A 2026 meta-analysis pooled 65 randomized trials with about 10,000 participants, all followed for at least six months. Behavioral programs produced a total weight-loss effect of Hedges' g = -0.19 (95% CI -0.30 to -0.13). That's about 3.25 kg more than control groups. Subgroup analyses listed goal setting, feedback on behavior and self-monitoring among the effective techniques, which the authors say "appear to support relative long-term weight outcomes." Maintenance was different. After the initial loss, intervention and control groups showed no significant difference in weight change.

A component network meta-analysis of 68 trials covering 151 trial arms coded nine digital features in weight-loss programs, goal setting and feedback among them, and its authors wrote that "no single digital component could be considered essential for success."

In a two-week workplace study of 73 employees over 516 diary days, a planning exercise raised measured physical activity, but the within-person results did not provide evidence of an additional benefit from daily refreshers of that exercise. Nobody in it did a monthly review. We read it as a reason to judge apps on what the review contains, and to give less weight to how often an app prompts you.

Monthly goal review templates in apps: the comparison table

Apps are listed alphabetically.

"Not published" and "could not confirm" mean we didn't find it in the company's public documentation. The feature may still exist. Prices are US App Store or official pricing-page prices on 2026-10-01.

Day One: a monthly reflection template on the free plan

Day One's template gallery has a Monthly entry under Reflections, and a Goals section with Goal setting, Goal check-in and Goal completion. The Day One templates guide says the gallery works on iOS, Mac, Android and the web, in English only. Journal templates are part of the free Basic plan.

Templates are fixed text. They hold formatting, checklists and prompts, and Day One says there's no variable syntax, so {{date}} stays exactly as typed. Each entry records its own creation date anyway. Nothing about your month gets filled in for you, and using one journal across devices is a Silver feature.

On iPhone, Mac and the web you can give a journal a default template. Name a journal "Monthly Review," set the Monthly template as its default, and every new entry there opens with your prompts on the page. Android cannot do this, so on an Android phone you pick the template by hand.

Notion: build the review once and let it repeat

Notion's marketplace lists a free monthly review template called "Monthly Review - Look back at your month." Its description says it lets you rate each month, document highlights and visualize progress. A community creator made it. You can change any part of the layout.

Repeating database templates keep a Notion review coming back each month. Notion's help page on database templates explains that a template can repeat daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, with a start date, a time and an interval. Set one to monthly and a fresh review page lands in your database on schedule, with last month's page still there to compare.

If you'd rather not design a database yourself, start from the marketplace template and add only the monthly repeat.

TickTick: a published monthly review routine around Month View

TickTick's help center has a page titled "Month View - Monthly Review and Reflection." It walks you through comparing the monthly goals you set at the start against the tasks you completed. You filter by list, turn off "Show Completed" to see only what slipped, and write your takeaways in a note such as "October Review" inside a Review list.

For the counting, TickTick has a feature called Summary. Pick a time range, filter by list, tag, assignee, status or priority, and TickTick turns those tasks into editable text you can drop into a note or export as text or an image. You can save a filter setup as a template, so you are not rebuilding the filters every month. The Notes and Summary guide says inserting a summary into a note works only in notes on mobile.

The help pages do not say which of these features need Premium. Notes come with three preset templates. We found no monthly review among them, so you'd write that one yourself under Settings.

Todoist: a weekly review template, made monthly by its due date

Todoist's official gallery includes a GTD Weekly Review template with steps for before, during and after the review and a recurring task set for Fridays. There's also a Goal Tracker template that links high-level goals to daily tasks. We could not confirm a monthly review template in the public gallery, and the in-app gallery needs a login.

You can turn the weekly one into a monthly ritual. Copy it, adjust the steps, save the project with Save as template, and give the review task a recurring date. Todoist's recurring dates guide accepts "every month" and "every last working day of the month at 15:00," so the review shows up on the same kind of day every month.

Sunsama: weekly objectives, with monthly on the roadmap

Sunsama's review ritual runs on weeks. You set objectives during weekly planning, and the weekly review shows the time you spent against each objective and asks for a reflection. Sunsama has no free plan, only a 14-day trial.

A request for monthly objectives and a monthly planning and review ritual has sat on Sunsama's public roadmap since December 2019. We couldn't read a status on the page, and Sunsama's help documents on objectives cover only weekly planning and the weekly review.

Routinery: monthly stats for your routines, no review template

Routinery records each routine you run and shows weekly and monthly stats on what you kept up. A plant grows for each day you hold a streak. When a routine timer finishes, a screen opens where you pick a mood and write a few lines. That journal screen is confirmed by our team and isn't described in our public listing yet, which is why the table says "company-confirmed."

For a written look back, our MCP connection lets you ask an AI assistant such as Claude to "Analyze my behavior patterns this month" and get completion rates, streaks and skip patterns. MCP is free on every plan.

Our public documentation doesn't describe a monthly review template. The app has no field for a numeric goal or a target date. Exports go through MCP too, since there's no export button in the app. If you want prompts to write against, use Day One or Notion. If your goals are numbers with deadlines, our comparison of apps for setting and tracking SMART goals covers the apps that track targets.

How to choose: start with the half of the review you skip

• You skip the writing: Day One. Set a "Monthly Review" journal with the Monthly template as its default.
• You want one place for goals, notes and the review: Notion, with the free marketplace template and a monthly repeat.
• You lose track of what you finished: TickTick's Month View guide and Summary, or Todoist with a recurring review task.
• Your planning is already weekly: Sunsama's weekly review. Its objectives don't span a month yet.
• Your goals are routines you repeat: Routinery's monthly stats, plus Day One or Notion for the written part.

Getting started: put the review on the calendar first

Choose the review day first. We'd use the last working day of the month, because Todoist and TickTick can both set it as a recurring task. Keep the questions short, since you'll answer them twelve times a year.

If the monthly review keeps sliding, add a short weekly check-in. Our guide to weekly planning that actually sticks covers that rhythm. Prefer paper for the reflection itself? We collected printable paper habit tracker templates you can keep beside a monthly page.

Frequently asked questions: monthly goal review apps

What are the best monthly goal review templates in apps?

Of the six apps we compared, Day One and Notion document a monthly review template you can use as is, and we did not find one described in the other four apps' documentation. In Day One, the free plan's template gallery has a Monthly reflection under Reflections and a Goal check-in under Goals. Notion's marketplace lists a free community template, "Monthly Review - Look back at your month," for rating each month and noting highlights, and Notion's database templates can repeat monthly. TickTick's help center walks through a monthly review with Month View and Summary. Todoist and Sunsama center on the weekly review, while Routinery tracks weekly and monthly stats for routines.

Does Notion have a free monthly review template?

Yes. Notion's marketplace lists "Monthly Review - Look back at your month" at no cost, and another free option called "Simple Monthly Review." Both come from community creators, not from Notion itself. To make the review recur, put the template inside a database and set that database template to repeat monthly, and a new review page appears on schedule with the previous month's page kept for comparison.

Can Todoist do a monthly review?

Yes, with a little setup. Todoist's official gallery has a GTD Weekly Review template with steps for before, during and after the review, and a Goal Tracker template. We could not confirm a monthly review template in the public gallery. Copy the weekly one, save your version as a template, and give the review task a monthly recurring date. Recurring dates work on every Todoist plan, according to its help center.

Is a monthly review better than a weekly one?

The research we found does not compare the two. A 2026 rapid review of programs promoting social connection in older adults lists goal review and feedback among the recurring parts of goal-setting support, but none of the studies we cite tested a monthly cadence against a weekly one. A two-week workplace study did not find evidence of an additional within-person benefit from daily refreshers of a planning exercise. A short weekly check-in and a longer monthly look back can also run side by side, and Todoist, TickTick and Notion can schedule both.

Does Routinery have a monthly review template?

Our public documentation doesn't describe one. Routinery shows weekly and monthly stats for the routines you run, and a journal screen opens after each routine where you pick a mood and write a few lines. Our team confirms that screen, though the public listing doesn't mention it. An AI assistant connected over our free MCP server can analyze the month's routine patterns. For the written reflection, pair Routinery with Day One or Notion.

About this guide. Written by the Routinery editorial team. Because Routinery is our product, we checked it against the same sources a reader could open, and anything only our team can confirm is labeled that way. Competitor facts come from each company's help center, template pages, pricing page or store listing, checked on 2026-10-01. Prices are US prices on that date. The studies cited describe goal-setting and behavior-change programs in specific populations. None of them tested these apps.

References: sources cited above

• Chen P, Fineberg D, Ogrin R. Supporting goal setting to promote social connection in older adults: a rapid review. BMJ Open, 22 September 2026. 13 studies. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42772889/
• Preuhs K, Eekhout I, Andree R, van Keulen H, van Empelen P. Effective Behavior Change Techniques for Successful Weight Loss and Weight Loss Maintenance Among Adults With Overweight and Obesity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Obesity Reviews, published online 10 July 2026. 65 RCTs. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42432828/
• Nunns M, et al. Evaluation of the Aspects of Digital Interventions That Successfully Support Weight Loss: Systematic Review With Component Network Meta-Analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22 May 2025. 68 trials. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40403296/
• Völker J, Koch TJS, Sonnentag S. Healthy intentions: A daily diary intervention study on physical activity and unhealthy snacking at work. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, published online 5 March 2026. 73 employees. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41785137/