Best Cleaning Planning Apps: Build the Schedule, Then Run It
A cleaning planning app has to do two jobs: help you decide what your home needs and when, then run that plan every week. Tody, Sweepy, OurHome, Spotless and a $23 offline planner, judged on both.
“Cleaning planning app” is really asking for two things at once, and most apps only do the second. The first job is making the plan: deciding which rooms you have, what each one needs weekly rather than monthly, which day it lands on, and how often the oven and the baseboards come round. The second job is running it: showing you today’s list and keeping score. Tody, Sweepy and Spotless are strong at running a plan and hand you a generic starter list to make one. CleanHouseOS is a $23 one-time offline planner built around the plan itself - a rotation you set room by room, and deep-clean intervals you choose. OurHome is the free pick if the real problem is dividing the work between people rather than deciding what the work is.
If you make the plan badly, no app rescues it, and that is the usual reason a cleaning app is abandoned inside a month. The two mistakes are building a schedule for the home you wish you had, and putting everything on Saturday. A plan that holds has three properties: the daily part is short enough to do tired (ten to fifteen minutes, not an hour), one room per weekday rather than a weekend blitz, and the rare jobs are on an interval, not a memory - the oven every 60 days, grout every 90 - so they surface on their own rather than waiting until they are visibly bad. Every tool below can be made to work that way; they differ in how much of that thinking they do for you and how much you set yourself.
| Tool | Best for | Price | Subscription | Works offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CleanHouseOS | A plan you set yourself, then run | $23 one-time | No | Yes |
| Tody | Auto-resurfacing tasks by “decay” | Paid on iOS, free tier on Android | Yes (Android premium) | Mostly |
| Sweepy | Point-based tasks and leaderboards | Free tier, then paid plans | Yes | Mostly |
| OurHome | Assigning chores to a family for free | Free | No | Partly |
| Spotless | iPhone reminders and widgets | Free, then paid upgrade | Yes | Mostly |
Underneath the plan, every cleaning app is solving one of two different problems, and buying the wrong category is the other reason they get abandoned. The first problem is “I never know what to clean today,” which is a decision problem. The second is “we never share the work fairly,” which is a people problem. A decay algorithm solves the first by guessing; a checklist you own solves the first by structure; a family points system solves the second. Pick for the problem you actually have.
One thing this page is not. If you are planning cleaning jobs for clients - scheduling staff, routing them between houses, quoting and invoicing - none of these are your category and CleanHouseOS least of all. That is field service software: Jobber, ZenMaid, Launch27 and similar. They cost a monthly subscription per user because they do payroll-adjacent work that a household planner has no business touching. The rest of this page is about cleaning your own home.
1. CleanHouseOS - best for a cleaning system you control
CleanHouseOS is our planner, so treat this section as biased and open the demo yourself before deciding. It is a single HTML file you download once for $23. Open it on a laptop, or add it to your iPhone or Android home screen and it behaves like an app.
It has seven tabs, and it is built around structure rather than guesswork. The Dashboard shows today’s tasks, this week’s rotation as a percentage complete, a 14-day streak grid, a count of low supplies, and your next deep-clean due date, so one screen tells you where you stand. The Daily tab holds the 5 to 15 minute maintenance tasks (make the bed, dishes, wipe surfaces, quick tidy), resets at local midnight, and keeps a streak counter so a good run is visible.
The Weekly Rotation is the core idea: one room per day, Monday kitchen, Tuesday bathroom, Wednesday floors, and so on, and you customize which room lands on which day. It auto-flags days you missed rather than silently rescheduling them. The Deep Clean tab handles the things you forget for months. You set an interval (every 30, 60, or 90 days) for tasks like the oven, grout, blinds, and baseboards, and it sorts them by “due in X days” with overdue flags, so nothing quietly slides past a year.
The Rooms tab is a per-room task library (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living, laundry, entry, floors), with each task tagged daily, weekly, or monthly, so you can build the checklist your actual home needs. The Supplies tab is a small inventory: quantity, unit, a low-stock threshold, and last-restock date, with an automatic “Low” flag and a low-only filter you can use as a shopping list before you run out mid-clean. Settings holds your profile, household size, home type (apartment, house, condo), rotation start day, and a full export, import, and reset for your data.
Everything is stored in your browser on your device. Ecuato never receives it, because there is no server and no account. It works fully offline, which is genuinely useful if you clean with your phone in a basement or a garage with no signal.
Where it loses, and this is the honest part: there is no decay algorithm that predicts how dirty a room is, no push notifications or reminders to nag you, no real-time sharing where a roommate edits the same list from their own phone, no cloud sync between your devices except through manual export and import, and it is not in the App Store. If the single feature you need is a daily notification, or a shared household account with points, this is the wrong tool and you should pick one below instead. If you want a system you set once and run on autopilot without a subscription, this is the point of it.
2. Tody - best for auto-resurfacing tasks by “decay”
Tody is the app that popularized the idea of cleaning by decay. Instead of a fixed list, each task has an interval, and Tody visually shows a room getting “dirtier” as time passes since you last did it, then floats the most-overdue tasks to the top. For people who like the app to think for them, that feedback loop is satisfying and effective, and the color-coded rooms make it obvious where to spend twenty free minutes.
On pricing, Tody is a paid one-time purchase on iOS with optional family sharing, while on Android the base app is free and premium features like syncing across devices sit behind an inexpensive yearly subscription. It supports task assignment and rotation among family members, so it is not only a solo tool.
Where it loses: the decay model can drift from reality. It does not know you already wiped the counter, only that time passed, so the list sometimes nags you about things you just did, or stays quiet about a genuine mess because the timer has not elapsed. You are trusting an estimate rather than a schedule you set. If you prefer certainty over a clever guess, that is the tradeoff.
3. Sweepy - best for point-based tasks and a family leaderboard
Sweepy takes the decay idea and gamifies it. Each task is worth up to three points based on effort, you can filter by difficulty or dirtiness to find a low-energy task when you are tired, and a Smart Schedule generates a daily list that fits your available time. The paid tier adds multiple household members, per-person assignments, a daily tracker, and a leaderboard, which turns shared cleaning into light competition.
The free version covers a single user and unlimited custom tasks, which is enough to test whether the model works for you. The premium subscription, billed monthly or yearly, is what unlocks the multi-user and syncing features that most families actually want.
Where it loses: the same decay caveat as Tody applies, plus the gamification is a personality fit rather than a universal win. Points and leaderboards motivate some households and feel like homework to others. And the features that make it worth adopting for a family are the subscription ones, so budget for the recurring cost rather than the free tier.
4. OurHome - best for assigning chores across a family, for free
OurHome is not a decay tool at all; it is a family organizer, and its strength is dividing labor. You create tasks, assign them to specific people, set recurring schedules, and use a points-and-rewards system that works especially well for getting kids to do chores. It also bundles a shared shopping list and a family calendar, so it doubles as a lightweight household hub.
The headline is that it is genuinely free, which for a multi-user chore app is rare and makes it an easy first thing to try with a family or a house of roommates.
Where it loses, and this matters: OurHome has not had a real update in years and has at times been unreliable or unavailable on the US Google Play store. Treat it as “excellent if it works for your devices, but verify it installs and syncs before you build your family’s routine on it.” It is also a chore-assignment tool, not a deep-clean interval tracker, so it will not remind you the oven is overdue by 40 days.
5. Spotless - best for iPhone reminders and home-screen widgets
Spotless is a clean, well-made iOS task manager for the home. You set up rooms, create tasks per room, and it shows at a glance how “due” each task is so you can plan your time. Its standout features are native: scheduled reminder notifications on the days and times you choose, plus home-screen and lock-screen widgets that surface what is due, and sync across your Apple devices.
It is free to start with an optional paid upgrade that unlocks the fuller feature set. For someone who lives in the Apple ecosystem and just wants a gentle nudge and a widget, it is a tidy answer.
Where it loses: it is iPhone and iPad only, so it is a non-starter on Android or a Windows laptop. Like the others, the features you will actually rely on tend to sit behind the paid tier, and it is a reminder-and-checklist tool rather than a rotation-plus-deep-clean-interval system.
How to choose
- Pick CleanHouseOS if you want a fixed, predictable system you set once, with a daily rotation, deep-clean interval tracking, and a supply list, and you do not want a subscription or an account.
- Pick Tody if you like the app deciding what is most overdue for you and you accept that a decay estimate is a guess, not a schedule.
- Pick Sweepy if points and a family leaderboard genuinely motivate your household and you are fine paying monthly for the multi-user features.
- Pick OurHome if your real problem is dividing chores across a family for free, and you have confirmed it installs and syncs on your devices.
- Pick Spotless if you are all-Apple and the one feature you need is a native reminder and a home-screen widget.
Reminders, decay, and the honest tradeoff
The word “schedule” hides a real fork. Tody, Sweepy, and Spotless all lean on the phone doing something to you: a decay timer that resurfaces tasks, or a push notification that interrupts you. That is powerful if a nudge is what makes you clean, and it is the honest reason to pick one of them over our planner. CleanHouseOS takes the opposite bet: no notifications, no algorithm guessing, just a clear system that tells you what is due the moment you open it and a deep-clean tab that flags anything overdue. If you already have the habit of checking a plan and you want it to be predictable, offline, and free of a monthly bill, that is the case for CleanHouseOS. If you need to be reminded, buy the app that reminds you. If you are decluttering at the same time, our best decluttering apps guide covers the sort-and-remove side of a cleaner home.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best cleaning planning app?
It depends on how much you want the app to decide for you. If you want software to estimate how dirty each room is and resurface tasks on its own, Tody or Sweepy do that well. If you would rather build the plan yourself - one room a day, deep-clean intervals you set - and then run it unchanged, CleanHouseOS is a $23 one-time offline planner with no subscription. If the harder problem is splitting the work between people rather than deciding what the work is, OurHome is free and built for that.
How do I make a cleaning schedule that I will actually keep?
Start from your rooms, not from a template. List every room you have, then for each one separate what it needs weekly from what it needs monthly or a few times a year. Put the weekly work on one weekday per room rather than stacking it on Saturday, and keep a short daily list of ten to fifteen minutes - beds, dishes, surfaces, a quick tidy - that you can do on a bad day. Put the rare jobs on an interval instead of trusting memory: oven every 60 days, grout and blinds every 90. Then run it for two weeks before changing anything, because the first version is always slightly too ambitious and you want to see which day you actually miss.
Is there a cleaning planning app for a cleaning business?
Yes, but it is a different category and none of the apps on this page belong to it. Scheduling staff across client houses, routing between jobs, quoting and invoicing is field service software - Jobber, ZenMaid and Launch27 are the usual names - and it is priced as a monthly subscription per user. A household cleaning planner, CleanHouseOS included, plans one home and has no client, staff or invoicing side at all.
Is there a free cleaning schedule app?
Yes. Tody has a usable free version on Android, and Sweepy is free for a single user. OurHome is fully free and adds chore assignment and points for a household. The catch with free tiers is that multi-user sync, extra rooms, or reminders usually sit behind a subscription, so read what the free tier actually includes before you build your whole routine on it.
Do cleaning apps remind you when to clean?
Most native apps like Tody, Sweepy, and Spotless can send push notifications when a task is due. CleanHouseOS deliberately does not. It shows what is due today and flags overdue deep-clean tasks when you open it, but it never pings your phone. If a daily push notification is the feature you actually need to stay on track, pick one of the native apps instead.
Does CleanHouseOS need a subscription or an account?
No. It is $23 once and the file is yours forever, with no account, no login, and no renewal. There is no free trial and no upsell later. Against an app that charges a few dollars a month, the break-even is usually within the first year.
Is my cleaning data private?
Everything you type into CleanHouseOS is saved in your own browser's storage on your own device. It never reaches Ecuato, because there is no server and no account to sync to. That also means it does not automatically follow you to another device unless you use the export and import it yourself.
Does it work offline and on my phone?
Yes. CleanHouseOS is a single HTML file that works fully offline after the first load. You can open it on a laptop or add it to your iPhone or Android home screen and it opens like an app. No connection is needed at any point after you download it.
What is the difference between a decay algorithm and a fixed rotation?
A decay algorithm, used by Tody and Sweepy, assumes a task gets 'dirtier' the longer since you last did it and pushes it up the list automatically. A fixed rotation, used by CleanHouseOS, is a schedule you set: kitchen Monday, bathroom Tuesday, and so on, the same every week. The algorithm feels smart but can drift; the fixed rotation is predictable and never surprises you.
Ecuato builds interactive dashboard planners as single offline HTML apps. About Ecuato and how these guides are written, or browse all planners.