Daylio vs MoodKit (2026): Which Mood Tracker Fits You?

Somewhere around check-in number two hundred, a lot of Daylio users hit the same wall. The streak is alive, the calendar looks like confetti, and yet they can’t answer one simple question: so what’s actually making my weeks good or bad?

That question is why MoodKit exists. And yes, we build MoodKit, so you should read this with one eyebrow raised. To keep us honest: every fact below is dated, sources are linked, and there’s a whole section on the things Daylio simply does better. There are several.

The short version? Daylio is the better diary. MoodKit is the better analyst. Daylio wins if you want a free, fast micro-journal with photos and Android support. MoodKit wins if you want answers: activities ranked by their measured effect on your mood, week-long self-experiments, and your sleep, exercise, and steps treated as evidence. All computed on your phone, no AI, no account.

Daylio vs MoodKit at a glance

	Daylio	MoodKit
Platforms	iPhone, iPad, Android	iPhone, iPad (iOS 15+)
Free tier	Yes, generous	Free download + full-feature trial, then paid
Check-in	2 taps, ~5 seconds	1-tap moods, tag activities, optional note
Mood scale	5 faces (customizable)	5 moods + unlimited custom moods (any emoji, label, color)
Insights	Charts, counts, correlations	4-tier insight engine: ranked drivers, best/worst weekdays, activity combos, catalysts and triggers
Self-experiments	Not available	Try a habit, skip a habit, or test next-day effects, with a verdict you can trust
Apple Health	Limited use	Reads sleep, exercise, steps as mood factors; writes State of Mind (iOS 18)
Widgets	Home Screen widgets	Home + Lock Screen widgets, one-tap logging, full Year in Pixels widget
App lock	Paywalled on iOS	Face ID / Touch ID lock included
Photos in entries	Yes	No
Languages	~34	11
Premium price (US)	$4.99/mo · $35.99/yr · $59.99 lifetime	$39.99/yr (1-week free trial) · $79.99 lifetime

Facts checked August 2026. US App Store pricing; both apps change prices whenever they feel like it.

What’s actually the same

Both apps make the same core bet: a mood log you’ll still be filling in come December. Pick a mood, tag what you were doing, done. Both have streaks, calendars, and a Year in Pixels view. If you’ve used one, the other feels familiar within a minute.

Where Daylio is simply better

Let’s get our own app’s losses on the table first.

• A real free tier. You can track moods and activities in free Daylio forever. MoodKit gives you a trial with everything unlocked, then asks for money.
• Android. MoodKit is iPhone and iPad only. If there’s any chance you’ll switch platforms, Daylio travels with you.
• Photos. Daylio entries can hold pictures, which quietly turns it into a visual diary. MoodKit can’t do this.
• Customization depth. Daylio advertises thousands of activity icons plus unlimited custom moods and groups. MoodKit supports custom moods and activities too, but Daylio’s catalog is in another league.
• Track record. A 4.8-star average from roughly 61,000 US ratings (App Store, August 2026) and a decade of updates. MoodKit is young and still earning that trust.
• A cheaper lifetime. $59.99 vs MoodKit’s $79.99. Twenty dollars is twenty dollars.

What MoodKit does that Daylio doesn’t

Here’s the funny thing: the best pitch for MoodKit was written by a Daylio user. Daylio’s most-featured App Store review, titled “Wonderful yet lacking,” praises the app and then asks: “Am I learning anything from recording all of this?” The same reviewer wishes they could run experiments on their habits, and notes that Daylio’s correlations sometimes blame harmless activities just because they showed up on bad days.

MoodKit is basically that review, turned into an app.

• Ranked drivers, not wallpaper charts. The Impact Leaderboard sorts your activities by measured effect on your mood and shows the day counts behind every claim. You see what lifts you up and what drags you down, in plain words.

• Self-experiments. The feature that reviewer begged for. Try a habit for a week. Skip a suspect one. Or test next-day effects, like whether a late night hurts tomorrow’s mood. MoodKit re-measures against your own baseline and will happily conclude “this didn’t help.” A tracker that can’t disappoint you can’t inform you either.
• Activity combinations. Hidden Patterns catches pairings you’d never spot yourself, like what happens on days that mix late caffeine with poor sleep. Single-activity stats miss these.
• Apple Health as evidence. With permission, last night’s sleep, your exercise minutes, and steps get ranked right alongside your tagged activities. Daylio barely touches this. MoodKit also writes your check-ins to Apple Health as State of Mind entries on iOS 18. More in our Apple Health guide.
• Widgets that actually log. Home and Lock Screen widgets with true one-tap logging, plus a full Year in Pixels widget: your whole year, on your Home Screen.
• No AI anywhere. Every insight is plain statistics computed on your device. Nothing you feel gets sent to a chatbot, and you can always see why MoodKit says what it says.
• App lock included. Daylio paywalls its PIN and Face ID lock on iOS. We think a privacy feature is a strange thing to charge extra for, so MoodKit’s Face ID / Touch ID lock is just… included.

Privacy

Both apps store your entries locally by default, and neither shows ads. The differences: Daylio offers optional backups to your own cloud drive, while MoodKit has no account of any kind, works fully offline, and syncs only through your own private iCloud if you turn sync on. Like most apps, MoodKit uses standard analytics and crash reporting to keep itself working. That data is about the app, never about how you feel.

The call

Daylio if: you want free, you’re on Android (or might be), you like photo memories, or customizing icons is half the fun for you.

MoodKit if: you’ve tracked for months and learned nothing, you want experiments and ranked drivers instead of raw charts, and you live in the Apple ecosystem.

Trying both costs nothing. Daylio’s free tier is permanent, and MoodKit’s trial opens every feature before you pay a cent. If Daylio’s simplicity wins, keep it. If you eventually want more answers from all that data, you know where the gap is.