6 Moodnotes Alternatives in 2026 (It Hasn't Updated Since 2024)

Moodnotes was the class act of CBT-style mood tracking. Beautiful ustwo design, a clever thinking-traps flow, 4.7 stars from eleven thousand people. Past tense is the point, though. As of August 2026, the current version on the App Store dates to October 2024. Meaningful feature work stopped even earlier. The free tier blocks after a couple of entries, and the subscription still costs more than nearly every rival: $14.99 a month, or $69.99 a year.

Paying premium prices for an unmaintained app is the one clearly wrong answer. Here’s where to go instead, matched to the part of Moodnotes you actually used. (Disclosure: we build MoodKit, #3 below. All facts checked August 2026.)

You used Moodnotes for…	Try
CBT thought records & reframing	Clarity or Moodfit
Understanding what drives your mood	MoodKit
A quick, pretty daily mood diary	Daylio
Naming feelings precisely	How We Feel
Reflective writing with prompts	stoic.

1. Clarity — the thought-record specialist

Clarity (4.8★, ~29k ratings) is the most direct heir to Moodnotes’ core loop: log the situation, the thought, the distortion, the reframe. Its listing describes exactly the CBT self-help journal workflow Moodnotes pioneered, and unlike Moodnotes, someone’s still building it.

• Best for: the thinking-traps workflow, kept alive.
• Watch out for: it’s a journal first, light on mood statistics.

2. Moodfit — the full CBT toolkit

Moodfit (4.7★) bundles thought records with mood tracking, breathwork, standardized check-in questionnaires, and “learn what brings you up and down” analytics, across iPhone, Android, and the web.

• Best for: people who want CBT tools plus factor tracking in one app.
• Watch out for: reviews report recurring bugs and sync issues, an account is required, and the best pricing is on its website rather than in the app.

3. MoodKit — from reframing thoughts to measuring drivers

Moodnotes asks “what were you thinking?” MoodKit asks “what were you doing, and what did it do to your mood?” One-tap check-ins with activity tags feed an engine that ranks your activities by measured mood impact (day counts shown), spots activity combinations, folds in Apple Health sleep, exercise, and steps, and runs week-long self-experiments with verdicts you can trust. It’s also visibly alive: Home and Lock Screen widgets, streak freezes, and Apple Health State of Mind support all shipped in 2026. Everything is computed on-device. No AI, no account.

• Best for: turning a mood log into answers.
• Watch out for: it’s not a CBT therapy-tools app (no thought records), it’s iPhone/iPad only, and it’s trial-then-paid: $39.99/year or a one-time $79.99 Lifetime. Cheaper per year than Moodnotes, for what that’s worth.
• See also: Daylio vs MoodKit shows how we handle these trade-offs.

4. Daylio — the dependable daily diary

Daylio (4.8★, ~61k ratings) drops the CBT layer entirely for a two-tap mood-plus-activities log with streaks, photos, and a genuinely usable free tier. A decade of continuous updates is the exact opposite of Moodnotes’ silence.

• Best for: a safe, simple default that will still exist in five years.
• Watch out for: charts over explanations. The insight gap is its known weakness.

5. How We Feel — emotional precision, free

How We Feel (4.9★, nonprofit, free) replaces thinking-traps with emotion naming: a 140+ word Mood Meter plus one-minute scientist videos. Moodnotes users who loved the psychoeducation side land well here, and the price is zero.

• Watch out for: iOS 17+ only, minimal analytics, no CBT records. (Its alternatives list.)

6. stoic. — reflective writing with structure

stoic. (4.8★) offers guided morning and evening journaling: prompts, mood checks, breathing, gratitude. It’s the “sit down and process it in words” experience, actively developed.

• Watch out for: big and busy, iOS 17+, and its mood log records how you felt but not what caused it.

Two practical notes before you leave

Get your data out while export still works. Abandoned apps eventually break on some future iOS version, and Moodnotes offers no guarantees. Export or screenshot anything you want to keep. Today, not eventually.

Run the price check. Whatever you pick, hold it against Moodnotes’ $69.99/year: Daylio’s lifetime is $59.99 once, MoodKit’s Lifetime is $79.99 once, eMoods Pro is ~$9.99/year, How We Feel is free. The pay-once round-up sorts the whole field.