Sunsama
Sunsama is a daily planner and timeboxing calendar that turns scattered tasks into one realistic, focused day.
Sunsama's guided planning and shutdown rituals are the actual product — the timeboxing calendar is the surface they run on. At $17/mo billed yearly it's a serious commitment for a personal planner, and the lack of a free tier will scare off the casual-curious. For anyone juggling five tools and losing the plot daily, it's money well spent.
Verified 14d ago · liveness 81/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/sunsama
- Executives, founders, and leads who juggle meetings and a long personal task list
- Product managers chasing follow-ups spread across Asana, Jira, Linear, Slack, and email
- Remote workers who need a ritual that forces an end to the workday
- Freelancers and solo professionals who want one calendar for paid work and personal chores
- Teams needing shared project dependencies, sprint boards, or a team backlog
- Buyers who require a free-forever tier — Sunsama explicitly doesn't offer one
- Users who want a bare list-only task manager with no calendar overhead
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Skip Sunsama if you need a free tool, collaborative project management with shared dependencies, or prefer a flexible, non-ritual-based task list—this will frustrate you.
There's no free tier; after the 14-day trial you must pay $17/mo (yearly) or $22/mo (monthly) to keep using it.
At $17/mo (yearly) or $22/mo (monthly), Sunsama is mid-priced among daily planners: cheaper than Motion ($34/mo) and comparable to Akiflow ($19/mo), but pricier than free tools like Todoist. It fits professionals who value structure and are willing to pay for behavior change, not teams needing basic to-do lists.
In short
Sunsama — Sunsama is a daily planner and timeboxing calendar that turns scattered tasks into one realistic, focused day. Best for Executives, founders, and leads who juggle meetings and a long personal task list, Product managers chasing follow-ups spread across Asana, Jira, Linear, Slack, and email, Remote workers who need a ritual that forces an end to the workday. Free to start; paid plans from $17/mo.
What's new in Sunsama
Checked 2 days agoAcross the latest 3 updates: 1 feature update and 2 community discussions.
How to Avoid Burnout at Work and Reclaim Your Energy
Sunsama publishes guidance on spotting burnout early and using time-blocking and shutdown rituals as defenses.
The Hybrid Worker's Focus Problem: Why You're Getting 30% Less Deep Work
Sunsama argues hybrid work fragments focus and costs 30% of deep work, and outlines a system to protect it.
Sunsamagotchi: A Reflection on Focus and Simplicity
Sunsama introduces Sunsamagotchi, a minimalist device that surfaces your day's top task as a tactile reminder.
What people actually say about Sunsama — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
58 mentions across 4 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, App Store) · researched Aug 24, 2026.
Average across the 4 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Life-changing for desktop users who commit to the daily ritual.
- +Powerful timeboxing: drag tasks directly onto the calendar.
- +Deep integrations with Asana, Jira, Notion, Todoist, Slack, and more.
- +Bi-directional calendar sync with Google, Outlook, and Apple Calendar.
- +Focus mode and Pomodoro timer help block distractions and stay on task.
- −Mobile app is buggy, slow, and nearly unusable for task editing.
- −Setup and daily ritual are tedious and require a computer.
- −No Kanban/board view, frustrating for ADHD and visual planners.
- −High price tag for a clunky experience, especially on mobile.
- −Support is unresponsive to reported bugs and login issues.
- • Mobile app bugs may push you toward desktop-only, but that doesn't lower the price.
- • No free tier after trial — only a 14-day trial, then paid.
- • Some users feel the price is unjustified given the mobile clunkiness.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Sunsama? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Timebox tasks directly onto your calendar
- Auto-schedule tasks into open slots
- Guided daily planning ritual with realistic workload view
- Daily shutdown routine that logs automatic highlights
- Pomodoro timer and focus mode
- Break reminders to maintain energy
- Weekly objectives tracking
- Bi-directional calendar sync (Google, Outlook, Apple)
- Pull tasks from Asana, ClickUp, GitHub, Jira, Linear, Monday.com, Notion, Todoist, Trello, Toggl
- Convert Slack and Microsoft Teams messages into tasks
- Drag Gmail and Outlook emails into your task list
- Daily and weekly time analytics
- Zapier integration across 9,000+ apps
- AI + MCP integration included in Pro
- iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and Linux apps
About Sunsama
Sunsama is a daily planner, calendar, and task manager built for professionals who are tired of ending the day unsure whether they actually did the important work. Executives, engineers, product managers, marketers, and operations leads use it to pull tasks from everywhere they already live — Asana, Jira, Linear, Trello, Todoist, Notion, Slack, email — and lay them onto a single calendar they can actually trust. The core move is timeboxing. You drag work onto your schedule, auto-scheduling fills open slots, and a guided planning ritual asks you to pick what matters before the meetings eat the day. Through the day, focus mode, Pomodoro timers, and break reminders hold the line, while a shutdown routine and automatic daily highlights close things out without the vague guilt of an unfinished list. Integration breadth is where Sunsama earns its keep. Calendars sync bi-directionally with Google, Outlook, and Apple; project and task tools feed tasks in; Slack and Teams messages convert to tasks; Gmail and Outlook emails drag straight into your list. Zapier covers 9k+ apps, and AI + MCP support is included in the Pro plan. Enterprise adds SSO/SAML, SCIM, and audit logs, backed by SOC 2 compliance. It is not a project management suite and doesn't pretend to be — no shared dependencies or native Kanban. Against Asana or Jira it looks thin, but that's the point: Sunsama is personal planning software priced at $17/month billed yearly ($22 monthly), with a 14-day trial and no free-forever tier by deliberate choice.
Behind the Verdict
Most task apps assume the problem is capture. Sunsama assumes the problem is the day — that you have more work than hours and no honest picture of either. If that's your situation, this is one of the few tools built around the constraint rather than pretending it doesn't exist. We'd reach for it when your calendar and your to-do list live in different worlds and you're the integration. The guided planning ritual is genuinely opinionated: it makes you pick, then blocks the time, then holds you to it. The shutdown routine is the sleeper feature — ending on time with a recorded set of wins does more for burnout than any Pomodoro gimmick. When to pass: if you need shared project dependencies, sprint boards, or a team backlog, this is the wrong shelf entirely. Go to Asana, Linear, or Jira for that and let Sunsama sit on top if you still want a daily plan. Also pass if you refuse to pay — there's no free forever plan, and the team has written a manifesto explaining why they won't add one. Don't expect a trial to convert you for free. The closest alternative is a stack, not a product: Todoist or Things for tasks, Google Calendar for time, a Pomodoro app for focus, and your willpower for the rest. Sunsama's bet is that you'd rather pay $17/mo yearly than spend the cognitive load assembling that yourself every morning. A practical caveat. The value compounds only if you do the ritual. Skip planning and Sunsama degrades into a nice-looking calendar with too many panes. Commit to five minutes at the start and five at the end for two weeks and it clicks; treat it as a list you occasionally glance at and you'll churn. The enterprise path (SSO/SAML, SCIM, audit logs, SOC 2) is aimed at people whose IT team has to sign off before calendars and email get connected. That's a real
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Sunsama actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You start each morning with Sunsama's planning ritual, pulling tasks from Jira, Notion, and Slack, timeboxing them on your calendar, and protecting focus blocks.
Outcome: You gain clarity on your day, reduce context switching, and end the day with a shutdown routine that logs wins and blockers, feeling accomplished and less stressed.
You use Sunsama to unify your calendars and tasks across meetings, email, and project tools, and use Pomodoro timers to maintain deep work on your top priority.
Outcome: You consistently finish your most important work, avoid burnout, and keep a healthy work-life balance, even with a demanding schedule.
You plan your day with Sunsama, integrating your client projects from Trello and Google Tasks, and timeboxing both work and personal tasks.
Outcome: You have a single view of your workload, ensure you don't overbook, and track time to invoice accurately and optimize your energy.
Use Cases
- Run a 15-minute daily planning ritual that pulls tasks from Jira, Linear, and Gmail into one ordered day.
- Time-block a deep-work morning and a meeting-heavy afternoon with explicit estimates per task.
- End each day with a guided shutdown to log wins, blockers, and tomorrow's top three.
- Weekly review that surfaces what got pushed and what consistently overflows.
- Onboard remote team members by aligning their weekly objectives and daily plans in shared view.
- Reduce context switching by converting Slack/Teams messages into actionable tasks in your plan.
- Use Pomodoro timers to maintain flow during deep work sessions within your timeboxed blocks.
- Track time analytics to optimize workload and energy levels over weeks.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-22
Limitations
- Sunsama is a paid product after a 14-day free trial (no credit card required), with a single Pro Plan priced at $17/month billed yearly or $22/month billed monthly.
- It is opinionated by design, centered on guided daily planning, timeboxing tasks onto a calendar, and a daily shutdown ritual.
- AI features exist but are only described as 'AI + MCP + Zapier' bundled in the Pro Plan, with no specific underlying models or advanced AI capabilities detailed in the evidence.
- An Enterprise tier adds custom security, compliance, integration, and billing options.
as of 2026-08-30
Verification history
We have re-verified Sunsama 19 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 19 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Sunsama tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free Trial
$0 for 14 days
Pro (billed yearly)
$17/mo billed yearly
Pro (billed monthly)
$22/mo billed monthly
Enterprise
Contact Us
Ideal for
Mid-to-large companies needing security, compliance, and admin controls like SSO, SCIM, and audit logs.
What this tier adds
Adds SSO & SAML, SCIM + Audit Logs, and custom privacy/data requirements, with custom pricing.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Sunsama's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
At $17/mo (yearly) or $22/mo (monthly), Sunsama is mid-priced among daily planners: cheaper than Motion ($34/mo) and comparable to Akiflow ($19/mo), but pricier than free tools like Todoist. It fits professionals who value structure and are willing to pay for behavior change, not teams needing basic to-do lists.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Sunsama — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Setting up Sunsama takes about 15 minutes: sign up, connect your calendar and task tools, and customize your daily ritual. You'll feel the difference on day one, but plan to spend a week adjusting to the timeboxing mindset.
Switching to or from Sunsama
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Todoist or TickTick: Import projects and tasks via CSV, or manually recreate them in Sunsama's task list.
- →From Asana or Trello: Use Sunsama's native integration to pull tasks directly into your daily plan, no import needed.
- →From Google Calendar: Connect your Google account to sync events and timebox tasks alongside your schedule.
- ↗To Motion or Akiflow: Export your tasks from Sunsama via CSV and import into the new tool.
- ↗To Todoist: Manually recreate tasks or use a clipboard/CSV approach to move your list.
- ↗To Asana or Jira: Use their native integrations to push tasks back from Sunsama if you're moving to team project management.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Sunsama”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Sunsama” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Sunsama.
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