Sunsama alternative for freelancers: the capacity test

Lars opens the renewal email on a Tuesday. Sunsama, going up again. He has used it for two years and the morning planning is genuinely good. But last Thursday he still said yes to a rush job, slotted it into a tidy column, and worked until 9pm anyway. The tool showed him a calm plan. It never told him the week was already full.

So the renewal question is not "is the ritual worth the money." It is "why am I paying for a planner that never tells me to stop."

Which Sunsama alternative is best for freelancers?

Short version, by the job you actually need done. Love the morning ritual and live in your calendar? Stay on Sunsama. Want the day built for you by AI? Motion. Want the cheapest reliable list? Todoist. Want to see whether today and this week are already full before you say yes to a client? That is where TaskBerry fits, at a flat low price.

Every tool here can hold tasks and drop them on a calendar. The one thing almost none of them lead with is capacity: a clear signal that your hours are already spoken for. That is the test that follows.

How the six planners compare on capacity

| Criterion | Sunsama | Akiflow | Motion | Morgen | Todoist | TaskBerry | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Shows day and week already full | Per-day workload bar, no week view | No, shows your next task | No, auto-schedules to fit | No, suggests open slots | No, a list with due dates | Yes, day and week against your hours | | Price for one freelancer | $22/mo, $17/mo yearly (USD) | $34/mo, $19/mo yearly (USD) | $19/mo, about $13/mo yearly (USD) | $30/mo, $15/mo yearly (USD) | $7/mo, $5/mo yearly (USD) | Free, Pro €4.95/mo | | Free plan or trial only | 14-day trial | 7-day trial | 7-day trial | 14-day trial | Free forever | Real free plan | | Best at | The morning ritual | Pulling every task into one list | AI auto-scheduling | A cheaper AI calendar | A cheap reliable list | Solo capacity, day and week |

Is Sunsama worth keeping for the ritual?

Sunsama is the best at the deliberate morning planning. You drag tasks into today, you think about what matters, and a per-day workload bar turns red once you plan past the hours you set. For two years that did right by Lars, and the calendar timeboxing is well made.

The gap is the week. Sunsama warns you when one day is overloaded, but it never adds up Thursday and Friday to tell you the week is already sold past what you can deliver. Pricing now sits at $22 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly, which sharpens the renewal question rather than answering it. A retainer that already ate the week looks the same in Sunsama as an empty Monday.

This is the planning fallacy in plain form. We estimate by listing what we will do, not by counting the time it takes. A neat column reads as control. It is not.

Akiflow and Motion make it tidier, not safer

Neither one tells you to stop. They make over-committing look organised.

Akiflow is the best at pulling every task from your inbox, Slack, and project tools into one command-bar list, then time-blocking it. Real help if your work lives in five places. The gap is the same one: it shows you what is next, not whether you have room for it. No free plan, $34 a month, or $19 a month billed yearly.

Motion is the best at AI auto-scheduling. You add tasks, it builds the day. The gap is sharper here, because auto-scheduling can quietly hide the problem. It works out how to cram everything in instead of telling you to say no, and the plan looks fine until 7pm. From $19 a month, about $13 a month billed yearly. No free plan.

Morgen and Todoist: cheaper, still no verdict

Morgen is the best cheaper AI calendar planner, suggesting where tasks fit around your free time. It is $30 a month, or $15 a month billed yearly, with a 14-day trial and no permanent free plan. Solid if your calendar is the center of gravity, but it surfaces open slots, not a verdict on whether the week is full.

Todoist is the best cheap reliable list, with a genuinely free forever plan and Pro at $7 a month, or $5 a month billed yearly. Noor, a freelance brand designer with three clients, ran it for a year. Free, fast, never broke. The gap is that a list is not a capacity tool. It will happily take a twelfth task for a day that was full at task four. If the price is what you are weighing, the Todoist price increase breakdown goes deeper.

What TaskBerry does that the others do not

TaskBerry counts your tasks against the hours you actually have, then tells you when the day and the week are already too full. You size a task in hours, it sits against your available time, and the bar fills as the day loads up. When the week is spoken for, it says so before you reply to the next "can you squeeze this in" email. You can see when your day and week are already full on the demo board without signing up.

For Lars's retainer that ate the week, that is the missing signal. For Noor's twelfth task, the day shows red at task four. This is the wedge the whole capacity planning approach is built on, with your client billable hours in view.

Two honest limits before you switch:

• It does not pull tasks automatically from Asana, Jira, or your inbox. If your work lives in five tools, you add it here yourself. Akiflow is the consolidator. This is not.
• Capacity is only as honest as your hour estimates. It can warn that the day is full, but it cannot know a "two-hour" task is secretly five. You still have to be straight with yourself.

Which one should you pick?

A ritual lover who lives in the calendar should stay on Sunsama. Someone who wants the day built automatically should take Motion. If you manage capacity in your head and want a cheap reliable list, Todoist is enough.

If the recurring problem is saying yes to work the week cannot hold, the fix is not a prettier plan. It is a planner that pushes back. We put the two side by side on the Sunsama alternative page, and you can start planning in under two minutes, free to begin, Pro at €4.95 a month.