Principal Task vs RightNow Focus
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Principal Task
This app helps you manage tasks by tracking your completion rate against new tasks created. It offers a unique 'Task Velocity' score to show if you're keeping up with your workload. Organize with folders, contexts, and priorities, with advanced features available through a premium subscription.
- Task Velocity score
- GTD-native structure
- Due dates and repeating tasks
- Markdown support
- Kanban boards
- Private templates
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Track your Task Velocity — the ratio of tasks you complete against the ones you create, updated every day. See at a glance whether you're ahead or falling behind, not just what's on your list. Principal Task is a GTD-native task manager built for people who've outgrown to-do apps. Folders, contexts, priorities, statuses, and unlimited nested subtasks — organized the way real work actually happens. TASK VELOCITY Your 30-day completed-vs-created ratio, shown as a simple multiplier. Free members see their current score. Premium unlocks the full history, filterable by folder, context, priority, and status. SYSTEM HEALTH A live verdict — Healthy, Strained, or Overloaded — so you know where things stand today, separate from where they're heading. BUILT FOR GTD Folders and sub-folders, contexts, priorities, statuses, and stars. Subtasks nest as deep as you need, with independent completion — no forced parent-child status. KANBAN, HEATMAP, TEMPLATES See your work as a board. Watch your activity over time. Turn repeatable processes into templates you can apply in one tap. BUILT FOR AI ASSISTANTS Principal Task connects to AI assistants over MCP — read and write your tasks, subtasks, and folders directly from the assistant you already use. SHARE WITHOUT FRICTION Share a task list with a four-word link. No account required to view. You control how long it stays open. Free, no credit card. Premium is about $3/month or $24/year, and it doesn't limit how much you can do — it unlocks Task Velocity history, Kanban, the Activity Heatmap, and private templates. Principal Task. Software that gets out of the way. Terms of Use: https://principaltask.com/terms
RightNow Focus
This app provides a focused approach to task management by presenting only one task at a time based on your available time. It helps users overcome decision paralysis and the guilt associated with long to-do lists. Features include daily summaries, timed task loops, and starter routines.
- One task presented at a time
- Time-based task selection
- Daily morning and evening summaries
- Starter routines for various needs
- No scrolling or long lists
- Offline data storage
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You don't need another to-do list. You need someone to tell you what to do right now. Every productivity app eventually becomes the same thing: a long list you scroll, feel guilty about, and close. The problem was never the list — deciding what to do is the hardest part, and lists make YOU do the deciding at the worst possible moment. RightNow flips it. Tell it how much time you have — 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes — and it hands you exactly one card. Do it, or skip it. That's the whole app. HOW IT WORKS 1. Add your habits and tasks as cards 2. Pick the time you actually have 3. Get one card — the right one for right now 4. Tap Done. Feel it. Repeat. No browsing. No ranking. No scroll of shame. YOUR DAY HAS A SHAPE • Morning Brief — your first open of the day shows yesterday in one line, names today's focus, and gives you one button to start it • The loop — pick a time, get a card, all day long • Wrap Day — close the evening with your day's story: what you did, your 7-day trail, and one piece of coaching for tomorrow SMART ABOUT TIME • Morning cards deal in the morning, evening cards wait for evening • A 5-minute window gets a real 5-minute card — never a 2-hour project in disguise • Skipped something? It cycles back fairly. Hid it for today? It stays gone until tomorrow. BUILT FOR REAL LIFE • Starter Routines — five curated packs (Fitness, Sleep, Parenting, Personal Growth, Beauty) so you're never staring at a blank app • Routines — run your own ordered sequences, card by card • Someday — park ideas you're not ready for; they never nag and never get lost • History — completed tasks are kept, and restorable YOURS, PRIVATELY Everything lives on your phone. No account, no cloud, no feed, no ads. Your data never leaves your device. Try RightNow free for 7 days. If it earns its place, one purchase unlocks it forever — no subscription, ever. Stop managing your list. Start doing what's on it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: RightNow Focus at none against Principal Task's 2. RightNow Focus also leads on update cadence (monthly vs every 3 months) and ratings volume (3 vs 1). On price, rating, ads and monetization model there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Principal Task sells 2 in-app purchases, starting at $3.99 per month. RightNow Focus asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Principal Task against 5.0 for RightNow Focus. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 3 respectively.
Principal Task ships an update every 3 months, RightNow Focus monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 18, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Principal Task | RightNow Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 3 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Monthly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.0 — better | 15.1 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 32 MB | 22 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Zechariah Schwenk | Alexander Bradley |
Customer experience
Principal Task
RightNow Focus
In-app purchases
Principal Task
- Monthly Subscription$3.991 Month
- Annual Subscription$29.991 Year
RightNow Focus
No in-app purchases









