Comparison

PriorityWise vs Matterlist

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

PriorityWise

This app helps you focus on what truly matters by tracking your progress on important life areas and long-term goals. It visualizes your efforts, highlighting neglected areas and ensuring your actions align with your priorities.

Highlights
  • Define and track important life areas
  • Progress tracking for long-term goals
  • Record work on items, not just completion
  • Visualize effort distribution
  • Identify neglected areas
  • Set and monitor priorities
  • Hierarchical task lists
Features
Read full description

Time is precious, spend it working on the most important things... There are a million to-do lists and task managers in the App Store. PriorityWise is unique and better than others in many ways. Read on to find out how. • PriorityWise is designed to allow you to define areas of your life that are important to you and then track how often you are working on improving those areas. • In addition to simple to-do lists, PriorityWise also tracks your progress on the kinds of goals that are longer-term, such as "Raising good kids" or "Advancing your career". • You can record when you complete an item, but you can also record whenever you work on an item. Using this information, PriorityWise shows you what areas or projects you are working on the most, which ones you may be neglecting, and how long it has been since you have worked on items in any category. • You can easily set priorities and then continually see how your efforts are stacking up to those priorities. • You can create a simple to-do list, or you can create a hierarchy of items that contain sub-items which can themselves contain sub-items, etc. Make your lists as simple or as detailed as you choose. ________________________________ People often have a tendency to spend the most effort working on things that are the least important. PriorityWise is designed to help reverse that tendency and get your life moving in the right direction "priority wise". ________________________________

About

Matterlist

This to-do list app helps you focus on current tasks with an infinite timeline and safe deadlines. It offers robust recurring tasks, hierarchical subtasks, and local data storage for complete user control.

Highlights
  • Completely free, no ads or purchases
  • Local data storage, no cloud sync
  • Infinite timeline for past and future tasks
  • Safe deadlines that don't shift
  • Robust recurring tasks with individual edits
  • Hierarchical subtasks with unlimited nesting
Features
Read full description

Matterlist is a 100% free to-do list app focused on helping you keep your task list relevant to the present moment. COMPLETELY FREE. There’s no up-front cost, no ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no account. All features are unlocked for all users. LOCAL DATA STORAGE. Matterlist stores data on your device only – there’s no cloud sync and no account. You own and control your data. EXPORT AND IMPORT. The export and import functions allow you to manually backup and restore your Matterlist database whenever you want. INFINITE TIMELINE. If a task has a date, be it tomorrow, next Monday, or sometime in 2050, jump to that date and put your task there. When that day comes, you’ll see this task on your Today list. Go back to any date in the past to see what you accomplished on that day. SAFE DEADLINES. When you postpone a task, it disappears from your Today list, but its due date stays unchanged. Matterlist doesn’t shift Due Dates as other to-do list apps do, so your deadlines remain safe. ROBUST RECURRING TASKS. Create tasks that repeat periodically and manage them separately from regular, non-repeating tasks. If you edit or delete a single event in a recurrence (e.g., move a gym workout only for this week), the rest of the events in this recurrence will stay intact. HIERARCHICAL SUBTASKS. Divide a bigger task into smaller ones that you can do right now. Use unlimited nesting levels to represent any complex task you might have. Work with a subtask like any other task: assign contexts, add notes, create due dates, and postpone them whenever you like. STARS, NOTES, PRIORITIES: Make important tasks stand out with a star, mark them with color to stress their importance or urgency, or attach notes with additional task information. Matterlist is completely free – no up-front cost, no ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases. With Matterlist, you own and control your data – it stores your tasks on your device only and doesn’t upload them to the cloud. Get Matterlist and start organizing your life right now! Terms and Conditions: https://matterlist.com/terms-and-conditions.html Privacy Policy: https://matterlist.com/privacy-policy.html

Screenshots

PriorityWise4 screens
Matterlist4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is rating: PriorityWise at 4.0 against Matterlist's 2.0. Matterlist's advantage is update cadence (every 2 months vs every 37 months) and iOS requirement (12.1 vs 14.0). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

PriorityWise holds the better App Store score, 4.0 against 2.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 1 respectively.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

PriorityWise ships an update every 37 months, Matterlist every 2 months. Both last shipped on July 4, 2026.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
PriorityWise versus Matterlist: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterPriorityWiseMatterlist
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.0 (1 ratings) — better2.0 (1 ratings)
Positive reviews50.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings11
Update frequencyEvery 37 monthsEvery 2 months — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS14.012.1 — better
Further details — not scored
Size2 MB31 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperCory SmithFILTER FORGE OU

Customer experience

PriorityWise

All ratings1 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews4 reviews
Positive50.0%
Neutral25.0%
Negative25.0%

Matterlist

All ratings1 ratings
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

In-app purchases

None

PriorityWise

No in-app purchases

None

Matterlist

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is PriorityWise free?
PriorityWise is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Matterlist free?
Matterlist is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, PriorityWise or Matterlist?
PriorityWise is rated higher. PriorityWise averages 4.0 out of 5 from 1 ratings, while Matterlist averages 2.0 from 1 ratings.
Do PriorityWise or Matterlist have ads?
Neither PriorityWise nor Matterlist shows ads.
Which is updated more often, PriorityWise or Matterlist?
PriorityWise ships an update every 37 months, and Matterlist every 2 months. Most recently, PriorityWise was updated on July 4, 2026 and Matterlist on July 4, 2026.

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