Occasions 3 vs Things 3
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Occasions 3
Never forget important dates like birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays again. This app helps you track special events, set multiple custom alerts, and even send well wishes directly from your device. It offers seamless integration with your contacts and calendar, with options for customization and convenient access via widgets and Apple Watch.
- Sync events with Contacts
- Multiple custom alerts per event
- Categorized holiday selection
- Add events to device calendar
- Send messages directly from app
- Customizable themes and icons
- Widgets and Apple Watch app
- Automatic iCloud backup
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Remembering birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and other special events is now easier than ever. Occasions is the best way to keep track of and remember important events in your busy life. You can also send your well wishes to friends and family, right from the app. Here’s what you can do with Occasions as your special-events manager: • Sync birthdays, anniversaries and other events with Contacts. • Set up to 3 alerts for each event, and customize alerts for individual events. • Choose from a wide selection of holidays, conveniently categorized by country and religion. • Add events from Occasions to your device’s built-in calendar. • Create events that are independent of Contacts. • Send messages to friends and loved ones via phone, email or text, right from the app. • Change the app's look and feel with themes and app icons. • Glance at the widgets and Apple Watch app to see timely event information. • Automatically back up your data to iCloud.
Things 3
This app helps you organize your life by planning your day, managing projects, and tracking progress toward your goals. It offers a clean interface to manage tasks, projects, and life areas, making it easy to focus on what matters.
- To-Do management
- Project organization
- Area categorization
- Daily planning
- Reminders and repeaters
- Calendar integration
- Share extension
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Get things done! The award-winning Things app helps you plan your day, manage your projects, and make real progress toward your goals. Best of all, it’s easy to use. Within the hour, you’ll have everything off your mind and neatly organized—from routine tasks to your biggest life goals—and you can start focusing on what matters today. “Things offers the best combination of design and functionality of any app we tested, with nearly all the features of other power user applications and a delightful interface that never gets in the way of your work.” —Wirecutter, The New York Times KEY FEATURES • Your To-Dos Your basic building block is the almighty To-Do—each a small step toward a great accomplishment. You can add notes, tag it, schedule it, and break it down into smaller steps. • Your Projects Create a Project for any big goal, then add the to-dos to reach it. Use headings to structure your list as you outline your plan. There’s also a place to jot down your notes, and a deadline to keep you on schedule. • Your Areas Create an Area for each sphere of your life, such as Work, Family, Finance, and so on. This keeps everything neatly organized, and helps you see the big picture as you set your plans in motion. • Your Plan Everything on your schedule is neatly laid out in the Today and Upcoming lists, which show your to-dos and calendar events. Each morning, see what you planned for Today and decide what you want to do. The rest is down to you :) MORE THINGS TO LOVE As you dive deeper, you’ll find Things packed with helpful features. Here are just a few: • Reminders — set a time and Things will remind you. • Repeaters — automatically repeat to-dos on a schedule you set. • This Evening — a special place for your evening plans. • Calendar integration — see your events and to-dos together. • Tags — categorize your to-dos and quickly filter lists. • Quick Find — instantly find to-dos or switch between lists. • Magic Plus — drag the + button to insert to-dos anywhere in a list. • Share extension — create to-dos with content from other apps. • Widgets — see lists on your home/lock screens. • Mail to Things — forward an email to Things; now it’s a to-do. • Markdown — structure & style your notes. • And much more! MADE FOR IPHONE Things is tailored to the iPhone with deep system integrations as well. A great example is the Share extension, which allows you to create to-dos with content from other apps, such as a link to a website you want to get back to. You can also enjoy a beautiful dark mode at sunset, connect your calendars, add a variety of widgets, create to-dos via Siri, import from Reminders—Things can do it all! There’s even Shortcuts integration if you want to automate your workflows. MADE FOR APPLE WATCH Things comes with a great app for Apple Watch. Just raise your wrist to glance at your Today list, mark to-dos complete as you go, and dictate new ones on the fly—all synced instantly with your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. AWARD-WINNING DESIGN Made in Stuttgart, with two Apple Design Awards to its name, Things is a fine example of German engineering: designed not only to look fantastic, but to be perfectly functional as well. Every detail is thoughtfully considered, then polished to perfection. “It’s like the unicorn of productivity tools: deep enough for serious work, surprisingly easy to use, and gorgeous enough to enjoy staring at.” —Apple GET THINGS TODAY Whatever it is you want to accomplish in life, Things can help you get there. Install the app today and see what you can do! • Things is also available for Mac, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro (sold separately). • Sync is provided for free via our Things Cloud service. • A free trial is available for Mac: www.things.app If you have any questions, please get in touch. We provide professional support and will be glad to help you!
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Occasions 3 at $2.99 against Things 3's $9.99. Things 3's advantage is update cadence (fortnightly vs every 2 months) and ratings volume (28K vs 2.4K). On rating, review sentiment, 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
Occasions 3 costs $2.99 and Things 3 $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Occasions 3 against 4.8 for Things 3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Things 3 has 28K ratings behind it against 2.4K, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 74% of Occasions 3's written reviews are positive against 76% of Things 3's.
Occasions 3 ships an update every 2 months, Things 3 fortnightly. The most recent releases landed on September 22, 2026 and September 25, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Occasions 3 | Things 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.99 — better | $9.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (2.4K ratings) — better | 4.8 (28K ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 73.9% of reviews | 76.3% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2.4K | 28K — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Fortnightly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Best chart rank | — | #3 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better | iPhone, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 18.6 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 26 MB | 118 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Hand Carved Code, LLC | Cultured Code GmbH & Co. KG |
Customer experience
Occasions 3
Things 3
User reviews
Occasions 3
From 2.4K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Useful calendar
- 👍 Outstanding app
- 👍 Excellent app
- 👍 Great app
- 👍 Reliable and fun to use
Room to improve
- 🐛 Annoying app
- 🐛 Duplicate notifications
- 🐛 Sync issues
- 🐛 Duplicate notifications
- 🐛 Duplicate notifications
Things 3
From 28K App Store ratingsWhat we love
- 🚀 Smooth and fast
- 👍 Elegant and intuitive design
- 🔒 Secure and private
- 💡 Powerful organization features
- 🗓️ Great calendar integration
Room to improve
- 💰 Expensive for multiple devices
- 🌐 Lack of web/Windows app
- 🔀 Difficulty with task reordering
- 🔔 Lacking persistent notifications
- 📁 No file attachments
Bugs and requests
Occasions 3
Reported bugs
5 issues- Duplicate notifications
- Sync issues
- Data loss
- Compatibility issues with older devices
- Facebook SDK error
Requested features
6 requests- Add military birthdays
- Repeat functionality
- Sync with Apple Watch
- Separate categories for events
- Zodiac sign display
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- Public occasion lists
Things 3
Reported bugs
2 issues- Sync issues between devices
- Occasional crashes or freezes
Requested features
5 requests- Ability to collapse headings and projects
- Location-based reminders
- Two-way calendar sync
- Shared task lists
- Customizable alert sounds
In-app purchases
Occasions 3
No in-app purchases
Things 3
No in-app purchases









