Vs subscriptions
Chore Board vs the monthly bill
On Chore Board:
The household surface aisle is stacked with subscriptions: Cozi at $39 a year, and Todoist at $60 a year, or $7 a month. The Chore Board is one HTML file that does the honest working core of what those tools sell, once, for the price of a Swiss Knife.
The bill you were quietly paying
Name the actual products and the arithmetic stops being abstract: Cozi ($39 a year: family calendar without the ads), Todoist ($60 a year, or $7 a month: lists with a premium tier), Notion ($120 a year, or $12 a month: household wiki, per member). An average home & life stack lands at $3 to $10 a month, forever.
Run that out five years and Cozi costs $195, Notion costs $600. A Swiss Knife, with the Chore Board folded in beside up to eleven other tools, is $95, once.
30 months of Cozi at $39 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. Every year after that is pure savings on this category.
What the Chore Board replaces cleanly
The dishwasher has been emptied by 'someone' for years, and 'someone' is developing a grievance. That is the working shape most subscriptions in this category are wrapped around; the Chore Board delivers it without the wrapper.
Concretely: Cozi would keep chore, who, and done on its own servers, behind its own login, on its own pricing schedule. The Chore Board keeps the same fields in a file on your disk — same shape of work, no monthly line on the card.
You keep the workflow. You lose the login, the sync outage, the price hike email, and the export deadline.
What you honestly give up
Team collaboration in real time. Auto-import from third-party APIs. A mobile app that pings you. Cozi does those things and does them properly; if any of them are load-bearing for how you work today, keep paying Cozi — the Chore Board is not trying to compete on those fronts.
Most people, honestly, were paying for features they did not use. The Chore Board is what remains when you strip that back to the tool.
What you stop renting
- Cozi: $39 a yearFamily calendar without the ads. $39 a year, every year.
- Todoist: $60 a year, or $7 a monthLists with a premium tier. $60 a year, every year.
- Notion: $120 a year, or $12 a monthHousehold wiki, per member. $120 a year, every year.
Questions people ask
How does the cost compare to Cozi?
Cozi runs about $195 over five years and Notion about $600. 30 months of Cozi at $39 a year come to the price of a Swiss Knife at $95. A Swiss Knife folds the Chore Board in with up to eleven other tools for $95, once, and there is no year two.
Is the Chore Board a like-for-like replacement for Cozi?
For the working core — chore, who, and done — yes. For family calendar without the ads, no. We would rather say that plainly than sell you a switch you'll regret in a fortnight.
What if my needs grow past a single file?
Excellent problem. Keep the Chore Board for what it does well; add a specialised SaaS on top only when you have a specialised need. Nothing here locks you in — it is a file.
Can I import my current data?
The Chore Board is deliberately hand-entered. Two minutes of typing on Monday keeps you closer to your own household surface than an integration ever will.
The subscription was renting the arithmetic. Buy the arithmetic instead.