A free Motion alternative

Side by side

Price

Plainer: Free to use. No card or personal AI key. The optional assistant has usage limits.
Motion: Pro AI for individuals is $49 a month billed monthly, or $29 a month billed yearly. Team seats start at $29 a month, or $19 billed yearly. A free trial, no free plan.

Capture

Plainer: Add tasks to a day, a project or the backlog; files and notes live in one Files area.
Motion: Projects and tasks, with integrations such as Gmail, Slack, Zoom and HubSpot, and more through Zapier.

Daily planning

Plainer: A day list with flexible “No time yet” tasks above a full-day calendar.
Motion: An AI planner that time-blocks your tasks on the calendar by priority, dependencies and deadline, and re-plans automatically during the day.

Timeboxing

Plainer: You decide: drag a task into a time block, or reserve a work block and keep its tasks in a separate work list.
Motion: Automatic: Motion picks the time for each task and moves it when plans change.

Projects

Plainer: Nested tasks and subtasks on a Gantt timeline, plus weekly goals.
Motion: Projects created with AI, with automatic status updates, next steps and delay flags.

Calendar

Plainer: Google Calendar, read-only: Plainer shows your events and never edits them.
Motion: Outlook, Google and iCloud calendar accounts in one view.

Assistant

Plainer: Plan my day, Roll over, Weekly review and your own saved commands. Changes can be undone.
Motion: AI chat, writer, docs and notes, plus meeting recordings and transcripts. AI use is metered in credits (7,500 a month on Pro AI).

Apps

Plainer: Runs in your browser.
Motion: iOS, Android and desktop apps.

Choose Plainer if

• You want a daily planner without a monthly bill or a card up front.
• You would rather decide when work happens than have an AI move your tasks around the calendar.
• Your work is projects with steps and dates, and you want the timeline and today’s list in one view.
• You want to shape the tool yourself: open a file as a table, board, calendar or timeline, write your own commands, or install templates from the Marketplace.

Choose Motion if

• You want the AI to schedule every task for you and re-plan automatically when things change.
• You plan in Outlook or iCloud, or across several calendar accounts.
• You want meetings recorded and transcribed, with action items turned into tasks.
• Your team needs shared projects, capacity planning, dashboards and permissions, or native phone and desktop apps.

Switching from Motion

Open Plainer and connect Google Calendar if you use it. Add this week’s tasks to the days you planned them for, and leave them without a time until they need one. Then ask the assistant to plan your day. You can export your workspace at any time.

Start planning in Plainer. Also comparing other planners? See Plainer and Sunsama, Plainer and Akiflow or Plainer and Reclaim. Questions: contact us.