I used Cozi for almost four years. Whiteboard on the kitchen wall got replaced by Cozi. School flyers became Cozi events. The Sunday-night planning ritual became "open Cozi on the iPad."
Then I started looking for alternatives. If you're here, you probably are too. The three reasons I hear most often:
- The ads. Cozi free has gotten noisier. Cozi Gold ($39/year) removes them — but paying once shouldn't feel like a relief; it should feel neutral. With Cozi, "paying" stopped feeling like "supporting a product I love" and started feeling like "buying my way out of a worse experience."
- The app feels stuck. The UI hasn't meaningfully evolved in years. iPhone got Lock Screen widgets, Live Activities, Apple Watch glance complications, Shortcuts — Cozi mostly doesn't use them.
- You're an iPhone household and the cross-platform compromise costs you the iOS polish. Cozi has to be a generic web wrapper because it serves Windows, Android, Mac, iPhone, web. That generic-ness shows up most painfully on iOS, where the native bar is highest.
I built Our Life because of #2 and #3. Before I pitch you on it, here's the honest take on where Cozi still wins.
Where Cozi still wins
Credit where it's due. I won't pretend Cozi is bad. Specifically:
- Mature web app. If your household straddles iPhone, Android, and Windows, Cozi's web experience handles that gracefully. Our Life has a web app too, but Cozi's is older and more battle-tested.
- Recipe box. Cozi's URL-to-recipe importer has 15+ years of polish. Our recipe handling is excellent (and includes AI recipe-to-grocery-list), but their library is a known good.
- Brand recognition. When a grandparent asks "what calendar do you use?", more people have heard of Cozi than Our Life. For now.
- $39/year is reasonable. Cozi Gold isn't expensive. If you only need a basic shared calendar and lists, and you're happy with the iOS app as-is, Cozi is a defensible choice.
If those four matter most to you, keep using Cozi. I mean it. The point of this post isn't to drag a competitor — it's to help you decide.
Where Our Life is better
Now the case for switching:
1. Native iOS feel
Cozi works on iPhone. Our Life belongs on iPhone.
- SwiftUI-native interface (no web wrapper)
- Lock Screen widgets at every size + Home Screen widgets + medium/large variants
- Live Activities (the next family event ticks down on your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island)
- Native EventKit integration with two-way Apple Calendar sync
- Apple Watch complication + glance view
- Shortcuts integration — "Hey Siri, add soccer Tuesday 4 PM for Leo"
- iPadOS adapted layout (not a stretched iPhone UI)
Cozi has system widgets but most of these features are missing or token implementations.
2. No ads. Anywhere. Including the free tier.
The free tier of Our Life has no ads. Plus and Plus Pro have no ads. We charge a subscription because we sell software, not impressions. Always.
3. AI that earns its keep
- Photo → event. Snap the school's monthly flyer. Our AI reads the date, time, location, and proposes a real event with one tap to confirm. Cozi makes you type.
- Recipe URL → grocery list. Paste any recipe link. We turn the ingredients into a deduplicated, aisle-grouped grocery list. Cozi has recipes but no list automation.
- Natural-language quick add. Type "Dentist Thursday at 9 for Mom" — it parses. Cozi requires you to fill out a form.
4. Privacy we can actually verify
Our Life runs a zero-PII architecture: we hash sensitive family identifiers before any third-party tool (analytics, error tracking) sees them. We don't sell data to brokers. We've published our security triage runbook publicly — extremely rare in this category. If you can read your family app's privacy practices in plain language and feel comfortable, that's the bar I want every family app to clear.
5. Built for modern families, not 2018 families
- ADHD-friendly mode. Color-tinted member columns, gentle (not screaming) reminders, quick-add affordances.
- Kid-safe view. Children see only what's relevant to them — not your work calendar or your therapy appointment.
- Blended/co-parenting support. Two households can share specific events without sharing the rest.
- Meal planning that generates the grocery list. Plan dinner Tuesday → the ingredients land in the shared list automatically.
Should you switch? (30-second decision)
Switch to Our Life if you check 3+ of these:
- 📱 Everyone in your household is on iPhone/iPad
- 😩 You're tired of Cozi's ads or feel the app is in maintenance mode
- 🤖 You want AI that saves real time (not chatbot gimmicks)
- 🔐 You care about being able to actually verify privacy claims
- 🍎 You use Apple Calendar for work or personal and want family events flowing both directions
- 📲 You'd use Lock Screen widgets and Live Activities if your family app supported them well
Stay on Cozi if any of these are true:
- 🤖 Your household has multiple Android devices (we're iOS-first; Android is roadmapped but not here yet)
- 📚 You have a massive existing Cozi recipe library you can't bear to migrate
- 💰 Even $4.99/month Plus Pro is a deal-breaker (Cozi Free + ads is cheaper)
Feature comparison
| Cozi Gold | Our Life Plus Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Shared family calendar | ✅ | ✅ |
| Color-coded family members | ✅ | ✅ + member-tinted everywhere |
| Shared lists | ✅ | ✅ |
| Recipe box | ✅ Mature | ✅ + AI recipe → grocery |
| Meal planning | ✅ Basic | ✅ Auto-generates grocery list |
| Native iOS Lock Screen widgets | Limited | ✅ Every size |
| Live Activities | ❌ | ✅ |
| Apple Watch | Limited | ✅ Full app + complication |
| Apple Calendar 2-way sync | One-way subscribe | ✅ Native EventKit |
| AI photo-to-event | ❌ | ✅ |
| Natural-language quick add | ❌ | ✅ |
| Web app | ✅ Mature | ✅ |
| Android | ✅ | Roadmapped |
| Ads (free tier) | ✅ Yes | ❌ Never |
| Price | $39/yr | $4.99/month |
| Built by | Public company | Indie, founder-run |
How to migrate from Cozi in 30 seconds
We built the migration so it's the easiest thing you do this week. The Cozi → Our Life path:
- In Cozi: Open the iPad or web app → Settings → Calendar → Subscribe to your Cozi calendar → copy the
webcal://link Cozi gives you. - In Our Life: Open Settings → Imported Calendars → Add Calendar → Paste.
- Tap Preview. Every Cozi event appears as a native, editable Our Life appointment. Review them all — or pick specific date ranges and members.
- Tap Import. Done.
The imported events become real Our Life appointments — editable, color-codeable, attachable to family members. Not subscription stubs. If you re-run the import later, duplicates skip automatically (we dedupe by Cozi's underlying UID).
If you decide we're not for you in a month, export your data back out. Settings → Privacy → Export Family Data. Full JSON and standard ICS, no gates, no "we'll get back to you in 30 days." That's the promise.
What people ask before they switch (FAQ)
Q: Can my whole family install Our Life and continue using their iPhones the same way? Yes. Onboarding takes 60 seconds per person. We use family codes (a 5-character shared identifier) so members join without needing to create accounts with emails — important if you have kids you don't want to give an email address to.
Q: Will I lose my Cozi recipes? You can keep using Cozi for the recipe library while running Our Life as the family calendar — they don't conflict. Or you can rebuild the recipe handful you actually cook regularly in Our Life in an hour. Most families discover they only use 10-15 recipes regularly.
Q: Does Our Life work if half my family is on Android? Today, partially. We have a web app every Android user can install as a PWA, but the native Android app is on the roadmap, not yet shipped. If you have a critical Android dependency, give us 6 more months or stay on Cozi for now.
Q: What about grandparents who never adopted Cozi? We've found that grandparents adopt Our Life better than Cozi because the iOS native feel + Lock Screen widget means there's nothing to "open" — the family schedule shows on their Lock Screen automatically. The learning curve is much lower for older users.
Q: How do you make money if there are no ads? Plus Pro subscriptions. We're indie and founder-run, so we don't need venture-scale revenue. Sustainable beats explosive.
Q: What if Our Life ever shuts down? You can export your full family data (JSON + ICS) any time, no gates. We also self-host nothing critical that we couldn't open-source on shutdown. The point: you walk out with your data intact, always.
Try it
Join the public beta waitlist →
Our Life is currently in Apple review. Waitlist members get the TestFlight link the moment it opens — typically within 48 hours.
Free to start, no card. Plus Pro is a 30-day trial, no card up front. 30-second Cozi migration is built in.
Questions? I read every support email personally. Reach me at hello@ourlifeapp.ai.
— Shaun L., Our Life
Last updated: February 2026. Cozi pricing verified Feb 2026. If you spot anything stale, email me and I'll fix it — that's a promise.