Sunsama vs Motion 2026: I found the best one for you

At first glance, Sunsama vs Motion have one thing clearly in common: both come with a relatively high price tag. Sunsama charges a straightforward $20 per month, while Motion’s pricing can feel less predictable as soon as you start exploring AI features, team setups, or longer-term plans.

But this comparison isn’t really about which app is cheaper. It’s about what you get for that price.

These are two apps built for very different planning philosophies. Sunsama focuses on calm, intentional manual planning, while Motion relies heavily on AI to automatically plan your schedule and optimize time for you.

In this Motion vs Sunsama comparison, I’ll break down how these productivity tools differ in task management, task scheduling, and project management capabilities, so you can decide whether you need a calmer task manager or a more automated system built for efficient task management.

 Let’s dive in!

My ratings: Sunsama vs Motion

Key differences between Sunsama and Motion

Here’s a quick overview of the main differences that stood out during testing:

What is Sunsama?

Sunsama is a daily planner app that brings your tasks, calendar events, and time tracking into one organized space. Unlike classic task management apps, Sunsama encourages intentional planning through guided daily and weekly workflows.

Sunsama also supports time blocking, recurring tasks, and focus mode, making it easier to prioritize tasks and manage multiple projects. 

What is Motion?

Motion is an artificial intelligence-based scheduling tool with task and project management features. More than 1 million people use Motion in their day-to-day life for better meeting scheduling and task management.

Besides many other use cases, Motion can auto-schedule meetings, synchronize your work and personal calendar, and block time slots for recurring tasks and certain projects. Motion has a web app, desktop, and mobile app.

Comparison: Sunsama vs Motion

Below, I’ll walk you through each tool step by step. First, we will break down the features for each tool, then we’ll take a look at the integrations, user interfaces, pricing plans, pros and cons, and finally, I’ll share my personal experience using both.

Features

Let’s start with Sunsama’s features!

Sunsama’s features

Task management

I started testing Sunsama by connecting my Todoist account, and the transition was smoother than I expected. You can also import tasks from other platforms like Asana or Trello.

My task list appeared instantly in the sidebar, and I could drag tasks into the calendar with simple drag and drop. This made it easy to schedule tasks and reschedule them without breaking my workflow.

Not everything was perfect, though. One task did not pull its subtasks on the first try, so I had to import it again. The second attempt worked, but it showed me that integrations depend on how consistent your task structure is in other tools.

The Home tab is essentially a board view, and it is one of the cleanest layouts I have seen in a task management app. Adding tasks is quick. Users can manually add tasks or drag tasks in from weekly objectives, backlog, or third-party calendars.

To add a task, click Add Task or press A, type the name, and Sunsama will suggest a channel and planned time. These suggestions were usually accurate during my review.

Every task can have an objective, planned time, subtasks, tags, and a channel. Channels and contexts are especially helpful because they let you categorize all your tasks, projects, and personal tasks in a way that mirrors real life. Contexts group several channels so you can focus on one area at a time.

Sunsama supports recurring tasks, but I loved most how it balances both tasks and events. The board view shows everything, while other views display only items with planned time. It is worth keeping this in mind so you do not lose track of important tasks.

Daily planning workflow

Daily planning is one of Sunsama’s strongest features. Hover over a day and select Plan to open a guided workflow that walks you through your daily tasks. It helps you prioritize tasks, schedule them realistically, and share your daily plan on Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Once tasks are placed on the calendar, the timestamped day overview appears in the sidebar. You can drag items around to adjust their planned time or shift your schedule if something takes longer. This keeps daily planning flexible and intentional.

At the end of the day, Sunsama encourages a daily shutdown routine. You can review completed tasks, check what still needs attention, and write a short reflection. Previous days show a Reflect option when you hover, allowing you to revisit your day and see a clear summary.

These daily rituals are part of what makes this app unique. During my Sunsama review, I found that it encourages consistent daily planning routines, helping you maintain structure and avoid decision fatigue.

Weekly planning & review

Weekly objectives were one of my favorite features during testing. You can set goals for the week and instantly assign them to tasks. The sidebar shows everything in one place, making it easier to stay focused on what matters.

Sunsama promotes weekly planning through simple rituals. Users often mention that this planning process helps manage workload and prevent burnout, and I found that to be true. It gives you a clear sense of where your time should go before the week starts.

The weekly review feature helps you see how your week went. It shows completed tasks, time spent on different channels, and highlights your productivity patterns. Many users describe this as essential for long-term improvement, and I agree.

Time tracking & focus mode

Sunsama surprised me with its built-in time tracking. Each task can have a planned time, and once you start working, you can activate the timer to track actual time. This feature helped me understand how much time I spent on tasks and how accurate my planning was.

You can track time spent on subtasks as well, which is great for multiple projects or detailed work. At the top of each channel, Sunsama shows how much planned time you still have left for the day. This makes it easier to avoid overcommitting and stay realistic.

Focus Mode and the Pomodoro style timer help you stay in deep work. These tools reduce distractions and support mindful work sessions. Sunsama also provides analytics and time distribution graphs so you can see exactly how your days were spent.

Customization & settings

Sunsama gives you a lot of control over your planning process. You can customize channels, contexts, task views, colors, filters, and workflows. Everything is designed to help you stay organized without feeling overwhelmed.

Channels categorize your work so you can understand where your time is going. Contexts group multiple channels so you can focus on specific areas like work or personal life. This structure makes Sunsama feel intentional and easy to navigate.

The Settings menu is extensive. You can adjust rituals, planned time behavior, notifications, integrations, and daily or weekly flows. With so many options, Sunsama can fit different working styles and planning habits.

Motion’s features

Now, it’s time to delve into Motion’s features!

Motion calendar

Managing your personal and work tasks across different apps, like Gmail and Outlook, can get pretty challenging. Motion offers seamless calendar integration with Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook Calendar, allowing you to bring them into a centralized view.

If you go to settings and click on the “calendars” tab, you can add your calendars with just one click. It is super easy.

Bringing your calendar management into one tool is really efficient. You not only see your personal and work calendar items simultaneously, but you also plan your weekly to-do list much more easily and add calendar events smoothly.

The best thing is that you can just drag and drop your calendar events to move them, and you can create tasks from this view as well.

Also, Motion recently improved its calendar sync speed across Google, Apple, and Outlook. This reduces context switching, making it easier to move between calendars.

AI scheduling tool

Motion not only integrates your calendar events into one single place, but it also uses AI scheduling to ensure you can meet all the deadlines and focus on high-priority tasks.

You can create tasks using your calendar view, and you can also make changes here. Personally, I used the “all task tab” to manage tasks. Once you create the task, Motion schedules it based on your availability, priorities, and settings.

During my Motion review, I found the scheduling tool to be the most exciting one. The auto-scheduling feature is useful when loading your tasks here, and it lets Motion find the best timeslot to complete them.

Nevertheless, before scheduling tasks, it makes sense to add your working hours, timeslots for personal activities, and more. You can do this in the settings menu using the schedules option.

If your task takes more time than you think, and you have no time to finish it or other tasks, Motion will reschedule based on your priorities, deep work hours, preferences, and personal events.

Motion designed its auto-scheduling feature based on how the most productive people work daily. However, if Motion schedules your tasks to an ideal time, you can simply drag and drop, and Motion will learn from it.

The auto-scheduling engine recently received an update, so the task rescheduling logic and duration predictions are now more accurate. This is especially useful when you want Motion AI to break longer tasks into smaller ones.

Meeting assistant

Motion’s meeting scheduler helps you and others to book time with you. Motion uses booking links to simplify appointment scheduling.

To access the booking link feature, hit the “booking links” option at the top. Here, you can select which booking link you want to send, but you can also make changes to when it should show you as available.

For example, I prepared a new schedule for myself called “Meetings,” and Motion will only show the timeslots I gave in this schedule. However, you can customize it in more detail.

You can add buffer time and date range, or limit the number of days for the meetings. Once you finish the customization, you can just share the link, and they can access your booking page. Motion also refreshed its booking link UI, so customizing availability or buffer times feels more intuitive now.

Overall, the meeting scheduler feature assists you with automatic scheduling, limiting the daily meetings, and displaying preferred meeting times to others. I particularly loved that during my Motion app review, it offers many options to personalize your booking page.

Ultimately, this is a valuable feature for virtual meetings, as it eliminates the constant back-and-forth communication and helps find a suitable time slot for virtual meetings.

Task management

Motion’s task management feature is a powerful tool for developing more efficient tasks and time management. It allows you to smoothly add and assign new tasks to you or your teammates, while the tasks dashboard provides a clear overview of tasks in progress and those that have not been completed yet.

Having a customizable central hub for your tasks can make your life easier. You can overview your outstanding tasks and projects on a list or in a board view.

When adding a task, you can select the assignee, duration, start date, due date, and when to auto-schedule it. Also, users can set custom priority levels for tasks, enabling flexible management of workload.

What I recognized during my Motion app review is that you can add tasks from almost all the pages. It is a small feature, but quite useful to ensure you add and manage tasks with the highest efficiency.

We all know there are times when it is all about firefighting. You need to jump into an important Google Meet or Microsoft Teams call, or some important tasks have come up. With a single click, Motion’s automatic scheduling reorganizes your tasks based on your preferences and priorities.

Motion also improved recurring tasks and default task fields, which makes adding new tasks slightly faster than in the older version. To stay up to date, users can track changes and updates in task management via an activity feed, enhancing organization.

This feature makes Motion an excellent tool for effective task management. Beyond helping you manage and track your focus time and tasks effectively, it simplifies task prioritization, creation, and time tracking, and fosters team collaboration.

Project management solution

One of the key differences between Motion and most productivity tools is that Motion is an all-in-one tool. This is where it is quite similar to Notion.

Motion is a lightweight project manager with strong project management capabilities for organizing projects and workflows. It works similarly to the task manager feature.

When setting up a project, you can specify the due date, add priority notes, and assign tasks to your team members. Additionally, you and your teammates can leave comments under each project and add new tasks if necessary.

It was also great that Motion offers several view options like Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and list views. Also, you can apply filters and easily select, move, edit, or manage projects. The Gantt chart view received small usability improvements, especially around scrolling and updating dependencies.

After you add the tasks, Motion will take it from here and make a balanced schedule using its AI task management features. So, after you add a project, it makes sense to check your Motion calendar to see the upcoming tasks.

As you can see, Motion updated my calendar with the new tasks. It found the empty timeslots based on my preferences and automatically scheduled all the tasks. Compared to many project management tools, Motion not only helps you with project management itself but also ensures that you will complete the tasks on time.

You can utilize Motion’s AI-powered dashboards to centralize critical insights and data into one view. With this feature, you will get a solid understanding of capacity, project progress, and potential roadblocks.

Motion’s project management feature has all the functions to manage small business projects and workflows. Essentially, the more projects and tasks you give, the more accurate your schedule will become.

Overall, using Motion for your project management can almost entirely automate your project planning, and you can focus on the tasks.

Team collaboration

Motion has strong team collaboration features as well. You can track each team member’s plan and priorities using the team schedule feature.

It is also great that they designed Motion for teams. So when you add a project, you can handle task assignments and team communication directly on the same page.

AI note-taker

Motion recently launched its AI note-taker for taking online meeting notes. It automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes your calls on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. At the moment, transcription works in English, and Motion sends a summary within a minute after the meeting ends.

Essentially, it works similarly to other platforms on the AI meeting assistant market. While it still has fewer functionalities than the current AI note-takers, this feature makes Motion a great all-in-one productivity tool.

AI docs assistant

Besides AI note-taking, Motion also launched its AI-powered docs assistant. This feature helps you turn your notes, ideas, and drafts into tasks.

What makes Motion special is that it automatically converts text into actionable tasks that sync directly into your team’s workflows. Using AI, it auto-fills durations, deadlines, and descriptions for your to-do list based on your team’s docs, notes, and wikis.

Motion also expanded this feature with better task extraction, so action items appear more consistently.

AI Employees

Motion’s AI Employees are essentially customizable AI bots trained on your data, writing style, and workflows.

You can make different employees for different areas of your work. Each AI Employee can read your notes, review existing tasks, analyze documents, and generate new action items or suggestions based on what you’re working on.

What makes it interesting is that it doesn’t just produce text like a generic AI tool. Instead, it converts ideas and drafts directly into structured tasks that are automatically added to your Motion calendar. You can also use AI Employees to draft follow-up emails, prepare briefs, summarize meetings, or build step-by-step project plans.

Another benefit is that the Employees keep improving over time. As you interact with them, Motion learns more about your preferences, tone of voice, and task patterns. This allows the AI to become more accurate, faster, and more aligned with how you like to work.

For individual users, AI Employees can automate a big part of administrative or repetitive work. For teams, they can act as unified assistants that help everyone stay aligned and reduce manual planning.

Integrations

Now, it’s time to check their integrations!

Sunsama’s integrations

Sunsama integrates with major calendar apps, including iCloud, Google, and Outlook Calendar. Personally, I connected my Google Calendar to Sunsama, and it was quite quick. You can set defaults for tasks or events and control what gets imported.

Beyond calendars, Sunsama works with many productivity tools and task management apps. Tasks from these tools appear in the sidebar, so you can pull tasks into the calendar with drag and drop. This keeps all your tasks and projects together in one planner app.

Motion’s integrations

Motion offers numerous integrations. You can connect it with Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, iCloud Calendar, Siri, Zapier, and more.

Motion also improved its Zapier workflows, so automations trigger more reliably. Utilizing the Zapier integration, you can access an additional 7,000 third-party integrations. So, Motion is quite good in terms of integrations.

Pricing

In this round of the Sunsama/Motion comparison, let’s take a look at the pricing structure of each daily planner tool.

Sunsama’s pricing

Sunsama does not offer a free plan, but you can try it with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required. The trial unlocks the full planner app, so you can test daily planning, weekly review, time blocking, and focus mode before paying.

After the free trial, Sunsama has a single paid plan: a $16 yearly subscription, or $20 monthly. All features are included in this one tier, from calendar integration and time tracking to recurring tasks, weekly objectives, and analytics.

If you want to bring others in, teammates are billed separately at $20 per user per month. Sunsama pricing is definitely on the premium side compared to other productivity tools, but many users feel the intentional planning workflow and better work-life balance justify it.

Motion pricing

Although Motion doesn’t offer a free plan, it does provide a 7-day free trial, giving you enough time to explore the app and see how it fits your workflow.

If you decide to continue using Motion, you can choose from several pricing plans, separated into individual users and teams.

Motion pricing for individuals

For individual users, Motion currently offers two plans:

The Pro AI plan costs $29 per month when billed annually. It includes AI chat, AI projects and tasks, AI calendar and meetings, and AI docs, wiki, and notes. This plan is positioned as the most popular option for individual users and small teams.

The Business AI plan is $39 per month with annual billing. It includes everything from Pro AI, with higher usage limits, and is designed for power users and businesses with more complex needs.

Motion pricing for teams

For teams and organizations, Motion offers seat-based pricing:

The Pro AI team plan costs $19 per seat per month when billed annually. It includes AI chat, AI projects and tasks, AI calendar and meetings, and AI docs, wiki, and notes, and is aimed at small teams getting started with Motion.

The Business AI team plan is $29 per seat per month when billed annually. It includes higher limits and is marked as the most popular option for teams that rely more heavily on Motion’s AI features.

Larger organizations can choose an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

User interface

In the next step of this Sunsama vs Motion review, I will guide you through the user interfaces of both apps.

Sunsama’s user interface

Sunsama’s user interface feels thoughtfully designed, with lots of small details that show how much attention was given to real user needs. The left sidebar, main calendar, and right sidebar work together nicely, so tasks, channels, and settings always feel close at hand.

There is both a light and a dark theme, and I enjoyed using each one. Everything can be personalized and color-coded, which keeps even a busy week visually simple and easy to scan.

What I especially liked is that the desktop app feels complete. I never had to jump to the web app to change important settings or find hidden options.

Overall, Sunsama’s minimalist interface felt designed to support enhanced productivity while planning.

Motion’s user interface

Motion’s user interface has been noted as having a steep learning curve, which might hinder new users. However, I found that it has a simple interface. I would not call it beautiful, but rather practical. You can easily navigate its pages, and it is easy to find its tools.

Compared to Reclaim AI, Motion has a less intuitive interface, and maybe it would be great if there were more colors. Nevertheless, I appreciated the option to change between numerous themes.

My experience with Sunsama

After a few weeks of planning my days in Sunsama, I understood why many people see it as a mindful productivity tool. What I appreciated most was how it encouraged intention without feeling restrictive. Weekly objectives, focus mode, and daily shutdowns helped me stay organized without burning out.

The price is on the higher side, but the overall experience felt polished and genuinely helpful for daily planning. 

You can read my full experience here: An Unfiltered Sunsama Review (2026): Is It Worth $20/Month?

My experience with Motion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD93po9HbIc

During the Motion app review, the first thing that came up was that the navigation was pretty straightforward. It was also easy to locate all the key features and start using them.

However, I would say it has a steep learning curve compared to most productivity tools. For example, it took me 10-15 minutes to set up my booking page and find all the relevant options for this.

The good news is that there are many tutorial videos and articles, so you do not have to find the solution for all your issues.

Moreover, Motion provides users with many customizable options to make sure they will not miss any important information. Entering tasks, changing existing tasks, or adding new tasks to a project work smoothly for me.

I particularly liked Motion as a project management software and scheduling tool. It is a great combination to create projects fast.

All in all, I had a very pleasant experience using Motion in my daily schedule.

Sunsama’s pros and cons

Now, I will show you the pros and cons I discovered during my Sunsama vs Motion review!

Pros of Sunsama

Cons of Sunsama

Motion’s pros and cons

Let’s continue with Motion’s pros and cons!

Pros of Motion

Cons of Motion

Alternatives to Sunsama and Motion

If you are not sure if these two productivity apps are the best choices for you, here are some Motion and Sunsama alternatives worth considering:

• Morgen: It is a popular calendar app that combines multiple calendars, tasks, and scheduling in one place
• Todoist: A powerful task management tool focused on simplicity and organization, ideal for people who need structured to-do lists and basic task management without switching between several calendars.
• Routine: A minimalist productivity app that combines calendars, tasks, notes, and simple journaling in one place.
• Notion: A flexible calendar built into Notion’s workspace, great for users already managing complex projects, tasks and notes there, who want task integration within one platform.
• Timehero: A predictive task management and time blocking solution that automatically arranges work based on your availability and deadlines.
• Reclaim: An intelligent planner that uses AI to automate time management, protect focus hours, and balance meetings with flexible task scheduling.
• Outlook: Microsoft’s long-standing app combining email, calendar events, and collaboration tools for larger teams in enterprise environments.
• Upbase: Upbase has a free plan available and offers comprehensive task management and project management for task and project management, making it a strong alternative to Sunsama.
• BusyCal: A highly customizable Mac and iOS app for users who want full control over views, reminders, and scheduling links.
• Reclaim: Reclaim is half the price of Sunsama and offers similar task management and time blocking capabilities, but is only available for Google Calendar.

My pick: Sunsama vs Motion

After using both apps daily, I’d say Sunsama works better for me as a proper project manager for daily planning. I liked the way it guided me through planning, slowed me down a bit, and made me think about what’s actually realistic for the day.

If, on the other hand, you want strong automation and expect the app to handle scheduling decisions for you, Motion is a perfectly valid choice.

Related article:

• 11 Best Daily Planner Apps | 20+ Personally Tested Tools (2026)
• My Honest Morgen Review After 5 Weeks (2026)
• Motion App Review: My $348 Experience and Why I Don’t Regret It
• 9 Best Motion Alternatives | I Tried 20+ Apps (2026)
• Todoist review (2026): Is it worth it anymore?

I hope I was able to help you find out whether Sunsama or Motion suits you the best. As always, I will keep updating this Sunsama vs Motion article.

Why you can trust our reviews

At thebusinessdive.com, our team tests, reviews, and compares hundreds of productivity apps every year — from project management tools to note-taking apps. We dive deep into real-world use cases to help you find the right tools that actually improve your workflow, not just add noise.

Our mission? No fluff, no shortcuts—just honest, hands-on insights from productivity pros.

Have a question or suggestion? I’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out anytime at aronkantor@thebusinessdive.com.

Frequently asked questions

What makes Sunsama different from other productivity apps?

In the Motion vs Sunsama debate, Sunsama stands out among productivity apps because of its manual planning and calendar-based approach. Instead of relying on artificial intelligence to automatically plan your day, it helps you categorize tasks, focus on task completion, and genuinely feel calm while working.

Who is Sunsama best suited for?

Sunsama is ideal for individuals focused on personal productivity, work-life balance, and intentional time management. If you want a user-friendly interface, clear focus time, and a daily planner that supports both work and personal life, Sunsama fits better than most other productivity tools.

What is the alternative to the Motion app?

Strong Sunsama alternatives include existing tools that focus on task scheduling, time blocking, and solid calendar features without heavy automation. Some alternatives rely on a drag-and-drop interface, work well with Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, and avoid forcing users to rely on auto-scheduling.

Is Motion worth it in 2026?

In Motion vs other tools, Motion is worth it if you want Motion’s AI to automatically prioritize tasks based on deadlines. With advanced features like project management capabilities, a built-in meeting scheduler, and strong team collaboration, Motion offers powerful, unique features, especially if you’re managing multiple tools today.

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