Everyday family life rarely lives in one place. The schedule sits in a calendar app, the shopping list on a note on the fridge, the week's dinners in the head of whoever does the shopping, and who paid for what gets tallied in a chat thread at the end of the month. Each part works well enough on its own, but the whole leaks: double bookings, forgotten groceries and expenses that never get evened out.
A family organizer app puts all of it in one place. EpiHem is our own app, and it is built for exactly that, so it comes first on this page: the shared calendar, the shared lists, the recipe book and the meal plan, the receipts and who owes whom in one app, where the parts work together. The calendar and the lists are free for a household of up to four, with no ads. After it come FamilyWall, Cozi, TimeTree and the pair Google Calendar and Google Keep, and further down a few apps that do a single job. For each one you get what it does, what it costs and where it stops.
The short version
Which one fits depends on what the household wants in one place:
EpiHem: one app for the household's whole week
EpiHem is built as a household app from the start, not as a calendar with extras. Everything a household shares is in the same app: the calendar, the lists, the recipe book and the meal plan, the receipts and who owes whom. It runs on iPhone, on Android and in any web browser, and a change shows on everyone's screen as it is made.
The parts work together
What makes it one app and not four is that the parts know about each other. Take an ordinary week:
- On Sunday you plan the week. Pick the week's dinners from your recipe book and they sit on the calendar on their days, under practice and the dentist.
- The meal plan writes the shopping list. The ingredients for the week's meals become a shopping list that everyone in the household sees.
- In the shop you tick it off together. Whoever is shopping ticks off, and whoever is at home can still add the milk. Type "2 l milk" and the app reads the quantity and the unit.
- After the shop you scan the receipt. EpiHem reads it item by item, and the cost is split between the people it concerns. The app keeps the balance of who owes whom until you settle up, and the receipt stays on the calendar on its day.
- A bigger plan gets a project. The bathroom renovation gets a budget, and the lists and receipts that belong to it are kept together.
Free for a household of up to four
The shared calendar and the shared lists are whole in the free version:
- A shared calendar with recurring events and reminders, in a week, a month and an agenda view, and a face on every event for who it is for.
- The school's, the club's and your Google calendar, added with a link, and your own calendar exported to Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar.
- Shared shopping and to-do lists that everyone ticks off together, with tags, and personal lists for what is only yours.
- Roles, for who can edit and who can only look.
- Real-time sync between iPhone, Android and the web.
- A way back: a deleted item can be restored for 30 days.
- No ads, on any plan.
Premium adds recipes, the meal plan, the receipts and who owes whom
Premium adds the rest of the week:
- A recipe book you fill from a link, from text or from a photo, with nutrition data. Or describe a dish, and EpiHem creates the recipe.
- Weekly meal planning with a nutrition overview, and the shopping list written from the week's meals. There is more in our guide to weekly meal planning.
- Receipt scanning that reads the line items, so every item on the receipt is in the app and not only the total.
- Splitting and settling who owes whom, with a running balance until you settle up.
- Projects with budgets, and statistics.
Premium costs EUR 6.99 a month or EUR 49.99 a year, and one subscription covers the whole household, up to 8 people. Try it free for 14 days, with no card. EpiHem is Swedish-made, and your household's data is stored in the EU.
What is a family organizer app?
A family organizer app, also called a household app, gathers a household's shared everyday life in a single app: a shared calendar, shared lists, meal planning and the household's shared costs. The point is not any single feature, but that everything connects and everyone in the household sees the same thing in real time. The idea behind the all-in-one household app is to replace three or four apps with one.
That separates it from two kinds of app it gets mixed up with. A family calendar app solves the schedule and nothing else. A single-purpose app does one thing, like the shopping list or splitting costs, and leaves the rest of the week to other apps. Several of the apps marketed to families are, in practice, family calendars with a few extras, so the tables below show line by line what each one holds and what it charges for.
Family organizer apps compared
We read each vendor's own site and its App Store listing: the features in July and October 2026, the prices in October 2026. A check means the feature is there, a half mark that it comes with a condition, and a dash that it is missing. Where a vendor does not say, the table says "Not stated". On a phone the table scrolls sideways.
| Feature | EpiHem Our app | FamilyWall | Cozi | TimeTree | Google Calendar + Keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared calendar | Yes free, up to 4 people | Yes sync and calendar links are paid | Partial events 30 days ahead when free, Cozi says | Yes | Yes free |
| Shared lists | Yes free, up to 4 people | Yes | Yes | Partial memos and to-dos | Yes a checklist in Keep, a separate app |
| Meal planning | Yes Premium | Yes paid | Yes the AI planner is paid | No | No |
| Splitting costs: who owes whom | Yes Premium | No budget only | No | No | No |
| Receipt scanning that reads the line items | Yes Premium | No | No | No | No |
| No ads | Yes on every plan | Yes FamilyWall says | Partial ads in the free version | Partial ads in the free version | Yes |
Price and what is free
Every one of the five can be started without paying. What differs is how much the free version holds, whether it shows ads, and what the paid subscription costs.
| Feature | EpiHem Our app | FamilyWall | Cozi | TimeTree | Google Calendar + Keep |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free version | Calendar and lists for up to 4 people, no ads | Calendar, lists, messaging and recipes | With ads, events 30 days ahead | With ads | All of it |
| Paid subscription, per year | EUR 49.99 (EUR 6.99 a month) for the whole household, up to 8 people | About USD 45 (about USD 8 a month) | Gold about USD 40 | About USD 45 (about USD 4.50 a month) | None |
The other apps' prices are rounded from what each vendor published in US dollars in October 2026. Prices change, so check the vendor's page before you pay. EpiHem's price is our own, in euros, and the app stores show it in your currency.
FamilyWall
What you get: A family organizer whose free version has a colour-coded calendar, shopping lists, to-dos you can assign, recipes, family messaging and a photo gallery, on iPhone, on Android and on the web.
Where it stops: Much of what a household comes for is paid. The meal planner, the budget, syncing with Google and Outlook calendars, adding a school calendar by link and location sharing all belong to FamilyWall Premium, a paid subscription at about USD 8 a month or USD 45 a year. The budget does not work out who owes whom: FamilyWall has no splitting of costs between family members and no receipt scanning, so the money ends up in another app.
Cozi
What you get: The long-established family organizer. Cozi has a colour-coded calendar that works with Google, Outlook and Apple calendars, shopping lists, to-do and chore lists and a recipe box, and dinners can be planned on the calendar with the ingredients sent to the shopping list. It runs on iPhone, on Android and on the web, and one account holds up to 12 people.
Where it stops: The free version shows ads and, Cozi says, takes events for the next 30 days only. To plan further ahead you pay for Cozi Gold, a subscription at about USD 40 a year, which also removes the ads, and the AI meal planner belongs to a more expensive subscription than that. Cozi does not scan receipts or split costs. There is more in our guide to Cozi alternatives, and a three-way comparison in Cozi vs FamilyWall vs TimeTree.
Same owner: Cozi and FamilyWall are owned by the same company. Both sit under In Tandem, formed in September 2024, which also owns OurFamilyWizard and Custody Navigator. Cozi names In Tandem as its parent organization and FamilyWall as a sibling brand in its own structured data. Choosing between Cozi and FamilyWall means choosing between two brands from the same owner.
TimeTree
What you get: A calendar app through and through. You can keep as many shared calendars as you need, for the family, a hobby or school, and talk about an event inside the event. It runs on iPhone, on Android and on the web, and the free version is a whole calendar.
Where it stops: At the calendar. Lists exist only as memos and to-dos, and there is no meal planning, no splitting of costs and no receipt scanning. The free version shows ads, and removing them is a paid subscription, TimeTree Premium, at about USD 4.50 a month or USD 45 a year. If the calendar is all you are choosing, our comparison of family calendar apps goes further into it.
Google Calendar + Google Keep
What you get: The free calendar most families already have, with a shared checklist in Keep next to it. When you set up a Google family group, a calendar called Family is created for it. Google Calendar runs on iPhone, on Android and in any browser, shows Google, Exchange and iCloud calendars together and takes a school or club calendar from its link. Nobody pays anything.
Where it stops: At the schedule and a checklist, in two separate apps. There is no meal planning, no splitting of costs and no receipt scanning, so dinner and the household's money are handled somewhere else. Google also notes that family members are not notified when someone adds or changes an event on the family calendar, so a change can pass unseen.
Single-purpose apps: one job each
Does everything have to live in one app? Not if the household shares a single thing. A single-purpose app does that one job, and the rest of the week stays in other apps. Before you pick one, know that EpiHem's shared lists and shared calendar cost nothing, and that they sit in the same app as the receipts.
Shopping lists: Bring! and Listonic
Bring! is a shopping list app with all its core functions free, and with local offers and brochures inside the app; its paid subscription is about USD 9 a year. Listonic gives you unlimited lists and sharing for free, with ads, and charges to remove them. Both stop at the list: there is no calendar next to it and nothing for shared costs. In EpiHem the shared lists are free and sit next to the calendar, and with Premium the meal plan writes the list and the receipt is attached to it afterwards. There is a walkthrough on our shared lists page, and more list apps side by side in our comparison of shared grocery list apps.
Splitting costs: Splitwise, Tricount and Settle Up
Splitwise is built for splitting costs in a group or on a trip. Free users can add up to 4 expenses a day, and receipt scanning, unlimited expenses and an ad-free app belong to its paid subscription, Splitwise Pro. Tricount is free, with no daily cap and no ads. Settle Up is free with ads; receipt photos, recurring expenses and export are a paid subscription at about USD 4 a month or USD 20 a year, and it does not read the receipt. None of the three has a calendar or lists, so the money sits apart from the week it was spent in. In EpiHem the receipt is scanned, read item by item and split in the same app as the list it was shopped from. There is more in our Splitwise comparison for households and on our receipt scanning and expense splitting page.
If one job is all you share, one of these does it. Once the household shares two or three things, the calendar, the list and the money belong in the same app, and that is what EpiHem is for.
Which one should you choose?
- You want the household's week in one place, with the calendar, the lists, dinner and the receipts: EpiHem. Start free with the calendar and the lists, and add Premium when the meals and the money should be in it too.
- You only need a schedule: Google Calendar, free, with a checklist in Keep.
- Family chat and location sharing matter most: FamilyWall, and count on its paid Premium for location sharing, the meal planner and calendar sync.
- You want the long-established organizer with chore lists: Cozi, and count on paying about USD 40 a year for Gold if you plan more than a month ahead.
- You want a calendar and nothing else: TimeTree, free with ads.
- You only want a shopping list: Bring! or Listonic.
- You only split costs in a group or on a trip: Tricount, free, or Splitwise within its 4 expenses a day.
If dinner is the part you most want solved, our comparison of meal planning apps sets them side by side.
