Sunsama Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives

What is Sunsama?

Sunsama is a digital daily planner that walks you through a short planning ritual each morning. You pull tasks from your calendars, email, Slack and project tools, decide what fits today, timebox it on your calendar and then close the day with a shutdown review. The goal is a workload you can actually finish, not an endless list.

The founders started working on time management in 2013 and tried several products before building Sunsama in 2018 as a planner for themselves. It joined Y Combinator in late 2018, raised a $2.4 million seed round and, according to the company, became profitable in 2022. It was named best scheduling tool by The New York Times Wirecutter.

Sunsama’s recent work focuses on AI and connections to other assistants. The Pro plan includes AI features and Sunny, the built-in AI assistant, alongside a hosted MCP server that lets ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Code, Cursor and Notion work with your Sunsama tasks. Its approach is deliberately manual and mindful: it helps you choose, rather than scheduling everything automatically.

Key features of Sunsama

• Guided daily planningA step-by-step morning flow that helps you pick today’s tasks and keep the workload realistic.
• TimeboxingDrag tasks onto Google, Outlook or Apple calendars to block time for real work.
• Focus modeA distraction-free view with a Pomodoro timer, break reminders and app muting.
• Shutdown and weekly reviewEnd-of-day summaries, highlights, weekly objectives and time-tracking analytics.
• IntegrationsConnects with 30+ tools including Asana, ClickUp, Todoist, Notion, Trello, Jira, Linear, Gmail, Slack and Teams, plus Zapier.
• AI and MCPAI features and the Sunny assistant, plus an MCP server so outside AI tools can read and update your plan.

Who is Sunsama best for?

• Knowledge workers prone to overcommitting because the planning flow makes you face how much time tasks really take.
• People using many task tools who want one daily view across Asana, Jira, Notion and email.
• Remote workers who want clear start and end rituals to protect work-life balance.
• Companies that need SSO, SAML, SCIM and audit logs on the Enterprise plan.

Popular ways to use Sunsama

• Morning planning: Pull tasks from Jira and Gmail, choose today’s priorities and timebox them.
• Deep work: Start focus mode with a Pomodoro timer on your most important task.
• End-of-day review: Run the shutdown ritual to log wins and move unfinished work.
• Weekly goals: Set weekly objectives and link daily tasks to them.
• AI planning: Ask Claude or ChatGPT, connected via MCP, to draft tomorrow’s plan from your tasks.

Sunsama pricing (October 2026)

The 14-day free trial includes all features and needs no credit card. Team members added mid-month are prorated.

Sunsama pros and cons

How to get started with Sunsama

1. Start the 14-day trial and connect your main calendar.
2. Add the task tools and inboxes you use, such as Asana, Notion or Gmail.
3. Run the guided daily planning flow and timebox three to five tasks.
4. Use focus mode for your first task of the day.
5. Finish with the shutdown ritual and set objectives for the week.

Tips to get better results from Sunsama

• Add time estimates to every task so you can see when the day is overloaded.
• Keep integrations focused; importing every project tool at once creates noise.
• Review the time-tracking analytics weekly to see where your hours actually went.
• Connect the MCP server if you already plan with Claude or ChatGPT.

Sunsama vs alternatives

Akiflow is the closest competitor: it is faster and more keyboard-driven, with a universal inbox, but lacks Sunsama’s guided rituals and costs more monthly. Motion and Reclaim.ai take the opposite approach by scheduling your tasks automatically with AI.

If you mainly want a workspace for notes and projects, Notion AI or ClickUp Brain may be enough, and they connect to Sunsama anyway. Sunsama suits people who want to decide their day intentionally rather than hand scheduling over to an algorithm. See all best AI productivity tools.

Our verdict: is Sunsama worth it?

Sunsama FAQs

Pricing and features change often. Details on this page were last reviewed in October 2026. Always confirm current plans on the official Sunsama website.