Choose Motion if…
- You plan work for a whole team and want shared projects, docs and a wiki in one paid workspace.
- You rely on native desktop and mobile apps today.
- Your team already builds on its public API.
Choose Needt if…
- You plan for yourself and want auto-scheduling with a free plan and Pro at $59 a year.
- You want to approve every change when your day rebuilds.
- Your plan needs docs and moodboards next to the calendar, plus MCP access from Claude or ChatGPT.
Side by side
| Needt | Motion | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $7/month or $59/year; Lifetime $149 once | Pro AI $19/seat/month, Business AI $29 (annual) |
| Free plan | Yes: 1 calendar, 1 board, 15 auto-scheduled tasks/month | No |
| Trial | 14 days of Pro, free | Not listed |
| Auto-scheduling | Yes: around meetings, by deadline, priority and energy; day rebuilds when plans move | Yes |
| Time-blocking | Yes, tasks and events in one view | Yes, via auto-scheduling |
| Docs | Yes: pages with rich text and databases | Yes: docs and wiki |
| Moodboards | Yes: Boards with images, hex swatches, notes, links | Not listed |
| AI assistant | Ask agent; small allowance on Free, included on Pro; bring your own key | Yes: AI chat |
| Calendars | Google, Outlook/Microsoft 365, iCloud, any CalDAV | Google, Outlook |
| Gmail, Outlook, IMAP (up to 3 mailboxes on Pro) | Not listed | |
| MCP/API | Remote MCP server + REST API (Pro) | Public API |
| Apps | Web app, installable on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android (PWA); native mobile apps in development | Native apps |
Prices and features from each company’s own pages, checked 11 Oct 2026. “Not listed” means we couldn’t find it there.
Who Motion is great for
Motion is built for teams. Projects, tasks and docs live in shared workspaces, and the scheduler plans everyone's work against their calendars. If you manage a team of five and want one tool that assigns work, fills calendars and keeps a wiki, Motion covers a lot of ground.
Where Motion wins:
- Team scheduling. It plans work across several people, not only you.
- A documented public API for teams that build internal tooling.
- Native apps on desktop and mobile. Needt is a web app you install as an app; native iOS and Android apps are still in development.
If those three matter most, Motion is a fair choice and you may not need to switch.
Where people get stuck
Most people searching for a Motion alternative are solo: a freelancer, a founder before the first hire, a student with a side project. For them the friction is cost. Motion has no free plan, and its lowest AI tier listed for teams is $19 per seat per month on annual billing. For one seat that is $228 a year before you know whether auto-scheduling fits the way you work.
The second friction is weight. A team workspace brings roles, projects and a wiki. If you just want your own day planned, much of that is overhead you click past every morning.
How Needt differs
Needt keeps the part people come to Motion for, and sizes everything else for one person.
- Auto-scheduling that shows its work. When a meeting moves or a task runs over, Needt rebuilds the rest of the day and shows you what moved. You confirm before anything changes.
- Energy as a scheduling input. Mark a task High energy and the scheduler favors your sharper hours; Low energy tasks go to the slump.
- Docs and moodboards next to the plan. Pages with databases, plus Boards for images, hex swatches and links. Useful if your work is partly visual.
An example day
Alex types draft proposal, 90 min, by Thursday #Clients, high energy. Needt places it at 09:30 to 11:00, after a 09:00 to 09:30 client call. At 10:15 the 14:00 review moves to 11:00. Needt shifts the proposal's second half to 13:00 to 13:45, slides invoice March, 20 min #Shop to 15:30, and lists both changes. Alex taps confirm and keeps working.
Cost over a year
Solo user, one seat, annual billing where offered:
| Plan | Math | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Motion Pro AI | $19 × 12 | $228 |
| Motion Business AI | $29 × 12 | $348 |
| Needt Pro (yearly) | $59 once a year | $59 |
| Needt Pro (monthly) | $7 × 12 | $84 |
| Needt Lifetime | $149 once | $149, then $0 |
The yearly difference against Motion Pro AI is $169. Prices from Motion pricing and Needt pricing, checked October 11, 2026.
Switching in an afternoon
- Create a Needt account. You get 14 days of Pro after confirming your email, free. Add a card only if you keep Pro.
- Connect the same Google or Outlook calendar Motion uses. Your meetings appear right away.
- Move open tasks. Paste them as lines, or connect an assistant like Claude to the Needt MCP server and ask it to recreate your Motion tasks with estimates and deadlines.
- Run the scheduler and compare the result with what Motion would have built. Run both for a week before you cancel.
Sources
- Motion pricing — www.usemotion.com
- Needt pricing — needt.app
