Dailies vs Motivate
Both are sold as motivation and both have a quote widget, and that is roughly where the overlap stops. Motivate is a streaming library of motivational video and audio: speeches, interviews, playlists, five new videos a day. Dailies is one line of text on a Lock Screen. One needs your attention; the other does not.
The short answer
Choose Motivate if what moves you is a speaker: a voice, a build, a swell of music, three minutes before the gym. It is well made, rated 4.8 across 8,300 ratings, it adds five new videos a day, and it sorts everything into playlists across categories like Essentials, Success, Fitness, Wealth, Happiness and Relationships. Nothing text-based reproduces what a good speech does to you at 6am in a car park.
Choose Dailies if the thing you need has to survive an ordinary Tuesday. It never asks for minutes, headphones, a sign-in or a data connection.
They also sit at opposite ends of the price range: Motivate’s annual plan was $95.99 on 8 September 2026, three to four times what a quotes app charges.
At a glance
| Dailies | Motivate | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Amit Shabtay | Brave New Logic LLC |
| Store rating | New, no ratings yet | 4.8 from 8.3K ratings |
| The medium | Text, read in seconds | Video and audio, watched in minutes |
| Library | A large quote library, cut into narrow topics | Thousands of videos and speeches; five new a day, plus quotes |
| How it aims | Narrow topics you follow, changed whenever you like | Playlists across 11 categories, browsed |
| Delivery | As many or as few a day as you like, at unannounced times inside a window | Customizable push notifications |
| Widgets | Home Screen and Lock Screen | Home Screen quote widget |
| Styling | Photographic backgrounds, typefaces, motion effects, your own photos and colors | Not a feature (the content is video) |
| Account | None. There is no sign-in | Account creation and sign-in |
| Offline | Everything but the purchase | Downloads for offline playback |
| Runs on | iPhone, iPad | iPhone only |
| Languages | English, Spanish, French, German and Simplified Chinese | English |
| Age rating | 13+ | 13+ |
| Download size | Small (the library is text) | 107 MB, plus whatever you download |
| Price | One yearly subscription with a free trial | $11.99/month, $95.99/year, $399.99 lifetime |
Watching or glancing
A motivational video is a performance. It works by building (a voice, a rhythm, music underneath), and building takes time. You cannot skim it, and it does not survive being paused at ninety seconds. Given the attention it needs, it carries far more than a sentence does. That is the trade Motivate makes, and for its audience it is the right one.
A quote is the opposite trade. It carries less and costs nothing to receive. It works in a corridor, in a queue, in the eight seconds between putting your bag down and the next thing.
Dailies is designed entirely around those eight seconds: one line, sized to be read on a Lock Screen without unlocking, on a photograph you chose, in a typeface you chose.
So the real question is not quality, it is occasion. Motivate needs you to have decided to be motivated. Dailies is built for the moment you had not decided anything.
When it reaches you
Motivate sends customizable push notifications and has a Home Screen quote widget, so it can nudge you. The nudge is an invitation: the content is inside the app, and you have to go in and watch.
In Dailies the notification is the whole thing. You set how many quotes you want, the hours you are willing to hear from it and the days; it picks the moments inside that window itself and does not tell you when. If you never open the app, you have still had what you signed up for. A Lock Screen widget and a Home Screen widget carry the same line between notifications.
Accounts, downloads and a bad connection
Motivate’s listing describes account creation and sign-in, which is what a streaming library needs to keep playlists and downloads across devices. It offers offline downloads and background playback, so a commute without signal is solved, as long as you remembered to download something.
Dailies takes the other approach: no account and no sign-in anywhere, and the entire library ships inside the download. Nothing streams and nothing needs remembering in advance. Every part of the app except the App Store purchase works in airplane mode, notifications included, because they are scheduled locally rather than pushed from a server.
What it costs
Motivate’s US listing on 8 September 2026 showed Pro at $11.99 a month, $95.99 a year and $399.99 for life, priced like a media subscription, which is fair, since it pays for produced video and a daily refresh of it.
Dailies sells one yearly subscription with a free trial, priced in your currency and shown in full before you confirm. It opens the full background, typeface and effect library, your own photos and colors, and the rest of the quote library. A substantial free tier comes with the install, and there are no ads at any tier.
Which one to pick
| If you… | Pick |
|---|---|
| Get fired up by speakers, and will actually press play | Motivate |
| Want something for the drive or the warm-up before training | Motivate |
| Like browsing playlists and building your own | Motivate |
| Want motivation that reaches you without you opening anything | Dailies |
| Do not want another account to create | Dailies |
| Want to choose how the words look | Dailies |
| Are on a tight budget, or want a free tier that is genuinely usable | Dailies |
These two overlap less than any other pair on this site. If your answer is a speech before the gym and a line in the middle of the afternoon, that is not indecision. It is two needs, and no single app in this category serves both well.
Questions
Does Dailies have videos?
No. Dailies is text: one quote at a time, on a photograph you choose. There is no video and no audio anywhere in it.
Do I have to create an account?
Not for Dailies. There is no sign-in anywhere in the app. Motivate’s listing describes account creation and sign-in.
Which works better without a connection?
Dailies works fully offline with nothing to prepare: the library is inside the app and reminders are scheduled on the phone. Motivate supports offline playback, but you have to download the videos first.
Which is cheaper?
Dailies, substantially. Motivate listed $95.99 a year on 8 September 2026; Dailies is one yearly subscription in the range typical of quote apps, with a free trial and a substantial free tier.
Can I get quotes on my Lock Screen?
In Dailies, yes: there is a Lock Screen widget as well as a Home Screen one, and scheduled quotes arrive there as notifications through the day. Motivate’s listing describes a Home Screen quote widget only.
Does Motivate run on iPad?
Its listing says iPhone only, as of 21 September 2026. Dailies runs on iPhone and iPad.
Sources
Motivate’s rating count, size, language, age rating, device support and feature list were read from its US App Store listing on 21 September 2026, version 3.5.50; its price points were read from the same listing in the App Store app on 8 September 2026. Dailies is described from the shipping build, in words rather than figures: its library, free tier and delivery limits move with every release, so a number here would go stale.
More comparisons: Dailies vs Motivation, Dailies vs I am, Dailies vs ThinkUp.
Three seconds, not three minutes.
Set it up once. Dailies takes it from there.
