Frequently asked questions

Equal House is a UK family organiser app for iPhone, iPad and Android, and on a computer at app.equal.house: a shared calendar, a meal planner with 6,000+ recipes and a shared shopping list, kids’ chores with pocket money, the school run and an AI assistant, with a Fairness Engine that shares the household work fairly between the grown-ups. A live Fairness Score shows how the work is split, by effort rather than by count, and Auto-Balance moves jobs to whoever has room.

Every task carries an effort weight, and an effort-weighted ledger of who does what becomes a single 0–100 score for how the grown-ups share the home. 86 and above is green, 75 to 85 amber and under 75 red, which shows the load has tipped onto one person. You can see it for the week, the month or the year. Children are counted separately, on their own boards, and never scored. One tap on Auto-Balance shares out the upcoming chores straight away to bring it back towards balance; if you would rather choose job by job, More → Fairer Week Ahead suggests moves for you to accept. The Fairness Score page at equal.house/fairness-score works through it with real numbers.

Yes. A 50/50 split by count ignores that some jobs take far more time and energy than others. Equal House balances by effort and by who is actually free that day — giving no work to anyone marked as away on those days, and expecting less of anyone at work — so fairness reflects real life.

Not an account, but they do sign in. A child taps your family’s chosen set of emojis, picks their avatar and enters a PIN — and the code is only accepted on a device your family has approved. A grown-up can approve a device by signing in on it, or by sending a setup code to a child’s own phone. A child needs no email address or password, and only a grown-up adds their details.

A grown-up needs to approve that device once, and the emoji code will work again straight away. There are two ways: sign in on the device yourself, or — for a phone that is the child’s own — send a setup code from Your Account, which they enter on their device without any adult signing in on it. Children can only sign in on an approved device because it stops a guessed code letting a stranger reach your children. You do it once per device, and you can see and remove approved devices under More → Your Account. If a device still refuses after a grown-up signs in, tap “Your emojis not working?” on the kid sign-in screen and choose Start again, then sign in once more.

Yes. Put stars and pocket money on a chore and they are paid once a grown-up confirms the child did it. Routines can pay too: each day a child ticks the last step, the stars and money go straight into their jars. You record a pay-out whenever you settle up, from Settings → Children’s boards.

There are three, and a shopping list they share: a meal planner that plans budget- and diet-aware dinners from 6,031 recipes across 52 cuisines (three days ahead on the free plan, a full week or more with Equal House Pro); a party planner for anyone’s party, from a child’s birthday to Grandad’s seventieth; and the school run, under More → School Information, which puts a whole term of drop-offs and pick-ups on the calendar (setting up a school is part of Equal House Pro). Everything the house needs to buy lands on one shopping list, in UK supermarket aisle order. The meal and party planners turn their plans into fairly shared tasks, and the school run fills your calendar with the term’s drop-offs and pick-ups.

Treat them as a guide. Labels such as vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, dairy free and contains nuts are worked out automatically from each recipe’s ingredients, and the nutrition and costs are estimates. They have not been checked against the products you buy, which vary between brands, and recipes carry no “may contain” warnings — so always check the packaging yourself, especially for allergies or coeliac disease. See the recipes section of our terms of service.

Magic Add lets you paste a school newsletter or snap a photo of one, and Equal House suggests the events and chores hidden inside it. Nothing is saved until you review and confirm — you always stay in control. It is on every plan with a monthly allowance, which is bigger with Pro.

Yes. Open Magic Add, tap “Speak it” and talk naturally — “book the dentist by Friday” or “Leo has swimming Tuesday at 5” — and your words become suggested events and tasks. You review and confirm everything on screen before it is saved, so a mis-heard word can never quietly create a task. Your phone’s own speech recogniser turns what you say into words. “Speak it” is part of Equal House Pro — snapping a photo or pasting text into Magic Add is free, up to a monthly allowance.

They are on the Tasks tab, which is where Home used to be. Since version 1.13.0 the calendar shows events only — events, parties, school and club feeds and work shifts — so it stays quick to read, and every chore, routine and to-do is listed, ticked off and shared out on Tasks.

Privacy is built in. Private documents stay private to their owner with signed, time-limited downloads, children need no email address or password, your private diary is kept only on your own device, or in your browser on a computer, and never uploaded, and we never sell your information. Your household’s data is stored in London, and the AI features — Bric, Magic Add, the meal planner and Safe Space’s talking points — are processed by Amazon Bedrock in the UK and the EU. See our privacy policy for the full detail.

Yes. Equal House includes a directory of more than 30,000 schools across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — search by name or postcode and pick yours. You then set your drop-off and pick-up days and times, record each child’s uniform, PE and swimming days, and the whole term appears on your family calendar, skipping the closures you add for half-terms, INSET days and bank holidays. Setting up a school is part of Equal House Pro: a term runs for months, and the free plan plans three days ahead.

Yes. With Equal House Pro you can connect your household to Claude and other AI assistants and manage it in plain language — ask what someone’s doing on Thursday, or share out the week’s chores. You choose read-only or read-and-write access, you’re always asked to confirm any change, and you can revoke access at any time.

Safe Space is a calmer, kinder way to raise something tricky with another grown-up in the house. You write down what’s on your mind — or say it, as a voice note — and choose who to share it with, and Equal House gently lets them know you’d like to talk it through, with gentle talking points and, if you like, a little time set aside. It’s part of Equal House Pro. There’s also a Wellbeing section for everyone, with Take a Breath, a private diary kept on your own device and UK helplines.

Bric is Equal House’s friendly brick. His tab opens on How we’re doing — the week as the Fairness Engine sees it, what is coming up and what is waiting for a yes — on every plan. He also cheers you on — tick something off and a full-screen “Done!” appears, with a bigger cheer when your part of the day is done — and he talks to children on their Kid Zone board. With Equal House Pro you can also ask him about your home, from who has the school run on Thursday to where the stopcock is, and he can suggest changes to your week that only happen when a grown-up approves them, or add things to the shopping list when you ask. You can turn the celebrations down in Settings → Celebrations.

Yes. On phones with a secure lock screen, you can switch on App Lock in Settings to require your fingerprint or device PIN whenever you open Equal House. It is set per device and stays on your phone, and it is designed to fail safely — if your device credentials are removed it unlocks rather than shutting you out, so you can never be permanently locked out of your own family’s data. There is also a “Sign out instead” option on the lock screen.

Equal House is free to use with a rolling 3-day planning horizon — you can view and create entries up to three days ahead across the calendar, tasks, events, meals and more. Equal House Pro removes that limit and unlocks the school run (a term spans months, so setting up a school needs Pro), Safe Space, Bric the in-app assistant (who both answers questions about your home and suggests changes to your week), Renewals, the Action Inbox and email forwarding, Calendar Sync (showing a Google, Outlook or Apple calendar in yours, read-only), “Speak it” dictation in Magic Add, sharing your household’s code with relatives, and the AI-assistant connector for £2.99 a month or £29.90 a year (two months free), as one subscription for your whole household. There is no automatic free trial: the free plan is free for as long as you like. Families moving from another family app can claim 31 days of Pro with code SWITCH until 23:59 UK time on 31 March 2027 — no card, it never turns into a subscription, once per household, once per person and once per email address, limited to the first 10,000 households (see equal.house/switch for every condition). One subscription covers the whole household, on every phone and on a computer at app.equal.house. You subscribe in the app or on the computer, and can manage or cancel it at any time. See the pricing page for full details.

For many UK families, yes — but not for everyone, and we compare them row by row on equal.house/alternatives with a link to each app’s own pages (checked on 9 October 2026). Equal House covers the shared calendar, shopping list and meals that Cozi and FamilyWall do, and like them works on a computer as well as a phone, and adds kids’ chores with pocket money and their own sign-in, the school run with a UK school directory, no ads on any plan (Cozi’s free plan has ads), and a Fairness Engine that shares the work between the grown-ups. Cozi’s free calendar looks further ahead (30 days to our three), both sync with Google or Outlook calendars (FamilyWall with Premium), and FamilyWall also has location sharing, a family chat, photos and a budget, which Equal House does not.

Yes, as a read-only copy. Cozi and FamilyWall can both share a calendar as an iCal link, and Google, Outlook and Apple calendars have one too. Paste it into Calendar Sync, part of Equal House Pro, and those events show in your family calendar and keep up to date; Equal House never writes back to them. Lists don’t move automatically. Our guides at equal.house/guides/switching walk through moving from Cozi, FamilyWall, Maple, TimeTree and Skylight step by step.

Equal House is on the App Store and Google Play, for iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets, and it works on a computer too, in a web browser at app.equal.house. Everyone in the household signs in to the same family, on whichever of them they use.

Yes. Go to app.equal.house in a web browser and sign in with the same account you use on your phone: it is the same household and the same plan, so Pro bought on a phone covers the computer, and Pro bought on the computer covers every phone. There is nothing to install. The computer gives the calendar, tasks, meals and the rest room to breathe, and can show the Family Wall as an overview of the day on a spare laptop or a TV. A few things stay on phones and tablets: Kid Zone boards for the children, reminders and notifications, and the app lock. A free household plans three days ahead there, as on the phone.

No. It is a measure of how the work is shared between the grown-ups, not a mark for anyone. It names no winner and no loser, allows for work patterns and shifts, and leaves the children out altogether. A score that has tipped is a prompt to talk, or to tap Auto-Balance, rather than a verdict. Your Week in Review counts what you got done together, and a Thanks chip makes saying so one tap. How the score is worked out is set out on equal.house/fairness-score.

Maple’s website says Maple closes on 31 December 2026, and that all data is then permanently deleted, with no way to recover it. Save what you need before then. If Maple was syncing with a Google, Apple or Outlook calendar, those events are still in that calendar and survive the closure, and you can show that calendar in Equal House with Calendar Sync (Pro). Lists, recipes and chores need copying across by hand; recipes can go into Saved recipes, typed or read from a photo. There is no direct import. The closure and what to save first are on equal.house/alternatives/maple, and the move step by step is in our guide at equal.house/guides/switch-from-maple.

Yes. Renewals (part of Equal House Pro) lets you note each date once — car insurance, the MOT, home insurance, passports, the TV licence — with as much warning as you want. Once a date is inside its warning it is marked Coming up on the Renewals list, and one you miss is marked Overdue rather than quietly rolled on. It is a list you check rather than a notification. When you renew, it asks for the next date, offering a year ahead.