Pain drives change.
Put your own money on the line for the micro goals you keep postponing. One deadline a day. Free unless you fail.
No subscription. You only ever pay a fee you set yourself — when you miss. It runs in your browser, on any device.
Three steps. That's the whole app.
Add micro goals for today.
Tiny, specific actions you fully control — “work 45 minutes on the project”, “don’t smoke”, “read 20 pages”. Each carries its own share of your daily fee, split by priority (Low 1× · Medium 2× · High 3×).
Pick the stake that stings.
The fee is yours: raise it, lower it, or give one micro goal a custom amount. Every micro goal shows exactly what it costs if missed.
Press YES before the deadline.
One button a day stops the countdown. Finish everything and you pay nothing. Miss a micro goal and its share is charged to your card.
Tap YES in time → you pay NOTHING.
Empty list at the deadline? The full daily fee is charged — an empty list is exactly what the fee exists to prevent.
Why a small consequence works
It sounds too simple. But it's the same instinct that stops you touching a hot stove twice: pain avoidance.
A small, real consequence quietly rewires how seriously your brain treats your own promises. The annoyance of losing money is the point — it's what turns a promise into a habit.
That's why normal to-do apps fail — with no consequence, your brain treats the list as optional.
And remember: finish on time and you pay nothing. The app is free unless you fail.
“The pain of discipline weighs ounces. The pain of regret weighs tons.”
You're in control.
You set every stake
The daily fee starts from the minimum your card processor allows. Raise it, lower it, or set a custom amount per micro goal — whatever stings just enough.
Every charge refundable for 14 days
Disagree with a charge? Open History → Payment history, press it, and contest it. A human reviews it — if it shouldn't have happened, it's refunded to your card.
Excuses for real life
Something genuinely got in your way? Waive a micro goal — today's or tomorrow's, before it even starts — it's never charged and doesn't count against you. Cancel or pause anytime, no dark patterns.
Where your money actually goes
You miss a deadline, your card is charged the share you set. Here is the exact order that money moves in — no hand-waving, and nothing here is a donation to us.
1. Stripe takes its cut first
The charge runs through Stripe, and their processing fee (a card-dependent percentage plus a small fixed amount) comes off the top before anything reaches us. We absorb it on our side: your fee is never raised to cover it.
2. If it shouldn't have happened, it's refunded
Contest any charge from History → Payment history for 14 days, with no explanation required. A human reads it — we answer within 72 hours — and a charge that was wrong goes back to your card. If the app itself caused the miss (you tapped YES offline before the deadline and it didn't register), the refund is automatic: you don't even have to ask.
3. What's left keeps the app running
Servers, email and push delivery, payment processing, support and development. No ads, no subscription, no selling your data, no upcharge on the fee. Fees you never pay — because you finished — cost you nothing and cost us nothing.
4. If someone referred you, most of it goes to them
GrowOrPay pays the person who invited you up to 100% of the net fee during your first month and 70% after that, for as long as you keep using the app. That is a larger slice than we keep.
We'd rather you never pay it. The fee exists to make the deadline real, not to fund us: if every micro goal got finished, we'd make nothing from fees and that would be a great outcome. We never keep a charge you dispute, we never sell debt and we never use collections agencies. The full policy is in the Terms.
Pricing
The app is free. You only ever pay the fee you set — and only when a micro goal misses its deadline. Running late is also an option: buy extra hours before the deadline, no list changes needed.
Tips welcome but optional. The fees people don't reclaim and those optional tips are the only money we make — no ads, no subscriptions, no data selling.
Stripe processing fees are absorbed by us, and every charge is contestable for 14 days.
Questions people actually ask
What people say
“I tried every habit app. The only one that actually got me out of bed at 6am was the one that would charge me $20 if I didn't.”
“I've paid the fee twice. I haven't missed since. That's the whole pitch — it works because it's real.”