Milestones Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

What Is Milestones in a Nutshell?

Milestones is a native Apple project planning app that organizes work into a simple Projects, Milestones, and Tasks hierarchy. We found it is one of the cleanest single-user planners on the Mac and iPhone, and the June 2026 update added a real MCP server so AI assistants like Claude can read and update your plans. Best for indie makers and solo founders. Price: free for up to 2 projects, paid from 5.99 dollars per month. Rating: 7.5/10.

What Is Milestones?

Milestones is built by Yassine Zeriouh, an indie developer with a track record of shipped Apple apps. It is a pure SwiftUI project planner for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Vision Pro, and it stores everything in your own iCloud with no account and no third-party servers. The pitch is straightforward. It is project planning for busy people who want structure without the weight of a full team tool like Jira or Linear.

The app uses a three-tier model. A Project contains Milestones, and each Milestone contains Tasks. Milestones move through lifecycle statuses such as Draft, Planning, In Progress, In Review, and Released, while tasks auto-sort into To Do, In Progress, and Done. The headline change in the 2026 release is the addition of a Mac app and an MCP server, which means you can point an AI assistant at your project data and have it create or update tasks for you. For a small native app, that is a genuinely forward-looking move.

What Are Milestones’ Key Features?

Three-Tier Projects, Milestones, and Tasks

The core structure keeps you honest. Instead of one endless task list, you break a project into milestone phases, and each phase holds its own tasks. On iPad and Mac you get a three-column layout that shows the project list, milestone list, and task list at once, so you always know where a given task sits in the bigger picture. It is the kind of structure that scales from a weekend side project to a multi-month app launch.

Private iCloud Sync With No Account

There is no sign-up, no password, and no server holding your data. Milestones syncs through your personal iCloud, works offline, and keeps everything on devices you already own. For privacy-minded makers this is a real selling point, and it also means there is no subscription lock-in on your actual data. You own it.

MCP Server and Claude Integration

The 2026 update ships a Swift-native MCP companion that lets AI clients connect to your Milestones data. The direct build bundles the MCP binary with an in-app install and repair flow plus auto-generated client config, so you can wire up Claude without hand-editing JSON. In practice this means you can ask an assistant to add tasks, change statuses, or summarize a project, and it acts on your real plan. Very few native planners this small offer that.

Milestone Lifecycle Statuses and Kanban

Each milestone carries a status that reflects where it really is, from Draft through Released, which gives you an at-a-glance read on a whole project. Pro unlocks extras like a kanban board, recurring tasks, a project backlog, and custom milestone statuses. It is a thoughtful set of additions that match how solo makers actually track work over time.

How Much Does Milestones Cost?

Milestones is free for up to 2 projects with access to almost every feature, which is a generous way to try it. The Pro upgrade is an in-app purchase priced at 5.99 dollars per month, 29.99 dollars per year, or 79.99 dollars one time for lifetime access. Pro lifts the project limit and unlocks recurring tasks, kanban, the backlog, and custom statuses.

That lifetime option is the standout. Compared with Todoist Pro at around 5 dollars per month forever or Linear at 10 dollars per user per month, paying 79.99 dollars once and never seeing another invoice is a great deal for a tool you plan to keep. The closest spiritual competitor, Things 3, also sells one-time per platform but charges separately for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, which adds up to more than Milestones asks for a single lifetime unlock that covers every Apple device.

Who Is Milestones Best For?

Use Milestones if you are an indie developer, solo founder, freelancer, writer, or student who lives on Apple devices and wants a clean, private way to plan personal projects. The structure is light enough to start in minutes and rigid enough to keep a long project on track. If you value owning your data and avoiding yet another web login, it fits perfectly.

Skip Milestones if you need team collaboration. It is single-user by design, with no shared workspaces, comments, or assignees, so a team will outgrow it immediately. Also skip it if you live on Windows or Android, because this is an Apple-only app and there is no web version to fall back on.

What Are the Best Milestones Alternatives?

Things 3 is the gold standard native Apple task manager, sold one-time at roughly 9.99 dollars for iPhone, 19.99 dollars for iPad, and 49.99 dollars for Mac. It is more polished but charges per platform and lacks an MCP server.

Todoist is cross-platform and works everywhere, with a free tier and Pro around 5 dollars per month. Pick it if you need Windows, Android, or web access, though it is less focused on the project-then-milestone structure.

Linear is the choice once you have a team. It is free to start and 10 dollars per user per month for Basic, and it is built for software teams rather than solo planners. It is overkill for one person but the natural next step if you grow.

Final Verdict: Is Milestones Worth It?

Milestones nails a specific job. It gives a solo maker a structured, private, native place to plan projects across every Apple device, and the new Mac app plus MCP server make it feel genuinely modern rather than just another to-do list. The free tier is honest, the lifetime price is fair, and the design respects your data. For its intended user, it is an easy recommendation.

The limits are clear and worth saying out loud. It is the work of a solo developer, it is Apple-only, and it has no team features at all, so it is not a tool you grow a company on. The website pricing page also currently 404s, which means you confirm prices on the App Store rather than the marketing site. None of that undermines the core product. We rate it 7.5 out of 10: a polished, fairly priced native planner that does exactly what it promises for individual makers.