OurHome App Alternative: What Happened, and What to Move To

You did not come here shopping around. You came here because the app stopped letting you in, or because your kid told you their points are gone. That is a different problem from "which family app is best," and most of the pages ranking for this search answer the wrong one.

Is the OurHome app gone for good?

Every check we ran on September 11, 2026 says yes. The original Android listing (package com.getfairshare.ourhome) returns a 404. Apple's own lookup API returns zero results for the original App Store ID. On the same day, ourhomeapp.com did not respond for us, while an old web shell at app.ourhomeapp.com still loaded, which is probably why so many people are stuck troubleshooting something that has already ended.

On data: no export path has ever been documented. The replacement guides that track this all report that OurHome never shipped one, so multi-year point balances and chore history are unlikely to be sitting in a file somewhere waiting to be moved. We would rather say that plainly than let you spend another evening resetting a password.

Worth knowing about the quiet exit: Apple's App Store Improvements process removes apps that have not been updated in three years and also fall under a download threshold, and Apple states that apps already installed keep working. Google Play's target API level rules separately make stale apps unavailable to new users on newer Android versions. That is exactly why some households only noticed when a sync broke.

Why is there a new OurHome in the App Store?

Because a different, unrelated app carries the name. The OurHome listed today by Elusios (developer Rafael Lermitte) is built for roommates: shopping lists and tasks, free with a $1.99 premium tier covering task tags, rewards, calendar events and list sections. It comes from a different developer, and nothing in the listing indicates it inherits the old app's accounts or point balances. If you installed it, felt confused, and searched again, that is the collision, not you.

What should you look for in an OurHome replacement?

Start by deciding which half of OurHome you actually used, because no single app is strongest at both.

• The kid layer: points, rewards, allowance, chore charts your children checked themselves. If this is what your family misses, you want a dedicated kids chore-and-rewards app, and you will likely have to rebuild the balances by hand.
• The adult layer: who is doing the pickup, what is out of milk, whether the thing actually got done. This is the half that keeps running whether or not anyone is earning screen time.
• Survival signals: when was the app last updated, does it have a real revenue model, can you export your data on day one rather than day 400. OurHome was documented as free with no ads and no paid tier, and the guides covering its shutdown read that as a reason the developers eventually moved on.

That last point is worth sitting with. A modest subscription is not the downside here. It is the reason there is somebody left to answer the support email.

What does Houseloop replace, and what does it cost?

Houseloop covers the adult layer. Tasks with handoff and reminders that reach the person actually assigned, routines for the parts of the week that repeat, a shared grocery list that auto-adds a baby supply when it runs low, and a baby tracker for feeds, diapers, sleep and shared night duty. Invited guests can view the whole shared workspace read-only, and people who join with a household code are full members who can edit.

That focus is deliberate. USC researchers surveying 322 mothers of young children (Saxbe and Aviv, 2024) found they reported carrying roughly 73 percent of the cognitive household labor, the planning and remembering, a larger share than they reported of the physical work. The measures were self-reported, so read it as what those mothers reported carrying rather than an audited split. Pew's March 2026 survey of 2,242 working parents found 43 percent say the mother does more chores, against 17 percent who say the father does. The remembering is the load, so that is the part we built for.

Pricing, stated straight: new households can create up to three active tasks and invite one other person before starting the trial. Plus is $7.99 a month or $69.99 a year, billed once per household, so one person pays and everyone else joins at no extra cost. The monthly plan includes a 7-day free trial through the app store, which auto-bills when it ends unless you cancel, and the annual plan has no trial. AI capture (brain dump, voice, screenshots) is unlimited on Plus. The iPhone app is live, it runs in any web browser including on Android, and the native Android app is on the way to Google Play.

Who is Houseloop not for?

Houseloop is the wrong answer for a few real cases, and it is cheaper for both of us to say so now.

• You want the points economy back. We do not run a kid rewards store or a points-to-screen-time ledger. If that loop is what your 9-year-old is asking about, a dedicated kids chore app will serve you better.
• You want real money on a card. Allowance apps with an actual prepaid or debit card belong to that category, not to us.
• You want a free replacement. Houseloop's free plan is deliberately small: up to three active tasks shared with one other person. That is enough to try the handoff loop, not to run a whole household on, so if a subscription is not in the budget right now, looking elsewhere is fair.
• You want a calendar-first family organizer. Our strength is follow-through and the baby tracker, not being the prettiest shared month view.
• You need a native Google Play app today. Android works in the browser and syncs fine, but the store app is not out yet.

If you are replacing the adult half of OurHome, and you would rather pay a small amount to a company that still exists in three years than get burned by free again, start the trial and rebuild one week's worth of the household. That is enough to tell.