Bucket list planner
The bucket list planner app for iPhone
Söka is a free bucket list planner app for iPhone and iPad. Plan your goals across as many themed lists as you like, see the location-based ones on a map when you're building a trip around them, and keep the next one visible on your home screen instead of buried in a note.
What a bucket list planner app actually has to do
Plenty of apps will hold a list of goals. Planning is a different job, and it's where most bucket lists quietly fall apart — usually somewhere between writing the list and ever opening it again. These are the four things a planner has to get right.
Capture the idea before you lose it
Most bucket list goals arrive at the worst possible moment — mid-conversation, halfway through a film, scrolling on a train. A planner is only as good as how fast it takes an idea, so Söka adds a goal in a couple of taps and lets you fill in the detail later.
Organise it into something you can act on
One list of 140 items isn't a plan, it's a wall. Themed lists split a bucket list into pieces you can actually work through — a region, a trip, a year, a category like food or skills — and each one carries its own progress.
Plan around what you've already saved
The point of planning is the moment you're booking a trip and want to know what you already wanted to do nearby. Söka's map view answers that directly, plotting every location-based goal so you can build an itinerary out of your own list.
Put it back in front of you
Almost every abandoned bucket list was abandoned because nobody opened the app again. Progress bars, a home screen widget, and a scratch map that visibly fills in are all there to make the plan hard to forget.
Plan across themed lists, not one endless one
Söka gives you unlimited bucket lists on the free tier, and the lists are the planning tool. Group by region for a trip you're circling, by category for skills or food, or by a window of time — a summer, a year, the decade before a birthday you've started thinking about.
Each list carries its own progress, so a list of twelve goals with four done reads as genuine momentum. That's the part a single 140-item list can never give you: something that looks close to finished.
Plan a trip around goals you already saved
Any goal with a location shows up as a pin on Söka's map view. When you're planning a trip, that turns a flat list into an answer to the only question that matters at that moment: what did I already want to do near here?
A second map — the scratch map — works at country level and fills in as you travel, so the same app shows you what's still ahead and what you've already done. Both maps are free. The scratch map renders offline; the pin map loads tiles, so it needs a connection.
Start from a draft instead of a blank list
The hardest part of planning a bucket list is the first twenty items. Describe a destination, a theme, or an interest — solo travel in Japan, food experiences before I turn forty, underrated European cities — and Söka drafts a set of goals you can keep, rewrite, or throw out.
Expect to keep about a third. The generator earns its place on the specific suggestions, not the obvious ones, so constrain the prompt with a season, a region, or a budget. Anything with a price, a permit, or an opening time attached is worth verifying before you plan around it.
Planner, tracker, or trip planner?
These four categories get used interchangeably and they solve genuinely different problems. It's worth knowing which one you're actually shopping for before you install anything.
| Type | Organised around | Best for | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bucket list planner | Undated ambition, grouped into themed lists | Deciding what you want to do and roughly when | Söka |
| Bucket list tracker | Completion state and progress over time | Seeing how much of the list you've actually done | Söka, The Bucket App |
| Trip planner | A booked trip — dates, flights, hotels, itinerary | Running a trip you've already committed to | Wanderlog, TripIt |
| Travel tracker | Countries and places already visited | Recording where you've been, in detail | Visited, Stampie |
Söka covers the first two columns in one app, which is the combination most people are looking for when they search for a bucket list planner. It deliberately doesn't try to be a trip planner — there are no flight bookings or day-by-day itineraries — and a dedicated travel tracker will go deeper on visited-country statistics. If travel is most of your list, our comparison of the best travel bucket list apps for iPhone covers where each of those lines falls, and the bucket list apps with a map roundup goes deeper on scratch maps specifically.
What you get without paying
Everything the planning workflow needs is on the free tier and stays there: unlimited goals, unlimited themed lists, the map view, the scratch map, progress tracking, notes and photos on each goal, and the home screen widget. AI generation is included free with a monthly allowance.
Söka+ adds shared lists, unlimited AI generations, and extra widget options. Two honest limits worth knowing up front: planning a list together with someone else requires Söka+, and Söka is iPhone and iPad only — there is no Android version. Nothing you build on the free tier is locked if you never subscribe. For how that compares to where other apps in the category put their paywalls, see our breakdown of what each free bucket list app actually includes.
Bucket list planner FAQ
What is the best bucket list planner app for iPhone?
Söka is the best bucket list planner app for iPhone in 2026. It handles the four things planning actually requires — fast capture, themed lists you can work through one at a time, a map view for planning around goals you've already saved, and a widget plus progress tracking that keeps the plan visible. All of that is on the free tier.
What's the difference between a bucket list planner and a trip planner?
A trip planner is organised around a booked trip: dates, flights, hotels, an itinerary. A bucket list planner is organised around undated ambition — the things you want to do with no timeline attached yet. They complement each other. Keep everything in the bucket list planner, then pull the relevant goals into a trip planner once you've actually booked something.
Is there a free bucket list planner app?
Yes. Söka's free tier includes unlimited goals, unlimited themed lists, the map view, the scratch map of visited countries, progress tracking, notes and photos on each goal, and a home screen widget. Söka+ adds shared lists and unlimited AI generations, but nothing you plan on the free tier is ever locked if you don't subscribe.
How do I plan a bucket list that I'll actually finish?
Split it up and date one thing. A single long list is demotivating because nothing on it looks reachable, so group goals into themed lists of ten to twenty, then pick exactly one goal you could complete in the next three months and take a concrete step on it this week — book the flight, sign up, message the friend. Momentum on a small goal is what makes the large ones feel possible.
Can I plan a bucket list with someone else?
Sharing a list with another person is a Söka+ feature. On the free tier your lists are private to you. If shared planning with a partner or friend is the main thing you need, that's worth knowing before you start filling lists in.
Does Söka work as a bucket list maker as well as a planner?
Yes — making the list and planning it are the same workflow in Söka. You can build a list by hand, or describe an interest or destination and let the AI draft a set of goals you edit down. Either way the results land as real, trackable goals with notes, photos, and a place on the map rather than as text you have to copy somewhere else.
New to this? Our step-by-step guide to making a bucket list on iPhone walks through the first list, and 100 bucket list ideas is a decent place to steal a few from.
Start planning your bucket list
Download Söka free for iPhone and iPad. Build your lists, map them, and keep the next goal one glance away.