Chickadee Bandit

Four OurFamilyWizard alternatives, and the one case where there is none

Co-parenting apps to move to from OurFamilyWizard: TalkingParents, a hub with two private homes, a custody calculator, and email — court-order caveat first.

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Quick answer

If a court order names OurFamilyWizard, use OurFamilyWizard; nothing here replaces a certified record. Otherwise: TalkingParents for recorded calls and PDF records at a lower monthly price, Chickadee Bandit for day-to-day coordination between two private homes at one household price with the other parent free, and a shared calendar plus email if you need no record at all.

OurFamilyWizard is the platform courts name, and that is the first thing to say: if your parenting plan or a court order specifies it, use it, and stop reading. Certified records, practitioner accounts for an attorney or mediator, and recorded calling are things the products below either do not offer or offer differently, and a contested matter is not the place to economise.

For everyone else, the reason to look is usually the bill — $110 to $299.88 per parent per year, and two parents pay twice — and the shape: one shared account for the case, with each parent's own household life somewhere else. This list is ordered by how much of a court-facing record each option keeps. We make the second entry and it is marked; every claim about another product is restated from the head-to-head page linked from its name.

The list

  1. TalkingParents

    Best for: A case that needs recorded calls and PDF records, billed monthly

    The other court-facing product. Unalterable messages with send and first-view timestamps, Accountable Calling with recorded audio from 30 minutes a month on Essentials to unlimited on Ultimate, PDF records unlimited on Enhanced and above, and printed record packages sold separately. Payments carry a per-transaction fee of 2 to 4 percent by tier. Against OurFamilyWizard it is the same category at a lower entry price and monthly rather than annual billing; the practitioner accounts and certified records that OFW offers are the reason to stay.

    Cost: Per parent, monthly: Essentials $7, Enhanced $16, Ultimate $32, about 8% off annually. No free plan since March 30, 2026; fee waivers for financial or domestic-violence hardship.

  2. Chickadee Bandit

    That's us

    Best for: Day-to-day coordination between two homes that stay private from each other

    OurFamilyWizard is one shared account for the case, and each parent's own household lives somewhere else. Here each parent keeps a private household — their own calendar, chores, new partner — and the space between them holds only what they co-manage; neither home can see into the other. Messages in the space are append-only and server-timestamped, custody swaps are proposals until the other parent countersigns, expenses split with receipt photos and two-party reimbursement, and either parent can export the whole record at any time as a ZIP of machine-readable files. What we do not do, and are not building: in-app calling or recording, certified records, a formatted PDF, or practitioner accounts for an attorney or mediator. If any of those is on your list, this is the wrong entry.

    Cost: $6/mo or $60/yr for one household. One parent sponsors the co-parenting space and the other parent joins free.

  3. A custody schedule calculator

    Best for: Working out the schedule before choosing a platform

    A lot of the OurFamilyWizard search is really a search for the schedule itself. Our free calculator lays a 2-2-3, 2-2-5-5, alternating-week or every-other-weekend pattern on a month, counts each parent's overnights and shows the percentage measured off the whole cycle — the figure an agreement quotes — with a print button. It is a sheet of paper, not a record: it cannot log a swap, timestamp a message or hold a receipt, and it should not be the last thing you set up.

    Cost: Free. Runs in your browser, no account.

  4. A shared calendar and email

    Best for: Two parents who coordinate well and need no record

    Some separated parents pay for a court-facing platform they never needed. A shared Google or Apple calendar for the schedule and email for the decisions costs nothing and works on every device either of you owns. The trade is the record: email can be deleted by either side, nothing is countersigned, and there is no expense ledger — so it is the right answer only while the relationship is cooperative, and the wrong one the day it stops being.

    Cost: Free, with the accounts you already have.

Prices and features are restated from our head-to-head comparison pages and reflect each product's published pricing as of September 2026. Products change — always check the other product's site for current details.

Why people look for an OurFamilyWizard alternative

Price, doubled. Both parents subscribe, and the tiers that include PDF downloads and calling start at $149.99 a year each. The second reason is that the case is not contested: parents who coordinate reasonably well end up paying for a legal-grade record they never produce.

The third is that OurFamilyWizard is co-parenting only. Each parent's own home — the chores, the new partner, the household calendar — needs a second app, and the child's schedule is entered in both.

Choosing between them

  1. If a court order names a platform, use the platform it names. Nothing else on this list is a substitute for a certified record.
  2. If you need recorded calls or a PDF record but not certification, TalkingParents is the lower entry price and bills monthly.
  3. If you need a record that cannot be altered but not one a court will certify, and each home wants to stay private, that is what we built.
  4. If you are still working out the schedule, start with the free calculator; it costs nothing and settles the overnight count before any platform argument.
  5. If the relationship is cooperative and you have never needed to prove anything, a shared calendar and email are free — and know what they cannot prove.

What you give up by leaving

Certified records and practitioner access are the two things nobody on this list replaces. TalkingParents offers PDF and printed packages; we offer a full record either parent can open at any time — the custody record, message log, schedule history, swaps and handoff notes in one stamped document downloaded as a PDF, or as a verified copy anyone can check against what we issued — plus an export in machine-readable files. Both are records; neither is certified. If there is any chance your matter becomes contested, weigh that before the price.

No option here imports OurFamilyWizard's history. Export what you have before the subscription ends, and keep it somewhere both of you agree on.

The feature list is not fixed

Every other product on this page is a fixed set of features: it does what it does, and a need it did not anticipate gets a no. Chickadee Bandit is built from small apps, and a household can add one of its own. An admin describes the app in a paragraph on the Apps page and the hub builds and installs it, using the AI credits that come with every plan; someone who writes code can start from any of the open-source apps and install their own version from a URL. A custom app gets the same checks as the ones we ship: it declares what it reads and writes, keeps its data in your household's own database, and the hub refuses anything it did not ask for.

How to build a custom app for your household

Where this list comes from

We make one of the products on it, and it is marked. Every claim about another product is restated from the head-to-head page that links from its name, where it was checked against that product's own site on the date shown there — nothing on this page was researched separately. The order is how close a like-for-like replacement each one is for someone leaving OurFamilyWizard, not a ranking of merit.

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