The Best Moving Checklist Apps in 2026 (And the One Thing None of Them Track)

I’ve moved three times in ten years, and every time I typed “moving checklist app” into the App Store I got the same jumble of results. Some were literal checklists: a timeline of tasks from eight weeks out to moving day. Some were concierge services that wanted my new address so they could forward my mail and switch my utilities. And a few were inventory apps that had nothing to do with the timeline at all and everything to do with what’s inside box 23.

They all call themselves moving apps, but they solve different problems, and the mistake I made on my first move was picking one and assuming it covered the rest. It didn’t. I had a beautifully ticked-off timeline and absolutely no idea which of forty identical boxes had the router.

So this comparison is organized by job, not by app. There are three jobs:

• The timeline. What to do and when — book the movers, change the address, use up the freezer, pack the guest room first.
• The logistics. The paperwork side: mail forwarding, utilities, insurance, DMV, subscriptions.
• The box inventory. What went into which box, so you can find things on the other end without opening everything.

Most apps do one of these well. A couple do two. If you want the shortest possible answer, skip to the quick comparison at the end. If you want the reasoning, keep reading.

Before the individual picks, here’s the checklist I’d use to judge a checklist app. It’s short because a move is short — you need this thing for about eight weeks, and then you need whatever it captured for months afterward.

• A timeline you can edit. Every move has a date, and the tasks should be grouped by how far out they are. But the pre-made list is never right for your move. If you can’t delete “arrange school transfers” because you don’t have kids, or add “return the cable box,” the checklist becomes a thing you read once and ignore.
• It works offline. The new place will not have Wi-Fi on day one. The garage where you’re packing has one bar. An app that needs a connection to show you the list is useless at exactly the moments you need it.
• Sharing that doesn’t cost extra. Two people packing two rooms need the same lists. Several checklist apps put sharing behind a subscription, which is a strange thing to charge for on a task that lasts two months.
• A box inventory, or at least a way to fake one. This is the job most checklist apps ignore entirely. You want to record “Box 12 — kitchen — stand mixer, baking sheets, rolling pin” quickly, while the box is open, and search it later.
• A life after the move. The best apps here aren’t single-purpose. A checklist app you delete the week after moving day is fine, but one that turns into your home inventory, your pantry list, or your storage-bin tracker is a better deal for the same effort.
• Price that matches an eight-week problem. A monthly subscription is reasonable for an app you’ll use for years. For a move, free or a one-time purchase is the right shape.

I weighed each app below against those six. No app got all six, and I’ll be clear about where each one falls short — including mine.

I’ll start with the one I built, and I’ll be honest about what it is and isn’t. Intellist is a list and inventory app, not a moving-specific app. There’s no “moving mode.” What it does have is every piece a move actually needs, in one place, with no subscription required for any of it.

The timeline lives as ordinary checklists — one per window, copied from the complete moving checklist or the free interactive version and trimmed to your move. You can reorder items, add notes and deadlines, and share each list with whoever is helping, using groups so the person packing the garage sees the garage lists and not your bank to-dos.

The part that separates it from a plain checklist app is the box inventory. Each box gets a list: box number, room, and the contents you add as you pack. Items can carry photos and dollar values, which means the same lists double as a home inventory for insurance — useful when a mover drops the box with the good speakers in it. And every list is searchable, so “where’s the router” has an answer.

Then there’s NFC. Stick a cheap NFC tag on each box (a 50-pack runs about $10–$15), write the box’s list to it once, and after the move you tap your phone to any box to see what’s inside. It reads through packing tape, needs no camera, and takes under two seconds per box. I wrote the full workflow up in how to label and track every box with NFC tags. If you’re deciding between tags and printed labels, NFC tags vs. QR codes covers the trade-offs; the short version is that NFC wins when your hands are full and the labeled side is facing the wall.

Offline-first is built in: everything is written to the phone and syncs later, which matters in a new house with no internet. And the app has a life after the move — the box lists become storage-bin lists, the kitchen inventory becomes the pantry list, and the tags come off the boxes and go onto totes.

Where it falls short: it’s iPhone only, it doesn’t generate a timeline for you (you copy or build one), and it does nothing about the logistics side — no address changes, no utility setup. For those, read on.

• Download Intellist free on the App Store — checklists, box inventory, sharing, and NFC are all included, not paywalled

If what you want is a pre-built moving timeline with dates attached, MoveAdvisor is the cleanest free option I’ve used. It asks for your move date and builds the countdown for you — tasks bucketed by weeks out, with reminders — and it includes a basic room-by-room home inventory so you can note what you own before the movers show up. It’s available on both iPhone and Android, which matters if your household is split across platforms.

The business model is worth knowing: it’s free because it also matches you with moving companies and takes a referral on that side. You’re not obligated to book through it, and the checklist works fine if you never do. As of this writing the app itself doesn’t charge for the checklist; check the current listing, since these things change.

Where it falls short: the inventory is room-level, not box-level. It’ll help you count the lamps in the living room; it won’t tell you which box the lamp cords ended up in. And once the move is over there’s no reason to keep it, which is fine — just don’t expect it to become your home-organization app.

Updater is the app most people don’t go looking for, because you usually don’t choose it — your real estate agent, brokerage, or apartment community sends you an invite. It’s a logistics concierge: forward your mail, transfer or set up utilities and internet, update your address with the places that need it, and compare movers, all from one flow. If you get offered it, use it; it turns an afternoon of hold music into a few taps.

It also has a moving checklist, and it’s a reasonable one, but that’s not the reason to use it. The reason is that it does the tedious administrative half of a move that no checklist app does — the half that involves other companies, not your boxes.

Where it falls short: you generally can’t just download it and start; access comes through a partner. It has no box inventory at all. And it’s the app you’ll forget you had by the second month in the new place, which, again, is fine.

There is a real argument for not downloading a moving app at all. Apple Reminders and Google Keep are on your phone already, they’re free, they share with a partner in one tap, and a moving timeline pasted into them as a few lists with due dates works. A Notion or Google Sheets moving template does the same on a bigger screen. I did my first move this way and it got the truck booked and the freezer emptied on time.

Where it broke was the box inventory. A note that says “Box 12: stand mixer, baking sheets” is fine for twelve boxes. At forty it’s a wall of text you can sort of search. At sixty, with two people adding to it from two phones, it’s fiction. There’s no structure, no quantities, no photos, and nothing linking the note to the physical box except the number you wrote on the cardboard — and if that side faces the wall, you’re opening boxes.

Where it falls short: everything past the timeline. If your move is small, this is enough. If you’re the one who ends up looking for the router at 10 p.m., you’ll wish you’d used something with a real inventory. I compared the note-app approach to purpose-built list apps more broadly in the best list apps in 2026 and Google Keep alternatives.

Sortly is the app that shows up when you search for box inventory, and it’s good at the job: each box is a folder, you photograph the contents, and you print a QR label to stick on the box. Scan the label with your camera and the box’s contents open. It’s built for businesses tracking stock across locations, and moving is one of the use cases it markets.

The caveat is that it’s priced and shaped like a business tool. The free tier caps how many items you can track, and the number is low enough that a whole-house move will hit it; the paid plans are monthly subscriptions aimed at teams. There’s no timeline checklist — it’s inventory only — so you’ll pair it with something else for the tasks.

The other thing to know is the labels. QR codes need a printer and a camera with line of sight, which means aiming your phone at each box and waiting for it to focus. That’s a minor annoyance on a shelf and a real one in a moving truck. I went through this in detail in Intellist vs. Sortly, and there’s a wider list of options in Sortly alternatives.

Where it falls short: cost for a one-time move, no checklist, and a label system that assumes you own a label printer.

Packing-list apps come up in this search constantly, so it’s worth saying plainly: they solve a different problem. Packr and its peers generate a packing list for a trip — based on destination, weather, and how many nights — so you don’t forget the charger. That’s useful for a week in Denver. It has nothing to do with sixty boxes and a moving truck.

A move isn’t “did I remember the toothbrush.” It’s “where is the toothbrush, among all these boxes, now.” Packing apps stop at the first question. I put the two side by side in Intellist vs. Packr, and the travel version of the box problem — knowing what’s in every suitcase — is its own post: tracking what’s in every bag on a family trip.

Here’s the pattern across everything above. The timeline apps and the logistics apps are good at the before. Almost none of them are any good at the after, and the after is where a move actually hurts. Nobody cries over an un-ticked “confirm mover” task. People absolutely lose an evening to the box with the sheets in it.

The fix is a box inventory, and the reason most people skip it is that it feels like extra work during the most stressful week of the move. It isn’t, if you do it the cheap way: one list per box, add the highlights as you pack (not every spatula), and give each box a number. That’s sixty seconds a box. The complete moving checklist has a section on exactly how to run it.

NFC tags are the upgrade on top of that, and they’re why I keep recommending an inventory app that supports them. A sticker on each box, written once, means the inventory is attached to the box instead of living in a note you have to cross-reference. Tap, read, move on. After the move, peel the tags off and use them on storage totes, which is where NFC tags for storage bins picks up.

If you take one thing from this comparison: choose your box-tracking app before you seal the first box. The timeline you can switch mid-move. The inventory you can’t rebuild without unpacking.

Match your situation to the row:

• Checklist plus a searchable box inventory, free, with NFC: Intellist.
• Just a pre-built timeline with reminders, free, on iPhone or Android: MoveAdvisor.
• Address changes, utilities, and mail forwarding: Updater, if your agent, landlord, or building offers it.
• A small move and no new apps: Apple Reminders or Google Keep with the timeline pasted in.
• Box inventory with printed QR labels, and you don’t mind a business subscription: Sortly.
• Packing for a trip, not a move: Packr.

Most people typing “moving checklist app” are in the first or second row. If you only want the timeline, take the free one and go. If you’ve ever stood in a new kitchen wondering which box has the coffee maker, you want the first row, and you want it before packing starts.

Any of the timeline apps above will get the movers booked and the freezer emptied on time; the differences between them are small. The difference that matters is whether the app you pick can also tell you what’s in box 23 three weeks later. Most can’t.

Intellist is the one I use for the whole move: timeline checklists shared with whoever’s helping, a box inventory with photos and values, offline sync for the Wi-Fi-less first week, and NFC tags so a tap on any box shows what’s inside. It’s free, and none of that is behind a paywall. Grab the interactive moving checklist to start the timeline, then build your first box list when the packing tape comes out.

• Download Intellist free on the App Store