Even Out A household chore planner for Android that shares work by the time each person can give, not by an equal split.
Most chore apps divide the work equally and call that fair. It only is if everyone has the same amount of time. Even Out asks each person what they can actually give in a week, and then measures everybody against their own number instead of against each other.
Even Out is a household chore planner, in development at BetuWorks, that shares work by the time each person has said they can give rather than by an equal split.
What “fair” is made of here
Everyone in the household sets a weekly capacity in minutes: 120, 240, 360, whatever is honest. That is the only thing anyone has to agree on, and it is a private statement of availability rather than a negotiation about who is lazier.
The app then tracks what each person has actually completed over a rolling 4-week window and compares it to their own target for that window. The gap between the two is their balance. Positive means behind their share; negative means they have been carrying more than it.
When next week's plan is generated, every task goes to whoever is furthest behind their own target. Two corrections stop that from being naive: the minutes already handed to a person during that same run are subtracted as they go, so the first name on the list does not collect everything, and there is a penalty for giving somebody the same chore they did last time, which makes daily tasks alternate on their own.
Credit follows whoever ticked the task off, not whoever it was assigned to. Doing someone else's washing-up counts for you, which is the behaviour you want to encourage anyway.
Going away doesn't create a debt
This is the part that took the longest to get right. The obvious implementation lets an absent person's target keep accruing while they are gone, so they come home to a backlog they cannot clear. That is punishment dressed up as arithmetic, and it makes people avoid telling the app they are away at all.
Instead, being away reduces your target for the days you were away. You return roughly balanced. And because the people who covered for you did more than their share while you were gone, they show as ahead, so the following week is automatically lighter for them. The correction lands on the right people without anybody having to ask for it.
What it deliberately does not do
No points or scores
Nothing converts a chore into a number to be won. The balance figure exists so the household can trust the split, not so anyone can top a table.
No streaks
There is no run to protect and nothing to break. A quiet week is allowed to just be a quiet week.
No leaderboard
Contributions are visible to the household because transparency is the point, but nobody is ranked against anybody else.
No expense splitting
Money between housemates is a different problem with good tools already. Adding it would blur what this app is for.
When fairness is the wrong tool
Not every chore should be allocated by balance, so each task carries its own mode. It can be shared fairly, which is the default and uses everything above; put on a straight rotation regardless of balance; left open for whoever gets to it first; or given a fixed owner, because some jobs genuinely do belong to one person.
Every assignment comes with a line saying why it landed where it did: that you are some number of minutes below your target, or that you have been carrying more than your share recently. A fairness system nobody can see inside is just a black box telling people to do chores.
Status
Even Out is finished as software and has not been released. It works, it has been used in a real household, and what is missing is not a feature: it is a clear answer to how it should be paid for. Releasing it with the wrong monetisation attached would be worse than leaving it on the bench a while longer.
There is no price and no release date. When there is, this page will say so.
- Flutter · Dart · Supabase
- Android
- Household tasks & fairness
- Required. A shared plan needs one source of truth
- app.even_out
- Built · not released
Questions
How does Even Out decide who does which chore?
Each person sets how many minutes a week they can give. The app tracks what each person has completed over the last 4 weeks against that target, and the difference is their balance. When the weekly plan is built, each task goes to whoever is furthest below their own target, adjusted so one person is not loaded up inside a single run, and so the same chore does not come back to the same person twice running.
Isn't fair just an equal split?
Only if everyone has equal time, which is rarely true. Even Out asks what each person can realistically give and measures them against that, so a household with very different schedules can still divide the work fairly.
What happens when someone is away or ill?
Their target shrinks for the days they were away rather than accumulating as a backlog. They come back close to balanced, and whoever covered for them shows as ahead, which lightens their next week automatically.
Are there points or a leaderboard?
No. No points, no streaks, no ranking. The balance display is there so the household can trust the division, not to score anyone.
Can I get it yet?
Not yet. It is built and working but unreleased, with no published price or date. If you want to know when that changes, write to info@betuworks.com.