DayLine vs TaxDay
TaxDay has been around since 2016 and pioneered a lot of this category — automatic state tracking, a 50-state rule database, reports built for tax preparers. It's also three times DayLine's price, cloud-based by design, and its own recent App Store reviews describe reliability problems since a 2025 platform migration. Here's the honest comparison.
The short version
Both apps track your days across states automatically and export a report your accountant can use. The differences: DayLine costs $39.99 a year against TaxDay's $119.88; DayLine keeps your entire location history on your iPhone (no account, no server, Apple privacy label Data Not Collected) while TaxDay requires a cloud account that syncs your data to its servers and web portal; and DayLine's coverage extends where TaxDay's stops — city-level tests for NYC and Yonkers, international days, and the five U.S. territories with Puerto Rico's federal presence test built in.
| DayLine | TaxDay | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $4.99/mo or $39.99/yr · 30-day free trial | $9.99/mo ($119.88/yr) · free trial |
| Automatic day tracking | Yes — Apple visit monitoring, battery-friendly | Yes — GPS-based |
| Where your data lives | On your iPhone only — no account, no servers; App Store privacy label: Data Not Collected | Cloud account required — data stored on TaxDay's servers, synced to a web portal |
| Per-state rule engine | Yes — each state's own statutory test: New York's 184-day line, any-part vs. midnight counting, permanent-abode logic | Rule database for all 50 states |
| NYC & Yonkers city taxes | Separate city-level tests | Not offered |
| International days | Tracked — abroad days logged by country, never shown as gaps | U.S. states only |
| US territories (§937) | PR, USVI, Guam, CNMI, American Samoa with the federal presence test | Not offered |
| Evidence attachments | Yes — receipts, photos, documents on any day | Travel logs, work-day tagging |
| Exports | PDF day log, CSV, accountant package | Excel reports |
| App Store rating | — (newly launched) | 3.8★ (65 ratings); recent reviews report missed days after a 2025 platform migration |
| Import your history | Yes — bring your TaxDay record over via CSV/Excel export | — |
TaxDay details from its public website and App Store listing as of September 2026; verify current features and pricing on their site. TaxDay is a trademark of its owner; DayLine is not affiliated with it.
Reliability is the whole product
A day tracker has one job: never miss a day. A gap in your ledger isn't a cosmetic bug — in an audit, a day you can't place is presumed to be in the taxing state, so every missed day is a day scored against you. TaxDay's recent reviews describe exactly this failure mode ("missed multiple days at a time") following its 2025 migration. DayLine was built around that risk: battery-friendly visit monitoring plus a fresh location fix every time you open the app, so even a stationary day gets logged — and anything the automatic layer misses can be corrected manually with evidence attached.
The cloud question
TaxDay's web portal is genuinely convenient if you want to review your travel from a desktop. The cost of that convenience is structural: a year of your location history sits on someone else's servers, where it can be breached or subpoenaed without you. DayLine takes the opposite bet — everything on your device, exports on demand — because for an individual, the deliverable is the accountant package, not the dashboard.
Where TaxDay stops, audits don't
TaxDay tracks U.S. states. But New York City and Yonkers levy their own resident taxes with their own day counts; a Puerto Rico move lives or dies on the federal §937 presence test; and time abroad still has to be accounted for when your old state asks where you were. DayLine treats all of those as first-class jurisdictions with their own rules — the same rules published free in our state rules library.
Switching keeps your record intact
Export your TaxDay history and DayLine imports it, so your ledger stays continuous across the switch — which matters, because residency questions are asked about whole years, not about which app you were subscribed to in March.
Keep reading
Stop counting by hand
DayLine tracks which state you're in every day, automatically, against every rule on this site — and builds the audit-ready record that protects you. All on your iPhone. Free for 30 days.
General educational information, verified against statutes and administrative guidance at the time of writing — not tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult a qualified tax professional about your situation. · All state rules · DayLine home