Best Todoist Alternatives in 2026 (Free and Paid)

The short answer

todoist alternatives is a key topic in modern project management and teamwork. If you want a better personal task manager, choose TickTick or Things 3. If you want free, choose Microsoft To Do (cross-platform) or Apple Reminders (Apple-only). If you want tasks plus notes plus light team collaboration, choose Superlist. If you need projects, dependencies, workload, and reporting, choose Doitify or a full project management platform.

Why do people leave Todoist in 2026?

Most complaints are not about speed or reliability. They are about the shape of the data model.

Everything is a task in a project. Todoist has projects, sections, tasks, and sub-tasks. There are no dependencies, no milestones, no custom statuses, and no portfolio layer. A 40-task launch with three parallel workstreams becomes a list with labels and hope.

There is no capacity view. Todoist shows what is due, not who is overloaded. For an individual that is fine. For a team of eight sharing work, the missing workload view is the single most common reason teams leave.

Reporting is personal, not managerial. Productivity visualisations show your completed tasks and streaks. There is no project health report, no budget column, no client-facing status page.

Team features arrived late and stay narrow. Business adds a shared workspace, up to 500 team projects, roles and permissions, and 1,000 team members — genuinely useful, but still built around lists rather than delivery.

> Important note: If your work is genuinely personal — errands, writing, study, solo freelancing — none of these limits matter. The best Todoist alternative for you may be Todoist.

How we evaluated these alternatives

We compared each option on six practical points: cost for one person and for a team of eight; whether it works on Windows, Android, and the web; how tasks are structured (flat list versus hierarchy with dependencies); offline behaviour; migration path from Todoist; and how much daily friction the interface adds.

We also separated two different buyers. A solo user needs speed and a reliable inbox. A team lead needs visibility. Tools that satisfy one often frustrate the other, and most bad recommendations come from ignoring that split.

1. TickTick: the closest one-for-one swap

TickTick feels like Todoist with the missing middle layer added: calendar views, a timeline, habits, and a Pomodoro timer in the same app.

2026 pricing: Free covers 9 lists and 99 tasks per list, with list and Kanban views and two reminders. Premium is $49.99 per year, roughly $4.17 per month, and raises limits to 299 lists and 999 tasks per list, adds unlimited calendar views, task duration, email reminders, and AI features.

Where it wins: The calendar is the differentiator. Seeing tasks and events on one grid answers “can I actually do this today?” better than any list. The Eisenhower matrix view, habit tracking, and per-task duration make it a stronger planning tool than Todoist for the same money or less.

Trade-off: TickTick’s collaboration is thin: shared lists exist, but there is no real workspace, no roles, and no reporting. The interface carries more features than Todoist, so the capture flow is slightly slower. Member limits on Premium (29) cap team use.

Best for: Individuals and pairs who want calendar-based planning without adopting a project management suite.

2. Things 3: the best Apple-only option

Things 3 is the most refined personal task manager on Apple platforms, and it is deliberately not a team tool.

2026 pricing: $9.99 one-time for the iPhone app, with Mac, iPad, and Vision versions sold separately. There is no subscription and no per-seat billing.

Where it wins: Areas, projects, headings, and the Today/Upcoming model create a calm structure that scales from a shopping list to a five-year plan. Keyboard shortcuts, Quick Find, and deep Shortcuts support make it fast. No subscription means the cost is predictable forever.

Trade-off: Apple-only, no Windows or Android, and no real collaboration. Sync runs through Things Cloud and is free, but the data model is personal. Buying each platform separately means a three-device setup costs more than the $9.99 headline, and major versions may be paid upgrades.

Best for: Mac and iPhone users who work alone and value craft over integrations.

3. Microsoft To Do: the best free cross-platform choice

Microsoft To Do is unglamorous and remarkably hard to beat on price: it is free, and it is already inside the Microsoft 365 subscription most companies pay for.

2026 pricing: Free with a Microsoft account. Advanced organisational features come through Microsoft 365 and the wider Planner and Teams ecosystem rather than a To Do subscription.

Where it wins: My Day gives a daily shortlist that pulls from any list, Outlook flags become tasks, and shared lists work in a household or small team. It runs on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and the web, and it syncs reliably.

Trade-off: The structure is flat: lists, tasks, steps, and reminders. No dependencies, no workload, no custom statuses, no Gantt. Microsoft’s real project management lives in Planner and Project, which means a mixed estate of tools. Personalisation is limited.

Best for: Microsoft 365 organisations that want zero incremental cost and already live in Outlook and Teams.

4. Apple Reminders: the best free option if you are all-in on Apple

Reminders improved quietly and substantially: tags, smart lists, subtasks, location and time triggers, and shared lists have made it a credible daily driver.

2026 pricing: Free on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and iCloud.com.

Where it wins: Siri capture, location reminders, and the tightest system integration on Apple devices. Tags plus smart lists reproduce most Todoist filter setups, and shared lists handle family or small-team coordination without a subscription.

Trade-off: Apple-only, no Windows or Android, no dependencies or reporting, and collaboration is limited to iCloud shared lists. Bulk editing and complex filters are weaker than Todoist’s, and migrating large projects in or out is manual work.

Best for: Apple households and solo users who want zero cost and zero setup.

5. Superlist: the modern middle ground for small teams

Superlist combines tasks, notes, and meeting notes in one place, which is the gap Todoist leaves open for small teams that think in conversations rather than lists.

2026 pricing: Free for individuals. Basic is $5 per person per month billed annually ($59 per year). Super is $17 per person per month ($199 per year), adding unlimited AI meeting notes, AI chat, and voice capture.

Where it wins: Anyone can turn a note into a task, so meeting follow-ups stop living in a separate document. Team plans include unlimited lists and team members, all integrations, and 25 GB of storage. The interface is genuinely pleasant, which matters for adoption.

Trade-off: No dependencies, no Gantt, no workload view, and reporting is limited. The AI features that justify the $17 tier are only valuable if your team runs on meetings. It is a young product, so roadmap risk is higher than with Microsoft or Apple.

Best for: Teams of 3–20 that want tasks and notes together and do not need formal project controls.

6. Doitify: when tasks need to become projects

Doitify is our platform, so judge this section with that in mind. It exists for the point where a task list stops answering management questions.

Tasks and sub-tasks carry owners, due dates, checklists, and WBS dependencies. The same work can be seen as a Kanban board, a sprint backlog, a roadmap, a Gantt chart, or a calendar. Workload and resource views show who is overloaded. Work and performance reports, project documents, meeting notes, risks, and milestones sit alongside the tasks, so status is derived from the work rather than retyped. Doitify Copilot and AI Coach can turn a stated goal into a plan with tasks, sub-tasks, and checklists.

Where the fit is strong: A freelancer or small team that has outgrown Todoist’s flat projects and needs dependencies, capacity, and client-ready reports without buying an enterprise suite.

Trade-off: For a single person tracking personal errands, Doitify is more tool than the job requires, and the fastest capture experience belongs to Todoist and Things. It is also not a replacement for a dedicated notes app at heavy documentation scale.

Comparison table

What does switching actually cost? Three calculations

Example 1: a solo user over three years. Todoist Pro at $5 per month is $180 over 36 months. TickTick Premium at $49.99 per year is $149.97 over the same period, a saving of about $30. Things 3 on iPhone is $9.99 once, but adding Mac and iPad as separate purchases moves the total toward the subscription equivalents. The real difference is not money; it is whether you want a calendar view.

Example 2: a team of eight. Todoist Business at $8 per user per month is 8 × 8 × 12 = $768 per year. TickTick Premium for eight people is 8 × 49.99 = $399.92, but you lose the shared workspace and permissions. Superlist Basic is 8 × 59 = $472 per year. If the team needs workload and dependencies, none of the three solves the original problem, and the cheapest option is the one you will leave again.

Example 3: the migration hours. A Todoist account with 850 open tasks and 60 projects takes about 25 seconds per task to export, review, and re-file: 850 × 25 = 5.9 hours. Add project structure design, label-to-tag mapping, and reminder re-creation, and a realistic solo migration is 8–10 hours. For a team of eight sharing 2,200 tasks, expect 15–20 hours plus two weeks of parallel running.

Example 4: the daily friction number. If a tool adds 40 seconds per task and you handle 25 tasks a day, that is 16.7 minutes daily, or about 61 hours a year across 220 working days. The reverse is also true: a tool that saves 40 seconds per task pays back its subscription in weeks. Measure your own capture time before switching.

Who should not switch away from Todoist?

Switching is not a maturity badge. Stay with Todoist if these describe you.

• Your work is personal and solo. Errands, study plans, writing projects, and household lists do not need dependencies. Todoist’s speed is the feature.
• You live in the quick-add flow. Natural language capture (“pay invoice every 2nd Tuesday”) is still among the best in the category, and it is the habit that keeps the system alive.
• You only need shared lists. Todoist’s shared projects cover family and small-team coordination. Moving to a platform adds configuration you will not use.
• Your team’s real problem is unclear ownership. A new tool will not fix a process where nobody agrees who owns a task.
• You rely on cross-platform parity. Todoist works the same on Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and the web. Things 3 and Apple Reminders do not, and Superlist’s desktop experience is younger.

> Common mistake: Buying a project management suite to fix a personal productivity problem. The extra structure becomes admin work, and the user returns to a list within a month.

How do you migrate from Todoist without losing your system?

Export the whole workspace first. Todoist exports projects as templates and data as CSV or JSON through its backup options. Do this before you cancel anything, and keep the archive for a year.

Decide the destination structure on paper. Map Todoist projects to the new tool’s containers, and decide which labels become tags, fields, or statuses. Most failed migrations skip this step and reproduce the old mess in a new interface.

Move open work only. Completed tasks are history, not workload. Import the 300 tasks you will actually touch and archive the rest as a reference file.

Rebuild recurring tasks by hand. Recurrence rules rarely translate cleanly. Recreate the twenty that matter and verify their next occurrence dates.

Run both tools for two weeks. Keep Todoist as the capture inbox while the new tool holds project work. Close the inbox when capture feels natural, not when the import finishes.

How do you choose between a task manager and a project platform?

Ask one question: does anyone else need to see the status without asking you? If the answer is no, a task manager is correct and a platform is overhead. If the answer is yes, you need owners, dependencies, and reports, and no amount of tags will substitute for them.

The middle case is the hardest: a team of five that shares work but does not run formal projects. Superlist handles it with notes and shared lists. Doitify handles it with tasks, workload, and reports. Todoist Business handles it with a shared workspace and permissions, provided nobody needs a Gantt chart.

Conclusion

Todoist is not failing; it is finishing. It solved capture and reminders so well that the next problem became visible: coordination. That is why the right alternative depends on which problem you actually have.

If capture is still the problem, TickTick, Things 3, or Microsoft To Do will feel like an upgrade for less money. If coordination is the problem, no task manager will fix it, and you should compare Doitify against a full platform using real seat counts and real reports. Move one project first, keep the old tool as an inbox for two weeks, and only cancel when the new habit survives a busy Monday.

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