Todoist Alternatives in 2026: Pay Once, Pay Nothing or Keep Todoist

The right Todoist alternative depends on what changed for you. TickTick costs less per year and puts a calendar, a focus timer and a habit tracker in the same app. Things is a one-time purchase for people who only use Apple devices. Microsoft To Do is free and syncs with Outlook. And if the list itself is fine but tasks sit there, Merlin, the assistant we make, works on top of Todoist rather than replacing it.

Todoist has been around for nearly two decades, and the search for a replacement usually starts with something specific rather than general unhappiness: a bill that went up, a free plan that ran out of projects, a calendar view that sits behind Pro, or a nagging sense that organizing tasks has become its own job. Below is a fair account of what Todoist does, then four options, each matched to one of those reasons, with every price and feature linked to the company that publishes it.

What Todoist does well

Todoist calls itself "the world's #1 to-do list app" on its homepage, and says it runs on phone, tablet, watch, desktop and the web. You type tasks in plain language, dates and repeats included, and around them sit recurring tasks, priorities, labels, templates, reminders, comments and a calendar view.

Its reach is the main reason to stay. The homepage lists integrations with Google Calendar, Outlook Mail, Gmail, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zapier, n8n, ChatGPT and Claude, plus an API, a command-line tool and an MCP server for developers. Todoist's calendar integration connects one calendar provider, Google or Outlook, on every plan, free included, showing your events next to your tasks.

The free plan is real, too. According to Todoist's pricing page, Beginner costs nothing and includes 5 personal projects, Smart Quick Add, task reminders, list and board layouts, 3 filter views and one week of activity history. If you work across Windows, Android and an iPhone, or your team already lives in Slack and Teams, few to-do apps cover as much ground, and staying is a sensible answer.

What Todoist costs in 2026

Todoist Pro is $60 for a year paid up front (the equivalent of $5 a month) or $7 when paid monthly, per its pricing page. Pro raises the limit to 300 personal projects and 150 filter views, and adds the calendar layout, task durations, deadlines, custom reminders, full activity history and Task Assist. Business runs $96 per user a year, or $10 per user for each month, plus local tax, and adds a shared team workspace with up to 500 team projects, roles and permissions.

Those Pro prices are new. Todoist's pricing update note says that from December 10, 2025, monthly Pro went from $5 to $7, and yearly Pro from $48 to $60 a year. The change applies at your first renewal on or after that date. People who subscribed through Apple's App Store stay on a Pro Legacy plan at their old price; Google Play subscriptions renew at the new one.

Why people look for something else

The pages that compare Todoist alternatives, and the discussions around them, keep landing on a few reasons:

• The price went up. A 25% rise on the yearly plan is enough to make people check what else is out there.
• Five projects on the free plan. Beginner caps personal projects at 5 and filter views at 3, which a growing list outgrows.
• Planning by the hour. Todoist's calendar layout, where you drag tasks into time slots, needs Pro or Business. The calendar integration also connects one provider at a time, shows events as read-only, and doesn't mark Todoist time blocks as busy on your main calendar.
• Only Apple, or only Microsoft. Someone who never leaves an iPhone and a Mac may want an app built only for those, and an Outlook user may want tasks that live where their flagged email already is.
• Organizing instead of doing. Projects, labels and priorities can start to feel like progress on their own. That one isn't a missing feature, and a different list app won't fix it by itself.

Four Todoist alternatives and the problem each one solves

TickTick: a calendar and focus tools for less a year

TickTick is a to-do app that bundles more into the list. Its homepage lists yearly, monthly, weekly, daily and agenda calendar views, a Pomodoro timer that splits work into 25-minute sessions, a habit tracker with statistics, and an Eisenhower Matrix for sorting tasks by urgency and importance. The download page offers apps for iPhone and iPad, Android, Windows, macOS and Linux, a browser extension and a web app.

On TickTick's upgrade page, Premium is $49.99 a year, with no monthly price shown. The free plan allows 9 lists with up to 99 tasks each, 2 reminders per task and a basic calendar view. Premium raises that to 299 lists of up to 999 tasks, 5 reminders per task, the full set of calendar views, task durations and email reminders.

Pick TickTick if you want hour-by-hour planning and a focus timer in your task app, on any platform including Linux, and $49.99 a year sits better than Todoist's $60.

Things: pay once, Apple devices only

Things, from Cultured Code, is a task manager made only for Apple devices. Its support page on buying Things says it's "a one-time purchase, not a subscription," sold separately for Mac, iPad, iPhone and Vision Pro, with the Apple Watch app included with the iPhone version. It doesn't run on Windows, Android or any other non-Apple device. Sync between your devices goes through Things Cloud, which is free.

On the App Store, Things 3 for Mac costs $49.99 and Things 3 for iPhone costs $9.99, with the iPad version sold separately. Only the Mac version has a 15-day trial; Cultured Code says it can't offer trials on iPhone or iPad because Things has no in-app purchases. The Mac listing describes Today and Upcoming lists that show your calendar events beside your to-dos, an evening section, tags, Quick Entry and forwarding email into Things.

Moving is straightforward. Things has a built-in Todoist importer: on a Mac it's File → Import → Import From Todoist, and on iPhone or iPad Settings → Import → Import from Todoist. Projects come across as projects and labels as tags, while repeating tasks lose their schedule, nested tasks are flattened, and priorities and image attachments stay behind. Cultured Code notes the import only copies data, so your Todoist account is untouched.

Pick Things if every device you own is made by Apple and you'd rather pay once than renew every year.

Microsoft To Do: free, and next to Outlook

Microsoft To Do is a free list app from Microsoft. Its App Store listing says "To Do is free and available on all your devices," and Microsoft's release notes cover Windows, web, Android and iOS versions. Lists can be shared and, in newer versions, tasks in a shared list can be assigned to members.

The draw is Outlook. Microsoft's planning guide explains that tasks are stored in Exchange Online, so they appear in both To Do and Outlook automatically, and My Day gives you a fresh daily list with suggestions carried over from yesterday. Turn on flagged email and messages you flag in Outlook show up as tasks, for accounts hosted by Microsoft such as Outlook.com, Hotmail.com or Live.com, or a custom domain hosted by Microsoft.

Pick Microsoft To Do if you already work in Outlook and want your tasks in the same place as your mail, for free. The Microsoft pages linked here don't mention saved filter views like Todoist's, so try it before you move a filter-heavy setup.

Merlin: keep Todoist, get help finishing

Merlin is our product, an assistant for macOS, and for many Todoist users it's an addition rather than a replacement. Merlin pulls your Todoist tasks into one to-do list alongside tasks from Linear and Notion and the action items from your meetings, according to Merlin's homepage. It can work on a task with you, for example drafting the email in Gmail, and when you tick a task off it closes it in Todoist too, after you approve.

Beyond the list, Merlin keeps a record of the people you know and what you owe each of them, and runs routines: a Daily Digest each morning, a brief before each meeting, and anything else you describe in plain words. When you ask it to send, book or pay for something, it shows you the details and waits for your go-ahead.

The limits are clear. Merlin runs only on macOS and signs in with Google; there's no Windows, Android or iPhone app, so it can't replace Todoist's phone capture, projects or filters. On Merlin's pricing page, the free tier renews 5,000 credits every month and asks for no card; Pro is $278 paid annually, or $29 for each month.

Pick Merlin if Todoist holds everything but tasks keep waiting on you, and your mail lives in Gmail, read on macOS. Your Todoist setup stays as it is.

Todoist, TickTick, Things, Microsoft To Do and Merlin in one table

Each figure is the single-user USD price from that company's own page. "Yearly" means paid for a year up front.

How to choose

Start from the reason you searched, then check the devices you can't give up.

• The price rise is the problem: TickTick, at $49.99 a year, or Microsoft To Do for free. If you pay Todoist through the App Store, check first: you may still be on the legacy price.
• You keep hitting the 5-project cap: TickTick's free plan allows 9 lists, and Microsoft To Do costs nothing.
• You want to drag tasks onto your day: TickTick's calendar views, or Todoist Pro if you'd rather not move at all.
• Everything you own is Apple: Things, bought once per device type, with a direct importer from Todoist.
• Your day runs on Outlook: Microsoft To Do, with flagged email as tasks.
• The list is fine but nothing moves: keep Todoist and add Merlin, as long as you use macOS and Google mail.

If your tasks and meetings already live in Google Calendar, our guides to using Google Calendar and automating it show what it can do before you add another app. Coming from the Microsoft side, see how to create Microsoft To Do tasks from Google Calendar.

Getting your tasks out of Todoist

Todoist has no single export that every other app reads, so plan the move in a few steps:

1. Check whether your new app imports from Todoist directly. Things does; if yours does too, use that and skip the files.
2. Otherwise export each project from the web or desktop app: open the project, click the three dots icon, then Manage data and Export as CSV, as Todoist's CSV guide explains. Completed tasks aren't included, and recurring tasks lose their start dates.
3. On a paid plan, also download a backup from Settings → Backups. Todoist's backup article says it's a ZIP with a CSV per active project, available on web and desktop only; archived projects and completed tasks aren't in it.
4. Check every recurring task in the new app and fix it by hand, since both Todoist's CSV export and Things' importer drop part of the repeat rule.
5. Run both apps for a week, then cancel Todoist before your next renewal.