Best Things 3 alternatives (2026).

iPhone + Mac · Free; Pro $2.99/mo · $19.99/yr · $59.99 once · Opens summer 2026

Zoro is for people who love the way Things feels — calm, native, fast — but keep hitting the same wall: it's a list, and a list never tells you you're doing too much. Zoro is a single-player kanban with the structure Things refuses to add: a board where work moves through stages, WIP limits that cap what's in flight, S/M/L effort sizing, visible task aging, and a weekly review that reads your week back to you — what you finished, what you deferred, what's quietly getting old. The free tier has unlimited tasks and projects with sync through your own iCloud; Pro ($2.99/month, $19.99/year, or $59.99 once) adds the insight engine — history, trends, stats — plus subtasks and custom statuses. The honest trade-offs: it's Apple-only, exactly like Things; it's single-player by design; and it opens in summer 2026, so today you're joining a waitlist, not downloading an app. See Zoro vs Things 3 →

Disclosure: Zoro publishes this list. We've ranked it first for people leaving Things because they want method and structure — but the picks below are genuinely better if you're leaving for cross-platform reach, deeper GTD, or a free option, and we say so.

All platforms · Free tier; Pro ~$4/mo · Natural-language capture

If the reason you're leaving Things is Apple-only, stop reading and get Todoist. It runs natively on everything — iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux, web, your browser, your email — and syncs flawlessly between all of them. Capture is the best in the category: type "review contract every second Friday" and it parses the schedule for you. The free tier is genuinely usable, and Pro is about $4 a month. What you give up from Things is the craft — Todoist is pleasant but utilitarian, and it's list-first with boards as a secondary view. It's also a subscription, which stings if pay-once was part of why you chose Things. See Zoro vs Todoist →

All platforms · Free tier; Premium ~$36/yr · Tasks + calendar + habits + pomodoro

TickTick answers a different complaint about Things: not the design, the scope. For roughly $36 a year you get tasks, a real calendar view, a habit tracker, a pomodoro timer, and a kanban view, on every platform. If you left Things because you kept needing a second and third app around it, TickTick collapses them into one — and it ships new features at a pace Cultured Code never has. The trade-off is the same one Things made in reverse: breadth over polish. TickTick can feel busy, and none of its five tools has the care of a dedicated one. See Zoro vs TickTick →

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch · ~$75 once (v4 universal) or subscription · Deepest GTD engine

Some people leave Things wanting more GTD, not less — and OmniFocus is where they go. It's the deepest implementation of Getting Things Done on any platform: defer dates that hide tasks until they're actionable, custom perspectives that slice your database any way you want, sequential and parallel projects, and a built-in review mode that walks you through every project on a schedule. Version 4 is a single universal purchase (~$75) covering iPhone, iPad, and Mac, or a subscription if you prefer — a better cross-device deal than Things' three separate purchases. The trade-off is honest and large: the learning curve is steep, and if you found Things fiddly, OmniFocus will feel like a cockpit.

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch · Free · Already on your devices

The honest question before paying for any Things alternative: do you still need a paid app at all? Reminders has quietly become capable since iOS 17 — sections within lists, a column layout on Mac that works as a lightweight board, smart lists, tags, location and time-based alerts, and shared lists that actually work. It's free on every Apple device you own, syncs through iCloud, and Siri capture is faster than opening any app. What it lacks is exactly what it always lacked: no method, no start dates, no review, and organizing a few hundred tasks in it gets unwieldy. But for a meaningful slice of Things users, it's genuinely enough. Moving from Reminders or Things →

All platforms · Free · My Day planning + Outlook integration

Microsoft To Do is the free escape hatch off Apple. It runs on iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and the web, costs nothing, and inherits the one great idea from Wunderlist (whose team built it): My Day, a list that starts empty every morning and makes you consciously choose today's work — a ritual Things users will recognize from the Today view. If your job lives in Outlook, flagged emails appear as tasks automatically. It's a simple lists-and-due-dates app, so like Reminders it tops out early: no method, no boards, and development is slow. But as a zero-cost, everywhere replacement for Things' basics, it's hard to argue with.

All platforms · Free for personal use · Docs + databases + tasks

Notion is the opposite bet from Things. Things gives you one opinionated system; Notion gives you a blank canvas and database blocks to build any system you can imagine — tasks next to the notes, docs, and projects they belong to, with board, list, calendar, and timeline views of the same data. Free for personal use, on every platform. The costs are real: you're designing your tool before you use it, and as a pure daily task list it's slower than everything else here — more taps, more loading, less capture speed. The common landing spot is docs and knowledge in Notion, daily tasks in something faster. See Zoro vs Notion →

Web, Windows, Mac + mobile apps · Subscription or one-time · Configurable strategies

Amazing Marvin is built on the premise that no fixed system fits every brain — so it ships dozens of toggleable "strategies" you mix and match: time-boxing, day planning, procrastination counters, rewards, a focus mode, task duration estimates, and more. It has a devoted following among people with ADHD precisely because you can tune the app to supply the structure your attention doesn't, instead of fighting a designer's one true workflow. It offers both subscription and one-time pricing. The trade-offs are the inverse of Things: it's web-first and visually quirky rather than native and polished, the mobile apps trail the desktop experience, and the sheer number of options can itself become the procrastination.