Best Todoist alternatives for personal use (2026).

iPhone + Mac · Free (unlimited tasks + iCloud sync); Pro $2.99/mo · $19.99/yr · $59.99 once · Opens summer 2026

Zoro answers the deepest complaint about Todoist for personal use: it's excellent at collecting tasks and indifferent to whether you finish them. Zoro is a single-player kanban built on a method — WIP limits that cap how much you can start, three priorities, S/M/L effort sizing, task aging that surfaces what you keep avoiding, and a weekly review that makes you decide. There's no karma, no streaks, no gamification of any kind; completing a task is a quiet strikethrough. Your data lives in your own iCloud rather than a vendor's database, and the lifetime price means you can stop renting your to-do list. The honest trade-offs: it's Apple-only, single-player by design, and it launches summer 2026 — today you're joining a waitlist, not downloading an app. See Zoro vs Todoist →

Disclosure: Zoro publishes this list. We've ranked it first for method-driven personal use on Apple devices — but the picks below are genuinely better if you want cross-platform, best-in-class design, or free, and we say so.

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

For most people searching this exact question, TickTick is the honest answer. It does essentially everything Todoist does — natural-language capture, projects, tags, filters, reliable sync on every platform — and then adds a built-in calendar, a habit tracker, and a pomodoro timer, at roughly $36 a year versus Todoist Pro. If your reason for leaving is simply "I want Todoist but more of it for less money," stop reading and get TickTick. What you give up is small but real: Todoist's capture parsing is still a touch more polished, and its third-party integration ecosystem is broader. What you don't get is a change in philosophy — TickTick is the same collect-everything model, just at a better price. See Zoro vs TickTick →

iPhone, iPad, Mac · One-time purchase per platform · Apple-only

If you're leaving Todoist because it feels like a web app wearing a native costume, Things 3 is the antidote — it is, by broad consensus, the most beautiful task app ever made. It's a one-time purchase per platform, so after buying it for iPhone and Mac you never pay again, and the GTD structure (Areas, Projects, a clean Today view) fits personal life naturally. The limits: it's Apple-only, there's no kanban board or any view beyond lists, and it's deliberately conservative — Things gains features slowly and doesn't try to push you toward finishing anything. It's a calm, gorgeous list, and for many people that's exactly enough. See Zoro vs Things 3 →

iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch · Free, built in · iCloud sync

Before paying for any Todoist alternative, it's worth asking whether you need a paid app at all. Reminders has quietly become capable: since iOS 17 it handles sections, smart lists, tags, subtasks, location and time reminders, and on the Mac its column layout is board-ish. It's free, it's already on every device you own, Siri capture is instant, and your data stays in your iCloud. The gaps show up at scale — no real board with WIP limits, no effort sizing, no review workflow, and organizing a large task collection gets unwieldy. But as the "do I even need a paid app" baseline for an Apple household, it's genuinely strong. If you outgrow it, we wrote about moving from Reminders to a WIP-limited system.

All platforms · Free · My Day daily planning

Microsoft To Do is the direct descendant of Wunderlist — Microsoft bought the team and rebuilt the app — and it remains completely free on every platform, with no premium tier to upsell you. Its best idea is My Day: a list that starts empty each morning and asks you to pull in only what you'll do today, which is a gentler version of the discipline paid planners charge for. It covers lists, steps (subtasks), reminders, and file attachments, and it ties into Outlook if you live there. It's less powerful than Todoist — weaker natural-language capture, no labels-and-filters depth — but for a free tool with a daily ritual built in, it's the strongest cross-platform answer.

Windows, Mac, Linux, web, Android · Free, open source · Local-first + time tracking

If your reason for leaving Todoist is "my tasks live on someone else's server," Super Productivity is the purist's pick. It's free, open source, and local-first — your data stays on your machine, syncable through a provider you choose (WebDAV, Dropbox) rather than a vendor's cloud. It bundles time tracking, break reminders, and Jira/GitHub integration, which makes it popular with developers. The trade-off is exactly what you'd expect from open source: the design is functional rather than beautiful, mobile support is weaker than desktop, and setting up sync is your job. It rewards tinkerers and frustrates everyone else.

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

Some people don't want a task app at all — they want their tasks next to their notes, reading lists, and plans. If that's you, Notion's free personal plan replaces Todoist with a build-your-own workspace: a task database with board, list, and calendar views, living alongside everything else you write. The flexibility is the point and the problem. You design the system before you use it, and as a pure daily to-do list Notion is slower than everything else here — more taps to capture, more loading, more temptation to redesign your setup instead of doing the tasks in it. The common landing spot is notes in Notion, tasks in something faster. See Zoro vs Notion →

All platforms · Free tier; Premium ~$36/yr · Moment daily ritual

Any.do is the lighter-than-Todoist pick: clean, friendly apps on every platform, tight calendar integration, and its signature Moment — a short daily ritual that walks you through today's tasks one by one and asks you to do, delay, or delete each. For someone whose Todoist setup collapsed under its own labels and filters, that simplicity is the appeal. The trade-offs: the free tier is thin, the good parts (Moment, recurring reminders, color tags, WhatsApp capture) sit behind a subscription at roughly TickTick's price with fewer features, and power users will hit the ceiling quickly. It earns its place as the gentlest daily planner in the category.