Todoist Review

Reviewed by Tom · Founder & lead reviewer

What makes it work

Todoist's strength is how little friction there is between a thought and a captured task. You can get a to-do out of your head and into the app in a couple of seconds from a phone, a browser extension, an email, or a voice assistant, and trust it will be there later. That reliability is what turns a messy pile of sticky notes and mental reminders into a calm system.

The product has been around since 2007 and the maker, Doist, has kept it deliberately narrow. Reviews across app stores and software review platforms tend to praise the same things: the quick-add box with natural-language parsing, sync that just works across every platform, and an interface that does not nag. The criticisms are equally consistent: it is a task manager, not a project suite, and the free tier has been trimmed over the years.

Who it is built for

Freelancers and solo operators juggling clients and errands, and small teams that want organization without complexity. A consultant who needs to see client deliverables, invoices to chase, and a dentist appointment in one trusted list is the ideal user. So is a two-to-ten person team that wants shared projects and assigned tasks without adopting a heavyweight work platform.

It is also a good fit for people who work in text rather than boards. Todoist's list view, keyboard shortcuts, and natural-language input reward typing; if you think in timelines and resource charts, a tool such as monday.com will feel more natural. And it is a fit for anyone who wants their tasks to follow them across devices, since the apps cover Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, the web, browsers, watches, and email clients.

Pricing structure explained

Todoist has three plans: a free plan (named Beginner on the pricing page), Pro for individuals, and Business for teams. Pro is priced per user per month and Business per user per month at a higher rate, both cheaper when billed annually. The figures are modest by software standards, and the pricing page has the current numbers.

What the pricing page and documentation say each tier includes, in outline:

• Beginner (free): a limited number of personal projects, basic filters, small file uploads, a short activity history, and collaboration on shared projects with a cap on collaborators. It is enough to run a personal system indefinitely; the caps bite when you want many projects or advanced filters.
• Pro: many more projects and filters, reminders, task durations and the calendar layout, unlimited activity history, larger uploads, automatic backups, and the AI assistant features. Reminders alone push many individual users to Pro.
• Business: everything in Pro for every member, plus a team workspace with shared team projects, centralized billing, admin and member roles, and team-level settings. Personal projects stay separate from team projects.
• Billing gotchas are few. The plans are simple, the annual discount is meaningful, and there is no minimum seat count on Business. Note that Beginner limits have been reduced more than once historically, so a free user should not assume today's caps are permanent.

Core features in practice: capture and organize

Quick add is the feature everything else depends on. Type 'Send invoice to Ana every last Friday p1 #Clients @billing' and Todoist parses the recurring due date, priority, project, and label from the sentence. Natural-language dates cover the everyday cases ('tomorrow 5pm', 'every other Monday', 'in 3 weeks') and the documentation lists the grammar it understands. A dedicated deadlines field, added later, lets you separate the day you plan to work on something from the day it is truly due.

Organization is the classic hierarchy: projects with sections, tasks with sub-tasks, four priority levels, labels, and filters. Filters are Todoist's power feature: a small query language lets you build views such as 'overdue or due today, priority 1 or 2, assigned to me' and pin them. Projects can be shown as a list, a board, or (on Pro) a calendar, and the same project can be switched between layouts. Templates, including a library of ready-made ones, let you spin up a repeatable project structure such as a client onboarding checklist.

Core features in practice: daily use and collaboration

The Today and Upcoming views are the daily surfaces, and they are where the calm reputation comes from: one list of what is due, drag to reschedule, done items disappear. Karma, an optional points system, gives a light nudge to keep streaks going. Reminders (Pro) can be time-based or, on mobile, location-based. Comments and file attachments live on tasks, which is enough for a solo operator to keep the context for a job with the job.

Collaboration is simpler than dedicated team tools. You can share a project, assign tasks, comment, and see activity, and Business adds a team workspace where team projects are visible to members and administered centrally. What you do not get is dependencies, workload views, Gantt charts, or approvals. Small teams that need 'who is doing what by when' will be fine; teams running multi-stage projects with handoffs will feel the ceiling, and that is where monday.com or Wrike come in.

Integrations and data portability

Todoist's integrations list is long for a task manager. Two-way calendar sync with Google Calendar and Outlook lets scheduled tasks appear as events and vice versa. The Gmail and Outlook add-ins turn an email into a task with a link back; a forwarding address does the same for any project. Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zapier, IFTTT, and Make cover automation, and there are connections for voice assistants, browser extensions for every major browser, and time-tracking tools. A public REST API and a Sync API make it one of the easier tools to script against, and a large community of third-party apps exists because of it.

Data portability is decent. Projects can be exported as CSV files (and imported from the same format), backups are generated automatically on paid plans and can be downloaded, and the API can pull everything. Attachments are the awkward part, since they are stored per task and are not bundled into the CSV. Moving to another task app usually means an import of the CSV plus some cleanup of recurrence rules, which is typical for the category.

Onboarding and learning curve

The gentle learning curve is a genuine advantage. A new user can start with the Inbox and Today view and learn nothing else for weeks. The depth (filters, labels, templates, keyboard shortcuts) is there when wanted and invisible when not. The in-app getting-started guide and the Todoist help center cover the natural-language syntax and filter queries, and the company publishes long-form guides on productivity methods (Getting Things Done, time blocking, weekly reviews) that map onto the product.

The one part of the learning curve users on review platforms mention is the filter syntax, which is powerful but needs a reference the first few times. Setting up a team workspace on Business also involves a few decisions about what belongs in team projects versus personal ones, and the documentation addresses this directly.

Support and documentation

Support is by email and in-app contact form, with priority handling for paid plans. There is no phone support and no live chat, which is normal at this price point but worth knowing. Response times reported by users are generally reasonable, and the tone of the support team gets good marks. The help center is thorough, searchable, and kept current with feature changes, and it is available in several languages. Doist also maintains a public changelog and a roadmap page, which is useful when deciding whether a missing feature is coming.

For a solo user the documentation answers almost everything. For a team administrator, the Business documentation covers roles, billing, and workspace settings, but there is no dedicated onboarding service; you are expected to set it up yourself, which is realistic given the product's simplicity.

Limits and dealbreakers

Todoist's restraint is the point, but restraint has costs.

• No Gantt or timeline view, no dependencies, no workload or resource planning. It is not a project-management suite and does not pretend to be.
• Collaboration is basic: shared projects, assignments, and comments. No approvals, no forms, no custom fields beyond labels and priorities.
• The free plan's project and filter caps are tight enough that a serious personal user will end up on Pro.
• Reminders are a paid feature, which surprises people coming from other apps.
• No built-in time tracking or note-taking beyond task comments; you pair it with other tools for that.
• Recurring-task behavior (the next occurrence is created when you complete the current one) is loved by some users and confusing to others; read the help article on recurrence before building a system around it.

Alternatives and when to pick them

monday.com is the pick when tasks are really projects: multiple people, stages, timelines, and the need to see workload across a team. It is far more configurable and correspondingly more expensive and more effort to set up. A solo operator would be over-tooled; a growing team with real handoffs would be under-tooled on Todoist.

Wrike is the pick for teams that need proper project management with Gantt charts, dependencies, request forms, and reporting, and are willing to pay per user for it. It is heavier than monday.com in some ways and better at structured, deadline-driven work.

SmartSuite sits between the two: a flexible database-style work platform for teams that want to model processes, not just tasks. It suits an operations-minded small business better than a freelancer.

Outside this site's coverage, TickTick and Microsoft To Do are the closest direct competitors to Todoist as personal task managers: TickTick bundles a calendar, habit tracker, and Pomodoro timer for a similar price, and Microsoft To Do is free and tightly tied to Outlook. Todoist tends to win on natural-language input, cross-platform polish, and integrations.

Frequently asked questions

Is the free plan enough to run a freelance business?

For a lean setup, yes: a few projects, labels, priorities, and recurring tasks cover a lot. Most people who rely on it daily move to Pro for reminders, more projects, and the calendar layout. The upgrade is inexpensive.

Does Todoist work offline?

Yes. The desktop and mobile apps store tasks locally and sync when a connection returns. Conflicts are rare in practice and are resolved by the sync engine.

Can I use Todoist with a team without paying for Business?

You can share individual projects and assign tasks on Pro and even on the free plan, within its collaborator limits. Business adds the team workspace, centralized billing, and admin controls, which matter once the team is more than a few people.

Does it have a calendar view?

The calendar layout for projects and the Upcoming view are available on paid plans, and two-way sync with Google Calendar and Outlook is available for all users.

How does it handle recurring tasks?

You set a recurrence in natural language ('every 2nd Tuesday'). When you complete the task, the next occurrence is scheduled. There is also an option to reschedule based on completion date rather than the original date ('every! 3 days'), which the help center explains.

What happens to my data if I cancel Pro?

Your account reverts to the free plan's limits. Your data is not deleted, but projects beyond the free cap become inaccessible until you are under the limit, and paid-only features such as reminders stop working. The help center describes the downgrade behavior, and exports remain available.

Bottom line

An excellent-value task manager that gives a solo business the reliable second brain it needs. Capture is fast, natural-language dates just work, the apps are everywhere, and the integrations and API make it easy to fit into whatever else you use. Buy it for calm and consistency, not for enterprise project management; when the work becomes multi-person projects with dependencies and timelines, graduate to monday.com or Wrike and keep Todoist for the personal list.

Best for

Freelancers and small teams who want a calm, reliable place to capture and organize every task.