Todoist vs TickTick looks like a tie for the first fortnight. Both capture fast, both do projects and recurring tasks, both sync everywhere. The split shows up in week five, when your list has grown past a hundred items and you find out which one you have been fighting.
Todoist is a task engine with a strict idea of what belongs in it. TickTick is a bundle: tasks plus a calendar, a habit tracker, a Pomodoro timer and an Eisenhower matrix, all in one icon. Neither of those is a flaw. They just fail differently, and they fail on different days.
TickTick vs Todoist on the numbers that bite
The free tiers are where most people meet the ceiling, and the two apps put the ceiling in completely different places.
| Todoist free | TickTick free | |
|---|---|---|
| what runs out first | projects | lists, then tasks inside them |
| projects or lists | 5 active personal projects | 9 lists |
| items | not capped by list | 99 tasks per list |
| saved filters | 3 custom filter views | none on free |
| checklist items | subtasks are tasks | 19 per task |
| reminders per task | automatic, on tasks with a date and time | 2 |
| attachments | 5 MB per file | 1 per day |
| history | 7 days of activity history | list and task activity is paid only |
| paid, per year | Pro is $60 a year, or $7 a month | Premium is $49.99 a year |
Todoist's numbers come from Todoist's plans and billing FAQ, TickTick's from TickTick's upgrade page, both read while writing this and both in USD. Todoist Business is $10 per user a month, or $96 per user a year billed yearly. Compare yearly to yearly and TickTick undercuts Todoist by about ten dollars, which is not the reason to pick either one.
The ceiling is in a different place, and that decides your free year
Todoist's free plan caps containers. Five active personal projects, three saved filters, seven days of history. You can put a thousand tasks in a project and nothing complains, so people run flat and lean on filters — until they discover filters are the thing capped at three.
TickTick's free plan caps contents. Nine lists is generous for most people, but 99 tasks per list is not, and 19 checklist items per task bites the first time you write a packing list. One attachment a day sounds like nothing until you try to file two screenshots on a Tuesday.
So the practical answer to which free tier lasts longer depends entirely on your shape. A small number of big projects survives Todoist free for years. A lot of small lists survives TickTick free for years. Get it the wrong way round and you will hit a wall in month two.
Natural language and filters, where Todoist earns the money
Type pay invoice every 2nd friday starting 3 oct p1 #admin into Todoist and it parses all of it. Recurrence, start point, priority, project. TickTick parses dates and repeats too, but Todoist's parser handles compound recurrence more reliably, and after a month that difference is measured in seconds saved per capture, dozens of times a day.
The filter language is the bigger gap. Todoist filters compose with &, | and !, so @waiting & !#work & 7 days is one saved view. That is the machinery a weekly review runs on, and it is why Todoist keeps showing up in serious next actions list setups. TickTick's smart lists cover the common cases with less rope, which is easier to learn and harder to push.
What TickTick bundles, and whether the bundle earns it
TickTick's calendar view is the feature Todoist users miss most, because seeing tasks against a week is a different act from reading a list. The habit tracker and Pomodoro timer are competent, and the Eisenhower matrix gives you a four-quadrant sort without building it.
The risk is dilution. Four features in one app means four roadmaps sharing one team, and the parts of TickTick that feel thinner than Todoist — the filter language, the integrations, the polish on edge cases — are thinner for that reason. If you already run a calendar you trust and habits somewhere else, you are paying for a bundle you have unbundled.
Habit streaks in particular are a separate discipline with separate mechanics, which is why init.Habits exists as its own app rather than as a tab inside a task list.
Where Todoist is better
Parsing, filters, integrations, and restraint. Todoist has said no to a lot of features, and the result is an app that does one job without a settings screen you have to study. Its API and integration surface is the deepest of the two by a wide margin, and its recurring-task engine handles the awkward cases — every last weekday, every 3rd Tuesday — without arguing.
Todoist also has the better story if you plan to leave. Export is straightforward and the data model is simple enough that a CSV really is your list.
Where TickTick is better
Range, for one subscription. Calendar views, a timer, habits and a matrix, plus a free tier that is far less stingy about how many projects you may create. The built-in calendar alone replaces a second app for a lot of people.
TickTick's cheaper yearly price is real but small. The honest advantage is that a single subscription covers four jobs, and four subscriptions is how a productivity setup quietly reaches sixty dollars a month.
How to test the switch in two weeks
- Do not migrate. Run the new app alongside the old one for two weeks with only this week's work in it.
- Recreate your three most-used views by hand. If you cannot, the filter model is the answer and you are done deciding.
- Capture on the phone twenty times, deliberately, at bad moments. Count the ones that failed.
- Write one recurring task with an awkward rule and check it fires correctly twice.
- On day fourteen, export both and compare what you actually put where. People plan in one app and work in another, and the export shows which is which.
- Only then move the archive.
Where init.Tasks fits
init.Tasks is a to-do list and personal project manager on iOS, macOS and web that also holds notes, links and files beside the tasks they belong to, in a terminal-looking interface.
Two things differ from both apps above. Areas hold projects and projects hold subprojects and to-dos, so a big piece of work nests instead of sprawling across a flat list of forty. And the day you can begin sits in its own field, apart from the deadline, so "can begin Monday" never masquerades as "due Monday" — the distinction that keeps a today view honest once you have real volume.
Quick add takes plain language, #project files it and [tag] labels it. There are saved filters, a someday shelf, a logbook and search across everything, on every device it runs on. The AI connection is coming in september, read-only by default. Waitlist invites land in september; the beta costs free while in beta and pricing is undecided, so nothing above is a tier comparison against it.
If what you are really after is somewhere for the material neither of them will hold, second brain apps is the wider survey, and the someday maybe list covers the shelf that keeps a task list honest.
FAQ
Why is TickTick better than Todoist?
Because it bundles. A calendar view, habit tracking, a Pomodoro timer and an Eisenhower matrix sit inside the same app as the tasks, and the free tier lets you make more lists than Todoist lets you make projects. If you would otherwise pay for two or three apps, that is a real saving and a real reduction in app-switching.
Is Todoist better than TickTick 2026?
For pure task management, yes on two specific counts: natural-language parsing of compound recurring rules, and a filter language that composes into saved views. For anything beyond tasks, no — Todoist deliberately does not go there. Both are actively developed, so pick on the shape of your work rather than on which shipped a feature last.
Is free Todoist better than free TickTick?
They cap different things. Todoist free allows 5 active personal projects, 3 filter views and 7 days of activity history, with no per-project task limit. TickTick free allows 9 lists but only 99 tasks per list, 19 checklist items per task, 2 reminders per task and 1 attachment a day. Few big projects favours Todoist; many small lists favours TickTick.
What is the 1/3/5 rule in Todoist?
It is a planning convention, not a Todoist feature: one big task, three medium ones and five small ones per day. People implement it with priorities or labels and a saved filter. The rule works because it forces a cap on the day, which is the same job a someday shelf does for the month.