Todoist

Overview

Todoist is a cross-platform task and light project manager from Doist (product site: todoist.com). It is built for capturing tasks in natural language, organizing them into projects with sections, labels, filters, and priorities, then executing them across phone, desktop, web, and wearables with reliable sync. Marketing materials cite tens of millions of people and teams and hundreds of thousands of app-store star ratings; Doist also builds the sibling async chat product Twist and has been remote-first and bootstrapped for years rather than a typical VC-scale work OS.

Todoist sits between a simple to-do list and a full project-management suite. Strengths are speed of capture (Quick Add, voice Ramble, email/Slack/calendar hooks), a clean multi-platform UX, and a mature free/paid split that keeps personal productivity lightweight. It is weaker when you need heavy portfolio PM—dependencies graphs, advanced resource planning, multi-team roadmaps, or a full docs/wiki layer. Those jobs usually go to Asana, ClickUp, Jira, or Notion.

As of mid-2026 list pricing on Todoist’s help center and pricing page, plans are Beginner (free), Pro ($7/month or $60/year ≈ $5/month billed yearly), and Business ($10 per user/month or $8 per user/month billed yearly). Pro and Business unlock calendar layout, task durations, custom reminders, large filter counts, full activity history, AI Assist features, and higher project/file limits. Business adds a shared team workspace, team projects/folders, roles, and centralized billing. Doist publishes SOC 2 Type II compliance via its Trust Center.

Key features

• Quick Add & natural language — Type “Submit invoice every Friday at 3pm #Finance p1” and Todoist parses date, recurrence, project, and priority. This remains the product’s core habit loop and the reason long-time users stick with it over denser tools.
• Projects, sections, sub-tasks — Active personal projects (including sub-projects) scale from 5 on Beginner to 300 on Pro. Each project can use list or board layout; sections group work; sub-tasks nest under parents. Hard product-wide caps still apply (e.g. 300 active tasks per project, 20 sections per project).
• Labels, filters, priorities — Labels and P1–P4 priorities cut across projects. Saved filter views (3 free, 150 paid) are how power users build GTD-style “Today / Next / Waiting” systems without rigid folders only.
• Calendar layout & durations (Pro+) — Paid plans add calendar views and task durations for time-blocking. Deadlines (distinct from due dates on paid tiers) help separate “must finish by” from “work on next.”
• Reminders — Automatic reminders for tasks with a date+time exist on free; custom, time-based, location-based, and recurring custom reminders are Pro/Business features. Combined automatic + custom reminder capacity is documented around 700 on paid personal limits.
• Ramble (voice-to-tasks) — Dictate tasks hands-free. Beginner gets 10 sessions per month (reset on the 1st UTC); Pro and Business get unlimited sessions with possible rate limiting for abuse prevention.
• Todoist Assist / AI busywork — Paid AI assists for breaking down work, capturing tasks from text/images/documents, and email assist (forward emails to create tasks). Positioned as automation for capture and structure, not a full autonomous agent workspace.
• Karma & productivity views — Optional gamified scoring and productivity charts for streaks and daily goals. Can be disabled if you dislike points systems.
• Collaboration — Share personal projects (small collaborator caps—commonly 5 people per personal project). Business teams add workspace projects (up to 500), folders, restricted projects, team filters, roles (admin/member/guest), and up to 1,000 members including guests on paid teams.
• Integrations & API — Native calendar hooks for Google Calendar and Outlook, plus Slack, email, Zapier/Make/IFTTT-style automation, browser extensions, and voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant). Developers get a unified API, OpenAPI spec, official Python and TypeScript SDKs, CLI, and an MCP server for agent tooling—all usable with a normal Todoist account.
• Platforms & offline — Web, iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and wearable clients. Offline use is supported with later sync; reliability of cross-device sync is a frequent praise point on Reddit and Hacker News.
• Security & admin basics — TLS in transit, encryption at rest, 2FA, Trust Center documentation, SOC 2 Type II. Business adds team activity logs and admin controls without full enterprise suite complexity (no SCIM on typical public docs—confirm current Trust Center for your procurement checklist).

Pricing

USD list prices from Todoist’s official pricing page and plans FAQ (updated mid-2026). Regional prices and tax vary; App Store / Google Play billing can differ from web checkout.

Plan	Price (USD)	Projects & filters	Planning extras	AI / history	Teams
Beginner	$0	5 personal projects; 3 filters; 5 collaborators/project	List & board; auto reminders with date+time	1-week activity history; 10 Ramble sessions/mo; 5 MB uploads	1 free team with low team-project limits
Pro	$7/mo or $60/yr (~$5/mo annual); 7-day trial	300 personal projects; 150 filters	Calendar layout, durations, time-blocking, deadlines, custom/location reminders	Full history; auto backups; Assist; unlimited Ramble; ~25 MB uploads (see limits docs)	Still free-team project caps unless Business
Business	$10/user/mo or $8/user/mo annual; 14-day trial	300 personal projects/member; up to 500 team projects	Everything in Pro for each member + team calendar views	Full history; team activity logs; Assist; higher team file limits (up to 100 MB)	Shared workspace, folders, roles, centralized billing, up to 1,000 people

• Annual discount: Pro yearly is $60 ($5/mo equivalent). Business yearly is $96/user/year ($8/user/mo). Monthly is higher ($7 Pro; $10 Business per user).
• Pro is per account, not family-shareable: Apple Family Sharing / Google Play Family Library do not share Pro features. Collaborators need their own Pro if they want paid features in shared work.
• Refunds: Yearly plans refundable within 30 days of purchase/renewal (self-serve on Pro; Business requires canceling the team then contacting support). Monthly is not refundable.
• Pro Legacy: Some long-time customers remain on a legacy Pro price/feature freeze (new paid features after the freeze date may not apply). Confirm in account billing if your rate looks older than current list.
• Free team vs Business: Any plan can create a free team with small project limits. Serious multi-person shared workspaces are the Business value prop—not personal Pro alone.

Limits & gotchas

• Universal hard caps (all plans): 300 active tasks per project (including sub-tasks and recurring instances counted as active), 20 sections per project, 500 total active projects across personal+team, 500 labels per account, 100 labels per task, character limits on names/descriptions/comments. Doist states these protect sync performance and generally cannot be raised by upgrading.
• Beginner pain points: 5 active personal projects and 3 filters force aggressive archiving or mega-projects. Activity history is only 7 days. File uploads are small (5 MB). No calendar layout, task durations, custom reminders, or Assist. Ramble capped at 10 sessions/month.
• Pro still not “unlimited PM”: Personal project collaboration stays small (5 people per personal project). Free team project limits remain low until you pay Business. There is no full dependency graph, workload heatmap, or portfolio portfolio like ClickUp/Asana Business.
• Downgrades: Data is not deleted, but projects/filters above the new plan become view-only until you archive/delete or re-upgrade. Plan around this before canceling Pro.
• AI scope: Assist and Ramble help capture and structure tasks; they are not a Notion-style agent workspace or full email client. Heavy AI use can still hit rate limits even on “unlimited” Ramble.
• Integrations churn: Community threads (e.g. Zapier forums) note changes or removals of older Google Calendar sync paths—prefer documented current calendar integrations and test two-way sync carefully.
• Privacy expectations: Cloud SaaS with analytics processors; Privacy Guides and Reddit threads have raised concerns about task content going to analytics vendors historically. Review the Privacy Policy and Trust Center subprocessor list if you store sensitive HR/legal text in task titles.
• Trustpilot vs app stores: App-store and G2 scores are high for UX; Trustpilot is more mixed and often reflects billing/subscription friction. Weight product reviews higher than one-off billing rants, but verify the platform you subscribe on (web vs App Store) for easier refunds.

Community sentiment

On r/todoist, praise clusters around speed of capture, multi-platform reliability, and long-term stability of the product company. Complaints cluster around the free plan’s 5-project limit (historically much higher years ago—many posts still surface when newcomers hit the wall), filter limits, and whether Pro is “worth it” versus TickTick’s freer free tier. Power users share elaborate filter systems; beginners often over-structure projects and then feel constrained.

Hacker News threads repeatedly call out cross-platform consistency and “text-file simple” task capture. Caveats: Todoist is “great for personal todos, not complex project planning,” and some users bounce between Todoist and org-mode, Things, or custom notes. Longevity versus dead apps from the Wunderlist era is a recurring positive.

Professional reviews: PCMag has given Todoist an Editors’ Choice / exemplary rating for personal to-do lists, citing interface quality, platform coverage, and collaboration. G2 sits around the mid-4s with ease-of-use as the headline. Independent 2025–2026 write-ups echo the same split: excellent personal task manager; deliberately lightweight for multi-stakeholder delivery. Trustpilot scores are lower and noisier—use as a signal for support/billing experience, not core feature quality.

Developers: The official API, Python/JS SDKs, CLI, and MCP server get positive attention from people wiring AI agents and automations. Reddit discussion of the unified API v1 reflects Doist consolidating older REST/Sync surfaces—good long-term, with migration work for older integrations.

Community consensus in one line: pay Pro if Todoist is your daily capture system; look elsewhere if free-tier generosity or deep PM is non-negotiable.

Who should use it

• Individuals and freelancers who live in a multi-device world and want one calm inbox for work and life tasks.
• GTD / productivity-system users who prefer filters and labels over complex databases.
• Small teams that need shared projects, comments, and light roles without adopting a full work OS.
• Automation-minded users who will connect Slack, email, calendars, Zapier/Make, or the API/MCP tools.
• Not ideal for: large program management offices, regulated environments needing advanced enterprise IAM/SCIM out of the box without sales confirmation, people who want a generous free forever tier with dozens of projects, or Apple-only users who prefer Things’ design and local-first model.

Alternatives

• TickTick — Strong free tier, habits/pomodoro built in; common migration target when Todoist free limits bite.
• Microsoft To Do — Free, solid with Outlook/Microsoft 365; fewer power filters than Todoist Pro.
• Things — Best-in-class Apple design; no first-class Windows/Android parity.
• Asana — Team goals, portfolios, and structured PM when Todoist feels too thin for projects.
• ClickUp — Docs + tasks + dashboards for teams that want one heavy workspace.
• Notion — Flexible databases and wikis; slower pure task capture than Todoist Quick Add.
• Trello — Board-first collaboration with less personal GTD depth.
• Linear — Issue tracking for product/engineering teams, not personal life admin.
• Obsidian — Local notes with community task plugins; different trust model (files on disk).

Verdict

Todoist remains one of the best personal-first task managers that still offers a credible small-team upgrade path. In 2026 the commercial story is clear: free for evaluation and light use, Pro at about $5–7/month for the real product (calendar, filters, reminders, history, AI Assist/Ramble), and Business at $8–10 per user/month when shared workspaces matter. Official limits documentation is unusually honest about performance caps (300 tasks per project, etc.), which is a feature of operational maturity more than a gotcha—plan project structure accordingly.

Choose Todoist if capture speed and multi-platform reliability are your top priorities and you accept freemium pressure to Pro. Choose a fuller PM suite if tasks are only one slice of work management, or TickTick/Things if free-tier generosity or Apple-native craft matter more than Doist’s ecosystem and API.