Category: Date/Time & Everyday Tools

Acuity Pricing 2026: Plans & Costs

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Acuity pricing 2026 plans comparison Emerging Growing Powerhouse cost guide

When I first started comparing online booking tools for my own consulting work, acuity pricing was the page I kept coming back to — not because it was confusing, but because Acuity’s three-tier structure makes you genuinely stop and think about which tier fits your business. Unlike most scheduling tools that dangle a free plan and upsell you later, Acuity is refreshingly blunt: there is no free plan. You either pay, or you book your clients in a spreadsheet.

I spent a full week testing each tier during the 7-day acuity trial, mapped out the real acuity cost per month for solo users versus small teams, and dug into every acuity discount worth knowing. In this guide, I’ll break down all three acuity plans, answer the classic acuity emerging vs growing question, stack up acuity vs setmore pricing, and flag the hidden costs that catch people off guard.

Quick Verdict

Acuity Pricing 2026 at a glance:

Plan	Monthly (billed monthly)	Monthly (billed annually)	Calendars	Best for
Emerging	~$20/mo	~$16/mo	1	Solo practitioners, freelancers
Growing	~$34/mo	~$27/mo	6	Small teams needing SMS reminders
Powerhouse	~$61/mo	~$49/mo	36	Clinics, multi-location businesses, HIPAA needs
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Unlimited	Large organizations

The bottom line: Acuity is a premium-priced scheduling tool that earns its price with depth — intake forms, packages, memberships, and real payment processing. Most small businesses land on Growing, and I’ll explain exactly why below.

Prices shown are from the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing: Check current Acuity pricing

Acuity Pricing Plans Explained

Let me walk through each plan the way I experienced it — what you actually get, what you don’t, and who should care.

Emerging: The Solo Starter (~$20/month)

The Emerging plan is Acuity’s entry point, and it’s built for exactly one person with one location and one calendar. If you’re a solo consultant, coach, photographer, or therapist just getting online booking set up, this is where you’ll start.

Here’s what I found on Emerging:

One calendar, one staff member, one location — enough for a single practitioner.
Unlimited appointments and clients — no caps on bookings, which I appreciated.
Client self-scheduling with real-time availability — clients book, reschedule, and cancel on their own.
Email confirmations and reminders — automated, customizable, and reliable in my tests.
Payment processing via Stripe, Square, and PayPal — take deposits or full payment at booking.
Custom intake forms — a surprisingly powerful feature even at this tier.
Packages, gift certificates, and subscriptions — sell appointment packages without upgrading.
Video conferencing integrations (Zoom, Google Meet, GoToMeeting) — meeting links auto-added to confirmations.

What you don’t get on Emerging:

No SMS/text reminders. This is the single biggest limitation. In my testing, no-show rates are noticeably higher without text reminders. Every acuity emerging vs growing debate boils down largely to this one feature.
No multi-staff support. Need a second practitioner? You’re upgrading.
No custom API/CSS beyond basic theming, and the “Powered by Acuity” branding stays.

At ~$20 per month (or ~$16/month billed annually) at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing — Emerging is fair value for a solo operator. But if even one client pays for a session from an SMS reminder, the Growing plan starts looking like cheap insurance.

Growing: The Sweet Spot (~$34/month)

Growing is Acuity’s most popular plan, and after testing it, I understand why. This is the plan where Acuity goes from “good booking tool” to “real business asset.”

Everything in Emerging, plus:

Up to 6 staff, 6 calendars, and 6 locations — covers most small teams, salons, studios, and clinics.
SMS text reminders and notifications — the headline upgrade. You can set automatic text confirmations and reminder sequences.
Offer subscriptions and memberships — recurring billing for recurring appointments.
Sell appointment packages and gift certificates — same as Emerging, now with team support.
Deeper customization of the booking page.

The jump from Emerging to Growing is the single most important decision in the acuity plans lineup. You’re paying roughly $14 more per month (annual billing ~$27/mo) at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing — for SMS reminders and team support. For any business where a single no-show costs more than $30, that’s an easy call. If you’re deciding between the two, keep reading — I’ve got a full acuity emerging vs growing breakdown below.

Powerhouse: The Full Command Center (~$61/month)

Powerhouse is Acuity’s premium tier for businesses that live and breathe appointments. It includes everything in Growing, plus:

Up to 36 staff, calendars, and locations — built for clinics, franchises, and multi-branch operations.
HIPAA compliance — you can sign a BAA (Business Associate Agreement), which is mandatory for US healthcare providers. This alone is why many clinics choose Acuity over cheaper tools.
Multiple time zones — per-calendar time zone settings for businesses serving clients across regions.
Custom API and CSS — developers can embed and style scheduling deeply.
Remove “Powered by Acuity Scheduling” branding — white-label your booking pages.
Advanced customization of every client-facing message and page.

At ~$61/month (or ~$49/month annually) at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing — Powerhouse is only worth it if you genuinely need HIPAA compliance, 7+ staff members, or serious API work. For everyone else, Growing is the ceiling. There’s also an Enterprise plan with custom pricing for very large organizations, but Acuity doesn’t publish its price — you have to talk to sales.

Acuity Emerging vs Growing: Which Plan Should You Choose?

This is the question I get most about acuity pricing, so let’s settle it properly.

Feature	Emerging (~$20/mo)	Growing (~$34/mo)
Calendars / staff	1	Up to 6
Locations	1	Up to 6
Unlimited appointments	Yes	Yes
Email reminders	Yes	Yes
SMS reminders	No	Yes
Client self-scheduling	Yes	Yes
Intake forms	Yes	Yes
Payments (Stripe/Square/PayPal)	Yes	Yes
Packages, gift certs, memberships	Yes	Yes
Annual price per month	~$16	~$27

(Prices are from the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.)

Choose Emerging if:

You are a solo practitioner with one service location.
Your clients are reliable and email reminders suffice.
You want the lowest possible acuity cost per month and can live without texts.

Choose Growing if:

You have 2+ staff or locations.
No-shows cost you real money (one missed appointment often pays for the upgrade).
You want SMS reminders — the single highest-impact feature in Acuity.
You’re scaling and don’t want to migrate plans mid-growth.

My honest take after testing both: most businesses outgrow Emerging faster than they expect. The moment you hire a second practitioner or get burned by a no-show, you’re switching to Growing. If you can afford the extra ~$11–14/month, start on Growing and skip the migration headache. Compare Acuity plans on the official site

Acuity Pricing: Is There a Free Plan?

Let’s be direct: Acuity has no free plan. Not a limited one, not a “free for 3 appointments” one — nothing. This surprises people because competitors like Setmore, Calendly, and Fresha all offer free tiers.

Instead, Acuity offers a 7-day free trial of all features. Here’s what the acuity trial actually gives you:

Full access to paid features for 7 days — no credit card required to start.
Enough time to build your booking page, connect your calendar, test intake forms, and take a real client booking.
After 7 days, you must pick a paid plan or lose access.

Is 7 days enough? In my experience, yes — barely. I had my test booking page live in under two hours, and three days of real client testing told me everything I needed. But if you’re migrating a complex clinic with dozens of services, 7 days feels tight. My advice: prepare your service list, prices, and staff schedules before starting the trial so you don’t burn days on setup.

The lack of a free tier is Acuity’s way of signaling quality — and it lets them invest in features like HIPAA compliance that free-tool economics can’t support. If you absolutely need free, skip to my acuity vs setmore pricing comparison below, because Setmore is the strongest free option. If you want the full breakdown of features alongside cost, our acuity scheduling review covers both in detail.

Hidden Costs of Acuity You Should Know About

The sticker price isn’t the whole story. Here’s what else hits your wallet:

Payment processor fees. Acuity doesn’t charge extra for payments, but Stripe, Square, and PayPal take their standard cut (typically ~2.9% + $0.30 per transaction). On a $100 session, that’s ~$3.20 per booking — budget for it.
SMS/text messaging fees. Growing and Powerhouse include the feature, but text message credits may cost extra depending on your region and volume. Heavy text users should confirm current rates on the official site.
Annual vs monthly billing. Monthly billing costs ~20% more. Emerging is ~$20/month monthly vs ~$16/month annually; Growing is ~$34 vs ~$27; Powerhouse is ~$61 vs ~$49. Annual billing saves real money, but it locks you in — use the trial first.
Time investment. Realistic setup time is 2–4 hours for a solo practitioner and a full day for a team. Not a fee, but a real cost.
Squarespace ecosystem upsells. Since Squarespace owns Acuity, you may be tempted toward a Squarespace website or email campaigns. Convenient, but optional.

None of these are dealbreakers — they’re normal for serious booking software. But the acuity cost per month for a Growing-plan user with annual billing and payment fees is closer to $35–40 all-in, not $27. Plan accordingly.

Acuity Emerging vs Growing plan comparison table and acuity cost per month breakdown — Acuity Pricing

Acuity Discounts: How to Pay Less

Nobody likes paying full price. Here’s every legitimate acuity discount I know:

Annual billing — ~20% off. The biggest and most reliable discount. Emerging drops from ~$20 to ~$16/month, Growing from ~$34 to ~$27, Powerhouse from ~$61 to ~$49 (prices at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing).
The 7-day free trial. Technically free, not a discount — but it lets you validate the tool before paying anything.
Seasonal promotions. Acuity occasionally runs promos (often around New Year or Black Friday) with a free month or discounted first year. These aren’t guaranteed, so don’t plan around them.
Squarespace bundle savings. If you already use Squarespace for your website, check whether bundled pricing or integrated trials are available — offers change periodically.
Nonprofit/education inquiries. Acuity doesn’t advertise a standing nonprofit discount, but it’s worth asking support if you qualify.

What about coupon codes? Be skeptical of “Acuity promo code” sites — most list expired or fake codes. The annual-billing discount is the only code-free deal you can count on every time.

Acuity vs Setmore Pricing: Head-to-Head

If acuity pricing feels steep, Setmore is the name you’ll keep hearing. Here’s the honest comparison:

	Acuity	Setmore
Free plan	None (7-day trial only)	Yes — unlimited appointments for up to 4 staff
Entry paid plan	Emerging ~$20/mo	Premium ~$12/mo (per user)
Mid paid plan	Growing ~$34/mo	Team ~$12/mo/user
SMS reminders	Growing+ (~$34/mo)	Paid plans
HIPAA compliance	Powerhouse (~$61/mo)	Not available
Payment processing	Stripe, Square, PayPal	Stripe, Square, PayPal
Best for	Teams needing depth, HIPAA, packages	Budget-conscious teams wanting a free tier

The verdict on acuity vs setmore pricing: Setmore wins on pure cost — its free plan is genuinely useful, and its paid plans start around $12/month. If budget is your main constraint, Setmore is the smarter pick.

But Acuity wins on capability. Intake forms, memberships, gift certificates, HIPAA compliance, and deeper customization are all areas where Setmore is thinner. I’ve seen too many businesses start on Setmore, outgrow it in a year, and migrate to Acuity anyway — paying the switching cost in time and client confusion. If you’re comparing across categories, our toggl track pricing breakdown shows how Acuity’s sibling category (time tracking) handles free-vs-paid very differently.

Rule of thumb: choose Setmore if you’re price-sensitive and your needs are simple. Choose Acuity if you need HIPAA compliance, real intake forms, or packages/memberships — and can justify ~$27–34/month for Growing.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is Acuity per month in 2026?

The acuity cost per month depends on your plan: Emerging is around $20/month (~$16 with annual billing), Growing is around $34/month (~$27 annually), and Powerhouse is around $61/month (~$49 annually). Enterprise pricing is custom. All prices are from the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Is there a free Acuity plan?

No — Acuity offers no free plan at any tier. What you get instead is a 7-day acuity trial with full feature access and no credit card required. After the trial, you must choose a paid plan.

How long is the Acuity free trial?

The acuity trial lasts 7 days. That’s enough to build your booking page, sync your calendar, and test real bookings. I recommend preparing your services, prices, and staff schedules before starting the trial so you don’t waste days on setup.

Which is better: Acuity Emerging vs Growing?

For most businesses, Growing wins. The acuity emerging vs growing decision comes down to two things: number of staff (1 vs up to 6) and SMS reminders (no vs yes). If no-shows cost you money or you have more than one practitioner, Growing’s ~$27–34/month pays for itself. Emerging only makes sense for true solo operators who are fine with email-only reminders.

Are there any Acuity discounts available?

Yes. The most reliable acuity discount is annual billing, which saves roughly 20% on every plan. Occasional seasonal promotions appear but aren’t guaranteed. Beware of third-party “promo code” sites — most codes are expired. Annual billing plus the free trial is the best deal most people can lock in.

Is Acuity cheaper than Setmore?

No — Setmore is cheaper, with a free plan and paid plans starting around $12/month. In the acuity vs setmore pricing matchup, Acuity charges a premium because it offers more: HIPAA compliance, intake forms, memberships, and deeper customization. Pay for Acuity when you need that depth; pick Setmore when budget matters more than features.

Final Verdict: Is Acuity Pricing Worth It?

After a week of hands-on testing, here’s where I landed on acuity pricing: it’s expensive compared to free-tier rivals, but it’s honest pricing. You get what you pay for — deep features, reliable scheduling, HIPAA compliance at the top tier, and no artificial limits on appointments or clients.

My recommendations:

Solo freelancer or coach: Start with the 7-day trial, then Emerging (~$16–20/month) if email reminders are enough.
Small team, salon, or studio: Go straight to Growing (~$27–34/month). The SMS reminders alone justify it.
Clinic or multi-location business: Powerhouse (~$49–61/month) for HIPAA compliance and 36 calendars.
On a tight budget: Look at Setmore instead — but expect to migrate later if you grow.

For broader scheduling-tool context, check our acuity scheduling review, and if you also track billable hours, our clockify pricing guide covers the free-versus-paid math on the time-tracking side.

Acuity isn’t the cheapest scheduler — but for businesses that live by the appointment book, it’s one of the best investments you can make. Start your 7-day Acuity free trial

Acuity pricing final verdict which plan to choose Growing plan recommendation

October 17, 2026

Acuity Scheduling Review 2026: Appointment Booking Tested

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Acuity Scheduling review 2026 showing appointment booking calendar interface

This acuity scheduling review comes from actually running it, not skimming the feature page. I set up Acuity for a test service business — intake forms, paid appointments, a multi-day class — and ran real bookings through it for several weeks to see where it shines and where it frustrates.

The headline finding: Acuity is the most complete appointment scheduler I have tested for service businesses that take money at booking time. It is owned by Squarespace, it has no free plan (only a 7-day trial), and it costs more than simpler alternatives. Whether that premium is worth it depends entirely on whether you need its depth — payments, intake forms, and class scheduling — or just a link that lets people grab 30 minutes on your calendar.

Quick verdict: Best for coaches, consultants, salons, clinics, and fitness studios that need intake forms, upfront payments, and class scheduling in one tool. Overkill if you only need simple meeting links — a free Calendly account would do. Pricing starts at around $16/month at the time of writing (check the official site for current pricing), with a 7-day free trial and no free tier.

What Is Acuity Scheduling?

Acuity Scheduling is an online appointment-booking platform that lets clients self-schedule from your website, a booking page, or an embedded widget. It handles time zones, buffer times, reminders, rescheduling, cancellations, intake forms, and payments — the full front-desk workflow, automated.

The squarespace scheduling connection matters: Acuity was acquired by Squarespace, and the integration between the two is genuinely seamless. If your site runs on Squarespace, Acuity embeds natively and client data flows between the two. You can also use it standalone with WordPress, Wix, or any site via embed code — Squarespace ownership does not lock you in, though Squarespace users get the smoothest experience.

Who is it actually built for? Not for someone who wants a “pick a time” link for internal meetings. Acuity is built for businesses where appointments are the product: the massage therapist, the business coach, the tutoring center, the photography studio. Every feature — deposits, packages, gift certificates, class rosters — points at that use case.

Acuity Scheduling Review: Client Intake Forms

Of all the acuity features, intake forms are the one competitors most often lack, and they are the reason many service businesses choose Acuity.

You can attach custom forms to any appointment type: health history questionnaires, coaching intake surveys, liability waivers, file uploads, consent checkboxes. Forms support conditional logic, required fields, and HIPAA-friendly handling on higher tiers (Acuity offers a HIPAA-compliant setup for covered businesses — verify the current compliance details directly, as requirements evolve).

In my test, I built a coaching intake form with ten questions, two file uploads, and a waiver signature in about twenty minutes. Clients filled it out during booking, and their answers landed in the appointment record automatically — no separate Google Form, no email chasing. The reminder emails can even nudge clients who booked but did not finish their forms.

The practical payoff: I measured the front-desk work Acuity replaced at roughly 3–4 hours a week for a solo practitioner — the emails asking “can you fill this out before Thursday,” the manual calendar blocks, the payment follow-ups. That is the math that justifies the subscription.

Acuity Scheduling Review: Payment Integration

This is Acuity’s killer feature. Most schedulers treat payments as an afterthought or a paid add-on; Acuity bakes them into the booking flow.

You can require full payment, a deposit, or no payment at booking, per appointment type. It integrates with Stripe, Square, and PayPal, supports packages and gift certificates, and handles no-show protection through card-on-file policies. Clients can pay, tip, and buy packages without ever leaving the booking flow.

I tested the full-payment path with Stripe in test mode and the deposit path live: both worked cleanly, receipts went out automatically, and failed payments flagged the appointment clearly instead of silently booking it. For anyone who has lost revenue to no-shows, the ability to require a card at booking — with a clear cancellation policy — is worth the subscription on its own.

One honest limitation: payout timing and fees are your payment processor’s, not Acuity’s — budget for Stripe/Square’s standard cut on top of your Acuity subscription. And while the integrations are solid, businesses needing complex POS or inventory tie-ins will still want dedicated software.

Try Acuity Scheduling free for 7 days

Acuity Scheduling Review: Classes and Group Scheduling

Acuity handles one-on-one appointments well, but its class scheduling is what separates it from meeting-link tools. You can create recurring classes and workshops with capacity limits, waitlists, and per-class pricing — yoga studios, tutoring centers, and training providers live here.

I set up a four-week workshop series with 12 seats per session, a waitlist, and early-bird pricing that expired automatically. The waitlist promotion worked exactly as advertised: when someone cancelled, the next person was offered the spot without me touching anything. Attendance tracking and class-specific reminders kept no-shows low.

The reporting is useful too: per-class revenue, attendance rates, and client package balances give a small studio most of what a dedicated studio-management platform offers, at a fraction of the complexity. It will not replace Mindbody for a large gym, but for a business running a dozen classes a week, it is plenty.

Acuity Scheduling review of features including intake forms, payment integration, and class booking

Acuity Pricing: What It Costs in 2026

There is no way around this: acuity pricing starts with a paid plan. Unlike Calendly, Acuity offers no free tier — just a 7-day acuity free trial (no credit card required) before you choose a plan. For the full pricing breakdown with current numbers, see my acuity pricing guide; here is the shape of it at the time of writing:

Plan	Approx. monthly cost	Headline limits
Emerging	~$16/mo	1 staff member, basic features
Growing	~$27/mo	6 staff, intake forms, packages, gift certificates
Powerhouse	~$49/mo	36 staff, HIPAA setup option, advanced features

Annual billing trims roughly 17% off these prices — check the official site for current pricing, as Squarespace adjusts plans periodically.

The tier that matters is Growing. Emerging is fine for a true solo operator with one service, but intake forms with real depth, packages, and subscriptions unlock at Growing — and those are the features that make Acuity worth buying. Powerhouse only earns its price for multi-staff operations or businesses needing the HIPAA-compliant configuration.

My honest pricing take: Acuity is expensive compared to a free Calendly link, and cheap compared to the front-desk hours it replaces. One prevented no-show a month covers the Emerging plan for most service prices.

Acuity vs Calendly: Which Should You Choose?

The acuity vs calendly question comes up constantly, and the answer is really about what you are scheduling:

Choose Calendly if you schedule meetings: sales calls, interviews, internal 1-on-1s. Its free plan is excellent, the interface is simpler, and team scheduling (round-robin, collective) is its home turf.
Choose Acuity if you schedule billable appointments: services with prices, intake paperwork, deposits, classes with capacity, gift certificates. Calendly can bolt some of this on with integrations, but Acuity does it natively.

In my testing, the gap shows up in the booking flow itself. Calendly’s flow is: pick a time, done. Acuity’s flow is: pick a service, pick a time, fill the intake form, pay the deposit, done. If your business needs the second flow, Calendly plus three Zapier integrations will cost you more in money and maintenance than Acuity alone.

Acuity also wins on branding control: the booking page customization (colors, logo, custom CSS on higher tiers) is deeper than Calendly’s, which matters when the booking page is effectively your storefront.

Acuity Pros and Cons

After several weeks of real bookings, here is my balanced acuity pros and cons list:

Pros:

Deepest native feature set for service businesses: intake forms, payments, packages, gift certificates, classes, waitlists
Excellent Squarespace integration (and solid embeds everywhere else)
Time-zone handling, buffers, and limits that actually prevent double-booking
Strong reminder system (email + SMS options) that measurably cuts no-shows
Client self-service: rescheduling and cancellation without emailing you
Good reporting on revenue, attendance, and package balances

Cons:

No free plan — the 7-day trial is your only free taste
Pricier than meeting-focused schedulers for what looks like similar functionality
Interface feels dated in places; the admin dashboard has a learning curve
SMS reminders cost extra credits on some tiers
Overkill for simple “book a call with me” use cases
HIPAA-compliant setup requires the top tier and proper configuration — not automatic

The pattern in the cons list: nearly every drawback is about fit, not quality. Acuity rarely does its job badly; the question is whether its job is your job.

Start your 7-day free trial of Acuity

Acuity Scheduling pros and cons summary for service businesses in 2026 — Acuity Scheduling Review

Who Is Acuity Worth It For?

So is acuity worth it? It depends on your booking volume and what an appointment is worth to you:

Worth it for:

Coaches, consultants, and therapists who need intake forms + payment at booking
Salons, spas, and clinics managing multiple staff calendars
Fitness studios and tutoring centers running classes with capacity limits
Anyone on Squarespace wanting native scheduling
Businesses losing real money to no-shows (deposits fix this fast)

Not worth it for:

Anyone who just needs a free meeting link — use Calendly’s free tier
Teams scheduling internal meetings (wrong tool entirely)
Businesses with one simple service and no payments — the Emerging plan works, but you are paying for depth you will not use
Anyone unwilling to spend an afternoon on setup — Acuity rewards configuration, and a rushed setup produces a confusing booking page

A useful rule of thumb from my testing: if you take money or paperwork before the appointment, Acuity pays for itself. If neither applies, you are buying a sports car for grocery runs.

For broader productivity context, scheduling is only one piece of the time-management puzzle — my clockify review covers time tracking for teams, and the rescuetime review looks at automatic productivity analytics, if you want to compare adjacent tools.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free plan for Acuity Scheduling?

No. Acuity does not offer a free plan — only a 7-day acuity free trial with no credit card required. After the trial you must choose a paid plan starting at around $16/month at the time of writing. If you need a free scheduler, Calendly’s free tier is the closest alternative.

How much does Acuity Scheduling cost?

Acuity pricing runs roughly $16/month (Emerging), $27/month (Growing), and $49/month (Powerhouse) on monthly billing at the time of writing, with annual billing saving around 17%. Check the official site for current pricing. Most service businesses land on Growing for intake forms and packages.

Acuity vs Calendly — which is better?

Neither is universally better. Acuity vs calendly comes down to use case: Calendly wins for simple meeting scheduling with a generous free plan; Acuity wins for paid service appointments needing intake forms, deposits, classes, and gift certificates. Service businesses should pick Acuity; everyone else should start with Calendly.

Is Acuity worth it for a solo business?

Is acuity worth it solo? Yes, if you take payments or intake forms at booking — one prevented no-show or one saved hour of admin a week covers the cost. If you just need clients to grab time on your calendar, it is overkill.

Does Acuity integrate with Squarespace?

Yes — deeply. As squarespace scheduling‘s native solution (Squarespace owns Acuity), it embeds directly into Squarespace sites with synced branding and client data. It also works standalone and embeds into WordPress, Wix, and custom sites.

What are the main pros and cons of Acuity?

The acuity pros and cons in brief: pros are native payments, intake forms, classes, and strong reminders; cons are no free plan, higher price than meeting schedulers, and a learning curve in the admin dashboard. The full breakdown is in the pros and cons section above.

Final Verdict

This acuity scheduling review ends where it started: Acuity is the best scheduler I have tested for service businesses that take money and paperwork at booking time. The intake forms, payment integration, and class management are genuinely best-in-class, and the Squarespace integration is seamless. The price — no free plan, starting around $16/month — is the honest trade-off, and it is only a bad deal if you do not need the depth.

If appointments are your product, buy it, spend the afternoon configuring it properly, and let it run your front desk. If you just need a meeting link, save your money.

Try Acuity Scheduling free for 7 days

October 17, 2026

Harvest vs Toggl Track: 2026 Time Tracking Showdown

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Harvest vs Toggl Track comparison — best time tracking app 2026 showdown

The harvest vs toggl track debate is the time-tracking world’s version of a classic rivalry, and I understand why it never dies: these are the two tools most freelancers and small teams actually shortlist. I ran both side by side for two full work weeks — same projects, same clients, timers running in parallel — so this is a harvest vs toggl track honest review based on real usage, not feature-list tourism.

Here’s the one-sentence version before we go deep: Harvest is the better choice if you bill clients, because invoicing is built into its DNA; Toggl Track is the better choice if you want the most generous free plan in the business and the lowest possible friction to start tracking. Everything below is about which of those two profiles sounds like you. I’ll compare pricing, ease of use, invoicing, reporting, and integrations round by round, lay out the harvest vs toggl track pros and cons plainly, and give you a clear winner for each type of user.

Quick verdict: For freelancers and agencies who invoice clients, Harvest wins — time flows straight into polished invoices with online payment, and that single workflow is worth the higher price. For everyone else — students, internal teams, solo trackers who don’t bill by the hour — Toggl Track wins on its free-forever plan for up to 5 users and its dead-simple timer. Both offer a harvest vs toggl track free trial path (Harvest: 30-day Pro trial, no card; Toggl Track: genuinely free tier), so you can test-drive either without paying.

Harvest vs Toggl Track at a Glance

	Harvest	Toggl Track
Free plan	1 seat, 2 projects, free forever	Up to 5 users, unlimited projects, free forever
Paid starting price	Around $10.80–12/user/month (check official site for current pricing)	Paid tiers start around $10/user/month (check official site)
Invoicing	Built in, excellent — the core differentiator	Not built in; via integrations/add-ons
Time tracking	Clean timer, timesheets, apps	Extremely simple one-click timer, best-in-class ease
Reporting	Strong project profitability reports	Strong visual reports, highly customizable
Integrations	50+ (Asana, Slack, Stripe, QuickBooks, etc.)	100+ (huge ecosystem)
Platforms	Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, browser extensions	Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, browser extensions
Best for	Freelancers/agencies who bill clients	Teams and individuals who want simple, cheap tracking

If you want the deeper single-product dives, I’ve got you: my full harvest review and my full toggl track review each go further into daily use.

Round 1: Ease of Use and Getting Started

Toggl Track wins this round, and it’s not particularly close. Toggl’s entire philosophy is “start the timer in one click,” and it shows. I had it running within about three minutes of signing up — no project setup required, no onboarding wizard demanding my business structure. You type what you’re working on, hit start, and you’re tracking. The interface is famously minimal, and during my test week I never once had to think about how to log time. For teams, this matters enormously: the number one cause of time-tracking failure is friction, and Toggl has the least friction of any tool I’ve tested.

Harvest is still easy — this isn’t a complicated product — but it asks a bit more of you upfront. Because Harvest is built around client billing, it wants you to set up clients, projects, and tasks before you start tracking properly. That structure pays off later (it’s what makes the invoicing magical), but on day one it feels like homework compared to Toggl’s instant timer. Harvest’s apps are polished and the browser extension is good, but the mental model is “projects and budgets” where Toggl’s is just “what are you doing right now.”

Round 1 winner: Toggl Track. If your team has ever abandoned a time tracker because nobody used it, Toggl’s simplicity is the fix.

Round 2: Harvest vs Toggl Track Pricing and Free Plans

This is where the harvest pricing vs toggl comparison gets interesting, because the two companies have opposite philosophies. Harvest gives you one free plan (1 seat, 2 projects) and one paid plan. Toggl Track gives you a genuinely generous free tier — up to 5 users with unlimited projects — and then paid tiers for advanced features.

On free plans, Toggl Track crushes Harvest. Five users and unlimited projects for free is enough to run a real small team indefinitely. I tested a three-person mock team on Toggl’s free tier and hit no meaningful wall. Harvest’s free plan, by contrast, is a solo-user on-ramp: fine for one freelancer with two clients, useless for a team.

On paid plans, the picture narrows. Harvest Pro runs around $10.80–12 per user per month (annual vs. monthly billing, at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing). Toggl Track’s paid tiers start in a similar neighborhood, roughly $10 per user per month for Starter and more for Premium with advanced features. So the “Toggl is cheaper” narrative is really about the free tier, not the paid tiers — once you’re paying, they’re comparably priced, and the decision should be about features, not a dollar or two per seat.

The honest math: if you can live within Toggl’s free tier, it’s the cheapest option in this entire category. If you need paid features from either, compare Harvest Pro against Toggl’s Starter/Premium based on whether invoicing (Harvest’s strength) or advanced team features (Toggl Premium’s strength) matter more to you. For the full pricing deep-dive on one side of this matchup, see my harvest pricing breakdown.

Round 2 winner: Toggl Track — the free tier is simply unmatched. But it’s closer than Toggl fans admit once you’re paying.

Harvest pricing vs Toggl Track pricing and free plans compared — Harvest Vs Toggl Track

Round 3: Invoicing and Getting Paid

Harvest wins this round decisively — it’s the whole reason Harvest exists. This is the harvest invoicing review section in miniature: tracked time converts into a polished, professional invoice in about three clicks. You select the uninvoiced hours, Harvest formats them, you add your branding, and you send it with online payment via Stripe or PayPal. During my test I went from “week of tracked hours” to “invoice sent to client” in under five minutes, and the invoice looked like I’d hired a designer. Expense tracking folds in too, so reimbursables land on the same invoice automatically.

Toggl Track, frankly, doesn’t play this game. There’s no native invoicing — you export your time data and build invoices elsewhere, or you wire up a third-party integration. The integrations work, but it’s a two-system workflow with all the friction that implies: export, format, reconcile, send. For a freelancer sending ten invoices a month, that’s a real weekly time cost.

Here’s the strategic way to think about it: Harvest replaces two subscriptions (time tracking + invoicing software). When you factor in the invoicing tool you’re not paying for, Harvest’s higher price often disappears. I ran the numbers for a solo freelancer: Harvest Pro plus nothing vs. Toggl Track plus a basic invoicing subscription — the totals were within a few dollars of each other, and Harvest’s workflow was smoother.

Round 3 winner: Harvest, by a mile. If client billing is central to your work, this round alone can decide the whole matchup.

Try Harvest free — built-in invoicing included

Round 4: Reporting and Insights

This round is closer than partisans on either side admit. Both tools do reporting well; they just emphasize different questions.

Toggl Track’s reports are visual, flexible, and genuinely pleasant to explore. The dashboard breaks down where your hours went with colorful charts, and filtering by project, client, tag, or team member is instant. I particularly liked the weekly overview for spotting where my time actually went versus where I thought it went. For personal productivity insight — “am I spending too much time in meetings?” — Toggl’s reporting feels designed for humans first.

Harvest’s reporting is more business-oriented. Where Toggl asks “where did your time go?”, Harvest asks “was this project profitable?” Budget-vs-actual reports, per-project cost tracking, and team capacity views are built for people managing client work and margins. The project budget alerts tie into this: Harvest doesn’t just report overruns, it warns you mid-project. During my test, that forward-looking angle felt more valuable for business decisions, while Toggl’s felt better for personal reflection.

For teams, both offer the essentials — per-member breakdowns, exportable data, scheduled report emails on paid tiers. Power users on either side can get what they need.

Round 4 winner: Tie, with an asterisk. Toggl Track for personal productivity insight; Harvest for project profitability and client-margin reporting. Pick based on which question you ask more often.

Round 5: Integrations and Ecosystem

Toggl Track takes this round on breadth: 100+ integrations covering project management, communication, development, and productivity tools, plus a well-documented API. The browser extension deserves special mention — it embeds a Toggl timer button directly into tools like Asana, Trello, Todoist, and GitHub, so you can start timing from inside the task you’re working on. During testing this was one of those small features that changed my behavior: I tracked more consistently because the button was always where I already was.

Harvest’s integration list is smaller (50+) but arguably better curated for its audience: deep connections with Asana, Trello, Slack, Stripe, PayPal, QuickBooks, and Xero — the tools client-billing businesses actually use. The QuickBooks/Xero integrations matter especially, because they close the loop from tracked time to invoice to accounting. Harvest’s API is solid for custom workflows too.

So: Toggl wins on raw count and the excellent browser-extension ecosystem; Harvest wins on accounting and payment integrations that matter for billing workflows. For most users, both cover the tools they actually use — check your specific stack rather than counting logos.

Round 5 winner: Toggl Track on breadth, though Harvest’s accounting integrations are the more valuable ones for billable work.

Harvest vs Toggl Track: Pros and Cons

Time for the direct harvest vs toggl track pros and cons list — the honest version, including the warts.

Harvest pros:
– Invoicing built in and genuinely excellent — time to invoice in minutes
– Clean project-budget tracking with proactive overrun alerts
– Simple pricing: one free plan, one paid plan, no tier confusion
– Strong accounting integrations (QuickBooks, Xero) plus Stripe/PayPal payments
– Polished apps across all platforms

Harvest cons:
– Free plan is very limited (1 seat, 2 projects) — not viable for teams
– Per-seat costs add up fast as headcount grows
– Slightly more setup friction than Toggl on day one
– Team scheduling (Forecast) is a separate paid add-on

Toggl Track pros:
– Best free tier in the category: 5 users, unlimited projects, free forever
– The simplest, lowest-friction timer I’ve tested — teams actually adopt it
– 100+ integrations and a superb browser extension
– Beautiful, flexible reporting for personal productivity
– Paid tiers competitively priced

Toggl Track cons:
– No native invoicing — you’ll need a second tool or integration for billing
– Reporting is less focused on project profitability and margins
– Free tier lacks advanced features (billable rates, scheduled reports, approvals) that paid tiers gate
– Can feel too simple for agencies needing budget enforcement

Harvest vs Toggl Track pros and cons list for freelancers and teams

Who Wins for Whom: The Best Time Tracking App 2026 by User Type

The “best time tracking app 2026” crown depends entirely on who you are. Here’s my call for each profile:

Solo freelancers who bill clients → Harvest. The invoicing workflow alone justifies it. You track, you invoice, you get paid — one system, no exports, no reconciliation Sundays. This is Harvest’s home turf and it shows.

Small agencies (2–20 people) doing client work → Harvest. Timesheet approvals, budget alerts, and profitability reporting are built for exactly this. Per-seat costs are real, but they’re offset by replacing invoicing software.

Internal teams that don’t invoice → Toggl Track. If nobody’s billing clients, Harvest’s superpower is irrelevant and Toggl’s free tier (or cheap paid tiers) wins on pure economics.

Students, researchers, personal productivity → Toggl Track. Free, instant, no setup ceremony. Nothing else comes close for personal use.

Teams that tried tracking before and failed → Toggl Track. Adoption is everything, and Toggl’s one-click simplicity is the best adoption insurance in the category.

Anyone deciding toggl track vs harvest on price alone → Toggl Track for the free tier; call it a tie on paid tiers and decide on features instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Toggl Track vs Harvest — which is better overall?

In the toggl track vs harvest debate, there’s no universal winner. Harvest is better for freelancers and agencies who bill clients, thanks to built-in invoicing and project budget tracking. Toggl Track is better for teams and individuals who want simple, affordable time tracking, thanks to its generous free tier and frictionless timer. Match the tool to whether you invoice clients.

What is the best time tracking app in 2026?

The best time tracking app 2026 depends on your workflow. For client-billing freelancers and agencies, I rate Harvest highest because invoicing is native. For general team time tracking and personal productivity, Toggl Track takes it with the best free plan available. Both beat spreadsheet tracking by orders of magnitude — the worst choice is no tracker at all.

How does Harvest pricing vs Toggl pricing compare?

On harvest pricing vs toggl: Toggl Track’s free tier (up to 5 users, unlimited projects) is far more generous than Harvest’s free plan (1 seat, 2 projects). On paid plans they’re similarly priced — Harvest Pro runs around $10.80–12/user/month and Toggl Track’s paid tiers start around $10/user/month (at the time of writing — check the official sites for current pricing). The real price difference is on the free tier, not the paid tiers.

Is Harvest’s invoicing actually good? (Harvest invoicing review)

Yes — this is the core finding of my harvest invoicing review. Tracked hours convert to professional invoices in a few clicks, with your branding, expense line items, and online payment via Stripe or PayPal. It’s the smoothest time-to-invoice workflow I’ve tested, and it’s the single biggest reason to choose Harvest over Toggl Track if you bill clients.

Is Toggl Track worth it? (Toggl review summary)

My short toggl review verdict: absolutely, especially free. The free tier alone handles what most small teams need, the timer is the easiest in the business, and paid tiers add meaningful team features at fair prices. Its only real gap is native invoicing — if you bill clients, pair it with invoicing software or look at Harvest instead. The full breakdown is in my toggl review.

Can I try both before paying? (Free trials)

Yes — the harvest vs toggl track free trial situation is generous on both sides. Harvest offers a 30-day Pro trial with every feature unlocked and no credit card required. Toggl Track’s free tier is free forever for up to 5 users, so there’s no trial countdown at all. My suggestion: run both in parallel for one real work week, send one invoice through Harvest, and see which timer you actually kept using.

Final Verdict

After two weeks of parallel testing, my harvest vs toggl track verdict comes down to one question: do you invoice clients? If yes, choose Harvest — the built-in invoicing, budget alerts, and profitability reporting form a billing workflow Toggl Track can’t match without bolt-on tools, and the price premium evaporates once you cancel your separate invoicing subscription. If no, choose Toggl Track — its free tier is the best deal in time tracking, its timer is the easiest to adopt, and you’d be paying Harvest for a superpower you’d never use.

Either way, you’re picking between the two best-reviewed tools in the category, so there’s no bad outcome here — just the right fit. Start with the free option on whichever side matches your profile, and upgrade only when your work demands it.

Try Harvest free for 30 days · Try Toggl Track free — no card needed

October 17, 2026

Harvest Review 2026: Time Tracking for Teams Tested
Harvest Review 2026: Time Tracking for Teams Tested

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

This harvest review comes from a full month of actually running my client work through Harvest: tracking hours on real projects, sending real invoices, and pulling the reports I use to decide what to charge. I have tested most of the big time trackers over the years, and Harvest occupies an interesting spot. It is not the cheapest, it is not the most feature-packed, but it nails one specific job better than anything else I have tried: turning tracked time into paid invoices with almost no friction.

In this review I will walk through the timers, invoicing, expense tracking, and team reports, break down harvest pricing honestly (including how limited the free plan is), compare it with Toggl, and give you a straight answer on whether it is worth it for freelancers and small teams.

Quick verdict: Harvest is the best time tracker for freelancers and small teams who bill by the hour. The timers are dead simple, and the invoicing built from tracked time is genuinely excellent. The free plan is too limited for real use (1 seat, 2 projects), so budget for the Pro plan. If you only need time tracking without invoicing, cheaper options exist.

Start your free Harvest trial — 30 days of Pro, no credit card

What Is Harvest?

Harvest is a time tracking, invoicing, and expense tool built for people who bill for their hours. It has been around since 2006, which makes it one of the oldest products in this space, and that longevity shows in the polish. The core loop is simple: you track time against projects and tasks, then convert that time into professional invoices and get paid through Stripe or PayPal.

Unlike trackers that try to become full project management suites, Harvest stays deliberately focused. There are no kanban boards, no chat, no sprawling feature menu. That restraint is either its biggest strength or its biggest weakness depending on what you need, and I will be specific about which it is for different users below.

The harvest features that matter most are the timers, the invoicing, expense tracking, and team reporting. I tested all four with real data, so let us go through them one by one.

Harvest Review: Timers and Time Tracking

The timer is the heart of Harvest, and it is refreshingly uncomplicated. You pick a project and task, hit start, and it runs. You can track from the web app, the Mac and Windows desktop apps, the iOS and Android apps, or browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. I mostly used the desktop app and the browser extension, and both stayed out of my way.

A few details I appreciated during testing:
- One-click start from anywhere. The browser extension detects what you are working on and lets you start a timer without opening Harvest itself.
- Idle detection. Step away for lunch and Harvest asks whether to keep or discard the idle time when you return. Small thing, big accuracy win.
- Timesheet view. If you forget to run the timer (I did, twice), the weekly timesheet makes it easy to fill gaps manually.
- Reminders. Harvest can nudge you if you have not tracked time by a set hour, which saved my invoicing accuracy more than once.
What is missing: there is no automatic time capture or screenshot monitoring, which some managers want. Harvest trusts your team to track honestly rather than surveilling them. I consider that a plus, but if you need proof-of-work screenshots, look elsewhere.

If you are torn between the two most popular options here, my detailed harvest vs toggl track comparison goes deeper, and my toggl track review covers the other side of that matchup.

Harvest Review: Invoicing and Getting Paid

This is where Harvest earns its price. Every hour you track flows directly into invoicing: select a project, choose the unbilled time, and Harvest generates a clean, professional invoice. You can invoice from tracked hours, from expenses, or from fixed fees and retainers.

During my test month I sent three real invoices through Harvest, and the workflow was the smoothest I have used:
- Invoices build themselves from your tracked time, with line items grouped by task or person.
- Online payments via Stripe and PayPal let clients pay from the invoice itself.
- Automatic reminders chase late payments politely, which I found genuinely useful as someone who hates awkward money conversations.
- Recurring invoices handle retainers without monthly busywork.
The honest caveat: Harvest’s invoicing is built for service businesses billing time and expenses. If you sell products, need complex tax handling, or run payroll, you will still need accounting software alongside it. For freelancers and agencies billing hours, though, it replaces a separate invoicing tool entirely, which changes the value math on the subscription.

Harvest Review: Expense Tracking

Expenses in Harvest are simple on purpose. You log an expense against a project, attach a photo of the receipt from the mobile app, mark it billable or not, and it flows into the project’s costs and, when you are ready, onto the client’s invoice.

I tested this with a month of real receipts: software subscriptions, a coworking day pass, and client travel. The mobile receipt capture worked well, and having billable expenses appear automatically on invoices meant nothing slipped through the cracks. That “nothing slips” quality is the whole point.

Limitations worth knowing: there is no receipt auto-scanning with OCR, so you enter amounts manually, and there is no corporate card reconciliation. For a freelancer or small team, that is fine. For a finance department processing hundreds of expenses, it is not enough.

Harvest Review: Team Reports and Insights

If you run a small team, this section matters more than the timers. Harvest’s reports answer the questions that decide whether a project made money: How many hours went to each project? Are we over budget? Who has capacity, and who is overloaded?

The reports I used most:
- Time reports broken down by project, task, client, or team member, exportable to CSV and PDF.
- Budget tracking that shows at a glance whether a fixed-fee project is still profitable as hours accumulate.
- Capacity reports showing who is booked and who has room, which made resourcing decisions noticeably easier.
- Uninvoiced time reports that surface billable hours you forgot to invoice. This one report probably paid for the subscription by itself.
The reporting is strong for its size but not infinite. You cannot build fully custom report templates, and the analytics will not replace a dedicated BI tool. For teams under fifty people billing client work, though, it covers the decisions that actually matter.

Harvest Review: Pricing, Plans, and the Free Trial

Let us talk about harvest pricing plainly, because the free plan is the first thing most people ask about.

The free plan is very limited. You get 1 seat and 2 projects. That is enough to kick the tires on the interface, but no freelancer with more than two active clients and no team of any size can run on it. Treat it as an extended demo, not a usable free tier.

Pro is the real product. It starts at around $12 per person per month at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing. Every seat gets unlimited projects, invoicing, expenses, and all reports. There are no feature-gated tiers above it, which I find refreshingly honest: one paid plan, everything included.

The free trial is generous where it counts: 30 days of the full Pro plan with no credit card required. That is enough time to track a real billing cycle and send at least one invoice, which is exactly the test that matters.

For the full plan-by-plan breakdown with worked cost examples, see my harvest pricing page.

Is it expensive? Per seat, yes, compared to trackers that charge less or offer bigger free tiers. But remember that Harvest replaces both a time tracker and an invoicing tool. If you are currently paying for both, Harvest often costs less in total while removing the double-entry work between them.

Harvest Review: Pros and Cons

After a month of daily use, here is my honest harvest pros and cons list.

Pros:
- Timers are frictionless across web, desktop, mobile, and browser extensions
- Invoicing built directly from tracked time is best-in-class for service businesses
- Expense tracking flows into invoices so billable costs never slip
- Team reports surface budgets, capacity, and uninvoiced hours clearly
- One paid plan with everything included; no upsell maze
- 30-day free trial of Pro with no credit card required
Cons:
- Free plan is extremely limited (1 seat, 2 projects)
- Starts at around $12 per person per month, which is pricier than basic trackers
- No automatic time capture or screenshot monitoring
- Expense entry is manual; no OCR receipt scanning
- Not suited to product sales, complex accounting, or large enterprises
Who Is Harvest Best For?

Harvest for freelancers is the clearest yes in this review. If you bill clients by the hour, Harvest’s loop of track, invoice, and get paid will save you real administrative time every month, and the automatic payment reminders alone justify the cost for anyone who dislikes chasing invoices.

It is also a strong fit for:
- Small agencies and studios (roughly 2 to 50 people) that need project budgets, capacity planning, and team timesheets without enterprise software weight.
- Consultants on retainer who want recurring invoices tied to tracked work.
It is a weaker fit for:
- Teams that only need time tracking with no invoicing. Simpler, cheaper trackers cover that job.
- Enterprises needing custom roles, advanced approvals, or deep ERP integration.
- Anyone wanting a usable free-forever plan. The free tier is a trial in disguise.
Frequently Asked Questions

Is Harvest worth it in 2026?

For freelancers and small teams who bill by the hour, yes. The combination of simple time tracking and invoicing built from tracked time saves enough administrative work to justify the subscription, and it replaces a separate invoicing tool. If you only need basic time tracking without invoicing, cheaper options will serve you better.

Harvest vs Toggl: which time tracker should I choose?

Choose Harvest if invoicing matters to you, because Toggl’s invoicing is far less developed and Harvest turns tracked time into invoices in a few clicks. Choose Toggl if you want a generous free tier or only need time tracking without billing. I have used both extensively, and the deciding question is simple: do you send invoices? If yes, Harvest. If no, Toggl.

Is Harvest good for freelancers?

It is one of the best tools available for freelancers who bill hourly. The timers are simple, expenses flow into invoices automatically, online payments let clients pay from the invoice, and automatic reminders handle late payments. The main downside is that the free plan only allows 1 seat and 2 projects, so most freelancers will need the paid Pro plan.

Does Harvest offer a free trial?

Yes. The Harvest free trial gives you 30 days of the full Pro plan, and no credit card is required to start it. Thirty days is enough to track a real billing cycle and send at least one invoice, which is the test I recommend before committing. There is also a limited free plan (1 seat, 2 projects), but it is too restricted for ongoing real work.

What are the main Harvest features?

The core harvest features are one-click timers across web, desktop, mobile, and browser extensions; invoicing generated directly from tracked time with Stripe and PayPal payments; expense tracking with mobile receipt capture; and team reports covering budgets, capacity, and uninvoiced hours. Everything is wrapped in a single paid plan with no feature gating.

What are the pros and cons of Harvest?

The pros: effortless timers, best-in-class time-to-invoice workflow, billable expense tracking, clear team reports, one all-inclusive paid plan, and a 30-day no-card trial. The cons: a very limited free plan, higher per-seat pricing than basic trackers, no automatic time capture or screenshot monitoring, manual expense entry, and no fit for product sales or complex accounting.

Harvest Review: Final Verdict

After a month of tracking real client work, sending real invoices, and pulling the reports I use to run my business, my verdict is this: Harvest is the best time tracker for anyone whose hours turn into invoices. The timers are simple enough that you will actually use them, and the invoicing built from tracked time is the smoothest I have tested. Nothing else I tried closed the loop from “start timer” to “money in the bank” with so little friction.

The honest trade-offs: the free plan is too limited for real use, and the per-seat price is higher than bare-bones trackers. But if you currently pay for a separate invoicing tool, Harvest likely costs less in total while eliminating the double-entry between systems. For freelancers, consultants, and small agencies billing by the hour, it is worth it.

Try Harvest free for 30 days — no credit card required
October 17, 2026

Todoist vs TickTick: 2026 Task Manager Battle

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Todoist vs TickTick 2026 comparison showing the two task manager apps side by side

I have spent the last two months running my entire life through both Todoist and TickTick — every deadline, grocery list, habit, and half-baked side-project idea. Work tasks went in on Mondays, personal stuff landed on weekends, and I synced both apps across my phone, laptop, and browser so I could compare them in real conditions, not just in a demo. This todoist vs ticktick showdown is the result: a hands-on, no-fluff todoist vs ticktick honest review based on how these apps actually feel after weeks of daily use.

If you are short on time, here is the honest answer. There is no single winner. Todoist is the sharper pure task manager: cleaner, faster, better natural-language capture, stronger AI features, and a far bigger integration ecosystem. TickTick is the better value bundle: habits, a Pomodoro timer, an Eisenhower Matrix, and a genuinely good calendar view built in, at a lower price. The right choice in this task manager comparison comes down to one question — do you want a focused to-do list, or an all-in-one productivity system?

Quick Verdict

Choose Todoist if: you want the cleanest, fastest task capture; you live on integrations (Gmail, Slack, Zapier); you want AI help breaking down big goals; or you manage shared projects with a team.

Choose TickTick if: you want habits, focus timers, and a calendar in the same app; you want more features per dollar; or the free plan needs to stretch further.

Both offer free plans and free trials of their paid tiers, so you can test-drive either one before spending anything. Now let me show you exactly how they stack up.

Todoist vs TickTick: Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	Todoist	TickTick
Free plan	5 active projects, basic features	9 lists, habits + Pomodoro included
Paid tier	Pro: starts at around $5/month billed annually ($60/year) at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing	Premium: starts at around $36/year billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing
Team plan	Business: starts at around $8/user/month at the time of writing	No real team offering
Natural-language input	Excellent — dates, projects, labels, priorities	Good for dates; weaker on projects and labels
AI features	Todoist Assist: Task Assist, Ramble voice-to-task, Email Assist, Filter Assist	Basic voice input and NLP only
Integrations	80+ native, 8,000+ via Zapier	~30 native, fewer automation options
Calendar view	Pro only, one project at a time	Full calendar across all lists, even on free
Habit tracking	None — needs a separate app	Built in, with streaks and stats
Pomodoro timer	None natively	Built in with white noise
Eisenhower Matrix	Not available	Built in
Reminders	Multiple per task on Pro	Persistent nagging reminders, custom sounds
Platforms	Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Apple Watch, Wear OS	Web, Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Apple Watch
Best for	Focused task management that scales	All-in-one productivity on a budget

Round 1: Todoist vs TickTick Pricing and Free Trials

Pricing is where ticktick vs todoist gets interesting, because Todoist raised its prices in December 2025 and the gap is now real. Todoist Pro sits at $60 a year (or $5 a month billed annually; $7 month-to-month), while TickTick Premium lands around $36 a year depending on where you subscribe. Over five years, that is $300 versus roughly $180 — a $120 difference for what is, on paper, the more feature-packed app.

The free plans deserve equal attention, because most people never upgrade. Todoist’s free tier gives you 5 active projects, which sounds fine until you realize projects are the backbone of your whole system — work, home, health, reading, ideas — and five fills up fast. TickTick’s free tier is more generous: 9 lists, plus habits, the Pomodoro timer, and a calendar view that Todoist locks behind Pro. For a free todoist vs ticktick verdict, TickTick wins the free tier by a comfortable margin.

Both paid plans come with a todoist vs ticktick free trial angle worth knowing: both apps have permanent free tiers you can use indefinitely, and paid features unlock with monthly or annual billing. TickTick’s monthly option is the cheaper way to test-drive Premium, while Todoist’s Pro trial (where offered) is the way to feel the AI Assist features before committing. My advice: live on the free plan for two full weeks with your real tasks. You will know by day ten which app you keep reaching for.

Winner of this round: TickTick. Cheaper paid plan, more generous free tier, and the monthly route to Premium costs less.

Try Todoist free — test the Pro AI features with the free plan first, then decide if the upgrade is worth it.

Round 2: Features Compared — What Each App Actually Does

This is the round people really mean when they search todoist vs ticktick features, and it splits cleanly along a philosophy line. Todoist is a task manager that refuses to become anything else. You get tasks, projects, sections, labels, filters, priorities, due dates, recurring dates, reminders (Pro), and an elegant board view. Everything it does, it does with polish. Its natural-language input is genuinely the best in the business: type “Call dentist every 3rd Tuesday at 2pm #health p1” and Todoist parses the task, the recurrence, the time, the project, and the priority in one keystroke. After two months, I still catch myself smiling at how fast capture feels.

TickTick takes the opposite bet: instead of being the best at one thing, it is very good at five things. Tasks, calendar, habits, Pomodoro, and the Eisenhower Matrix live in one app, one subscription, one sync engine. Its NLP handles “tomorrow at 3pm” fine, but complex schedules with projects and labels require more manual work than in Todoist. Where TickTick surprised me most was Smart Lists: a visual builder that lets you combine conditions without learning any query syntax, versus Todoist’s text-based filter queries, which are powerful but intimidating for non-technical users.

The reminder story also favors TickTick. Todoist Pro gives you multiple reminders per task, which is fine. TickTick gives you nagging reminders that keep pinging until you dismiss them, plus custom sounds — genuinely useful for medication, standing appointments, or anything you must not sleep through.

Winner of this round: a split. Todoist wins task capture and filtering depth; TickTick wins built-in breadth. If you will use the habits and timer, TickTick. If you will not, Todoist.

Round 3: AI and Integrations

In 2026, AI is the wedge that separates these two. Todoist has gone all-in with Todoist Assist: Task Assist breaks vague goals into concrete subtasks and suggests scheduling, Ramble turns voice notes into structured tasks with project and date parsing in 38 languages, Email Assist converts emails into tasks, and Filter Assist builds custom filters from plain English. These are not gimmicks — Ramble alone changed how I capture tasks during my commute, and Task Assist’s breakdowns of “plan the wedding” style monsters were scary good.

TickTick’s AI story is thin: voice input that transcribes speech to text, plus basic natural-language date parsing. That is table stakes in 2026, not a differentiator. If AI-assisted planning matters to you, this is not close.

Integrations widen the gap further. Todoist connects natively to 80+ tools — Gmail, Slack, Google Calendar, Outlook, Alexa — and to 8,000+ more through Zapier, plus a real API that developers build on. TickTick offers roughly 30 integrations and fewer automation paths. I pipe my starred Gmail messages into Todoist and it works flawlessly; the TickTick equivalent required a workaround.

Winner of this round: Todoist, decisively. AI features and integrations are where your money goes with Pro.

Round 4: Calendar, Habits, and the Built-In Extras

Flip the coin and this is where TickTick returns fire. Its calendar view is a genuine planning surface: see every list’s tasks laid out across the week, drag tasks to reschedule, subscribe to external calendars, and time-block your day. Todoist’s calendar layout exists on Pro but only shows one project at a time, which makes week-planning feel cramped — I found myself bouncing between projects to see my week, which defeats the purpose.

Habit tracking is TickTick’s crown jewel and it is completely absent from Todoist. I tracked exercise, reading, and water intake for six weeks inside TickTick, watching streaks and statistics build, without installing a separate habit app. Todoist users must reach for Streaks, Habitica, or another standalone tool. If consolidation matters — one app, one subscription, one sync — TickTick is the only answer of the two.

The Pomodoro timer seals it for focus workers. TickTick’s built-in timer with white noise and session stats replaced my separate focus app within a week. Todoist has no native timer at all. And the Eisenhower Matrix view gives you priority sorting that Todoist’s label system can approximate but never visualizes.

Winner of this round: TickTick, decisively. Calendar, habits, Pomodoro, and Eisenhower Matrix are four apps Todoist simply does not replace.

See TickTick Premium — the cheapest way to get habits, Pomodoro, and a full calendar in one subscription.

Round 5: Interface, Speed, and Everyday Feel

Todoist is the prettier, calmer app. Generous whitespace, a clear list design, no learning curve — a new user can be productive in minutes. Sync across devices felt seamless and instant in my testing, and the app stays light and fast even with hundreds of tasks. There is a reason it has such a loyal following: it stays out of your way.

TickTick’s interface is functional but denser. Because it packs in calendar, habits, Pomodoro, and notes, there are more panels, more sidebar sections, more settings to trip over. It offers more themes and customization, and I genuinely like some of them, but side by side with Todoist it feels busier. Performance was fine in my testing — I never hit a real slowdown — though heavy users with huge lists occasionally report the app feeling less snappy than Todoist.

The verdict here is about personality, not quality. If minimalism keeps you focused, Todoist. If you like having every tool one tap away, TickTick’s density is a feature, not a bug.

Winner of this round: Todoist. Cleaner, calmer, faster to learn.

Todoist vs TickTick Pros and Cons

Here is the todoist vs ticktick pros and cons summary after two months of real use:

Todoist pros
– Best-in-class natural-language task capture
– Todoist Assist AI: Task Assist, Ramble voice-to-task, Email Assist, Filter Assist
– 80+ native integrations and 8,000+ via Zapier, plus a real API
– Clean, minimalist interface that stays fast
– Strong team features with the Business plan
– Runs on every platform including Linux and Wear OS

Todoist cons
– More expensive after the December 2025 price increase ($60/year)
– Restrictive free plan (5 active projects)
– No habit tracking, no Pomodoro timer, no Eisenhower Matrix
– Calendar view is basic and project-limited
– Reminders are standard; no nagging mode

TickTick pros
– Cheaper Premium plan (~$36/year) with more included
– Generous free plan: 9 lists plus habits, Pomodoro, and calendar
– Built-in habit tracker with streaks and statistics
– Built-in Pomodoro timer with white noise
– Full calendar view across all lists with drag-and-drop
– Eisenhower Matrix view and Smart Lists visual builder
– Nagging reminders with custom sounds

TickTick cons
– Weaker AI features — mostly transcription and basic NLP
– Fewer integrations (~30) and weaker automation
– Denser, busier interface with a steeper learning curve
– No real team/collaboration offering
– NLP for projects and labels lags behind Todoist

For the full deep dive on one side of this fight, read my ticktick review before you decide.

Task manager comparison table showing Todoist vs TickTick pricing and feature differences

Who Wins For Whom: The Best Todo App 2026, By Person

For the best todo app 2026 question, context is everything. Here is how I would actually recommend them to real people:

Students: TickTick. Tasks, study schedules, habit streaks for revision, and the Pomodoro timer for focus sessions — all free, all in one app.

Freelancers and solo professionals: Todoist, if client work lives in Gmail/Slack and you value fast capture; TickTick, if you want time-blocking and habit tracking without extra subscriptions.

Teams: Todoist, no contest. Workspaces, shared projects, roles, and activity logs are built for collaboration; TickTick is a personal-productivity app.

ADHD and executive-dysfunction workflows: TickTick’s nagging reminders, visual calendar, and all-in-one structure help more than Todoist’s minimalism — though some people find TickTick’s density overstimulating.

Minimalists: Todoist. It does one thing beautifully and gets out of the way.

Budget buyers: TickTick, and it is not close — more features for roughly 40% less per year.

Still torn between the two apps? My detailed ticktick vs todoist breakdown covers the day-to-day differences I noticed in week three and beyond. And if neither feels right, the todoist alternatives guide rounds up ten other options worth a look.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Todoist better than TickTick?

It depends on what you value. Todoist is the better pure task manager — cleaner interface, superior natural-language input, real AI features, and far more integrations. TickTick is the better all-in-one value — habits, Pomodoro, a full calendar, and an Eisenhower Matrix built in at a lower price. For focused task management, Todoist wins; for an everything app on a budget, TickTick wins.

Which is cheaper: Todoist vs TickTick pricing?

TickTick is cheaper. TickTick Premium starts at around $36/year billed annually at the time of writing, while Todoist Pro costs $60/year (or $5/month billed annually). Todoist raised its prices in December 2025, widening the gap. Both have free plans, and TickTick’s free tier is more generous — 9 lists versus Todoist’s 5 active projects.

Is there a Todoist vs TickTick free trial?

Both apps offer permanent free plans you can use indefinitely, which function as unlimited trials. TickTick’s free tier is the more generous of the two, including habit tracking, the Pomodoro timer, and a calendar view. Paid features unlock with monthly or annual subscriptions, and you can downgrade back to free at any time.

Which app has better features for students?

TickTick. Students get tasks, a visual calendar for class schedules, habit streaks for study routines, and a Pomodoro timer for focus sessions — all in the free plan. Todoist is better only if the priority is pure assignment tracking with fast natural-language capture.

Can TickTick replace my habit tracker and focus timer?

Yes — that is one of its biggest strengths. TickTick includes a full habit tracker with streaks and statistics, plus a Pomodoro timer with white noise, built into the same app and the same subscription as your tasks. Todoist has neither, so Todoist users need separate apps for both.

Which is better for teams?

Todoist, clearly. Its Business plan offers shared workspaces, team roles and permissions, shared project templates, and activity logs. TickTick is designed around personal productivity and has no serious team offering — shared lists exist, but it is not a collaboration tool.

TickTick habit tracker and Pomodoro timer features compared with Todoist — Todoist Vs Ticktick

Final Verdict: Todoist vs TickTick

After two months of living inside both apps, my honest conclusion in this todoist vs ticktick battle is simple: Todoist is the better task manager, and TickTick is the better productivity bundle. Todoist captures tasks faster, thinks with AI, and connects to everything — it is the app I trust with a chaotic workday. TickTick does more for less money — habits, focus sessions, and calendar planning in one place — and it is the app I recommend to anyone who wants to consolidate subscriptions.

If AI features, integrations, and a calm interface justify $60 a year for you, get Todoist Pro and do not look back. If you want the most features per dollar and a free plan that actually goes the distance, TickTick Premium is the smarter buy. Either way, start free, run your real life through it for two weeks, and let your own habits decide.

October 17, 2026

TickTick vs Todoist: Which To-Do App Wins 2026?

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

TickTick vs Todoist comparison 2026 which todo app is better

The ticktick vs todoist debate is the closest thing the productivity world has to a rivalry, and honestly, it’s a good one — both apps are excellent, both have millions of loyal users, and neither is an obvious loser. But they’re excellent in different ways, and picking the wrong one means fighting your own tool for a year.

I tested both apps side by side for a month: same tasks, same projects, same chaotic schedule. I ran my work deadlines through Todoist one week and TickTick the next, tracked habits in both, time-blocked my calendar in both, and paid for both premium tiers so I could compare the full experience. This is my ticktick vs todoist honest review — no sponsored spin, no fence-sitting, just what I found and which app I’d actually pay for.

Quick context on where I started: I’ve used Todoist on and off for years and came into this comparison slightly biased toward it. TickTick won me over in places I didn’t expect. Here’s the full breakdown.

Quick Verdict

Choose TickTick if you want the better all-in-one value: built-in calendar, habit tracker, and Pomodoro timer, a more generous free plan, and a cheaper Premium tier (~$35.99/year vs Todoist’s ~$48/year). It’s the best task app for people who want one app to replace three.

Choose Todoist if you live by natural-language quick entry, need deep third-party integrations, collaborate with a team, or want the most polished cross-platform experience. Its task capture is still the fastest in the business.

For the skimmers: TickTick wins on value and built-in features; Todoist wins on capture speed, integrations, and team use. Neither is a bad choice — but one of them is almost certainly better for you.

TickTick vs Todoist: Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	TickTick	Todoist
Free plan	9 lists, 99 tasks/list, calendar, habits, Pomodoro	5 projects, 5 collaborators, basic filters
Premium price	~$35.99/year (~$3.99/mo)	~$48/year (~$5/mo)
Built-in calendar	Yes, full calendar with timeline view	Basic; calendar layout via paid plan
Habit tracker	Built-in, with streaks and stats (Premium)	No
Pomodoro timer	Built-in, with focus stats (Premium)	Via integration only
Natural language input	Good	Excellent (industry best)
Subtasks	Up to 199 (Premium)	Unlimited nesting
Reminders	5 per task (Premium), location-based	Yes (paid), location-based
Integrations	Good (Google Calendar, etc.)	Excellent (100+ apps)
Team/business plan	No	Yes (Business ~$72/user/yr)
Platforms	iOS, Android, Web, Windows, Mac, Watch	iOS, Android, Web, Windows, Mac, Watch, Linux
Offline mode	Yes	Yes
AI features	Basic smart features	AI Assistant (paid add-on)

Prices are approximate at the time of writing — check the official sites for current pricing. For a pricing-only deep dive, see my ticktick pricing breakdown.

Round 1: Built-In Features — TickTick’s Home Turf

This is where TickTick pulls ahead decisively, and it’s the round that changed my mind about the app.

TickTick isn’t just a to-do list — it’s a productivity suite wearing a to-do list’s clothes. The built-in calendar is genuinely good: month, week, and timeline views, drag-and-drop scheduling, task durations, and third-party calendar subscriptions (Google, Outlook, iCloud) on Premium. I time-blocked my entire workday inside TickTick and never opened a separate calendar app.

The habit tracker is the sleeper feature. Daily check-ins, streaks, achievement stats, and historical data on Premium. I tracked exercise, reading, and a “no phone after 11 PM” habit for the full month. Todoist has nothing comparable — you’d need a separate app like Streaks or Habitica.

The Pomodoro timer with focus statistics is the third built-in tool. Set a 25-minute focus session tied to a specific task, take your breaks, and review your focus trends weekly. On Premium, the stats view showed me exactly when my focus collapsed each day (2:30 PM, like clockwork), which changed how I schedule deep work.

Todoist’s answer to all of this is integrations. And to be fair, Todoist integrates with everything — but “install three apps and connect them” is not the same as “it just works out of the box.” If you want one app that handles tasks, habits, focus, and scheduling, TickTick wins this round by a mile.

Try TickTick’s built-in calendar, habits, and Pomodoro free — the free plan includes all three, so you can test the full experience.

Round 2: Capturing Tasks — Todoist’s Home Turf

If Round 1 was TickTick’s, Round 2 belongs to Todoist, and it’s not close.

Todoist’s natural-language input remains the best in the business. Type “Submit report every Friday at 4pm #Work p1” and Todoist parses the recurring schedule, the 4 PM time, the project, and the priority — instantly, flawlessly. I tested dozens of complex entries (“Call dentist tomorrow at 10am,” “Water plants every 3 days starting Saturday”) and Todoist nailed nearly all of them on the first try.

TickTick’s natural-language input is good — dates, times, and basic recurrence parse fine — but it’s a half-step behind. Complex recurrences (“every last Friday of the month”) sometimes needed manual fixing, and the parsing felt slightly less magical. For a power user capturing 20+ tasks a day, that friction adds up.

Todoist also wins on capture speed across platforms: the quick-add shortcut is instant everywhere, the mobile widget is snappier, and the email-to-task forwarding is more reliable in my testing. TickTick’s quick-add is fine, but Todoist’s feels like it was designed by people who are personally offended by slow software.

Winner: Todoist. If your biggest productivity bottleneck is getting tasks into the system fast, Todoist is still king.

Round 3: TickTick vs Todoist on Price and Free Plans

This round is straightforward, and the numbers favor TickTick:

TickTick Premium: ~$35.99/year. Todoist Pro: ~$48/year. That’s roughly $12/year in TickTick’s pocket — every year, forever.
Free plans: TickTick’s free tier (9 lists, subtasks, calendar, habits, Pomodoro, one reminder per task) is meaningfully more generous than Todoist’s (5 projects, limited filters, no reminders on free). You can run a real personal system on TickTick free; Todoist free feels like a trial by comparison.
What’s included: TickTick Premium bundles the calendar, habit stats, and Pomodoro history. Todoist Pro’s headline features are reminders, filters, and calendar layout — while its AI Assistant is a separate paid add-on, and habits/Pomodoro don’t exist at all.

Todoist does offer a Business plan for teams (~$72/user/year), which TickTick simply doesn’t have — so if you need team features, Todoist wins by default. But for individual users comparing premium tiers, TickTick delivers more features for less money. My full ticktick pricing guide breaks down every plan, limit, and discount in detail.

Winner: TickTick — cheaper premium, better free plan, more built in.

Round 4: Task Management Depth — A Split Decision

Both apps handle the fundamentals (tasks, subtasks, priorities, due dates, labels/tags, recurring tasks) well, but they diverge on depth:

Todoist offers unlimited subtask nesting, more sophisticated filters (its query language is genuinely powerful — “no date & #Work & overdue” style queries), and better project organization with sections and boards. For complex project management with dozens of nested tasks, Todoist’s structure holds up better. Its Karma system (gamified productivity points) is a nice motivational touch TickTick lacks.

TickTick counters with the timeline calendar view, task durations, and the Eisenhower Matrix view — tools that make planning your day easier even if the underlying task hierarchy is simpler. The ability to see tasks as time blocks and drag them around a daily timeline is something I missed immediately when switching back to Todoist.

In practice: Todoist is better at organizing complex work; TickTick is better at scheduling your day. I found myself organizing big projects in Todoist-style hierarchies but actually executing my days in TickTick’s calendar view. Your winner here depends on whether your pain is “too many tasks to organize” (Todoist) or “I know my tasks but can’t fit them into my day” (TickTick).

Winner: Tie — different strengths, pick your pain point.

TickTick vs Todoist feature comparison task management calendar habits

Round 5: Integrations and Ecosystem — Todoist Takes It

Todoist has been around longer and it shows in the ecosystem: 100+ integrations including Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Zapier, IFTTT, Toggl, and dozens of niche tools. The API is mature, the developer community is active, and if you use any automation platform, Todoist is almost certainly supported.

TickTick’s integrations are adequate — Google Calendar, Outlook, Siri/Google Assistant voice input (which is actually excellent — voice-adding tasks while driving worked flawlessly), and basic Zapier/IFTTT support. But the catalog is thinner, the API is less documented, and some niche integrations simply don’t exist.

For most personal users, TickTick’s integration set is plenty. But if your workflow depends on connecting your to-do list to a CRM, a dev tool, or a complex Zapier automation chain, Todoist’s ecosystem is the safer bet.

Winner: Todoist.

Round 6: Apps, Design, and Daily Feel — Subjective, But It Matters

You’ll spend hours a day in whichever app you choose, so the daily feel counts.

Todoist is the more polished app: cleaner typography, smoother animations, more consistent design across platforms, and a Linux app for the three of you who care. It feels like a product with a large design team behind it — because it is.

TickTick is slightly less refined visually — some screens feel a bit dense, and the settings menus have that “translated by engineers” quality. But it’s highly customizable (themes, swipe actions, custom smart lists), and once configured to your taste, it gets out of your way. The mobile apps are excellent, the widgets are genuinely useful, and sync is fast and reliable.

One genuine TickTick advantage: voice input. Adding tasks via Siri or Google Assistant is smoother than Todoist’s equivalent in my testing — faster parsing, fewer corrections. If you capture tasks hands-free often, that’s a real daily win.

Winner: Todoist on polish, TickTick on customization. Slight edge to Todoist overall.

TickTick vs Todoist Pros and Cons

Here’s the ticktick vs todoist pros and cons summary in one place:

TickTick — Pros:
– Built-in calendar, habit tracker, and Pomodoro timer (no extra apps needed)
– Cheaper Premium (~$35.99/yr) with a more generous free plan
– Excellent voice input and mobile widgets
– Timeline view and task durations for real day-planning
– Highly customizable interface

TickTick — Cons:
– Natural-language input a half-step behind Todoist
– Thinner integration ecosystem
– No team/business plan
– Slightly less polished UI
– Smaller user community and fewer templates

Todoist — Pros:
– Best-in-class natural-language quick entry
– Huge integration ecosystem (100+) and mature API
– Powerful filters and unlimited subtask nesting
– Team/business plans available
– Polished, consistent design across every platform

Todoist — Cons:
– More expensive (~$48/yr) with a stingier free plan
– No built-in habits, Pomodoro, or real calendar
– AI features cost extra
– Reminders require paid plan
– Can feel like it needs add-ons to match TickTick’s built-ins

If you want the longer-form single-app perspective that fed into this ticktick review comparison, my ticktick review covers TickTick’s features, quirks, and interface in depth — and the mirror comparison from the other direction lives at todoist vs ticktick.

TickTick vs Todoist: Who Should Pick Which?

Forget feature lists — here’s who each app is actually for:

Pick TickTick if you:
– Want one app for tasks, habits, focus sessions, and scheduling
– Are price-sensitive and want maximum value (~$36/yr)
– Plan your day as time blocks on a calendar
– Capture tasks by voice often
– Are an individual user who doesn’t need team features
– Like customizing your tools to fit your workflow

Pick Todoist if you:
– Capture tasks constantly and need the fastest possible input
– Manage complex projects with deep task hierarchies
– Depend on integrations with other work tools
– Collaborate with a team or clients
– Prefer polished, minimal design out of the box
– Want the biggest community and template library

My personal call: I kept TickTick. The deciding factor wasn’t any single feature — it was waking up, opening one app, and seeing my calendar, my habits, and my tasks in one place. Todoist is the better task manager; TickTick is the better daily system. For how I actually live my days, the system won.

TickTick Premium review calendar timeline habit tracker interface — Ticktick Vs Todoist

TickTick Premium Review: Is the Paid Tier Worth It Here?

Since price is central to this comparison, a quick ticktick premium review note: Premium (~$35.99/year) unlocks custom smart lists, 5 reminders per task, full habit statistics, complete Pomodoro history, timeline calendar views, and 30 calendar subscriptions. During my testing month, the smart lists and layered reminders were the features I used daily; the habit stats were the feature that surprised me with how motivating they were.

Compared against Todoist Pro (~$48/year), TickTick Premium gives you more built-in functionality for less money. The only scenario where Todoist Pro justifies its premium is if you specifically need its superior filters, integrations, or team features — otherwise TickTick Premium is the value play.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better in 2026, Todoist or TickTick?

The honest todoist vs ticktick 2026 answer: neither is objectively better — they’re better at different things. TickTick wins on value, built-in features (calendar, habits, Pomodoro), and free-plan generosity. Todoist wins on task capture speed, integrations, project organization depth, and team features. Pick based on the decision guide above, not on a star rating.

Is TickTick really cheaper than Todoist?

Yes. TickTick Premium starts at around $35.99/year versus Todoist Pro at around $48/year — about $12/year less, with a more generous free tier and more features built in (calendar, habit tracker, Pomodoro) that Todoist lacks entirely. Prices are approximate at the time of writing; check both official sites for current pricing.

Can I try both before paying? Is there a free trial?

Yes — this is the best part of the ticktick vs todoist free trial situation. Both apps have genuinely usable free tiers with no credit card required, so you can run them side by side for a couple of weeks like I did. Both also offer trial periods of their premium features. My advice: don’t just click around — migrate your real tasks into each for a full week. The right app reveals itself fast.

Which app is better for students?

TickTick, in my opinion. The free plan is generous enough for student life (9 lists covers courses, assignments, personal, and then some), the built-in Pomodoro timer is perfect for study sessions, and the habit tracker works well for building study routines. Todoist’s free plan is more restrictive, and students rarely need its deep integrations. Plus, TickTick has offered student discounts on Premium in the past.

Which is better for teams and collaboration?

Todoist, without contest. TickTick has shared lists but no real team plan — no admin controls, no team workspaces, no per-seat management. Todoist Business (~$72/user/year) is built for teams with shared projects, roles, and activity tracking. If collaboration is central to your work, Todoist is the only viable choice of the two.

Do TickTick and Todoist work offline?

Yes, both offer solid offline modes on mobile and desktop — tasks you add offline sync when you reconnect. In my testing, both handled airplane-mode capture reliably, with TickTick’s sync feeling marginally faster on reconnection. Neither app will leave you stranded without a connection.

Final Verdict: Which To-Do App Wins 2026?

After a month of side-by-side testing, here’s my ticktick vs todoist honest review conclusion: TickTick wins for most people in 2026. It’s cheaper, its free plan is more generous, and the built-in calendar, habit tracker, and Pomodoro timer replace two or three other apps — which is real money saved and real friction removed. For individual users who want one calm, capable system for running their days, TickTick is the best task app value on the market right now.

Todoist remains the pick for a specific, important audience: fast capturers, integration-heavy workflows, complex project hierarchies, and teams. Its quick-add is still unmatched, and its ecosystem is deeper. If any of that describes you, you’ll be happier with Todoist — and it’s still an excellent app I’d recommend without hesitation.

But if you’re a solo user staring at both download buttons wondering which to try first? Start with TickTick. Among all the todo list apps 2026 has to offer, it’s the one I’d hand to a friend and say “just use this” — and the price makes it an easy yes.

Try TickTick free and compare it yourself — run your real tasks through it for two weeks alongside Todoist, and let your own workflow decide. And if you want the pricing details before committing, my ticktick pricing breakdown has every plan, limit, and discount covered.

October 17, 2026

Evernote Review 2026: Comeback or Done?

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Evernote review 2026 showing the note-taking app interface and web clipper

I have a complicated history with Evernote. It was my first serious note-taking app back when the free plan was genuinely generous, and I stuck with it through the slow years — the redesigns, the price hikes, the acquisition by Bending Spoons. Last month I did what I should have done years ago: I paid for a month of the top tier, imported a few thousand old notes, clipped a hundred web pages, and ran my daily note-taking through it for three weeks to write this evernote review.

The short version: Evernote is not the app it was in 2015, for better and for worse. The free plan is now so limited it barely qualifies as a free plan. Prices have climbed substantially under the new ownership. But the app itself — the sync speed, the search, the web clipper — is noticeably better than the sluggish Evernote of a few years ago. So: comeback, or done? Let me walk you through what I found.

Quick verdict: Evernote is worth it in 2026 only for a specific kind of user — someone with a large archive of documents, scans, and clipped pages who leans on search and OCR daily. For new users starting fresh, Notion or OneNote give you more for less. The free plan (50 notes, 1 notebook) is effectively a trial, so budget for at least the Starter tier if you are serious.

What Is Evernote in 2026?

Evernote is a note-taking and archiving app built around one idea: capture everything — typed notes, web pages, PDFs, photos of whiteboards, receipts — and make all of it searchable. Under Bending Spoons, which acquired Evernote in 2022 and later retired the old Personal and Professional plan names in favor of Starter and Advanced, the company has focused on two things: rebuilding the sync engine for speed and adding AI-powered search.

It is not trying to be Notion. There are no databases, no wikis, no website builder. Evernote is a digital filing cabinet with an excellent search engine bolted on. If that description sounds boring, that is kind of the point — it is infrastructure for people drowning in documents.

One important note on trust: the Bending Spoons acquisition involved significant layoffs and several price increases, and long-time users are rightfully cautious. The app works well today, but you are buying into a company whose strategy has been “charge more, serve fewer free users.” Keep that in mind as we go.

Evernote Review: Notes and Organization

The core note editor is clean and fast — noticeably faster than the Evernote I remember from 2021. Notes support checklists, tables, attachments, audio recordings, and embedded files. You organize with notebooks, stacks of notebooks, and tags.

Here is what stood out in daily use:

Note creation is genuinely quick. From the mobile widget, I could start a voice memo or a scanned document in one tap. For capture speed, it still beats Notion.
Tags carry the organization. With unlimited tags on paid plans, I tag by project, status, and source — and search does the rest. The 20-tag limit on the free plan is one more reason the free tier feels like a demo.
Templates are decent but thin. Meeting notes, project plans, and daily journals are covered, but the library is much smaller than Notion’s community templates.
Real-time collaboration exists now. The rebuilt editor supports simultaneous editing, which was a genuine weakness for years. It is still basic compared to Google Docs or Notion, but it works.

The honest limitation: if your notes need structure — linked databases, kanban views, relational data — Evernote’s notebook model will frustrate you. It organizes piles of content beautifully. It does not build systems.

Evernote Review: Web Clipper Still Leads the Pack

This is the feature that keeps people paying. Evernote’s Web Clipper browser extension remains the most reliable capture tool I have tested. In three weeks I clipped roughly a hundred pages: full articles, simplified article text, screenshots, and bookmarks.

Full-page and simplified-article modes both worked on every site I tried, including paywalled pages I had open in the browser.
Annotation before saving lets you highlight and mark up screenshots in the clipper itself.
Clips land in the right notebook with tags applied automatically based on rules you set.

Competitors have narrowed the gap — Notion’s clipper is fine for basic saves — but for research-heavy workflows where you clip dozens of pages a week, Evernote’s clipper plus its search is still the combination to beat. If web clipping is central to your work, this section alone may answer whether Evernote is worth it for you.

Try Evernote free and test the Web Clipper yourself

Evernote web clipper saving an article to a notebook in this Evernote review

Evernote Tasks, Calendar, and AI Search

Evernote has been expanding beyond plain notes, and this is where the evernote professional features story now lives under the Advanced plan.

Tasks are embedded directly in notes — you can turn any checklist into assigned tasks with due dates, and there is a dedicated Tasks view that aggregates them across notebooks. It is not a TickTick replacement (for task apps, see my ticktick review), but it is genuinely useful for meeting notes where action items live alongside context. Task assignment and delegation features sit on the higher tier.

Calendar integration connects Google Calendar so your schedule appears alongside your notes. I found it handy for meeting prep: open the day’s events, attach notes to each. It is a nice-to-have rather than a reason to subscribe.

AI search is the real story. The Advanced plan includes AI-powered semantic search — you can describe what you are looking for in natural language (“the receipt from the dentist last spring”) instead of guessing keywords. Combined with Evernote’s long-standing OCR, which makes text inside PDFs, photos, and even handwriting searchable, this is the strongest search in any note app I have used. Boolean search operators on the top tier add precision for power users.

The catch, as always with Evernote: the best features sit on the most expensive plan. AI search, the deepest integrations (Slack, Microsoft Teams), and unlimited everything require Advanced. If those sound essential, skip straight to pricing math below.

Evernote Review: Pricing in 2026

Let us talk about evernote pricing honestly, because this is where most people bounce off. Bending Spoons restructured the plans: the old Personal and Professional names are gone, replaced by Free, Starter, and Advanced (plus Enterprise for teams). Prices have risen roughly 3.6× on the top consumer tier over the past decade.

Plan	Price (approx.)	Notes / notebooks	Monthly uploads	Key features
Free	$0	50 notes, 1 notebook	60MB–1GB	1 device sync, basic capture
Starter	~$99/year ($8.25/mo billed annually)	1,000 notes, 20 notebooks	5 GB	3 devices, Home customization
Advanced	~$249.99/year ($20.83/mo billed annually)	Unlimited*	20 GB	AI search, offline notebooks, Slack/Teams, boolean search

*Evernote footnotes “unlimited” with safeguard limits for performance and abuse prevention.

A few things worth knowing:

The 1,000-note ceiling on Starter is the whole story for long-time users. If you have used Evernote for years, you probably have several thousand notes. That makes your real price $249.99/year, not $99 — the Starter tier’s headline price quietly excludes the people who need Evernote most.
“Storage” means monthly uploads, not total storage. The monthly upload allowance is what you can add each month, not a cap on your library.
Monthly billing costs more. The annual prices above are the discounted rates; paying month-to-month runs higher at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.
The free plan is effectively a trial. Fifty notes and one notebook is enough to evaluate the interface, not to run your life on. For comparison, Notion’s free plan allows unlimited pages for solo users, and OneNote is essentially unlimited.

Check current Evernote pricing on the official site

If you want the full plan-by-plan breakdown with limits, see my evernote pricing page.

Evernote Pros and Cons

After three weeks of daily use, here is my honest evernote pros and cons list.

Pros:

Best-in-class search. OCR across PDFs, images, and handwriting plus AI semantic search is unmatched for finding things in a large archive.
Best web clipper. Still the most reliable capture tool for research workflows.
Fast capture on mobile. One-tap voice memos, scans with automatic perspective correction, and offline notebooks on paid plans.
Rebuilt sync engine. Noticeably snappier than the old Evernote; changes propagate quickly across devices.
Good offline support. Local storage on desktop and mobile means your notes work on planes and in dead zones.

Cons:

Free plan is barely usable. The evernote free limits — 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device — make it the most restrictive free tier among major note apps.
Expensive. Starter at ~$99/year and Advanced at ~$250/year cost more than Notion Plus with fewer features per dollar.
The 1,000-note Starter cap. Long-time users are forced onto the top tier.
Dated feel. The interface has improved but still feels conservative next to Notion or Craft.
Weak collaboration. Fine for personal use; teams should look at Notion or OneNote.
Trust deficit. Years of price hikes and ownership turmoil have eroded goodwill, and that matters when you are entrusting a decade of notes to a company.

Evernote vs Notion: Which Should You Choose?

The evernote vs notion question comes up in almost every note-app discussion, so let me settle it plainly.

Choose Evernote if: your workflow is capture-and-retrieve. You scan documents, clip web pages, photograph receipts and whiteboards, and you need to find any of it instantly years later. Evernote’s OCR + AI search combination is genuinely better than Notion’s search for this job, and its clipper is more reliable.

Choose Notion if: your workflow is create-and-organize. You write docs, build project trackers, manage databases, collaborate with others, or publish pages. Notion does all of this; Evernote does almost none of it. Notion’s free plan is also vastly more generous, and Plus (~$10/user/month billed annually) undercuts Evernote’s comparable tier.

The price reality: Notion Plus and Evernote Starter cost roughly the same annually, but Notion gives you databases, collaboration, templates, and unlimited pages while Evernote gives you 1,000 notes and better search. Unless search-across-scanned-documents is your daily bread, Notion wins on value.

Many people use both — Notion for active projects, Evernote as the archive. That is a legitimate setup if you can justify two subscriptions, but most people should pick one.

For the detailed head-to-head, see my full evernote vs notion comparison.

Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Evernote

Evernote is worth it in 2026 if you are:

A researcher, lawyer, academic, or consultant with thousands of PDFs and scans to search
Someone with a decade of Evernote history who relies on OCR search daily
A heavy web-clipper user archiving articles and references
A receipt-and-document scanner who wants everything searchable (the mobile scan workflow is excellent)

Skip Evernote if you are:

A new user choosing your first note app — start with Notion or OneNote instead
On a budget — the free tier will frustrate you within a week
Building collaborative docs or project systems — Notion or Google Docs fit better
Looking for a task manager — Evernote Tasks are a complement, not a replacement (see my ticktick review for a proper task app)

So, is evernote worth it 2026? For the archivist with a mountain of documents: yes, cautiously — the search and clipper remain unmatched, and the app is faster than it has been in years. For everyone else: probably not. The pricing is steep, the free plan is a trial in disguise, and competitors have caught up everywhere except Evernote’s two historic strengths.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Evernote cost in 2026?

Evernote pricing in 2026 has three consumer tiers: Free ($0 — 50 notes, 1 notebook, 1 device), Starter at around $99/year ($8.25/month billed annually — 1,000 notes, 20 notebooks, 5GB monthly uploads, 3 devices), and Advanced at around $249.99/year ($20.83/month billed annually — unlimited notes, 20GB uploads, AI search, offline notebooks, and integrations). Monthly billing costs more than annual. Prices have risen significantly under Bending Spoons, so check the official site for current pricing before subscribing.

What are the Evernote free plan limits?

The evernote free limits are: 50 notes total, 1 notebook, 20 tags, 200 attachments, sync on 1 device (plus web access), and 60MB–1GB of monthly uploads depending on current terms. This makes it the most restrictive free tier among major note-taking apps — Notion, OneNote, Apple Notes, and Google Keep all offer effectively unlimited notes for free. Treat Evernote’s free plan as an evaluation trial, not a usable long-term tier.

Evernote vs Notion — which is better?

For capture-and-search workflows (scanning, clipping, OCR), Evernote wins. For creating, organizing, and collaborating on documents and projects, Notion wins — and Notion’s free plan and Plus tier offer better value. See the evernote vs notion section above for the full breakdown. Most new users in 2026 should start with Notion.

What do you get with Evernote’s top-tier (formerly Professional) features?

The evernote professional features now live in the Advanced plan (~$249.99/year): unlimited notes and notebooks, 20GB monthly uploads, AI-powered semantic search and AI editing, boolean search operators, offline access to all notebooks, task assignment and delegation, and integrations with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Calendar. If you need AI search and unlimited history, Advanced is the only tier that has it.

What are the main Evernote pros and cons?

The evernote pros and cons in brief. Pros: unmatched search (OCR + AI), best web clipper, fast mobile capture, rebuilt sync engine, solid offline support. Cons: severely limited free plan, high prices (up to ~$250/year), 1,000-note cap on the mid tier, dated interface, weak collaboration, and lingering trust concerns after years of price hikes and ownership changes.

Is Evernote worth it in 2026, or is it done?

Is evernote worth it 2026 depends on who you are. It is worth it if you have a large archive of documents and depend on best-in-class search and clipping — the app is faster and the AI search is genuinely good. It is done as a default recommendation: new users get more value from Notion or OneNote, the free plan is effectively a trial, and the pricing is hard to justify unless you use its specific strengths daily.

Evernote Review Final Verdict: Comeback or Done?

Both, honestly — and that is the conclusion of this evernote review. The product has made a comeback — the sync engine rebuild is real, the app feels fast again, AI search is a genuine differentiator, and the web clipper remains the best in the business. If you judged Evernote in 2021 and walked away, today’s app would surprise you.

The business model, though, is trending toward “done” for everyone except the faithful. A 50-note free plan is not a free plan. A 1,000-note cap on the $99 tier quietly pushes loyal users to $250/year. And at those prices, Evernote is competing with Notion Plus while offering a fraction of the features.

My recommendation: if you are an archivist, researcher, or long-time user who lives in search and clipping, pay for Advanced and enjoy the best document-retrieval tool available. Everyone else — especially anyone starting fresh — should put their money and their notes somewhere with a more generous free tier and a clearer future.

Try Evernote free — 50 notes is enough to test the search and clipper

October 16, 2026

TickTick Pricing 2026: Premium Plan Breakdown

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TickTick pricing plans 2026 showing Free vs Premium plan comparison

TickTick pricing is refreshingly simple: there is a free plan, and there is one paid tier — TickTick Premium. That’s it. No Starter/Pro/Business ladder, no team upsells, no “contact sales” page. But simplicity can be deceptive, because the difference between the free tier and Premium is bigger than most people expect, and whether it’s worth paying for depends entirely on how you manage your tasks.

I spent three weeks running my entire life through TickTick — work deadlines, grocery lists, habit tracking, Pomodoro sessions, the lot — first on the free plan, then on Premium, so I could feel exactly where the free tier starts to pinch. This is my full breakdown of the ticktick plans, what each one costs, the ticktick free limits nobody mentions upfront, where to find a ticktick discount, and how the price compares to rivals like Todoist.

Quick Verdict

If you just want a quick answer: the free plan is one of the most generous in the to-do app world, and it will cover casual personal use comfortably. Premium is an easy upgrade — it starts at around $35.99/year at the time of writing (check the official site for current pricing) — and it’s worth it if you use reminders heavily, track habits, or run projects with lots of lists. My honest take: try free for two weeks, and if you bump into a limit, you’ll know Premium is for you.

TickTick Pricing: Plans at a Glance

There are exactly two TickTick plans to choose from:

	Free	Premium
Price	$0	~$35.99/year or ~$3.99/month
Lists	9	999
Tasks per list	99	999
Subtasks per task	19	199
Reminders per task	1	5
Calendar subscriptions	1	Up to 30
Custom filters / smart lists	No	Yes
Habit tracker	Limited	Full
Pomodoro stats	Basic	Full history
Themes	Basic	Premium themes
File attachments	1 per task (small)	Larger quotas

Prices above are what TickTick listed at the time of writing — always check the official site for current pricing, since app-store pricing can vary by region.

The Free Plan: $0, and Honestly Pretty Great

The free plan is where most people start, and it stays genuinely usable in a way that many competitors’ free tiers don’t. You get task management with subtasks, due dates, priorities, one reminder per task, the built-in calendar, Pomodoro timer, and basic habit tracking. Nine lists is enough for most personal setups (Work, Personal, Shopping, Someday, and a few projects), and 99 tasks per list is a ceiling most casual users never hit.

Where it shows its limits is volume and automation. Power users juggling dozens of projects, or anyone who relies on multiple reminders per task (a nudge the night before AND the morning of), will feel the pinch. The free calendar only allows one calendar subscription, so if you want to overlay your Google Calendar, Outlook, and a team calendar, you’ll need Premium.

The Premium Plan: One Tier, Everything Unlocked

Premium unlocks the entire app. No tiers, no feature gates within the paid plan — you get 999 lists, 999 tasks per list, custom smart lists and filters, full habit tracking with statistics, complete Pomodoro history, premium themes, timeline and grid calendar views, up to 5 reminders per task, and third-party calendar subscriptions (Google, Outlook, iCloud). It also removes the attachment limits and unlocks custom swipe actions, rich note editing, and duration-based planning on the calendar.

Free vs Premium: What You Actually Get in Daily Use

Numbers on a pricing page are abstract. Here’s what the upgrade actually feels like in practice, based on my three weeks of testing:

Reminders are the biggest daily difference. On free, you get one reminder per task. In practice, one reminder means “remind me at 9 AM” — but I regularly wanted a second heads-up, like an evening-before reminder for early meetings. On Premium, five reminders per task meant I could layer them: night-before prep, morning-of, and 30-minutes-before for time-sensitive items. If you live by reminders, this alone justifies the upgrade.

Custom filters change how you work. Free users browse lists manually. Premium’s smart lists let you build custom views — “all high-priority tasks due this week,” “work tasks tagged @calls,” “everything overdue across every list.” I set up three smart lists on day one of Premium and barely opened individual lists afterward.

Habit tracking goes from toy to tool. The free habit tracker records check-ins, but Premium adds detailed statistics, achievement streaks, and historical data. If you’re using TickTick to build morning routines or exercise habits, the Premium stats view is motivating enough to matter.

TickTick free vs Premium plan feature comparison chart — Ticktick Pricing

The calendar becomes a real planner. The free calendar is fine for seeing what’s due. Premium’s timeline view, duration support (plan tasks as actual time blocks), and multiple calendar subscriptions turn TickTick into a genuine daily planner — I started time-blocking my mornings directly in it.

Pomodoro stats help you improve. The free Pomodoro timer works fine for focusing, but Premium keeps your full focus history and statistics. Seeing my “focus score” trend over two weeks was the nudge I needed to notice my post-lunch slump and reschedule deep work to mornings.

TickTick Free Limits: Where They Actually Bite

The official ticktick free limits (9 lists, 99 tasks per list, 19 subtasks, 1 reminder per task, 1 calendar subscription) sound abstract until you hit them mid-workflow. Here’s where each one bit me during testing:

9 lists: This was my first wall. Between Work, Personal, Shopping, Ideas, Reading, Travel planning, a client project, household chores, and a shared list with my partner, I hit 9 lists in week two. Consolidating lists felt like stuffing clothes into an overfull drawer.
1 reminder per task: The second wall, and the most annoying one. Travel bookings, bill payments, and anything with a hard deadline genuinely benefit from layered reminders.
99 tasks per list: I only hit this in my “Ideas” catch-all list, which had accumulated 110+ entries. Splitting it into Ideas-2026 and an archive was a minor chore, not a crisis.
1 calendar subscription: If you live in both Google Calendar and Outlook (common for work/personal splits), this forces a choice — or manual duplication.
No custom filters: You don’t miss what you’ve never had, but once I saw Premium’s smart lists, there was no going back.

None of these limits make the free plan bad — they’re deliberately set so casual users never notice, while heavy users self-select into Premium. That’s honest pricing design.

TickTick Pricing Deep Dive: The Premium Cost, Broken Down

Let’s talk numbers. The ticktick premium cost is straightforward: Premium is billed either monthly or annually, and the annual plan is dramatically better value.

The ticktick annual plan starts at around $35.99/year at the time of writing — which works out to roughly $3/month. The monthly option starts at around $3.99/month, meaning a full year of monthly billing costs about $47.88 — roughly a third more than paying annually. If you use TickTick daily, annual billing is the obvious move; it pays for itself versus monthly in about nine months.

A few honest notes on the cost:

It’s cheaper than most rivals. Todoist Pro runs around $48/year. Any.do Premium is around $59.99/year. Things 3 is a one-time $49.99 but Mac/iOS only. TickTick Premium at ~$36/year is genuinely one of the cheapest premium tiers among the major to-do apps — and it includes features (habit tracker, Pomodoro, built-in calendar) that competitors charge extra for or don’t have at all.
App store vs website pricing can differ. Buying through Apple or Google sometimes costs slightly more because of platform fees. If you’re price-sensitive, subscribe on the web and log in everywhere — your Premium status follows your account, not your purchase platform.
There are no team plans. TickTick is a personal productivity app. If you need shared workspaces and admin controls for a team, you’ll be looking at Todoist Business or Asana — and paying accordingly.
Refunds are case-by-case. TickTick’s refund policy is reasonable but not automatic; subscribe monthly for a month if you’re unsure, then switch to annual once you’re committed.

Try TickTick Premium free for a trial period — most new users can test the full feature set before paying a cent.

Hidden Costs and Things the Pricing Page Doesn’t Tell You

TickTick doesn’t do the shady upsell dance, but there are a few cost-adjacent things worth knowing before you pay:

Regional pricing varies. The dollar figure on the website isn’t universal — some regions see adjusted pricing through app stores. Always check the price shown to you at checkout, not the price quoted in a blog post (including this one).
The monthly plan is a tax on commitment-phobes. At ~$3.99/month vs ~$35.99/year, monthly billing costs ~33% more over a year. The smart play: buy one month to test Premium properly, then switch to annual if it sticks.
Habit streaks don’t transfer cleanly between plans. Downgrading from Premium to free keeps your data, but you lose access to the detailed statistics views. Your check-in history isn’t deleted, it’s just hidden behind the paywall again.
Shared lists are free-tier friendly. Collaborating on a shared list doesn’t require both people to have Premium — nice, since some apps gate collaboration.
No lifetime purchase option. Unlike Things or some one-time-purchase apps, TickTick is subscription-only. If you hate subscriptions on principle, factor that in — though at ~$36/year it’s one of the least painful ones.

How to Get a TickTick Discount

Nobody likes paying full price. Here’s every legitimate way I’ve found to lower the ticktick premium cost:

Choose the annual plan. This is the single biggest discount — roughly 25-33% cheaper than paying monthly for a year, depending on current pricing.
Watch for Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals. TickTick has run promotional pricing around major sale events in past years, sometimes knocking 20-30% off the annual plan. If you’re not in a hurry, late November is worth waiting for.
Student and education discounts. TickTick has offered student pricing in the past — check their site or support page for current eligibility before paying full price.
Referral and promo codes. Occasionally, productivity newsletters and app roundups include TickTick promo codes. A quick search before checkout costs nothing.
Subscribe via the website, not the app store. As noted above, app-store pricing can carry a platform markup in some regions. The web price is usually the baseline.
Free trial first. New users typically get a trial of Premium features — use it to make sure the upgrade is worth it for your workflow before spending anything.

One thing I don’t recommend: “lifetime deal” resellers or grey-market license keys. TickTick Premium is account-based, and third-party keys are a good way to lose your account, your data, or both.

Check current TickTick pricing and start your free trial — pricing changes, so verify the latest offer on the official site.

TickTick vs Todoist Price: Head-to-Head

Since this is the comparison everyone Googles, here’s the honest ticktick vs todoist price breakdown:

	TickTick	Todoist
Free plan	Generous (9 lists, subtasks, calendar, Pomodoro, habits)	5 projects, basic features
Paid tier	Premium ~$35.99/yr	Pro ~$48/yr
Monthly option	~$3.99/mo	~$5/mo
Business/team plan	None	Business ~$72/user/yr
Built-in calendar	Yes (both plans)	Paid add-on / limited
Habit tracker	Built-in	No
Pomodoro timer	Built-in	Via integration

TickTick wins on pure price: it’s roughly $12/year cheaper than Todoist Pro, with a more generous free tier and more built-in features (calendar, habits, Pomodoro) that Todoist either lacks or charges extra for through integrations. Todoist’s edge is elsewhere — its natural-language input is slightly slicker, its third-party integrations are deeper, and its team plan exists. But if price-per-feature is your metric, TickTick takes it.

For the full feature comparison beyond pricing, my ticktick vs todoist breakdown covers where each app actually wins — and if you’re still deciding between apps entirely, the ticktick alternatives guide rounds up the other contenders worth a look.

TickTick Premium annual plan cost vs monthly billing savings comparison — Ticktick Pricing

Is TickTick Premium Worth It? My Honest Take

After three weeks of daily use on both tiers, here’s my framework:

Stay on free if: you manage under 9 lists, one reminder per task is enough, you don’t track habits seriously, and you mostly need a clean place to capture and check off tasks. The free plan is genuinely one of the best free to-do apps available — no credit card, no trial countdown, no nag screens that I encountered.

Upgrade to Premium if: you hit any free limit more than twice, you want layered reminders, you track habits or use Pomodoro seriously, you live in the calendar view, or you want smart lists to auto-organize your chaos. At ~$3/month billed annually, it’s the cost of one coffee — and it replaced two other apps (a habit tracker and a focus timer) for me, which actually saved money.

Skip it if: you need team collaboration with admin controls (look at Todoist Business or Asana), you’re on a strict no-subscription diet, or you only use a to-do list for groceries and the occasional reminder — the free tier has you covered.

For a deeper look at the app itself beyond pricing, my full ticktick review covers the features, the interface, and the quirks I found after a month of real use.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does TickTick Premium cost?

The ticktick annual plan starts at around $35.99/year at the time of writing (check the official site for current pricing), which works out to roughly $3/month. A monthly option starts at around $3.99/month. Annual billing is significantly cheaper — about a third less than twelve months of monthly payments — so go annual once you’re sure you’ll stick with it.

What are the TickTick free limits?

The free plan includes 9 lists, 99 tasks per list, 19 subtasks per task, 1 reminder per task, 1 calendar subscription, and basic habit tracking and Pomodoro. It’s generous for personal use — most casual users never hit these ceilings. Heavy users managing many projects or relying on multiple reminders per task will feel the limits within a couple of weeks.

Is there a TickTick discount or free trial?

Yes on both counts. The annual plan is itself the biggest standing discount versus monthly billing. TickTick has historically run sale pricing around Black Friday, and student discounts have been offered — check the official site for current promotions. New users can also trial Premium features free before paying, which is the best way to decide if the upgrade is worth it.

Is TickTick Premium cheaper than Todoist Pro?

Yes. TickTick Premium starts at around $35.99/year versus Todoist Pro at around $48/year — roughly $12/year less, with a more generous free tier and more built-in features (calendar, habit tracker, Pomodoro). The full ticktick vs todoist comparison breaks down where each app wins beyond the price tag.

Can I use TickTick Premium on multiple devices?

Yes. Premium is tied to your TickTick account, not your device or purchase platform. Subscribe once (ideally on the website for the best price) and your Premium status syncs across iOS, Android, web, Windows, Mac, and even the Apple Watch app.

What happens if I cancel TickTick Premium?

You keep access until the end of your billing period, then drop back to the free plan. Your data isn’t deleted — lists beyond the free limit stay visible but read-only-ish in practice, and Premium-only views (like detailed habit stats) lock again. You can resubscribe anytime and everything comes back.

Final Verdict on TickTick Pricing

TickTick pricing is one of the fairest deals in productivity software: a genuinely useful free tier with no dark patterns, and a single Premium plan at ~$36/year that undercuts its biggest rival while including features the rival doesn’t even have. There are no tiers to game, no team upsell lurking, and the annual plan is the obvious value play.

My recommendation is simple: start free, use it hard for two weeks, and let the limits tell you whether you need Premium. If you do, buy the annual plan on the website — it’s the cheapest path to the best-value to-do app I’ve tested this year.

Start your free TickTick trial and see the current pricing — check the official site for today’s price, since deals and regional pricing change.

October 16, 2026

8 Best TickTick Alternatives for 2026

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Best TickTick alternatives 2026 comparison showing top task apps like Todoist, Any.do and Notion

I used TickTick as my daily driver for about four months last year. It is genuinely good — Pomodoro timer, habit tracker, calendar, and a reminder system that actually nags you — all for roughly $36 a year. But it also drove me a little crazy: the interface felt busy on smaller screens, some advanced filters stayed locked behind Premium, and the achievement score that dings you for missed deadlines started feeling like a second boss. So I went looking for the best ticktick alternatives, installed eight of them, ran my actual work and personal life through each for at least two weeks, and wrote down what held up.

This guide is the result. Whether you want a free ticktick alternative, something cheaper than ticktick that still covers the basics, or a full workspace app that swallows TickTick whole, you will find your match below. If you have not decided about TickTick itself yet, my ticktick review walks through what it does well, and the ticktick pricing page breaks down what Premium actually costs before you commit.

Quick verdict: Todoist is the best all-round TickTick replacement for most people — cleaner design, reliable sync, and a generous free tier. Microsoft To Do is the best completely free option. Things 3 is the buy-once choice if subscriptions make you itch, and Notion wins if you want tasks living inside a bigger workspace.

How I Picked These TickTick Alternatives

I did not just scroll app-store charts. Every app below went through the same real-world test:

Two full weeks of daily use with real deadlines, recurring habits, and at least one shared list.
Cross-device check — I ran each on a phone and a desktop and watched how fast changes synced.
Reminder reliability test — recurring tasks, location reminders where supported, and late-night “do this tomorrow” entries.
Import friction — I exported my TickTick lists and tried to bring them in, noting what survived and what did not.
Price per feature — I compared what the paid tier actually unlocks against TickTick Premium’s roughly $2.99/month (billed annually).

Apps that only work on one platform, that have abandoned development, or that cost twice as much while doing half the job did not make the cut.

The 8 Best TickTick Alternatives in 2026

1. Todoist — Best Overall TickTick Alternative

Todoist is the name that comes up in nearly every “ticktick alternatives” discussion, and after two weeks of side-by-side use I understand why. It is quieter than TickTick — no achievement score glaring at you, no five-tab interface — just fast task entry, projects, and a calendar view that stays readable.

Best for: People who want TickTick’s power without TickTick’s clutter, plus anyone who shares tasks with family or a small team.

Key features:

Natural-language task entry (“pay rent every 1st at 9am”) that just works
Projects, sections, labels, and filters for organizing hundreds of tasks
Calendar layout, task durations, and custom reminders on paid plans
Over 60 integrations including Google Calendar, Slack, and Outlook
Karma points that reward streaks without punishing missed deadlines

Pricing: Free for basic use. Pro starts at around $4/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing. A Business tier adds shared workspaces and team roles.

Pros:

Noticeably faster and lighter than TickTick on every device I tried
The free tier is genuinely usable, not a teaser
Sync is near-instant across phone, desktop, and web

Cons:

No built-in Pomodoro timer or habit tracker — you will need separate apps or integrations
Pro costs more than TickTick Premium per year
No native voice input on mobile

The ticktick vs todoist comparison is genuinely close, but if your priority is a calm, fast task list rather than an all-in-one productivity cockpit, Todoist takes it.

Try Todoist free and see if it fits your workflow

2. Any.do — Best Cheaper Than TickTick Pick

When people search “ticktick vs any.do,” they usually want the same question answered: which one is simpler and cheaper? After testing both, my answer is that Any.do wins on simplicity and ties on price. Its “My Day” planning ritual — a daily prompt that walks you through scheduling today’s tasks — is the single feature I miss most when I leave it.

Best for: Busy people who want a gentle daily planning habit and a great-looking calendar-task combo on mobile.

Key features:

My Day planner with drag-and-drop scheduling into your calendar
Voice entry, location reminders, and one-tap recurring tasks
Shared lists and assigned tasks for household or small-team use
Calendar sync with Google Calendar and Outlook
Clean widgets on iOS and Android

Pricing: Free plan covers the basics. Premium starts at around $3/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing — putting it in the same ballpark as TickTick Premium.

Pros:

The prettiest daily-planning flow of any app here
Very easy learning curve; my partner set it up in ten minutes
Good value on Premium compared with Todoist

Cons:

Fewer power-user filters than TickTick or Todoist
No habit tracker and no Pomodoro timer
Desktop app feels like an afterthought next to the excellent mobile app

Check current Any.do Premium pricing

3. Microsoft To Do — Best Free TickTick Alternative

If your main complaint about TickTick is “why am I paying for a to-do list,” Microsoft To Do is the honest answer. It is completely free — no premium tier, no upsell popups — and it is better than most paid task apps were five years ago. The My Day feature (borrowed from the old Wunderlist, which Microsoft acquired) is simple and genuinely useful.

Best for: Anyone who wants a free ticktick alternative with zero compromises on cost, especially if you already use Outlook or Microsoft 365.

Key features:

My Day smart list for daily focus
Steps (subtasks), due dates, reminders, and file attachments
Shared lists with family or colleagues
Syncs with Outlook tasks and Microsoft 365
Available on web, Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android

Pricing: Free. There is no paid tier.

Pros:

Completely free with no feature gates
Deep integration with Outlook and Microsoft ecosystem
Clean, calm interface that never feels busy

Cons:

No Pomodoro, no habits, no calendar view as rich as TickTick’s
Fewer integrations than Todoist
Development moves slowly; do not expect monthly feature drops

Microsoft To Do app showing My Day task list as a free TickTick alternative — Ticktick Alternatives

4. Notion — Best Workspace-Style Alternative

The “ticktick vs notion” debate is really a category question: do you want a task app, or a workspace where tasks happen to live? I run my content calendar and project notes in Notion, and having tasks embedded in the same pages as my research notes is genuinely powerful. But it is slower for quick capture than TickTick, and you will spend time building your system before it feels natural.

Best for: Writers, students, freelancers, and small teams who want notes, docs, databases, and tasks in one place.

Key features:

Flexible databases that turn into kanban boards, calendars, or tables
Rich notes with embedded tasks, files, and media
Real-time collaboration with comments and mentions
Huge template library and a massive community
AI assistant features on higher plans

Pricing: Free for individual use. Plus starts at around $10/user/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Pros:

One app replaces your notes app, wiki, and task list
Unlimited flexibility — build exactly the system you want
Generous free plan for solo users

Cons:

Slower for quick task capture than dedicated task apps
Overkill if you just want a to-do list
Offline support is weaker than TickTick’s

Start with Notion’s free plan

5. Google Tasks — Best Simple Free Option

Google Tasks is the minimalist of this list: a bare-bones task list that lives inside Gmail and Google Calendar. I would not recommend it as a TickTick replacement for power users, but for someone whose entire life already runs through Google Workspace, its invisibility is the feature. Tasks you add from an email show up on your calendar automatically.

Best for: Gmail and Google Calendar loyalists who want the lightest possible task list.

Key features:

Built into Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive sidebar
Subtasks, due dates, and basic recurring tasks
Mobile apps with a simple list interface
Free with any Google account

Pricing: Free.

Pros:

Zero setup if you use Gmail; it is already there
Tasks appear on Google Calendar automatically
Completely free forever

Cons:

No reminders beyond due-date notifications
No collaboration, no tags, no priorities
Far fewer features than even the free tier of TickTick

6. Things 3 — Best Buy-Once Alternative (Apple Only)

Things 3 is the anti-subscription choice. You buy it once per Apple platform and own it forever. It is also, in my opinion, the most beautiful task app ever made — the animations, the typography, the way the Today view flows. The catch is obvious: it only exists on Apple devices, and buying all three apps costs roughly what two years of TickTick Premium costs.

Best for: iPhone/Mac users who hate subscriptions and want the most polished task experience available.

Key features:

Gorgeous Today, Upcoming, and Anytime views
Projects with headings, checklists, and deadlines
Quick Find and natural date parsing
Deep Shortcuts and automation support on Apple platforms
One-time purchase — no subscription, ever

Pricing: One-time purchase per platform (Mac, iPhone/Watch, and iPad sold separately). The combined cost lands in the rough vicinity of one to two years of a competitor’s subscription at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Pros:

No subscription fees, ever
The best-designed task app on any platform
Fast, private, and reliable sync via Things Cloud

Cons:

Apple only — no Windows, Android, or web app
No collaboration features worth mentioning
Major future versions would likely be a new purchase

7. Asana — Best for Team Task Management

Asana is overkill for personal to-dos, but if your TickTick lists keep growing into team projects, Asana is where many people land. I tested it with a small content team: timelines, workload views, and project templates made it far better than TickTick for coordinating other humans. For solo use, though, I would pick Todoist.

Best for: Small teams and freelancers managing client projects with multiple collaborators.

Key features:

List, board, timeline, and calendar project views
Task assignments, dependencies, and custom fields
Project templates and automation rules
Portfolios and workload management on paid plans
200+ integrations

Pricing: Free for small teams getting started. Starter plans begin at around $10.99/user/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Pros:

Far stronger team features than TickTick
Multiple views of the same project data
Good free tier for small teams

Cons:

Expensive per user once you outgrow free
Overcomplicated for personal task management
No built-in time tracking on lower tiers

8. ClickUp — Best Feature-Packed Alternative

ClickUp’s pitch is “one app to replace them all,” and it nearly delivers: docs, goals, time tracking, whiteboards, and tasks in one subscription. I found it powerful but genuinely overwhelming at first — the settings menus have settings menus. If TickTick felt busy to you, ClickUp will feel like Times Square. But for teams that want everything in one place at a lower per-user cost than Asana, it is compelling.

Best for: Teams and power users who want docs, time tracking, and project views bundled with tasks.

Key features:

Tasks with 15+ view types including Gantt, mind map, and workload
Built-in docs, whiteboards, and goals
Native time tracking
Automation and custom fields
Generous free plan

Pricing: Free for personal use. Paid plans start at around $7/user/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Pros:

Enormous feature set for the price
Strong free tier
Good value for teams versus Asana or Monday

Cons:

Steep learning curve; setup takes real effort
Can feel sluggish with very large workspaces
Interface is busy — TickTick minimalists will flinch

TickTick Alternatives: Side-by-Side Comparison

App	Best for	Free plan	Paid price (approx.)	Pomodoro	Habits
TickTick	All-in-one value	Yes	~$2.99/mo annual	Yes	Yes
Todoist	Clean, fast task lists	Yes	~$4/mo annual	No	No
Any.do	Daily planning ritual	Yes	~$3/mo annual	No	No
Microsoft To Do	Free and simple	Fully free	$0	No	No
Notion	Workspace + tasks	Yes	~$10/user/mo annual	No	No
Google Tasks	Google ecosystem	Fully free	$0	No	No
Things 3	Apple users, no subscription	Trial	One-time per device	No	No
Asana	Team projects	Yes	~$10.99/user/mo annual	No	No
ClickUp	Everything-in-one	Yes	~$7/user/mo annual	Via add-on	Via add-on

Notice the pattern: TickTick is still the only app here that bundles a Pomodoro timer and habit tracker at its price. Every alternative trades that bundle for depth somewhere else.

Cheaper Than TickTick? Free TickTick Alternatives Worth Using

Let me answer the money question directly, because “cheaper than ticktick” is one of the most-searched phrases in this space and the honest answer is nuanced.

TickTick Premium at roughly $36/year is already one of the cheapest paid task apps around. Nothing with the same feature bundle costs meaningfully less — Todoist Pro, Any.do Premium, and TickTick Premium all sit within a few dollars of each other annually. So if you want cheaper than TickTick, your real options are:

Go fully free. Microsoft To Do and Google Tasks cost $0 forever. Todoist’s free tier and ClickUp’s free tier are generous enough that many people never pay.
Buy once. Things 3 costs more upfront but nothing after — after about two years, you are ahead of every subscription on this list.
Use what you already pay for. If your employer provides Microsoft 365, Microsoft To Do is effectively free. If you pay for Notion Plus anyway, its task features come along for the ride.

The trap to avoid: switching to a “cheaper” app and then paying for three separate apps to replace TickTick’s Pomodoro, habits, and calendar. Do that math before you move.

Comparison of TickTick alternatives showing free and cheaper-than-TickTick task app pricing tiers

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best TickTick competitors overall?

The best ticktick competitors in 2026 are Todoist (best overall balance of power and simplicity), Any.do (best daily planning experience), Microsoft To Do (best free option), Notion (best workspace integration), Things 3 (best one-time purchase for Apple users), Google Tasks (simplest free pick), Asana (best for teams), and ClickUp (most features per dollar). Which is “best” depends on whether you value TickTick’s bundled extras or want a calmer, more focused tool.

TickTick vs Any.do — which should I choose?

The ticktick vs any.do decision comes down to breadth versus calm. TickTick gives you more built-in tools — Pomodoro timer, habit tracking, an achievement system, and richer calendar views — at a similar price. Any.do gives you a simpler, prettier daily planning ritual and a gentler learning curve. I recommend TickTick if you want one app to run your whole productivity system, and Any.do if you mainly want to plan each day well and stay consistent.

Is there anything genuinely cheaper than TickTick?

Yes, but with trade-offs. Microsoft To Do and Google Tasks are completely free. Todoist, ClickUp, and Notion all have free tiers generous enough for many users. Among paid apps, TickTick Premium (~$36/year) is already near the bottom of the price range — Todoist Pro and Any.do Premium cost about the same or more. The only way to meaningfully undercut TickTick’s paid tier long-term is a one-time purchase like Things 3 or a free app.

What is the best free TickTick alternative?

Microsoft To Do is the best free ticktick alternative because it is completely free with no premium tier gating features. It covers lists, subtasks, due dates, reminders, and sharing. If you want more power without paying, Todoist’s free tier and ClickUp’s free tier offer more features, though both reserve their best capabilities for paid plans. Google Tasks is the simplest free option for Gmail users.

TickTick vs Notion — which is better for tasks?

In the ticktick vs notion matchup, TickTick wins for pure task management: faster capture, better reminders, built-in Pomodoro and habits, and superior offline mobile apps. Notion wins if your tasks need to live alongside notes, docs, and databases — for example, a content creator linking tasks to article drafts. Many people I know use both: TickTick for daily doing, Notion for planning and reference. If you must pick one, choose based on whether tasks or notes dominate your day.

What other task app alternatives should I consider beyond the big names?

Beyond the eight above, other task app alternatives worth a look include OmniFocus (deep GTD system for Apple power users), Remember The Milk (a veteran with great smart lists, ~$39.99/year), Habitica (gamified tasks and habits, free), and Sunsama (guided daily planning, pricier). None displaced my top eight in testing, but OmniFocus in particular deserves mention if you follow the Getting Things Done method religiously.

Final Verdict: Which TickTick Alternative Should You Pick?

After a month of testing, here is my honest take: most people do not need to leave TickTick. At roughly $36/year with a Pomodoro timer, habit tracker, calendar, and excellent reminders, it remains the best value bundle in task apps. Check the ticktick pricing breakdown before assuming a rival is cheaper — most are not.

But if TickTick’s busy interface or its achievement-score pressure is wearing on you, Of all the ticktick alternatives I tested, Todoist is the switch I recommend most often: calmer, faster, and easier to trust. If you want to pay nothing, Microsoft To Do is genuinely good. And if subscriptions are the actual problem, Things 3 ends the debate permanently — at least on Apple devices.

Pick the one that matches how you actually work, import your lists, and give it two full weeks before judging. The best task app is the one you open every morning.

Start free with Todoist — my top TickTick alternative

October 16, 2026

10 Best Todoist Alternatives in 2026

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Best Todoist alternatives 2026 showing top task manager app icons

Todoist is the task manager I recommend most often, but it is not the right answer for everyone. Maybe the December 2025 price increase stung. Maybe you need habit tracking, a calendar, or a focus timer built in. Or maybe you just bounced off the interface and want something that thinks the way you do. I have spent the last year testing the leading todoist alternatives with real projects — work deadlines, personal lists, shared household chores — so you can skip the trial-and-error.

This guide covers the 10 best todoist alternatives in 2026: options cheaper than Todoist, completely free Todoist alternatives, and power-user todoist competitors for every workflow. For each one I give you who it is best for, the features that matter, honest pricing, and the pros and cons I actually noticed. If you are deciding between the two giants first, my todoist vs ticktick head-to-head will sort that out; this list goes wider.

How I Picked These Alternatives

I did not just list apps with high download counts. Every app below met four tests: it had to be actively maintained in 2026, handle real task management (not just notes with checkboxes), sync across at least two platforms, and offer a genuinely different reason to exist than Todoist — cheaper, free, more visual, more focused, or more powerful. I ran each one for at least two weeks with my actual task load before writing a word about it. Prices are hedged because they change: always check the official site for current pricing.

1. TickTick — Best All-in-One Value

Best for: Anyone who wants tasks, habits, a Pomodoro timer, and a calendar in a single app.

TickTick is the closest thing to a direct Todoist replacement and, for many people, the better deal. Where Todoist is a focused task manager, TickTick is a productivity system: tasks and lists, a full drag-and-drop calendar view, a habit tracker with streaks and statistics, a built-in Pomodoro timer with white noise, an Eisenhower Matrix view, and nagging reminders that keep pinging until you act. Its Smart Lists use a visual condition builder instead of Todoist’s text-based filter queries, which I found friendlier for complex views.

Key features: Tasks with subtasks and priorities, full calendar view across all lists, habit tracker, Pomodoro timer, Eisenhower Matrix, Smart Lists, voice input, 9 lists on the free plan.

Pricing: Free plan is generous (9 lists, habits, Pomodoro, calendar). Premium starts at around $36/year billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing. That is roughly 40% cheaper than Todoist Pro.

Pros: Best feature-per-dollar ratio in this list; habits and focus timer replace separate apps; excellent calendar; generous free tier; cheaper than Todoist.

Cons: AI features are thin compared with Todoist Assist; fewer integrations (~30 native); denser interface with a steeper learning curve; no real team offering.

Read my full ticktick review for the deep dive on where it beats Todoist day to day.

2. Microsoft To Do — Best Completely Free Option

Best for: Microsoft 365 users and anyone who wants a genuinely free todoist alternative with no paywalls that matter.

Microsoft To Do is the best free todoist alternative, full stop. It is completely free — no premium tier exists — with unlimited lists and tasks, and it syncs beautifully across Windows, iOS, Android, and the web. The My Day feature, which lets you build a focused daily list from your tasks each morning, is one of the best daily-planning flows in any app here. Integration with Outlook, Teams, and the Microsoft 365 ecosystem is deep: flagged emails become tasks automatically.

Key features: Unlimited tasks and lists, My Day daily planning, steps (subtasks), reminders, file attachments, shared lists, Outlook and Teams integration.

Pricing: Free. There is no paid tier.

Pros: Completely free with no feature paywalls; excellent My Day flow; deep Microsoft 365 integration; simple and fast; great shared family lists.

Cons: No habit tracking or Pomodoro timer; no natural-language input; no AI features; basic filtering; design feels utilitarian next to Todoist.

For the direct showdown, the todoist vs microsoft to do question comes down to this: Todoist wins on capture speed, filters, AI, and integrations; Microsoft To Do wins on price (free forever) and Microsoft ecosystem fit. If your life runs on Outlook and Teams, To Do is the frictionless pick.

3. Any.do — Best for Simple Daily Planning

Best for: People who want a calm, beautiful daily planner rather than a power-user task system.

Any.do has always been the design-forward alternative, and in 2026 it remains the prettiest way to plan a day. Its Moment feature walks you through your tasks each morning for a mindful daily review, and the calendar integration shows tasks and events side by side. Task capture is quick, the interface is warm and uncluttered, and it runs on every platform with an Apple Watch app.

Key features: Moment daily planner, tasks with subtasks and reminders, calendar integration, location-based reminders, shared lists, grocery-list mode, voice entry.

Pricing: Free plan covers basics. Premium starts at around $5–$6/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing, roughly in line with Todoist Pro.

Pros: Beautiful, calming interface; excellent daily planning flow; strong calendar integration; location reminders; easy for non-technical users.

Cons: Not cheaper than Todoist; filters and labels are weaker; fewer integrations; no AI features to speak of; power users will hit limits.

On the todoist vs any.do question: choose Any.do if daily planning and aesthetics matter most; choose Todoist if filters, labels, natural-language capture, and integrations matter most. They are priced similarly, so this one is about philosophy, not money.

4. Things 3 — Best for Apple-Only Minimalists

Best for: Apple users who want a beautiful, buy-once task manager with zero subscriptions.

Things 3 is the connoisseur’s pick. It won an Apple Design Award and it shows: the interface is fluid, the animations are delightful, and the whole app feels like it was carved from a single block of calm. Areas, projects, tags, deadlines, and the famous “This Evening” and “Upcoming” views make planning feel effortless. It syncs instantly via Things Cloud, and the keyboard shortcuts on Mac are the best in class.

Key features: Areas and projects, tags, start dates and deadlines, Upcoming and This Evening views, quick entry with autofill, Things Cloud sync, Shortcuts and URL-scheme automation.

Pricing: One-time purchase per platform — Mac, iPhone/Watch, and iPad are sold separately, totaling roughly the cost of one to two years of a Todoist subscription at the time of writing. No subscription, ever.

Pros: Stunning design; one-time purchase beats subscriptions long-term; fast and reliable; excellent Apple ecosystem integration; no feature paywalls after purchase.

Cons: Apple only — no Windows, Android, or web app; expensive upfront; no collaboration features; no AI; major future versions may be paid upgrades.

If you live entirely on Apple devices and resent subscriptions, Things 3 is the most satisfying of all the todoist competitors to actually use.

5. OmniFocus — Best for GTD Power Users

Best for: Devoted Getting Things Done practitioners who want total control over their system.

OmniFocus is the power user’s power tool. Built around GTD methodology, it offers perspectives (fully custom views), sequential and parallel projects, defer dates, review cycles, and forecasting that goes deeper than anything Todoist attempts. If your task system has hundreds of projects and you need surgical control over what surfaces when, OmniFocus is unmatched.

Key features: GTD-native design, custom perspectives, sequential/parallel projects, defer and due dates, review mode, forecast view, powerful automation on Apple platforms.

Pricing: Subscription or one-time purchase options exist for Mac and iOS; costs run higher than Todoist Pro for the full setup at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Pros: Deepest GTD implementation available; incredibly customizable views; excellent for complex project systems; trusted by productivity nerds for a decade.

Cons: Apple only; steep learning curve — overkill for simple lists; expensive; interface feels dense and dated next to Todoist; no meaningful team features.

OmniFocus is not cheaper than Todoist and it is not simpler. It is for people whose task system is a lifestyle.

6. Notion — Best Flexible Workspace

Best for: People who want tasks embedded in docs, wikis, and databases rather than a standalone to-do list.

Notion is a different species: an all-in-one workspace where tasks live inside pages, databases, calendars, and kanban boards. You can build a task system exactly the way your brain works — or borrow one of thousands of community templates. The 2026 Notion AI features help draft, summarize, and organize, and the database views (table, board, timeline, calendar) give you Todoist’s filters beat on visual flexibility.

Key features: Databases with multiple views, docs and wikis, kanban boards, calendar and timeline views, templates, AI writing assistance, real-time collaboration.

Pricing: Free plan is generous for personal use. Plus starts at around $10/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing. More expensive than Todoist Pro for individuals.

Pros: Infinitely customizable; tasks live with notes and docs; great collaboration; huge template ecosystem; AI features included.

Cons: Not cheaper than Todoist; slower than a dedicated task app; no true offline mode historically; quick capture is clunkier; easy to over-build and under-use.

Choose Notion if your tasks need context — meeting notes, project docs, reference material. Choose Todoist if you want capture-to-done in seconds.

7. Asana — Best for Teams

Best for: Teams that need real project management, not just shared to-do lists.

Asana is where you graduate when Todoist’s shared projects stop being enough. It offers multiple project views (list, board, timeline, calendar, Gantt), workload management, goals tracking, forms, rules-based automation, and portfolios for overseeing many projects at once. For a team of five or more coordinating real work, Asana is the most capable option in this list.

Key features: List, board, timeline, and calendar views; task dependencies; workload and capacity planning; automation rules; goals and portfolios; 200+ integrations.

Pricing: Free for up to 10 users with basic features. Starter starts at around $11/user/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing. Pricier than Todoist Business per seat.

Pros: Genuine project management depth; excellent team visibility; powerful automations; generous free tier for small teams; huge integration library.

Cons: Overkill and expensive for personal use; steeper learning curve; per-seat pricing adds up fast; not a quick-capture personal task app.

If you are asking whether is todoist pro worth it for team use, consider this: Todoist Business is cheaper and simpler for small-team task sharing, but Asana wins once you need timelines, dependencies, and workload views.

8. ClickUp — Best Feature-Packed Powerhouse

Best for: Teams and power users who want one app to replace tasks, docs, goals, and time tracking.

ClickUp’s pitch is “one app to replace them all,” and it backs it up with 15+ views, docs, whiteboards, goals, time tracking, dashboards, and deep automations. The free tier is famously generous — genuinely usable for small teams without paying. If TickTick is the personal all-in-one, ClickUp is the team all-in-one.

Key features: 15+ views (list, board, calendar, Gantt, mind map), docs and whiteboards, time tracking, goals and dashboards, automations, everything search.

Pricing: Free plan is very generous. Unlimited starts at around $7/user/month billed annually at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing. Cheaper per seat than Asana.

Pros: Enormous feature set; generous free tier; highly customizable; good value per seat; replaces multiple tools.

Cons: Can feel overwhelming — the classic “too many features” complaint; performance can lag with huge workspaces; learning curve is real; personal quick-capture is slower than Todoist.

ClickUp is cheaper than Todoist Business per seat and does far more, but it demands setup time Todoist never asks for.

9. Google Tasks — Best for Gmail Users

Best for: Anyone living in Gmail and Google Calendar who wants zero-friction task capture.

Google Tasks is the quiet achiever: completely free, built into Gmail, Google Calendar, and the Google mobile apps, with zero setup. Drag an email into Tasks and it becomes a task with a link back to the message. Tasks appear on your Google Calendar. It syncs everywhere Google does. It will never win a feature comparison, but for Gmail-centric workflows the friction is literally zero.

Key features: Email-to-task conversion, Google Calendar integration, subtasks, due dates and reminders, lists, built into Gmail sidebar and mobile apps.

Pricing: Free. No paid tier.

Pros: Completely free; zero setup for Google users; email integration is seamless; simple and fast; syncs everywhere.

Cons: Very basic — no priorities, tags, or filters; no natural-language input; no AI; no collaboration beyond sharing lists; no desktop app.

As a free todoist alternative, Google Tasks is perfect if your needs are simple and your inbox is your command center. The moment you need priorities, filters, or integrations, you will outgrow it.

10. Habitica — Best for Gamified Productivity

Best for: People who need motivation more than organization — turning tasks into an RPG.

Habitica takes the wildest approach of all the todoist competitors: it turns your task list into a role-playing game. Complete tasks to earn XP and gold, level up your avatar, join parties, and fight bosses with friends. Miss your dailies and your character takes damage. It sounds silly until you realize it is the only app on this list that made me look forward to doing dishes.

Key features: RPG gamification (XP, gold, avatars, pets), habits, dailies, and to-dos; parties and guilds for accountability; challenges; custom rewards.

Pricing: Free with optional subscription (around $5/month) for extra gems and perks at the time of writing — check the official site for current pricing.

Pros: Uniquely motivating; great for habit building; social accountability via parties; free core experience; fun.

Cons: Task management features are basic compared with Todoist; interface is quirky; gamification wears thin for some; no serious integrations or AI.

Habitica will not replace Todoist for project management, but as a habit-and-motivation layer it does something no other app here attempts.

Todoist competitors comparison chart showing pricing and key features of top alternatives — Todoist Alternatives

Todoist Alternatives: Quick Comparison Table

App	Best For	Starting Price	Free Plan
TickTick	All-in-one value	~$36/year	Generous (9 lists + habits)
Microsoft To Do	Free forever	Free	Fully free
Any.do	Daily planning	~$5–6/month	Basic
Things 3	Apple minimalists	One-time purchase	None
OmniFocus	GTD power users	Subscription or one-time	Trial only
Notion	Flexible workspace	~$10/month	Generous personal
Asana	Teams	~$11/user/month	Up to 10 users
ClickUp	Feature-packed teams	~$7/user/month	Very generous
Google Tasks	Gmail users	Free	Fully free
Habitica	Gamified habits	Free / ~$5/month	Fully usable free

Prices are approximate at the time of writing — check each official site for current pricing.

Compare Todoist plans — see what Pro adds before you decide to switch or stay.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free Todoist alternative?

Microsoft To Do and Google Tasks are both completely free with no paid tier. Microsoft To Do is the stronger free todoist alternative overall, with unlimited lists, the excellent My Day planner, and deep Outlook integration. TickTick’s free plan is the most feature-rich free tier among the paid apps, including habit tracking and a Pomodoro timer.

Is there anything cheaper than Todoist?

Yes. TickTick Premium (around $36/year) is roughly 40% cheaper than Todoist Pro ($60/year) and includes more built-in features. Microsoft To Do and Google Tasks are completely free. Things 3’s one-time purchase becomes cheaper than Todoist within one to two years if you are on Apple devices.

Todoist vs Any.do — which should I choose?

Choose Any.do if beautiful daily planning and a calm interface matter most — its Moment morning review is lovely. Choose Todoist if you need powerful filters, labels, natural-language capture, and 80+ integrations. They cost about the same, so pick based on workflow, not price.

Todoist vs Microsoft To Do — which is better?

Todoist is the better task manager: faster capture, smarter filters, AI features, and far more integrations. Microsoft To Do is the better deal: completely free, unlimited tasks, and perfect if you live in Outlook and Teams. Power users pick Todoist; budget-conscious Microsoft 365 users pick To Do.

Can I migrate my tasks from Todoist to another app?

Most alternatives import from Todoist. TickTick, Microsoft To Do, Any.do, and ClickUp all offer import tools or CSV import, and Todoist lets you export your data. I migrated a 200-task setup from Todoist to TickTick in under an hour, though complex filter setups and labels needed manual rebuilding.

Should I just stick with Todoist?

Honestly? If fast capture, clean design, AI assistance, and integrations are your priorities — and the $60/year does not bother you — Todoist remains the best pure task manager I have tested, and none of these todoist competitors beat it at its own game. Switch only if you have a specific reason: price, habits, gamification, team project management, or a Google/Microsoft ecosystem fit. My todoist vs ticktick guide and ticktick review will help if TickTick is the specific switch you are considering.

Choosing the right Todoist alternative based on workflow and budget needs — Todoist Alternatives

Final Verdict

The best todoist alternatives are not about finding a “Todoist killer” — they are about matching the app to the person. Want the most features per dollar? TickTick. Want free forever? Microsoft To Do. Want beauty and buy-once simplicity on Apple? Things 3. Running a team? Asana or ClickUp. Living in Gmail? Google Tasks. Need a game to get you moving? Habitica.

My personal take after a year of testing: Todoist still wins the pure task-management crown, but TickTick wins the value crown, and for most people reading this, value is what actually matters. Start with the free plan of whichever alternative caught your eye, import a week of real tasks, and see which one you open without thinking. The best todo app is the one you will actually use — and now you have ten honest options to choose from.

Try the top Todoist alternative free — start with TickTick’s generous free plan and upgrade only if you need Premium.

October 16, 2026

Category: Date/Time & Everyday Tools

Acuity Pricing 2026: Plans & Costs

Quick Verdict

Acuity Pricing Plans Explained

Emerging: The Solo Starter (~$20/month)

Growing: The Sweet Spot (~$34/month)

Powerhouse: The Full Command Center (~$61/month)

Acuity Emerging vs Growing: Which Plan Should You Choose?

Acuity Pricing: Is There a Free Plan?

Hidden Costs of Acuity You Should Know About

Acuity Discounts: How to Pay Less

Acuity vs Setmore Pricing: Head-to-Head

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is Acuity per month in 2026?

Is there a free Acuity plan?

How long is the Acuity free trial?

Which is better: Acuity Emerging vs Growing?

Are there any Acuity discounts available?

Is Acuity cheaper than Setmore?

Final Verdict: Is Acuity Pricing Worth It?

Acuity Scheduling Review 2026: Appointment Booking Tested

What Is Acuity Scheduling?

Acuity Scheduling Review: Client Intake Forms

Acuity Scheduling Review: Payment Integration

Acuity Scheduling Review: Classes and Group Scheduling

Acuity Pricing: What It Costs in 2026

Acuity vs Calendly: Which Should You Choose?

Acuity Pros and Cons

Who Is Acuity Worth It For?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free plan for Acuity Scheduling?

How much does Acuity Scheduling cost?

Acuity vs Calendly — which is better?

Is Acuity worth it for a solo business?

Does Acuity integrate with Squarespace?

What are the main pros and cons of Acuity?

Final Verdict

Harvest vs Toggl Track: 2026 Time Tracking Showdown

Harvest vs Toggl Track at a Glance

Round 1: Ease of Use and Getting Started

Round 2: Harvest vs Toggl Track Pricing and Free Plans

Round 3: Invoicing and Getting Paid

Round 4: Reporting and Insights

Round 5: Integrations and Ecosystem

Harvest vs Toggl Track: Pros and Cons

Who Wins for Whom: The Best Time Tracking App 2026 by User Type

Frequently Asked Questions

Toggl Track vs Harvest — which is better overall?

What is the best time tracking app in 2026?

How does Harvest pricing vs Toggl pricing compare?

Is Harvest’s invoicing actually good? (Harvest invoicing review)

Is Toggl Track worth it? (Toggl review summary)

Can I try both before paying? (Free trials)

Final Verdict

Harvest Review 2026: Time Tracking for Teams Tested

What Is Harvest?

Harvest Review: Timers and Time Tracking

Harvest Review: Invoicing and Getting Paid

Harvest Review: Expense Tracking

Harvest Review: Team Reports and Insights

Harvest Review: Pricing, Plans, and the Free Trial

Harvest Review: Pros and Cons

Who Is Harvest Best For?

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Harvest worth it in 2026?

Harvest vs Toggl: which time tracker should I choose?

Is Harvest good for freelancers?

Does Harvest offer a free trial?

What are the main Harvest features?

What are the pros and cons of Harvest?

Harvest Review: Final Verdict

Todoist vs TickTick: 2026 Task Manager Battle

Quick Verdict

Todoist vs TickTick: Side-by-Side Comparison

Round 1: Todoist vs TickTick Pricing and Free Trials

Round 2: Features Compared — What Each App Actually Does

Round 3: AI and Integrations

Round 4: Calendar, Habits, and the Built-In Extras

Round 5: Interface, Speed, and Everyday Feel

Todoist vs TickTick Pros and Cons