A Free TickTick Alternative — No Premium Needed (2026)

A good TickTick alternative has to clear a high bar. TickTick does a lot — tasks, recurring schedules, a calendar, a habit tracker, a Pomodoro timer — and does most of it well. The catch is that the free plan is sized to make you upgrade, and Premium is a yearly subscription. Below we look at what you actually lose on TickTick's free tier, what a replacement has to cover, and which free apps like TickTick are worth installing in 2026.

Why people look for a TickTick alternative

• The list cap. Nine lists sounds fine until you have Work, Home, Groceries, Errands, Books, Trip, Kids, Health — and want one more.
• Reminder and calendar limits. Two reminders per task on free, and the richer calendar views (the ones that make TickTick feel like a planner) sit in Premium.
• Subscription only. There is no one-time purchase. Premium is roughly $35.99 a year and the price has gone up over the years, as most subscription apps' have.
• Account required. TickTick is cloud-first, so you sign up before you can add your first task.

None of this makes TickTick a bad app. It makes it a paid app with a free trial that doesn't expire — which is fine, as long as you go in knowing it.

What a TickTick replacement has to do

Be honest about which TickTick features you actually use. Most people need:

• Recurring tasks — weekly chores, monthly bills, "every weekday" routines, without a paywall.
• Reminders that fire on time — including more than one per task for the important ones.
• A calendar view — seeing tasks and appointments on the same day grid.
• Lists and checklists — groceries, packing, a reading list.
• Notes — somewhere to keep the details that don't fit in a task title.
• Habits — a streak or heatmap for the routines you want to keep.

The Pomodoro timer and the white-noise player are nice, but they are also easy to replace with a dedicated timer app. The six items above are the ones that decide whether you can actually switch.

Free TickTick alternatives compared (quick table)

If "unlimited lists plus a free calendar view" is your shortlist, that narrows the table quickly. Microsoft To Do is the strongest fully-free pick if you don't need a calendar; My Tasks is the one that keeps recurring tasks, the calendar, notes and checklists together without a cap. For the Todoist side of the same question, see our free Todoist alternative guide.

Best for tasks + calendar in one view

The feature TickTick users miss most when they leave is the calendar. Seeing "dentist 3 pm" next to "submit report" on the same day is what turns a list into a plan. My Tasks has a calendar view of your tasks and events built in and free, plus a per-task calendar for recurring routines so you can see every upcoming occurrence of "gym" or "rent". Any.do also offers a calendar view on its free plan; Todoist's calendar layout is Pro-only.

Best for habits and routines

TickTick's habit tracker is genuinely good, and no free app copies it exactly. The closest free equivalent is to make the habit a recurring task. In My Tasks, recurring tasks support daily, weekly, monthly and custom patterns, and a habit heatmap widget (part of premium) shows your completion streak on the home screen — so "drink water", "walk 20 minutes" and "read" become a calendar of ticks rather than another subscription. For a paper-first start, our free daily routine template lays out a morning-to-evening routine you can copy into the app.

Best for notes and checklists

TickTick's notes are a pleasant surprise for a task app. If you rely on them, make sure the alternative has real notes rather than a description field. My Tasks includes a rich-text note editor with formatting and colors and (on premium) drawing, and checklists are a first-class list type rather than a task with steps. Microsoft To Do's notes are plain text; Google Tasks and Todoist have task details only.

Moving your tasks out of TickTick

TickTick lets you export your data from its settings. Few consumer apps import that file directly, and My Tasks doesn't either. In practice the move is quicker than it sounds:

1. Recreate only the lists you touched this week. Archive the rest in your head.
2. Re-add the recurring tasks — these are the ones that matter long term.
3. Copy over active notes; leave the old reference notes in an export file.
4. Set a test reminder and allow notifications so the first real one fires.

Most people carry over a dozen tasks, not three hundred. You can install My Tasks free on Google Play or on the App Store and have the first list rebuilt in a few minutes.