Best Free Todoist Alternative (No Paywall) in 2026

Why people look for a Todoist alternative

Todoist earned its reputation honestly: a clean interface, quick natural-language entry, and a system that scales from a grocery list to a full project. So why do so many people search for a todoist alternative free of charge? Two reasons come up again and again.

The first is price. Todoist's paid plans have crept upward over the years, and for a single person who just wants a reliable to-do list, an annual subscription can feel like a lot for features they use occasionally. The second is the workspace limits on the free tier. Reminders and recurring due dates are free — but the moment you want more than five active projects, more than three saved filters, or to look back further than a week of activity, you bump into a limit and a prompt to upgrade.

The third is that Todoist is deliberately task-focused: there are no native notes and no built-in calendar layout on the free plan, so your notes, planning and documents end up in separate apps. None of this makes Todoist a bad app — it just means a lot of people want one place for tasks, notes, lists and a calendar without juggling tools. If that's you, you're in good company, and there are genuinely capable free Todoist alternative apps worth a look.

What Todoist's free plan limits you on

Before you switch, it's worth being clear about exactly what the free tier holds back — both so you know what you're missing, and so you can judge whether a replacement actually covers it. Todoist's free (Beginner) plan is genuinely generous on the basics — reminders, recurring due dates, sub-tasks, sections, priorities and list/board layouts are all included — but it draws the line on the surrounding workspace:

• Active projects are capped at 5. Free users can keep only five active personal projects at once, which gets tight if you organise life into many buckets (work, home, errands, hobbies).
• Filters and history are limited. You get 3 filter views and just 1 week (7 days) of activity history on the free plan, so you can't save many custom views or look far back through completed tasks.
• Collaborators per project are limited. Sharing a list with family or a small team is capped at 5 collaborators per project on the free plan.
• No calendar layout or native notes. The Calendar layout, task duration/time-blocking and deadlines are Pro features, and Todoist has no built-in notes — so notes and planning end up in separate apps.
• Reminders are free, but only one per task. Automatic reminders, a single custom reminder and one urgent reminder are included free; multiple custom reminders per task and the "!" reminder shortcut are the part that needs Pro.

For a casual list, none of this matters. But the things people often outgrow — more projects, more saved filters, longer history, and a calendar and notes in the same app — are where the free plan stops. That's the gap a good free Todoist alternative can fill.

What to look for in a free replacement

"Free" can mean a lot of things, and not all of it is good. A truly useful replacement should give you the everyday essentials without asking for a card, and be honest about what (if anything) is premium. When you compare a todoist vs free task app matchup, check for these:

• No task or project cap. You shouldn't be rationing how many tasks or lists you create.
• Recurring tasks and reminders included. These are the backbone of a real task manager — they belong on the free plan.
• Subtasks (steps). Breaking a big task into smaller steps keeps momentum without extra apps.
• Offline-first. Your list should open instantly and work on the subway, not depend on a live connection.
• Cross-platform. A genuine todoist free alternative android pick should also run on iPhone, so you're not locked in.
• Honest monetisation. It's fine for cloud sync or sharing to be premium — what matters is that the core list never gets held hostage.

Free Todoist alternatives compared

Here's a fair, side-by-side look at popular apps like todoist free to use, plus Todoist itself for reference. Every app on this list is worth trying; the right one depends on whether you want a pure task manager or an all-in-one workspace.

The honest takeaway: if you only want a streamlined task list and live inside a particular ecosystem, Google Tasks or Microsoft To Do are excellent free picks. If you want one app that replaces a to-do list, a notes app and a calendar at once — without a paywall on the basics — My Tasks: Lists & Schedules is the most complete free option here. (For a broader roundup, see our best free to-do list app for Android guide.)

Recurring tasks, reminders and subtasks without paying

These three mechanics are the backbone of any real task manager, so the litmus test for any free todoist alternative is whether they all work without an upgrade. Todoist itself does include recurring due dates and reminders on its free plan (one reminder per task), so the honest question isn't "can it remind me?" but whether everything else you rely on — and your notes and calendar — also stays free in one app:

• Recurring tasks. Set "every Monday", "the 1st of the month", or a custom interval, and the task regenerates automatically once you complete it — no re-typing.
• Reminders. A due date tells you when something is due; a reminder actually pings you. On My Tasks, both are free, so a recurring task can quietly nudge you at the right time.
• Subtasks (steps). Break "Plan trip" into book flights, reserve hotel, pack — and tick them off one by one inside the parent task.

If you mainly came from Todoist for fast capture and repeating chores, you'll find the same rhythm here, minus the upgrade prompt. New to structuring a list this way? Our how to make a to-do list walkthrough covers a simple, repeatable system.

Notes, checklists and calendar in one app

Todoist is deliberately focused: it does tasks and does them well, but notes and calendar live in other apps. For a lot of people that means juggling three or four tools. One reason an all-in-one app makes such a good todoist alternative free of subscriptions is that it collapses that stack:

• Rich notes for the thinking that doesn't fit on a checkbox — meeting notes, ideas, draft messages.
• Checklists / lists for groceries, packing and repeatable routines, with inline checkboxes and drag-to-reorder.
• A built-in calendar so scheduled tasks and events show up together in day, week and month views.

Need to plan things with other people too? Cloud backup and real-time shared to-do lists are the kind of premium extras that make sense to pay for — while your everyday list stays free. And if you're weighing the lightweight built-in options, our Google Tasks alternatives guide compares them head to head.

How to move your tasks over from Todoist

Switching sounds like a chore, but in practice most people only carry over their open tasks, not years of completed history. Here's a painless way to switch from Todoist in about fifteen minutes:

1. Export from Todoist. In the Todoist web app, open each project's menu and export to a template/CSV so you have a record of your tasks and due dates.
2. Recreate your buckets. Set up your main projects as categories or lists in the new app. Don't over-engineer it — fewer, clearer buckets beat a sprawling tree.
3. Add active tasks first. Move over only the tasks that are still open, with their due dates and repeat rules. Anything done is already done.
4. Re-set recurring rules and reminders. Add your repeat patterns and reminders as you go — on My Tasks recurring tasks and reminders are free, with no upsell.
5. Run both for a week. Keep Todoist read-only for a few days as a safety net, then delete it once you trust the new flow.

That's it. Because the essentials are free, there's no risk in trying — if it doesn't click, you've lost nothing but a quarter of an hour.

FAQ: Is there a truly free Todoist alternative for Android and iPhone?