Is Microsoft To Do better than Google Tasks?

For planning one day at a time and sharing lists, yes. My Day, steps, hashtags and link sharing go further than anything in Google Tasks. For a quick list that puts dated tasks on Google Calendar, Google Tasks is the better fit.

Is Microsoft To Do free?

Yes. It's free with a personal Microsoft account, with apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Android, Windows and Mac plus a web version. A work or school account works once the employer's Microsoft 365 plan includes To Do.

What is the Google equivalent of Microsoft To Do?

Google Tasks. Both are free to-do lists tied to their maker's email and calendar: Google Tasks to Gmail and Google Calendar, To Do to Outlook.

Can I sync Google Tasks with Microsoft To Do?

Not from inside either app. Zapier lists ready-made connections that copy new tasks from one to the other and complete tasks across both, but every connected task then lives twice, so picking one app per job works better.

Can I use Microsoft To Do without Outlook?

Yes. You need a Microsoft account, not Outlook. Only the Flagged email list depends on it, and that works just for email Microsoft hosts, such as Outlook.com or Hotmail.com.

Is Google Tasks still a thing?

Yes. As of October 2026 it's in the side panel of Gmail, Google Calendar, Chat, Drive and Docs, and Apple's App Store lists its iPhone app as free.

Google Tasks vs Microsoft To Do (2026): which free app wins

The short answer

Google Tasks vs Microsoft To Do comes down to the inbox you open first. Gmail? Pick Google Tasks. It's free, it sits beside your email, and every task with a date lands on Google Calendar. Outlook, or a list you want to share at home? Pick Microsoft To Do. It's free as well, and My Day hands you a fresh list each morning.

Neither app has a paid tier, so you're choosing how you like to plan. Google Tasks is a short list you glance at between appointments. To Do is a small planner: you pick today's handful of jobs from everything else, and the rest waits.

Find your row:

If you	Pick	Why
Plan your week in Google Calendar	Google Tasks	Dated tasks sit on the grid
Read work email in Outlook	Microsoft To Do	Flagged email becomes a task
Want a short list for today	Microsoft To Do	My Day starts empty
Share a shopping list at home	Microsoft To Do	Any list, shared by link
Want an app on a PC or Mac	Microsoft To Do	Windows and Mac apps
Want nothing to set up	Google Tasks	A list, a star, a date

How we compared them

Every fact here comes from pages Google and Microsoft publish themselves, plus each app's store listing, all read on 30 October 2026. We built the comparison from that documentation, not from weeks of hands-on testing, so you won't find star ratings or scores. Both apps were free as of October 2026.

We asked each app the same six questions:

What does it cost, and which account does it need?
Where does it run: phone, computer, watch?
How does it help you plan today?
Will it remind you, and how does a task repeat?
Can someone else work from the same list?
If you leave, can you take your tasks with you?

Google Tasks: best for a list that lives on your Google Calendar

Google Tasks is the to-do list built into Google's apps. You open it from the side panel in Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, or on a computer through Tasks in Calendar in your browser. Phones get an app for Android and one for iPhone and iPad, and Apple's App Store lists the iPhone app as free. There's no app for a Mac or a Windows PC.

A task holds a title, details, a date and time, a deadline, a repeat and subtasks. You split tasks into lists, star the important ones, and sort any list five ways: your own order, date, deadline, recently starred or title. Google's task help caps you at 100,000 tasks across your lists and 20,000 open ones in any single list, numbers a household never gets near.

The calendar is where it pulls ahead. A dated task appears on Google Calendar beside your appointments, and Google's product page says a task can take a duration and mark you as busy. Give "clear out the spare room" two hours and the calendar holds that time for you.

Pick it if your week already runs through Gmail and Google Calendar and you want a list you learn in a minute. Skip it if you want a list someone at home edits with you, or an app on your laptop instead of a browser tab.

Microsoft To Do: best for planning one day at a time

Microsoft To Do is Microsoft's free to-do app, and each task holds more. You can add steps, a star, notes, hashtags and Outlook's categories, and a counter under the task shows how many steps are done. Its Google Play listing says you can attach up to 25 MB of files to any task, so the photo of a flat-pack instruction sheet goes on the job itself.

My Day is the reason people choose it. Microsoft's planning help says My Day is empty the first time you open To Do each day, and you fill it with what you mean to get done. From your second day, a lightbulb offers suggestions from your other lists. Smart lists gather the rest, such as Important for starred tasks and Planned for anything with a date.

It also runs on more screens. There are apps for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, for Android, for Windows and for Mac, plus a web version. You need a Microsoft account, not Outlook: To Do is free with a personal Microsoft account, the kind you'd use for Outlook.com or Xbox. A work or school account works too, once your employer's Microsoft 365 plan includes To Do.

Pick it if you like choosing a few tasks each morning, want to share a list at home, or want the app on a PC or your wrist. Skip it if you'd rather see tasks on Google Calendar than in a separate planner, or if a sidebar of ready-made lists feels like clutter.

Side by side

	Google Tasks	Microsoft To Do
Price	Free	Free
Account	Google account	Microsoft account
On a computer	In a browser	Windows, Mac, web
Phone and watch	Android, iPhone, iPad	Same, plus Apple Watch
Plan today	On Google Calendar	My Day, with suggestions
Break a job down	Subtasks	Steps
Group tasks	Lists and a star	Lists, groups, hashtags
Repeats	Daily to yearly	Adds weekdays, custom
Email to task	Add to Tasks in Gmail	Flagged email in Outlook
Sharing	One task, in Chat or Docs	A whole list, by link

Cost is a tie, since neither one sells a paid plan. Everything else has a winner:

Seeing tasks beside your appointments on one screen: Google Tasks.
Planning a single day: Microsoft To Do.
Sharing a list with family or flatmates, and handing out jobs inside it: Microsoft To Do.
Email to task: whichever app matches your inbox.
Least to learn: Google Tasks.

If neither fits, Todoist vs Google Tasks weighs Google's list against a paid one, and our best task management app guide lines up nine apps by job.

Planning your day: My Day or your calendar

The two apps plan a day in opposite ways, and that's the difference you'll feel every day.

Google Tasks puts the plan on your calendar. A task with a date sits on Google Calendar with your dentist appointment and the school run, so one screen shows the whole day. Nothing gets lost overnight, either. Google's sorting help says every open task from the last 365 days stays available on today, and overdue ones collect under Past at the top.

To Do keeps the plan in the app. You open My Day to a blank page and pick, say, three jobs from Planned and the gym from your Health list. Anything you don't finish moves back into tomorrow's suggestions instead of sitting on today's page. Microsoft's habits help adds one trick: set a task to repeat daily, such as 20 minutes of Spanish, and To Do suggests it for My Day each morning.

So the question is how your day is built. If it's built from fixed times, a daily schedule with tasks dropped into gaps, Google Tasks fits. If it's a pile of small jobs with no set hour, My Day's short list is easier to face than a long one.

Like My Day but want the list to come to you? In ActivityTracker you give a daily routine a time as well as a repeat. When that time comes and it isn't done, the assistant tells you.

See how routines work

Dates, repeats and reminders

Take two chores. The gym is every weekday at 7, and the library books are due back in three weeks.

In To Do, the date and the reminder are two separate fields. Microsoft's reminders help lets you set a due date of today, tomorrow, next week or a day you pick, then a reminder for later today, tomorrow, next week or any date and time. The library books can be due on Friday and remind you on Thursday night. Repeats run daily, on weekdays, weekly, monthly, yearly or on a custom pattern, so the gym is one tap.

To Do also reads dates you type, in places. Its smart due date help says the Windows app, from version 2.66, picks up phrases such as "tomorrow 5pm" or "every Monday" from the task title, in English only, and the iPhone app suggests reminders as you type.

In Google Tasks you set a date and time, and the alert arrives at that time. Leave the time off and Google's help says the alert comes at 9 AM instead, and a deadline gets its own 9 AM alert on the day. The product page lists daily, weekly, monthly and yearly repeats, and says nudges keep coming back until you tick the task off. There are two limits to know: a task with subtasks can't repeat, and a repeating task can't move to another list.

If you mostly need things to ring on time, the best reminder app guide has apps that do nothing else.

Email: Add to Tasks or flagged email

Both apps turn an email into a task. Each does it only for its own maker's email.

In Gmail it's one button. Open a message and click Add to Tasks at the top, or drag the email into the Tasks side panel. The task keeps a link back to the message, so the booking confirmation with your reference number is one click away.

In Outlook, you flag the email. Microsoft's flagged email help says flagged messages turn up in To Do's Flagged email list, named after the subject line with a preview of the text, and Open in Outlook takes you back to the original. You can rename and date them, or drop them into My Day. Read the limits first:

It works only for email Microsoft hosts, such as Outlook.com or Hotmail.com, or your own domain on Microsoft's servers.
The first time you switch it on, it pulls in the 100 most recently flagged emails from the last 30 days.
Only your main mailbox counts, not shared mailboxes or shared folders.

To Do also lives inside Outlook itself. Tasks are stored on Microsoft's Exchange Online, so the same list shows in To Do and in Outlook without any setup.

If your work email is Outlook and your personal email is Gmail, the task app follows the inbox where most of your to-dos arrive. It helps to get both calendars onto one screen first, whichever list you keep.

To Do shares whole lists. Microsoft's sharing help has you open the list, choose Share, create an invitation link and send it by email or any messaging app. Once the household has joined, switch on Limit access to current members and the link stops working, or stop sharing and the list is yours alone again.

Inside a shared list you can assign a task to any member, yourself included, and it shows up in their Assigned to you list. On Windows you type @ and a name as you add the task. Move an assigned task to another list and the assignment is dropped, so reassign it.

One rule decides whose account owns the list. Under Microsoft's sharing rules, personal accounts share with personal accounts, and work accounts share inside one workplace or school. A list you make on your work account can't reach anyone outside your employer, so make the family list on a personal one.

Google Tasks shares single tasks instead. In a Google Chat space you add a space task and assign it to a member, and in Google Docs you do the same on eligible Workspace plans (Google's shared tasks help). The person you assign gets the task in their own list, and on their calendar if it has a date and time. Shared tasks can't repeat or carry subtasks, and Google's help describes no way to share a whole personal list.

Moving between them, or running both

Google's Tasks help covers exporting your data, and Microsoft's To Do help covers moving tasks between your own lists, but neither describes importing from the other app. Zapier lists ready-made connections, such as copying new Google Tasks tasks into To Do and the reverse, or completing a task in one when you tick it off in the other. Every connected task then lives twice, and one copy goes stale.

Two apps work when each has its own job: a work list in To Do on your work account, a home list in Google Tasks. The same task in both doesn't work. To move from Google Tasks to To Do:

Back up first. Google Takeout exports your Tasks with titles, descriptions, due dates, list titles, repeat schedules and stars. Deleted tasks aren't included.
Tick off or delete what you won't do, so you move a short list.
Make the same lists in To Do, and put them in list groups if you have more than six or seven.
Retype each open task with its date. On the Windows app you can type the date into the title.
Set every repeat again and check the next date it shows.
If your email is with Microsoft, switch on the Flagged email list.

Try both for one week

A week with your own tasks settles this faster than any table:

Monday: copy your ten most pressing to-dos into both apps. Date three, set two to repeat, and turn one email into a task.
Tuesday morning: fill My Day in To Do, then open Google Calendar and look at today's tasks there. Note which plan you trusted by lunchtime.
Wednesday: add three tasks on your phone while you're out, without sitting down.
Thursday: share a list with someone at home in To Do, and see whether they join.
Friday: leave one dated task undone on purpose and see where each app puts it on Saturday.
Sunday: count which app you opened without being reminded, and keep it.

A weekly reflection template gives Sunday's count somewhere to go, along with what slipped and why.

Made-up example: Lena and Sam share a flat. Lena's email is Gmail. Sam's job runs on Outlook, with a work Microsoft account.

They want one shopping list they both add to.

Google Tasks can't share the shopping list. It shares single tasks in a Chat space, and neither of them uses Chat at home.

Sam's first To Do list fails: he makes it on his work account, and a work account's list stays inside his employer. He sets up a free personal Microsoft account, adds it to the app beside his work one, and shares a Groceries list by link. Lena makes a free Microsoft account and taps the link. She's in.

Lena keeps her bills and appointments in Google Tasks, where the dates sit on her calendar. Sam plans each morning in My Day and flags work emails into To Do. The shopping list lives in one place, and neither of them pays anything.