Is Things 3 better than Todoist?

For one person on Apple devices who wants to pay once, yes. Things 3 keeps Today short with start dates and costs US$59.98 for a Mac and an iPhone. If you use Windows or Android, or share a list, Todoist is the better pick.

Is Things 3 a one-time purchase?

Yes. Things 3 is a one-time purchase for each platform, with no subscription: US$9.99 for iPhone, US$19.99 for iPad and US$49.99 for Mac on the US App Store, with sync through Things Cloud free.

Can I use Things 3 on Windows, Android or the web?

No. Things runs only on Apple devices: Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. Pick Todoist instead, which has Windows and Android apps and works in a browser.

Can you share a list in Things 3?

No. Things has no real-time sharing of to-dos or lists. Todoist lets 5 people into a personal project on its free plan, with comments and assigned tasks.

Can I move my tasks from Todoist to Things 3?

Yes. Things has a built-in Todoist importer that copies your projects and tasks, with their labels and comments, and leaves Todoist untouched. Repeating tasks lose their schedules, and priorities and image attachments stay behind.

Things 3 vs Todoist (2026): prices, platforms and the pick

Q: Does Things 3 have a free trial?

Yes, on the Mac only. The trial runs 15 days from first launch with every feature, and your to-dos stay if you buy. There's no trial for iPhone or iPad.

The short answer

Things 3 vs Todoist is mostly a question about your devices. If everything you own is Apple and you're tired of subscriptions, pick Things 3. You pay once per device, US$49.99 on a Mac and US$9.99 on an iPhone, and you get a planner built around one question: what are you doing today? If a Windows laptop or an Android phone shows up anywhere in your week, pick Todoist. It runs on all of them, the free plan covers 5 projects, and Pro costs US$60 a year.

The second question is who else needs the list. Things has no shared lists at all. Todoist lets 5 people into a project on its free plan.

Find your row:

If you	Pick	Why
Use only a Mac and an iPhone	Things 3	Pay once, sync free
Work on Windows or Android	Todoist	Things won't run there
Need your list in a browser	Todoist	Things has no web app
Share a list at home	Todoist	5 people per project, free
Want tasks hidden until their day	Things 3	Start dates keep Today short
Plan in Google Calendar	Todoist	Connects to Google and Outlook

How we compared them

Each fact is from Cultured Code's Things pages and support articles, Todoist's pricing page and help centre, or the App Store, read on 30 October 2026. Nobody here used both apps daily for months before writing this, which is why you'll see no star ratings or test scores. Prices are US list prices before tax, as of October 2026.

We put the same six questions to both apps:

Which devices does it run on?
What does it cost today, and over three years?
How does it plan your day?
How do repeats and reminders work?
Does it talk to your calendar and your email?
Can someone share the list with you, and can you leave with your tasks?

Things 3: best for an all-Apple setup you pay for once

Things 3 is Cultured Code's personal task manager for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro. A to-do can carry notes, tags, a checklist and a date. You group to-dos into a project with headings, and projects into areas such as Work and Family. The iPhone App Store listing adds reminders, repeating to-dos, a This Evening section, Markdown notes and Mail to Things, which turns a forwarded email into a to-do.

The planning model is what people buy it for. Every to-do sits in one of four lists: Today, Upcoming, Anytime or Someday. Give a to-do a start date and it waits in Upcoming, out of sight, until that morning, then moves into Today on its own. Someday holds the ideas you're not ready to commit to. A deadline is a separate flag for the day something has to be finished.

Each kind of device is a separate purchase. You buy Things once for each platform, and there's no subscription. The Watch app comes free with the iPhone app, and sync through Things Cloud costs nothing extra. On the US App Store the iPhone app is US$9.99, the iPad app US$19.99 and the Mac app US$49.99, with no bundle and no discount. There's no Things for Windows, Android or Linux, and no way to open your list in a web browser.

Pick it if every device you carry is Apple and you want to pay once and forget about it: a Mac and an iPhone come to US$59.98, for good. Skip it if you'll ever need your list on a work PC or an Android phone, or if your partner needs to tick things off the same list.

Todoist: best for a list that follows you to any device

Todoist pulls the date out of the sentence you type. Write "Pay the window cleaner every 4 weeks on Friday" and the task gets its repeat before you hit save. Its help on dates goes from "tomorrow at 4 pm" up to "every 3rd Tuesday starting Aug 29 ending in 6 months", and a date can be 150 characters long.

Tasks live in projects, with sections inside them. Labels cut across projects, four priority levels run from P1 down to P4, and a filter saves a view such as every P1 task due this week. In Things you sort with tags. Cultured Code's own tip is a single Important tag: filter any list by it, or type it into Quick Find to see every flagged to-do.

You can open Todoist almost anywhere. Its downloads page lists apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch and Wear OS, plus browser extensions and email add-ons, and the web app works in any browser.

The free Beginner plan gives you 5 personal projects, 3 filter views, task reminders, list and board layouts and 5 MB file uploads. Pro costs US$5 a month billed yearly, or US$7 month to month. It raises the limits to 300 projects and 150 filters, and deadlines come with it.

Pick it if your week crosses platforms or someone else shares the list, and you'd rather type one line than tap through a date picker. Skip it if you want one quiet list on your Apple devices and never want to see a renewal email.

Side by side

	Things 3	Todoist
Price	US$9.99 to US$49.99 per device, once	Free, Pro US$60 a year
Free option	15-day Mac trial	Beginner, 5 projects
Devices	Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch, Vision Pro	Most Apple devices, plus Windows, Linux, Android, web
Typed dates	In the date picker	In the task name
Start dates	Hide to-dos until the day	Not supported
Deadlines	Included	Pro only
Sorting	Areas, projects, headings, tags	Projects, labels, priorities, filters
Calendar	Apple Calendar, shown in Today	Google or Outlook, events in, tasks out
Sharing	None	5 people per project
Files	Saved as links	Uploads, 5 MB free

Things 3 wins the morning: a short Today list and nothing from next week nagging you. Todoist wins anything that involves another device or another person.

What each costs over three years

Things charges once for each kind of device. A second Mac or a second iPhone costs nothing extra. Todoist charges yearly for Pro, or nothing at all if 5 projects are enough.

Your setup	Things 3	Todoist Pro
iPhone only	US$9.99	US$180
Mac and iPhone	US$59.98	US$180
Mac, iPhone and iPad	US$79.97	US$180
Any Windows or Android	Won't run	US$180

Stay within 5 projects and Todoist costs you nothing on any of these setups. Pay for Pro month to month instead of yearly and three years comes to US$252.

Pro buys more than room. It adds the calendar layout, task durations, custom reminders, deadlines, automatic backups and your full activity history, where Beginner keeps one week.

Planning a day: start dates or due dates

This is where the two apps feel most different.

In Things, the date on a to-do is a start date. It answers "when can I begin?", not "when is it due?". Until that day the to-do waits in Upcoming, then it moves into Today by itself. So the gym bag you'll pack on Friday stays out of Monday's list.

Todoist's dates are due dates. Every task stays visible in its project, because Todoist has no start dates that hide a task until its day. Today shows what's dated today. The help's workaround is a repeating date, such as "every day starting May 3 and ending May 6", which puts the task in Today on each of those days. Want a hard stop beside the working date? That's a deadline, and it needs Pro or Business.

Both read typed dates, in different places. Todoist takes the date from the task name as you write it. Things takes plain words in its When picker: its natural language help lists "tues 8am" for Tuesday at 8am, "17d" for 17 days from today and "3rd wed jul" for the third Wednesday in July, in eight languages. On a Mac, Cmd S opens that picker.

Repeats and reminders

Take two jobs: put the bins out every Tuesday, and descale the kettle a month after you last did it.

Things handles both. Its repeating to-dos repeat on a schedule, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly, or a set time after you complete them. Weekly with Tuesday picked covers the bins, and after completion covers the kettle. Tick Add deadlines in the repeat and the deadline lands on the repeat day, with the to-do appearing a set number of days before it.

In Todoist you type both. "Bins out every Tuesday at 7pm" sets the first one. For the kettle, its recurring dates help splits two forms: "every month" counts from the date on the task, and "every! month" counts from the day you tick it off.

Reminders differ more. In Things you set a time on a to-do and it reminds you then, and its help says reminders attach to start dates, not deadlines. In Todoist, a task with a date and a time gets an automatic reminder as a phone or desktop notification. Extra custom reminders, such as one an hour early, come with Pro.

Forget things unless your phone buzzes? Try an app built for reminders alone.

Want one list that reads dates the way you'd say them? In ActivityTracker you type "pick up the dry cleaning tomorrow 3pm" or "every 2 weeks" and it reads the day, the time and the repeat, and a task with a time rings at that time by default.

See how tasks work

Calendars, email and other apps

Things only talks to Apple Calendar. Its calendar help shows your events beside your to-dos in Today and Upcoming. It can't connect to Google or Outlook directly, so you sync those into Apple Calendar first. Events don't sync between devices, so you switch the feature on for each one, and Things can't send a to-do to your calendar.

Todoist connects to Google Calendar or Outlook on every plan. Your events appear in Today and Upcoming, and tasks you time-block sync back to the calendar. You connect one provider at a time. The calendar layout, where you drag tasks into time slots, is on Pro and Business. If your days run on blocks of time, our guide to the best time blocking app goes further.

For email, Things has Mail to Things: forward a message to your Things Cloud address and it lands as a to-do in your Inbox, with a link back to the original. Todoist has browser extensions and email add-ons, and its pricing page counts 90+ integrations on every plan.

Things doesn't share lists. It has no real-time sharing of to-dos or lists, so you can't invite your partner to the shopping list or hand a to-do to a flatmate.

Todoist does, free. Up to 5 people can join one of your personal projects, leave comments and take assigned tasks, on every plan. A comment takes a file of up to 5 MB on Beginner and 100 MB on Pro, so the photo of the broken tap goes right on the task. Things accepts plain text only, and a file you drop into a to-do turns into a link to its spot on your Mac.

Running a team? Todoist Business gives you a shared workspace for US$8 per person a month, billed yearly. Shopping for the shared list first? Start with task apps built for teams.

Moving from Todoist to Things, or back

Todoist to Things is a built-in import. Things' Todoist importer signs in to your Todoist account through Todoist's public API and copies your data, so nothing in Todoist changes. It needs iOS 17.4 or macOS 14.4. Here's what changes on the way across:

Projects and boards become projects, and tasks become to-dos.
Due dates become start dates, and labels become tags.
Comments are added to each to-do's notes.
Repeating tasks arrive without their schedule, so you set each repeat again.
Priorities, favourites, location reminders and image attachments stay behind.
Sub-tasks are flattened, because Things doesn't nest to-dos.

Watch the dates. A bill that was due Friday in Todoist now hides until Friday in Things, so give anything with a hard stop a deadline as well.

Things to Todoist is manual. Things' import guide only covers getting into Things, from Reminders, Todoist and OmniFocus, so you copy and paste:

Tick off or delete what you won't do, so you move a short list.
On a Mac, select one project's to-dos in Things and copy them with Cmd C.
Open Todoist's quick add and paste. Todoist's help says it asks "Add X tasks?" and makes one task per line.
Open the first few tasks and check what came across.
Type each repeat again, such as "every Tuesday at 7pm".
For a long list, fill in Todoist's CSV template and import it into a project.

Try both for one week

Things gives you a 15-day trial on the Mac only, counted from first launch, with every feature, and your to-dos stay if you buy. Cultured Code can't offer iPhone or iPad trials, because those apps have no in-app purchases. Todoist's Beginner plan costs nothing. Here's a fair test:

Day one: install the Things trial on your Mac and Todoist on every device you use. Put the same 15 tasks in both.
Day two: date five of them for later in the week and see which Today list stays shorter.
Day three: add three tasks on your phone while you're out. Todoist works on any phone. Things on an iPhone means buying the US$9.99 app first.
Day four: set two repeats, one on a fixed day and one counted from completion.
Day seven: count which app you opened without thinking, and keep that one.

A short weekly reflection on day seven keeps the count honest: which list did you trust?

Made-up example: On a Monday in October, Hana counts 60 open tasks in Todoist Beginner, most of them for the wedding stationery she sells from her spare room.

She works on a MacBook and an iPhone, so that evening she installs the Things trial and runs its Todoist importer. Her projects and labels arrive, but her six repeating chores lose their schedules and she sets them again.

Three days in, the mornings feel lighter, because orders due next week wait in Upcoming and Today holds eight to-dos instead of thirty.

The snag is the cleaning rota she splits with her flatmate, who has an Android phone. Things can't share a list or run on Android.

She buys Things for the Mac at US$49.99 and the iPhone at US$9.99, US$59.98 in all, and keeps one free Todoist project for the rota with her flatmate in it. Over three years she pays US$59.98, against US$180 for Todoist Pro.