Todoist review: the task manager that gets out of your way

Almost every to-do app promises to organise your life. Most end up demanding that you organise the app first. Todoist has spent over a decade resisting that trap: it is built to capture a task in seconds and then disappear until you need it. That focus has made it one of the most recommended task managers anywhere — but focus is also a limit. This review answers the practical question: what does Todoist do brilliantly, where does it fall short, and is it worth paying for now that prices have gone up?

What Todoist actually is

Todoist is a personal task manager, not a full project-management suite. At its core is a fast list of tasks you can group into projects, tag with labels, prioritise, and schedule. Its signature feature is natural-language input: type “email Sam every Monday at 9am” and Todoist parses the date, the recurrence and the time automatically. It runs everywhere — web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and browser extensions — and syncs near-instantly between them. Paid tiers add three task views (list, board and calendar), reminders, longer history and, on Business, shared team workspaces.

Who it’s for

The honest test is what you want a task app to do:

• If you’re an individual juggling personal and work tasks, Todoist is close to ideal — quick capture, reliable reminders and a system that scales from a shopping list to a year of goals without getting in your way.
• If you’re a small team coordinating shared to-dos and light projects, Business gives you shared projects, assignments and comments that are more than enough for straightforward work.
• If you need Gantt charts, time tracking, budgets or detailed reporting, Todoist will frustrate you. It is a to-do list, not a project-management platform, and it does not pretend otherwise.

Where it shines

The standout, echoed consistently across user reviews, is the balance of simplicity and speed. On G2, Todoist holds roughly 4.5 out of 5 across more than 800 reviews, and the praise clusters tightly: reviewers describe a clean, user-friendly interface that makes task management effortless across devices. The most-loved single feature is natural-language input — the ability to type a conversational line and have dates and priorities parse themselves — followed by seamless cross-device sync and a deep integration library covering Slack, Outlook and calendars. The through-line in the sentiment is that Todoist gets out of your way: it is powerful enough for advanced users yet immediately usable for beginners.

Where it frustrates

The complaints are just as consistent, and they trace back to the same design choice. Reviewers repeatedly flag limited features for complex workflows — no native Gantt or timeline view, thin reporting and analytics, and restricted customisation. Forbes Advisor is blunter still, scoring Todoist only 2.8 out of 5 and pointing to limited customisation, slow email-only support and a lack of advanced features — including no native Gantt charts. Users also note that calendar integration can be unreliable and that costs climb when scaling across a larger team. None of this makes Todoist bad; it makes it narrow. The gap between G2’s 4.5 and Forbes’s 2.8 is really a gap in expectations — a great to-do list judged as a project-management tool it never set out to be.

Is it worth paying for?

Here is the part most reviews skip. The free Beginner plan is genuinely usable — but it caps you at five active projects, five collaborators per project, three filters and one week of activity history. That five-project ceiling is the single most common reason people upgrade.

• Pro ($5/month billed yearly, $60/year; $7 monthly) lifts you to 300 projects, adds reminders, the calendar layout, longer history and AI-assisted task features. For anyone who runs their whole life through the app, it is comfortably worth it — though worth noting both Pro and Business rose in December 2025 (Pro from $48 to $60 a year), so it is no longer the bargain it once was.
• Business ($8/user/month billed yearly, $96/user/year; $10 monthly) adds shared team workspaces, assignments and admin controls. It is fair value for a small team that wants shared to-dos, but a poor fit if you need real project management.

The takeaway: most individuals get real value from Pro; most teams needing more than shared lists should budget for a heavier tool instead.

Todoist vs the alternatives

Short version: choose TickTick if you want habit-tracking and a Pomodoro timer bundled in for less money; Things 3 if you live entirely on Apple devices and prefer a one-off purchase to a subscription; Microsoft To Do if you want a capable list app for nothing. Todoist wins on raw capture speed, cross-platform consistency and integrations. For a heavier all-in-one workspace, a tool like Notion is a different category again.

FAQ

Is the free plan enough? For light use, often yes — but the five-project cap is tight if you separate work and personal areas, which is what pushes most people to Pro.

Did Todoist put its prices up? Yes. As of December 2025, Pro is $60/year (up from $48) and Business is $96/user/year. Existing subscribers move to the new rate on renewal.

Can it handle real project management? Not really. There are no native Gantt charts, timelines or time tracking. It is a task manager; treat it as one.

Does natural-language input actually work? It is the feature reviewers praise most — typing dates, times and recurrence in plain English is reliable and fast.

The bottom line — should you buy it?

If you want a fast, dependable place to capture and organise tasks across every device, Todoist is one of the best there is, and the free plan is a fair way to test it. Individuals should upgrade to Pro once the five-project cap bites — it is the version the app is designed around. Small teams can get honest value from Business for shared lists, but anyone who genuinely needs Gantt charts, reporting or time tracking should buy a project-management platform instead. Judged as what it is — a personal task manager — it earns a solid 8/10, held back only by thin reporting and a price that is no longer the outright bargain it used to be.

Sources: pricing verified against Todoist’s official pricing page and Todoist’s plans & billing FAQ; user sentiment and rating from G2’s Todoist reviews and Forbes Advisor’s Todoist review; competitor pricing cross-checked against this TickTick and Things pricing breakdown and Things’ official App Store pricing page.