Todoist vs Things vs TickTick vs goals.: an honest 2026 comparison

There are, by my last count, more than two hundred todo apps in the iOS App Store. Most of them are bad. Four of them are genuinely worth considering — worth a look even if you already have one — and that's what this post is about.

I wrote this because we just finished building goals. and the honest question from every beta tester is "but how is this actually different from Todoist?" Fair question. Here's the honest answer, with the other two best-in-class apps thrown in for fair comparison.

One ground rule: no affiliate links, no tier lists, no "#1 best app of 2026" bullshit. I use all four of these apps and I'll tell you what I actually like and dislike about each one.

At a glance

Now the detail.

Todoist

What it's good at: Todoist is the Honda Civic of todo apps — it's been around forever, it's reliable, it runs on every platform, and the natural-language parser is still the best in the category for anything date-related. Type "buy flowers every Friday at 5pm" and it just works. The project + section + label system is powerful if you like to organize. There's a real API, real integrations, and real keyboard shortcuts.

What it's not good at: Todoist treats productivity as a logging exercise. You capture a task, you assign it labels, you watch your karma score go up, and at the end of the week you get... more tasks. The "goals" feature they added a few years back is a counter of how many tasks you finish per day or week — which is exactly the completion-porn problem I wrote about in Why your todo list is broken. It rewards motion without rewarding direction.

Pick Todoist if: you've already built up a system in it and switching would cost more than the marginal gains, you need cross-platform support including Windows and Linux, or you care deeply about the natural-language date parser. Keep using it.

Things 3

What it's good at: Aesthetics. Things is the most beautiful todo app on any platform. The typography, animations, and attention to detail are genuinely unmatched — using Things feels like using an app designed by someone who actually cared. The Areas / Projects / Today / Upcoming hierarchy is a thoughtful, mature model of how projects evolve over time. It's iOS/Mac only and proudly local-first, which means your data is yours and sync is fast.

What it's not good at: Things has essentially no opinion about why you're doing your tasks. Like Todoist, it's a capture-and-display system. There's no goal layer, no weekly review beyond whatever you build yourself, no AI, and almost no integrations. Cultured Code's development pace is famously slow — Things 3 shipped in 2017 and Things 4 still isn't out. If you're paying for it today, you're paying for an app that's been stable for almost a decade.

Pick Things if: you care more about the feel of the app than the feature list, you're comfortable doing weekly reviews by hand, and you're all-in on Apple's ecosystem. It's still the nicest pure todo app on iOS.

TickTick

What it's good at: TickTick tries to be everything. Tasks, calendar, habit tracker, Pomodoro timer, notes, even a meditation timer — all in one app. The calendar view is genuinely well-done and the habit tracker is the only reason a lot of people use the app. The free tier is generous, and the $3/month Premium is the cheapest of the serious options. Cross-platform including Android, Windows, and the web.

What it's not good at: The "everything app" approach means nothing inside TickTick is best-in-class. The todo system isn't as tight as Todoist or Things. The habit tracker is good but feels like a bolt-on. The UI is functional but dense — it has the vibe of an app designed by a committee that couldn't agree on what to leave out. And, again, no goal layer and no weekly review beyond the dashboards.

Pick TickTick if: you specifically want a habit tracker and a todo list in the same app, you're on Android or Windows, or you want the cheapest full-featured option.

goals.

Full disclosure: this is my app. I'll tell you what it's good at and what it isn't, and you can weight my opinion accordingly.

What it's good at: goals. is the first iOS todo list where every task can be tied to an overarching goal, and where the app actually uses that connection. When you finish the week, Claude reads through your completed todos, your calendar, your voice reflections, and optionally your spending and health data, and writes you a one-paragraph briefing with a single alignment score. Not a dashboard — a short honest note. That weekly briefing is the product.

Voice capture is the other headline feature. Tap the mic on the Todos or Goals tab, say "I need to schedule a dentist, meal prep every Sunday, and my new goal is to run a half marathon by fall," and Claude sorts it into structured todos and goals — picks cadence, category, and linked goals automatically. It's the first time voice-to-task capture has actually felt delightful instead of gimmicky.

The optional signals (calendar, Apple Health, statement upload for spending) all feed into the weekly briefing without you having to think about them. They're opt-in and individually togglable.

What it's not good at: Apple only (iPhone + Mac). No Android, no web, no Windows. No sync to anything outside the app. If you need the cross-platform support that Todoist and TickTick offer, goals. will not work for you. It's also newer — it just launched on the App Store — so the quirks that decades of Todoist usage have sanded down are still in there somewhere. And because it leans on Claude for the weekly briefing and voice parsing, it needs a network connection for those specific operations. Core todo / goal management works offline, but voice capture and the weekly briefing don't.

Pick goals. if: you've been frustrated by the disconnect between your todo list and your actual goals, you want AI to do the weekly review work for you, you're on iOS, and you're willing to trade cross-platform support for a more opinionated experience.

So which one should I use?

Honest answer: the one that makes you feel good about opening it every morning.

If your current app is doing that, stay put. Tool-switching has a real cost and the marginal gains from jumping between mature apps are usually small.

If you're actively frustrated, here's a rough decision tree:

• If you love the look of Things and you're on iOS/Mac only → Things 3. Still the prettiest.
• If you need cross-platform sync and a rich filter system → Todoist. Still the most reliable.
• If you want a habit tracker bundled in and don't want to pay much → TickTick. Still the cheapest.
• If you want your todos to actually connect to your bigger goals, you want AI to handle the weekly review, and you're happy to talk to your app → goals. This is the thing we're trying to build.

If you pick goals. and it turns out to be wrong for you, Todoist and Things and TickTick will still be there. Nothing is permanent. The best todo app is the one you actually use.