Things 3 vs Todoist vs TickTick — the 3-gap test

Switching task managers costs you twice — once exporting your old system, once retraining your thumbs. Before you drop $36 a year on Todoist or $14 once on Things, you want to know where each app quietly fails the workflows you actually run. I've used all three as my daily driver for stretches of at least six weeks each since 2023. The marketing pages won't tell you that Things has no recurring-task completion history, or that TickTick's free tier silently caps you at nine lists. This is the side-by-side that does.

Tested on iPhone 15 Pro (iOS 18.4), Pixel 8 (Android 15), Mac mini M4. Verified Things 3 v3.20.3, Todoist v25.5.0, TickTick v7.3 on May 24 2026.

Capture speed: the metric that actually predicts retention

Here's the uncomfortable truth about task managers. The one you keep is rarely the one with the best features — it's the one that gets a thought out of your head before the thought evaporates. Friction at capture is where systems die.

Things 3 owns this on Apple hardware. The Magic Plus button, the system-wide share sheet, and the Today widget all funnel into a Quick Entry box that opens in an instant. On Mac, the global shortcut (Ctrl+Space by default) with autofill pulls in the URL and selection from whatever app you're in. That autofill trick is genuinely the fastest "capture a webpage as a task" flow I've tested on any platform — and I've tried most of them.

Todoist counters with the smartest parser of the three. Type "Email Sarah every Monday at 9am p1 #work" and it shreds that into a due date, a recurrence, a priority flag, and a project without touching a menu. After years of muscle memory it beats any date picker on speed, and it's the single feature that keeps pulling me back to Todoist even when I've sworn off subscriptions.

TickTick sits in the middle. Its natural-language parsing works but is fussier about phrasing, and the quick-add bar buries the priority toggle one tap deeper than it needs to be. What it adds instead is capture variety: voice input that transcribes on-device, an "add from notification" flow, and email-to-task on the free tier — a feature Todoist gates behind Pro.

Where Siri fits in

All three accept tasks via Siri, just through different routes. Things and TickTick use the Reminders bridge or App Intents; Todoist registers Shortcuts actions you can voice-trigger. None is perfect. Siri capture into Things via App Intents — added in the iOS 17 cycle — is the cleanest of the bunch now, landing items directly in your Things Inbox without a Reminders round-trip. If you talk to your watch more than you type, that distinction matters.

Recurring tasks: where the apps genuinely diverge

This is the section most roundups skip, and it's where your real workflow lives or dies. There are two kinds of repeating tasks, and the apps treat them very differently.

The first kind is fixed-schedule: "pay rent on the 1st." Every app handles this. The second is the one that breaks systems — "water the plants every 3 days after I last did it." That's a floating or completion-based recurrence, the difference between a chore list that reflects reality and one that nags you about something you finished yesterday.

The standout gap: Things 3 does not keep a history of completed recurring instances. Check off a repeating task and it just rolls to the next date — no log proving you watered the plants the last 12 times. For habit-adjacent tracking that's a real hole. Todoist's Activity log and TickTick's calendar both preserve that trail.

Todoist's recurrence syntax is the most expressive once you learn it. every! 3 days means "3 days after completion," while every 3 days means fixed. The bang is doing heavy lifting, and the app never explains it in-product — you find it in the help docs or you don't find it at all. That's a documentation failure, but the capability is there and it's powerful.

Apple ecosystem integration: the deciding factor for many

If you live entirely inside Apple — iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch — this section may settle the whole debate. The integration depth is not equal.

Things 3 is the most Apple-native of the three by a wide margin, and it's not close. Handoff between devices, a genuinely good Apple Watch app, Stage Manager and external-display behavior on iPad that respects Apple's design language, widgets that look like they ship from Cupertino. No web app, no Windows app, no Android app. That's the trade: total platform lock-in for total platform polish.

Todoist is platform-agnostic by design. It runs everywhere — web, Windows, Android, Linux via browser — which is its entire value proposition if your life spans an iPhone and a Windows work laptop. The Apple Watch app is functional but plain. Calendar integration syncs two-way with Google Calendar and, since 2024, with a native iOS calendar layer. It does Apple well enough, but it was never built to feel like it.

TickTick lands between them with a genuine surprise: it has the best built-in calendar view of the three, subscribes to your iOS calendars, and offers two-way Apple/Google calendar sync on the paid tier. Its Watch app supports complications and quick-add. Cross-platform like Todoist, but with a calendar layer Todoist charges extra for.

The "pick one source of truth" discipline that keeps Garmin, Whoop, and Oura from duplicating data in Apple Health applies here too: pointing Siri, your Watch, and your widgets at one app prevents the split-brain mess where half your tasks live in Reminders and half in your "real" app.

Pricing: one-time vs subscription, and what you actually get

The cost structures are fundamentally different, which makes any flat "which is cheaper" answer misleading. Things charges once per platform. Todoist and TickTick are annual subscriptions. Over a five-year horizon the math flips depending on how many Apple devices you own.

Things' three separate purchases sting up front — buy all three Apple platforms and you're out roughly $80 once. No recurring bill, no feature held hostage behind a renewal, no price hike risk. Over five years that $80 beats $180 of Todoist Pro comfortably. The contrarian take: a single-platform iPhone user who'll never touch the iPad or Mac app pays $9.99 once for the most polished app on this list — and almost no roundup frames it that way, because it spoils the "subscription is the modern default" narrative.

Todoist's free tier is usable, but the 2023 change to a 5-active-project limit pinched a lot of casual users. Pro at $36/year unlocks reminders, the Activity log history, more projects, and email forwarding. TickTick's free tier is more generous on features but caps lists and habits; Premium at about $36/year unlocks the calendar view, more habit slots, and custom filters.

If you're auditing recurring app charges in general — and a task manager is exactly the kind of $3/month line item that hides in plain sight — the same method works here as in this walkthrough for killing forgotten subscriptions with YNAB categories. Tag the renewal, set a calendar nudge two weeks before it bills, decide deliberately.

Which subscription survives the cull

I run an annual "does this earn its renewal" pass on every subscription, the same way I'd weigh which music streaming service to actually keep. A task manager has to clear a high bar because the switching cost is real and the lock-in is your own data. If you're paying for Todoist or TickTick and haven't touched a Pro-only feature in 90 days, you're funding optionality you don't use. Downgrade and see if you miss it.

GTD and methodology fit

Power users rarely want a plain list — they want a system. Getting Things Done (GTD), with its Inbox, contexts, projects, and weekly review, is the framework these apps implicitly compete on.

Things 3 is the most GTD-shaped out of the box. It literally ships with an Inbox, Projects, Areas (think contexts/responsibilities), and the Today/Upcoming/Anytime/Someday horizons that map cleanly onto GTD's "next actions" and "someday-maybe." No setup required. For purist GTD practitioners Things is the path of least resistance — and the reason it has a near-cult following among that crowd.

Todoist flexes through labels, filters, and saved searches. You build your GTD system rather than receiving it — @context labels, a p1 priority scheme, filter queries like today & @home. More work to configure, more powerful once built. The filter engine is the most capable of the three.

TickTick supports GTD via folders, tags, and smart lists, and its Eisenhower matrix gives you an urgent/important quadrant view none of the others offer natively. It's the kitchen-sink option: more views, more methodology scaffolding, more visual clutter to tame.

• Pure GTD, minimal setup: Things 3
• Custom system, maximum flexibility: Todoist
• All-in-one productivity suite: TickTick

Pros and cons at a glance

Quick checklist: pick one and commit

1. Count your platforms. Apple-only across iPhone/iPad/Mac and you value polish? Lean Things. Any Windows or Android in the mix? Cross off Things now — its lack of a web app is a dealbreaker, not an inconvenience.
2. Stress-test recurring tasks. Write down your three weirdest repeating chores. If any are completion-based or need a done-history, Things' missing recurrence log may disqualify it.
3. Time your capture. Install the free trial (or Things' refund window), add 20 real tasks over three days, and notice which app you reach for without thinking. That's your answer.
4. Do the five-year cost math. One-time $80 (Things, all platforms) vs ~$180 (Todoist Pro, 5 yrs). Single iPhone? Things at $9.99 once wins outright.
5. Commit for 30 days before re-evaluating. Task systems feel wrong for two weeks regardless of quality. Don't app-hop inside the trial — switching costs compound.
6. Export a backup once you're in. Whichever you choose, learn its export format early so you're never hostage to it later.

Sources & further reading

• The New York Times / Wirecutter — Best To-Do List App — Independent long-term testing of Todoist, Things, TickTick and others, with a clear methodology and update cadence.
• Cultured Code (Things 3) official documentation — Authoritative reference for Things' recurrence behavior, Quick Entry, and the absence of a web client.
• Todoist Help Center — The canonical explainer for natural-language input and the every! completion-based recurrence syntax that the app never surfaces in-product.
• TickTick Help & Feature pages — Details on the habit tracker, Pomodoro timer, Eisenhower matrix, and free-tier list limits.
• The Sweet Setup / MacStories app reviews — Apple-ecosystem-focused coverage that weighs Watch apps, widgets, and Handoff integration in real day-to-day use.