Microsoft To Do vs Todoist in 2026: which should you use?

Todoist is the better task manager. Microsoft To Do is the better free one.

Both are true at once, which is what makes the choice harder than it looks. The split runs along the paid line: everything To Do does costs nothing, while most of the structure Todoist is loved for sits behind Pro.

Microsoft To Do vs Todoist at a glance

The scorecard below rates each app on the jobs people actually use a task manager for.

Both apps are fast, sync everywhere, and handle a basic checklist well.

The differences show up the moment your needs grow past "remember to buy milk."

Price: free vs. freemium

Microsoft To Do is completely free. There is no paid tier, and nothing is held back. If you're new to it, our Microsoft To Do guide covers lists, My Day and flagged emails.

Everything it does comes with a personal Microsoft account or a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Todoist is freemium, and the three tiers separate cleanly:

• Beginner (free): 5 active personal projects, 3 filter views, 7 days of activity history, 5 MB file uploads. No deadlines and no calendar layout.
• Pro, $5 per user per month billed yearly ($60 a year) or $7 monthly: raises the ceilings to 300 projects and 150 filter views with full history, and adds the scheduling extras.
• Business, $8 per user per month billed yearly ($96 per user a year) or $10 monthly.

Both paid rates took effect on 10 Dec 2025.

If price is the only thing that matters, To Do wins outright.

Task capture and natural language

Todoist still captures faster, but the gap has narrowed.

Microsoft To Do reads dates, times, and repeat patterns straight out of the task title as you type. Write "submit invoice friday 5pm" and the task arrives with a due date and a reminder already attached.

Three limits worth knowing:

• Windows app from version 2.66 onward, and iOS
• English only on Windows
• It stops working once you are editing an existing task in the details view

What To Do cannot read is structure. Todoist's parser takes the project, the label, the priority, and the assignee from the same line, so a task lands where it belongs instead of waiting to be sorted.

Todoist has also pushed capture past typing:

• Ramble turns spoken thoughts into structured tasks in more than 40 languages: 10 sessions a month on the free plan, unlimited on Pro and Business.
• Todoist Assist builds filters from plain language and turns forwarded emails into tasks. Pro and Business only.

Organization: projects, labels, and views

To Do organizes work into lists, which you can collect into groups, plus steps inside each task. That is the whole hierarchy: no filters, one way to view a list. For labels you get hashtags typed into a task's title and Outlook's color categories, searchable across lists but far lighter than Todoist's labels.

What it adds instead is a planning ritual. My Day is a fresh list you rebuild each morning, and To Do suggests items from your overdue and upcoming tasks so you pick the handful worth doing today.

Todoist gives you projects, sections, labels, and filters, plus four priority levels. The same task can belong to a project and carry tags like @home or @deep-work that you filter across every project at once.

You also get three views of any project, including a Kanban-style board for moving work through stages.

The list and board layouts are free. The calendar layout is the one that costs: it comes with Pro.

Reminders and recurring tasks

Repeating tasks are close to a draw.

To Do repeats daily, on weekdays, weekly, monthly, yearly, or on a custom pattern. Todoist takes the same instructions as plain text ("every 2nd Tuesday", "every weekday at 9am"), which our guide to Todoist recurring tasks walks through in detail.

Reminders are closer than the plan pages suggest. Both free plans will buzz you, so the difference is flexibility rather than access:

• Microsoft To Do: the Remind me control costs nothing and takes any time you name, whether or not the task has a due date.
• Free Todoist: give a task a date and a time and it adds one automatic reminder, fired by the lead time you set in your reminder settings.
• Todoist Pro: stack several custom reminders on one task, type them inline with the ! shortcut, and trigger a reminder by location instead of time.

So the free gap is not "no reminders". It is "one reminder, tied to when the task is due".

Collaboration and sharing

To Do lets you share a list, which is enough for a shared grocery list or a couple's errands.

Todoist goes further: you share whole projects, assign tasks to specific people, add comments, and attach files. That makes it workable for small teams, not just households.

Platforms and the Microsoft ecosystem

If your day runs through Microsoft 365, To Do has a real edge:

• Flagged Outlook emails become tasks
• Your items appear in the Teams Tasks experience next to Microsoft Planner
• The whole thing is free with your existing subscription

The flagged email trick is the feature people pick To Do for, so it is worth knowing where it stops:

• Only mailboxes Microsoft hosts work: Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, or a custom domain hosted by Microsoft
• You have to switch the Flagged email list on before anything appears in it
• Only your primary mailbox syncs. Shared mailboxes and shared folders do not

If your mail runs through Gmail instead, Google Tasks does the same job with its Add to Tasks button.

Todoist matches the broad platform coverage and adds Linux, which To Do skips. It offers Outlook and Gmail add-ins, but it sits beside the Microsoft stack rather than inside it.

Getting your tasks where you plan

This dimension often decides the question for people who plan their work somewhere other than a task app.

Neither Microsoft nor Notion offers a To Do connection, so To Do reaches Notion through a dedicated sync tool.

• Microsoft To Do, two-way: notes, due and start dates, the reminder, importance, categories, status, and the list all carry across. Steps arrive as read-only text, and since To Do has no subtasks or sections, there is no hierarchy to bring along.
• Todoist: an official Notion embed plus two-way sync tools that carry the full structure, projects, sections, labels, priorities, and subtasks included.

If you want the richest task data in Notion, Todoist still has the edge.

If To Do is the app you already use all day, the good news is that you do not have to switch apps to get your tasks into Notion.

If you are only ever going to use the free version

Most people comparing these two apps intend to spend nothing, and that changes the answer.

Free Microsoft To Do is the entire product:

• Lists, steps, due dates, and file attachments
• Reminders at a time you pick, and repeating tasks from daily through custom patterns
• Shared lists, My Day, and the Outlook and Teams connections

Free Todoist is a sample of the product:

• 5 active personal projects and 3 filter views
• 7 days of activity history and 5 MB file uploads
• List and board layouts, but no calendar layout and no deadlines
• One automatic reminder per task, tied to its due time; multiple custom and location reminders need Pro
• Ramble voice capture capped at 10 sessions a month, and no Todoist Assist

On a strict free-versus-free comparison, Microsoft To Do gives you more.

Todoist earns its place once you need labels and filters spanning projects, or a task app that connects to the rest of your stack.

At that point the fair comparison is To Do against Todoist Pro at $5 per user per month billed yearly, not against the free Beginner plan.

If you would rather survey the wider field first, our roundups of the best to-do list apps and the best planner apps cover the alternatives.

Which should you choose?

The right answer depends on how complex your work is and which ecosystem you already work in.

If Todoist is the side you are leaning toward, two closer comparisons are worth a look: Todoist vs. Google Tasks and TickTick vs. Todoist.

Connecting your tasks to your workspace

A task app is only half a system.

If you plan projects, keep meeting notes, and track everything else in Notion, a checklist on the side means switching windows and copying items by hand. The fix is to keep tasks where you do them and have them appear automatically in a Notion database.

Both apps can be wired in. Todoist brings the most structure with it.

2sync connects Todoist and Notion with true two-way sync. Add or complete a task in Todoist and it updates in Notion; edit it in Notion and the change flows back.

• Todoist: due dates, priorities, labels, sections, and subtasks map to Notion properties, and you can filter so only certain projects or labels sync.
• Microsoft To Do: title, notes, due and start dates, the reminder, importance, categories, status, and the list all flow both ways, and emails you flag in Outlook arrive in Notion as tasks.

Steps from To Do land as read-only text, one per line. You can sync several lists into one database or give each list its own.

Todoist tasks landing in a Notion database after a two-way sync, ready for board, table, or calendar views.

Setting it up takes a few minutes:

1. Pick your database. Our free Todoist Notion template is already structured to mirror Todoist tasks, so you can connect it and go. Other layouts work too: our pick of the best Notion to-do list templates covers boards, weekly planners, and GTD setups.
2. Connect the two apps and map your fields. How to sync Notion with Todoist walks through it step by step.
3. Check exactly what maps where on the Todoist Notion integration or Microsoft To Do Notion integration page.

To Do signs in with the same Microsoft account as Outlook Calendar, Outlook Mail, and Outlook Contacts, so meetings, important emails, and contacts can land in the same workspace as your tasks.

See how to sync Notion with Outlook Calendar if the calendar is the next piece you want in Notion.

Pleexy is the other tool people reach for to bridge Todoist and Notion; 2sync vs Pleexy compares the two on two-way sync and field mapping. If you are still weighing Todoist against Notion's own task features, Notion vs. Todoist covers that decision in depth.

Conclusion

Microsoft To Do and Todoist are built for different people.

Microsoft To Do wins if you want a free, focused daily planner and your work already runs through Outlook and Teams. It also wins if your budget for task software is zero, since nothing in it is reserved for a paid tier.

Todoist wins for almost everyone willing to pay. It captures tasks faster, organizes them with projects, labels, and filters, shows them in list, board, or calendar view, and scales from a personal list to small-team work without breaking.

The deciding factor for a lot of people is what happens outside the task app.

If you plan your life in Notion, both apps connect with two-way sync: Todoist brings its projects, labels, and subtasks across, while To Do keeps its importance, status, and reminders in step. Either way, your task list becomes part of the workspace you already use for everything else.

For a wider look at the field, compare the best to-do list apps, or read Google Keep vs. Google Tasks if you are leaning toward Google's tools instead.

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