Microsoft To Do vs Todoist: which wins?

Todoist is the better task manager for most people: it has projects, labels, filters, board and calendar views, and natural-language input that Microsoft To Do can't match. Microsoft To Do is the better pick if you work inside Microsoft 365 and want something clean, simple, and completely free. The honest version is that they aim at different users: To Do is a free daily planner wired into Outlook and Teams, while Todoist is a full productivity system you can grow into. This guide compares them feature by feature, including the question that often decides it: which of them actually gets your tasks into the workspace where you plan everything else.

Microsoft To Do vs Todoist at a glance

The scorecard below rates each app on the jobs people actually use a task manager for. Detailed breakdowns follow in the sections beneath it.

Bottom line: Todoist wins on features, flexibility, and how far you can take it. Microsoft To Do wins on price and on fit if your work already runs through Outlook and Teams. If you need a simple, free daily list and you work in Microsoft 365, choose To Do. If you manage anything more complex than a flat checklist, or you want a task app that connects cleanly to the rest of your tools, choose Todoist.

What is Microsoft To Do?

Microsoft To Do is a free task app built on the bones of Wunderlist, the beloved list app Microsoft acquired in 2015 and retired in 2020. It is designed to be simple: a clean place to keep daily lists, tied tightly into the Microsoft 365 world.

Its signature feature is My Day, a fresh list you rebuild each morning. To Do suggests items from your overdue and upcoming tasks, and you pick the handful worth doing today. Around that sit ordinary lists, steps (subtasks), due dates, reminders, recurring tasks, file attachments, and shared lists for a partner or small team.

The real draw is the Microsoft integration. Flagged emails in Outlook turn into To Do tasks automatically, your tasks surface in the Teams Tasks app alongside Planner, and everything syncs across Windows, web, iOS, Android, and Mac. What To Do leaves out is structure: there are no tags, no custom filters, no board view, and no way to group tasks by anything other than the list they sit in.

What is Todoist?

Todoist is a cross-platform task manager that has spent years building one of the most refined to-do experiences available. Where To Do is a daily list, Todoist is a system: somewhere you can run your whole life and work without it falling apart at scale.

The feature people fall for first is natural-language input. Type "Write agenda for Monday's meeting every week #Work +Paul" and Todoist parses the due date, the recurrence, the project, and the assignee as you type. From there you get projects and sub-projects, sections, labels, filters, four priority levels, and three ways to look at the same tasks: list, board, and calendar. It also handles recurring tasks, reminders, comments, templates, and a light gamification layer called Karma.

Todoist runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web, with browser extensions and add-ins for Gmail, Outlook, and Slack. The free plan covers the basics (including reminders) but caps you at 5 personal projects, 3 filters, and one week of activity history; Pro lifts those to 300 projects and 150 filters with full history. For a closer look at how it stacks up against other tools, see Todoist vs. Google Tasks and TickTick vs. Todoist.

Key differences

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 with no paid tier. Everything it does, you get at no cost with a personal Microsoft account or a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Todoist uses a freemium model. The free plan is genuinely usable for one person with a handful of projects, but power users hit the ceilings (5 projects, 3 filters, one week of history). Pro costs $5 per month billed annually ($60 per year, or $7 per month billed monthly) and raises the limits dramatically; Business adds team features at $8 per user per month billed annually ($10 billed monthly). If price is the only thing that matters, To Do wins outright.

Task capture and natural language

This is Todoist's clearest advantage. Its natural-language parser lets you capture a fully structured task in one line, dates, recurrence, projects, labels, and priority included, without touching a menu. Over months of daily use that speed compounds.

Microsoft To Do has a plain quick-add box. You type the task, then set the due date, reminder, and repeat through separate controls. It is perfectly fine for simple items, but it never gets out of your way the way Todoist's parser does.

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. There are no tags, no filters, and one way to view a list.

Todoist gives you projects, sections, labels, and filters, so 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.

Reminders and recurring tasks

Both apps do reminders and repeating tasks, but Todoist is more flexible. You set a recurring task in plain English ("every 2nd Tuesday", "every weekday at 9am"), and Todoist handles the rest. Microsoft To Do covers the common patterns (daily, weekly, monthly, custom) but you build them through dropdowns rather than typing.

Collaboration and sharing

To Do lets you share a list with other people, 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, which 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, and the whole thing is free with your existing subscription. Todoist matches the broad platform coverage (and adds Linux, which To Do skips) and 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. Microsoft To Do has no official Notion connection; you are limited to third-party automation, and most of those run one direction only. Todoist has an official Notion embed and a healthy set of sync tools, including true two-way options. If your tasks need to show up in Notion alongside your notes, projects, and docs, Todoist is the far easier app to wire in, which is what the next section is about.

Which should you choose?

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

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 separate checklist on the side means you are constantly switching windows and copying items by hand. The fix is to keep your tasks where you do them and have them appear, automatically, in a Notion database next to the rest of your work.

This is where Todoist pulls ahead in a way that matters. To keep the two in step without retyping anything, 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 to Todoist. It maps Todoist fields to Notion properties, including due dates, priorities, labels, sections, and subtasks, and you can filter so only certain projects or labels sync.

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

If you want a head start, our free Todoist Notion template gives you a database that is already structured to mirror your Todoist tasks, so you can connect it and go.

Setting it up takes a few minutes: walk through how to sync Notion with Todoist for the step-by-step, or see the Todoist Notion integration page for exactly what each field maps to. If you are still weighing Todoist against Notion's own task features, Notion vs. Todoist covers that decision in depth.

What if you lean toward Microsoft To Do? To Do itself does not connect to Notion through 2sync, but if you work in Microsoft 365 the rest of your stack does: 2sync syncs your Outlook Calendar, Outlook Mail, and Outlook Contacts into Notion, so your meetings, important emails, and contacts land in the same workspace. See how to sync Notion with Outlook Calendar if that is the part of your day you most want in Notion.

Conclusion

Microsoft To Do and Todoist are built for different people. Microsoft To Do is the better choice if you want a free, focused daily planner and your work already runs through Outlook and Teams. Todoist is the better choice for almost everyone else: 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, Todoist is the one that connects cleanly, and a two-way sync turns your task list into part of the same 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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