Best TickTick Alternatives in 2026

Why consider TickTick alternatives?

TickTick is one of the most popular to-do list apps going, and most people who try it end up liking it. But it isn't the right fit for everyone. Three reasons keep coming up when people start hunting for an alternative.

What pushes people to look elsewhere

Be honest with yourself before jumping ship. TickTick is a great app, and arguably the best-value to-do list app on the market once you add up everything bundled into the yearly premium. Don't leave just for the sake of it. But if one of those three reasons is a real dealbreaker for you, the picks below are where to start.

A more professional take on TickTick

Todoist is probably the best alternative to TickTick overall. The easiest way to describe it: a professional version of TickTick. No playful themes, no theme details, none of the feature overload. It just does the core things incredibly well at a reliable rate, and it runs on about as wide a range of devices as TickTick does. For a lot of people leaving TickTick, this is the safe, sensible upgrade.

Built for teams and structure

This is a big reason people make the move. If you want to add a few more people in a team setting, with shared projects and more structure around who does what, Todoist handles it far better than TickTick. Assignments, permissions, and project organisation all feel more grown-up. Solo users still get a lot out of it, but the team side is where Todoist quietly pulls ahead.

Ramble, filters, and the polish

Todoist also has features TickTick doesn't. The newer Ramble feature lets you just talk and get things out of your head, then turns that brain-dump into tasks. In a world of vibe organisation, that lands really well for some people. The custom filters and overall structure feel more fine-tuned too. It's hard to put a finger on exactly why, but the whole app feels more polished in its design and feel.

On more devices, and wired into your AI

The device range is wide, right down to Wear OS on your wrist. More interesting lately: Todoist is deeply integrated with AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT, so you can add and manage tasks straight from a chat. If you already live in those tools, interfacing with your task list that way is a real pull, and TickTick can't match it yet.

What you give up, and the price

Honest tradeoffs to wrap up. Todoist won't give you the formalised habit tracking TickTick bakes in, and there's no Pomodoro timer for focus sessions. It does have calendar abilities, and it integrates better with Google Calendar than TickTick does. On price, Todoist Pro is around $4/month ($48/year) against TickTick's roughly $3/month ($35.99/year), so you're paying about $12 a year more. Small on paper, but for some people that gap matters. Todoist is also a regular pick in our GTD task management apps roundup. Our Todoist vs TickTick comparison goes deeper on the side-by-side, and the full Todoist alternatives guide covers more options.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick

A serious step up from TickTick

Akiflow is much more of a step up from TickTick. Think of it like going from a Hyundai to a Mazda sports car: similar in nature, but a lot faster and more powerful. It doesn't do habit tracking or a Pomodoro timer. It's far more of an orchestration tool than a straight task manager, and that framing matters before you look at anything else.

It orchestrates tasks from everywhere

This is the real difference. TickTick is about the tasks you add into TickTick. Akiflow is about the tasks that already live in your other apps. It pulls them in from Asana, Notion, ClickUp, Trello, Gmail, and many more, all the work you pick up across the day, into one place. It's sort of a universal inbox. It also connects to your calendar, working with Google Calendar as well as Outlook and Microsoft.

Who actually needs this

Picture someone working across lots of teams, maybe client-facing, maybe just juggling very different projects. You might use Todoist for personal life, ClickUp for work, and Asana for a charity project on the side. Akiflow lets you plan all of those tasks in one view instead of jumping between three apps to work out what's next. If that's your day, this is where it earns its keep.

Rituals, time-blocking, and the Aki assistant

There's a guided planning experience called rituals that walks you through setting up your day. You time-block tasks straight onto your calendar, and there's an AI assistant built in, called Aki, that helps plan your workload. You can even send out scheduling links so other people can book time in your calendar, something TickTick doesn't do at all.

The price is the big caveat

Here's the thing to be ready for: it's much more expensive. Not the ~$36 a year that TickTick costs. Akiflow is $19 a month, though you can get a discount on the annual plan through our Akiflow link. The gap is still big. The only reason to make this jump is if you want a dramatic upgrade: going from a lightweight, student-style task app all the way to a full professional system that orchestrates task management across multiple apps feeding into one day. For that person, it's worth every penny. For everyone else, it's overkill. Our Akiflow vs TickTick comparison and the wider Akiflow alternatives roundup go deeper if you're weighing it up.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick

The ultimate TickTick swap for Apple minimalists

Things 3 is probably the ultimate TickTick alternative if you manage personal projects and tasks but want a totally minimal, cleaner interface, and you want to drop the annual subscription. It's a reliable rock in the productivity space, a mainstay in our best Mac productivity apps, and it still holds up today for how well it's built.

Pay once instead of forever

This is the headline reason people switch. TickTick is a subscription. Things 3 is pay-once, per device. If you have an iPhone and a Mac, that's $49.99 on Mac and $9.99 on iPhone, so you're shelling out just over a single year of TickTick, but you own it for life. Stick with it long term and it pays off as a really good, valuable investment.

Beautiful, but pared back

Things 3 is really, really nice, but it doesn't come with all the bells and whistles TickTick does. You get the core stuff done well: tasks, subtasks, and some light calendar integration with Apple Calendar. What you won't get is the extensive functionality TickTick packs in. It's arguably the most stunning, minimal task app on iOS, and it feels more fluid on mobile than TickTick does, despite TickTick's strong ratings.

Apple only, and no free plan

A couple of things to know. It's iOS and Mac only, not Android, and it's built for the Apple lover, working across iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch too. There's no free plan, just a 14-day free trial, after which you're locked out until you buy the licence. Sync across your devices runs through Things Cloud.

Who it's for, and what you lose

We recommend it for TickTick switchers who mainly want to cut ongoing costs and design a simpler, more minimal task setup that leans on-device. The trade-offs are clear: no Pomodoro timer, no habit tracking, and no extensive calendar functionality or Google Calendar integration. If those matter to you, this isn't the one.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick

Tasks and notes, side by side

Superlist is a bit of a strange one, in a good way. It's free for up to 5 people, so it often gets a nod as a shared to-do app for small teams. The premise is managing your tasks and taking notes right alongside them. It comes from real design pedigree, and it shows the moment you open it.

Collaborative lists in real time

You create lists that other people can be invited into and edit in real time. They behave like a hybrid of notes and tasks, which makes them handy for things like meeting agendas. Where TickTick lets you share a list, Superlist is built for actually working on it together.

The AI note taker and list generation

There's an AI note taker that can join your meeting and capture it for you. Other AI features help you build lists from scratch, so if you've got an idea for a trip, it'll generate the list for you. It's a different flavour of AI to TickTick's, aimed at creating and capturing rather than scheduling.

Design and the team/personal toggle

It's just incredibly well designed and looks fantastic. The standout for daily use is the toggle between your team tasks and your personal tasks. You can zoom into your own focus, your team's focus, or blur the two together. For people running work and personal life out of one app, that split is really nicely done.

How it differs from TickTick

This is a very different tool to TickTick. There's no habit tracking and no extensive calendar functionality. It's much more about collaboration and task management as a whole, which makes it strong for getting team members on board, something TickTick doesn't really do. If you're solo and lean on habits and the calendar, TickTick still fits better.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick

The pick if you can't give up habit tracking

Griply is probably the closest thing to TickTick if you can't give up the habit tracking and you want it to stay a fundamental part of how you manage tasks. The difference is that it goes a step further. Griply is almost a full life management system rather than just a task app.

Goals with vision and systems

Some apps take goal planning to an extreme, like Timestripe planning decades of your life out. Griply doesn't go that far. What it does is let you set goals, attach a document to each one (some people treat these as mood boards or vision statements), then add habits to those goals as the systems that get you there. Alongside all of that, you still add tasks, projects, and the usual bits you'd manage in TickTick.

Planning towards something, not just ticking boxes

This is the nice part. In TickTick, habits sit on their own and you're left wondering whether they add up to anything. In Griply, the goals give you the target, so you're planning towards something more objectively. Each habit and task has a reason it exists.

Metric tracking, and the apps

There's a neat metric tracker too. Say your target weight is 92kg, you keep it updated and Griply shows it back as a statistical breakdown over time, which is really nicely done. On platforms, the iOS app is solid, the web and desktop versions are good, and an Android app is on the way. No Android yet might be a dealbreaker for some, but it's good to know it's coming.

Value, premium, and the discount

The overall experience is really nice, and a bit like TickTick it feels like one of the best value-for-money apps going. It gets high ratings from people who want something secure and easy to use. The real power lives in the premium, so be aware of that, though it doesn't cost much more than TickTick's. You can use Tool Finder to get a healthy discount on your first year through our Griply link.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick

In the Akiflow and Motion league

Sunsama sits alongside Akiflow and Motion on this list, and like those two it's a much more extensive application than TickTick. It's less a task app and more a planning tool, built to help you decide what actually deserves your attention each day.

Pulls your tasks together

Like Akiflow, Sunsama brings tasks together from multiple apps. If you've got work in Trello, Notion, or TickTick, you can pull it all into Sunsama and plan from one place. You stop hopping between tools just to work out what's next.

The work-life balance pick

If any app on this list is the work-life balance one, it's this. Sunsama walks you through a guided daily planning flow that helps you orchestrate what to focus on. For a lot of people that's a big upgrade from TickTick, where you're left to organise everything yourself.

Planning that's second to none

This is probably the best all-round planner on the whole list. Akiflow does a great job with rituals, its own guided planning feature, but Sunsama's planning experience is second to none. People are drawn to it for a rare combination: stunning design, the orchestration of pulling everything into one place, and that feeling of finally taking your task management seriously. If you want to take your work seriously, this is the one.

Built to reduce burnout

What's really nice is how holistic it feels. The whole app is built around reducing burnout, because you focus on the high-level objectives rather than just a pile of tasks to tick off. It's also capacity-aware, adding up your day and nudging you when you've taken on too much, which TickTick never does.

Day planning, not life planning, and the price

Sunsama won't zoom out to the 30,000 to 50,000 foot life-planning view that Griply reaches for. What it does brilliantly is give you a much better handle on your day. On price, it's gone up recently and sits well above TickTick, but as a long-standing, proven option it still holds good value for the right person. Our Sunsama alternatives roundup covers the closest options if it's not quite right.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick

The biggest upgrade on the list

Motion is the strangest option here, and probably the biggest upgrade from TickTick of the lot. It's also expensive, so go in aware of that. At heart it's a task and calendar hub that uses AI to help you get things done, and it arguably goes further than even Akiflow or Sunsama. The people who get the most from it are moving from light, personal task management into letting AI do the planning for them.

AI that schedules your day

The core idea: you feed Motion your tasks, projects, and meetings, and it works out when each thing actually happens. It plans your week around your priorities and calendar, slots new work in, and reshuffles automatically when things move. It's less "here's a tidy list" and more "here's a week that's already planned for you."

AI agents that do the work

The newer angle is agents. Motion's AI can run projects, take meeting notes, pick up action items, draft follow-ups, and assign work, all with context of your tasks and calendar. TickTick has nothing close to this. It's the difference between a list you manage and an assistant that helps manage the work with you.

Where it leaves TickTick behind for teams

For teams of roughly 5-25 people, the gap gets wide. Motion has real project management: dependencies, deadline-aware scheduling, per-person capacity views, and automatic load balancing when someone gets buried. TickTick's collaboration is lighter and built for personal use first. Motion looks like a proper project management tool with AI wired through it.

The price and the two-week test

Motion runs around $34/month for individuals, with team plans near $19 per user. Against TickTick's ~$3/month, you're paying many times more. The aggressive auto-scheduling also takes getting used to, since it reshuffles your day when things shift. Give it two weeks: that's usually enough to know if the AI clicks for you. If it doesn't, our Motion alternatives roundup covers the next options.

Pros & Cons vs TickTick

Pros vs TickTick

Cons vs TickTick