Motion vs Reclaim.ai: Full Task Manager or Smart Calendar in 2026?

Motion launched in late 2020 as an all-in-one: task manager, project planner, and AI calendar scheduler. You create tasks with deadlines and priorities, and the AI schedules them around your meetings. It handles dependencies, team workload, everything.

The pitch is consolidation - replace Asana and Calendly with one AI-powered tool. Used it for 8 months managing a team, and yeah, having everything in one place was powerful. The cost and learning curve are real though.

Reclaim.ai (2020) has a narrower mission: defend your calendar intelligently. It auto-blocks focus time, reschedules habits when meetings conflict, and protects personal time. But it doesn't manage your tasks - you keep using Todoist or whatever.

Think of it as a calendar bodyguard, not a replacement for your task manager. I used it alongside Todoist for 6 months. The free tier was enough honestly.

Motion is a complete task manager. Projects, sub-tasks, dependencies, deadlines, priorities, time estimates. The AI schedules it all. If Task A blocks Task B, Motion knows.

If you're behind on a project, it adjusts the whole timeline. For teams, you see everyone's tasks and capacity. It's basically Asana plus smart scheduling. The catch? You have to move your tasks into Motion's system.

Reclaim.ai doesn't manage tasks at all. It integrates lightly with Google Tasks and Linear, but mainly it's about defending calendar time. You keep using your existing task manager.

Reclaim just makes sure you have focus blocks to actually work on those tasks. This is great if you like your current system and just want smarter calendar protection.

Motion's AI schedules specific tasks onto your calendar. 'Work on proposal' gets a 2-hour block Tuesday morning based on deadline and priority. When a meeting pops up, Motion reschedules the task. It's proactive scheduling of concrete work.

The AI learns when you're most productive and schedules hard tasks then. Very hands-on with your calendar.

Reclaim defends time without scheduling specific tasks. It creates flexible focus blocks that automatically move when meetings conflict. You have 'Deep Work' blocked 9-11am, a meeting gets scheduled at 10am, Reclaim moves Deep Work to the next available slot.

Same with habits - you want to exercise daily, Reclaim finds time even when your calendar changes. It's more about protection than prescription.

Motion shines for teams. Shared projects, workload visibility, AI meeting scheduling across multiple calendars. When scheduling a team meeting, Motion checks everyone's actual work (not just free slots) and suggests times that won't wreck anyone's focus.

For managers, seeing team capacity before adding work is huge. The team features justify the higher cost if you're coordinating people.

Reclaim has team features but they're simpler. You can see teammates' focus time to avoid scheduling over it. Slack status integration shows when you're in focus mode.

It's useful for respecting team boundaries, but you're not managing projects together. Fine for distributed teams who just need calendar awareness, not collaborative task management.

Motion is $34/month individual or $19/month annual. No free tier. You're paying for complete task+calendar+team management.

If it replaces Asana ($10) and Calendly ($10) and saves you scheduling time, the math works. If you just need calendar defense, it's overpriced for features you won't use.

Reclaim has a generous free tier - 20 hours per week of smart scheduling. Lite is $8/month, Starter is $12/month for unlimited. Way cheaper than Motion.

If you already have a task manager and just want calendar intelligence, Reclaim delivers that without breaking the bank. The free tier might honestly be enough for solo users.