Sunsama vs Todoist: Intentional Planning or Fast Task Capture in 2026?

Sunsama launched around 2019 with a specific philosophy: your productivity problem isn't capturing tasks, it's actually planning when you'll do them. Every morning (or whenever you start work), Sunsama walks you through a planning ritual. You review yesterday, pull in tasks from all your tools, drag them onto your calendar, assign time to each one, and set your intention for the day.

It's deliberate, almost meditative. The whole thing takes 10-15 minutes, which sounds like a lot until you realize how much time you waste being reactive without a plan.

Todoist has been the fast task capture king since 2007. The whole app is built around one idea: get that task out of your head and into your system as quickly as possible. Natural language processing means you just type 'Call dentist Thursday at 2pm' and Todoist parses it perfectly.

No planning ceremonies, no forced workflows, just a clean list of tasks organized by project and date. It's minimal by design, which some people love and others find too bare-bones.

The daily planning ritual is Sunsama's killer feature. Every session starts with a guided workflow: review yesterday's tasks (what got done, what didn't), check your calendar for today, pull in tasks from connected tools, and time-box everything. You literally drag tasks onto your calendar and assign them 30 minutes or an hour or whatever you think they'll take.

It forces you to be realistic about your day instead of pretending you'll somehow squeeze in 12 hours of work. When I started using this in December 2024, I realized I'd been consistently overcommitting by like 40%. The daily shutdown ritual at the end helps you wrap up properly and reflect on what actually happened.

Todoist doesn't have daily planning built in - you can create your own workflow with filters and views, but the app won't walk you through it. Some people prefer this freedom; they'll use the Today view and their own system. Others end up with a pile of tasks and no real plan for tackling them.

You can see what's due today, but Todoist won't make you think about when you'll actually do each task or how long it'll take. That flexibility is great if you're self-directed. Less great if you need guardrails.

Calendar integration is where Sunsama absolutely shines. Your calendar and tasks live in the same view, not two separate apps you're constantly switching between. When you plan your day, you're looking at your meetings alongside your tasks, dragging tasks into open slots. It connects to Google Calendar and Outlook bidirectionally - changes in either place sync immediately.

The focus timer shows your current task and counts down the time you allocated. This is probably the most polished calendar-task integration I've used. If time blocking is your thing, Sunsama gets it right.

Todoist's calendar integration is... fine. It connects to Google Calendar and shows your tasks there, but it's basically a one-way sync of due dates, not real time blocking. You won't see your tasks slotted into your calendar as work sessions.

There's no time boxing in Todoist - just due dates and times. Some people bolt on external calendar blocking (like blocking time in Google Calendar for Todoist tasks), but the app doesn't handle it natively. If you want a calendar-first workflow, Todoist isn't built for that.

Task capture in Sunsama is straightforward but not as fast as Todoist. You can quick-add tasks with a keyboard shortcut, but there's no fancy natural language parsing. You type the task name, then manually set the date, time estimate, and channel (their word for project).

It works fine, just slower than Todoist's approach. Honestly though, Sunsama isn't trying to be a task inbox - it's designed to pull tasks from other tools (Todoist, Asana, Trello, Gmail, Slack) during your planning ritual rather than being your primary capture tool.

Todoist is stupidly fast at capturing tasks. The natural language input is the best in the business - type 'meeting with Sarah about Q1 budget every Tuesday at 3pm starting Feb 5' and it parses the date, recurrence, project, and time perfectly. The quick add shortcut works globally on desktop (even outside the app), and the mobile share sheet lets you turn anything into a task instantly.

Offline mode means you can brain dump on a plane and everything syncs when you land. For pure task capture speed, nothing beats Todoist.

Sunsama's integration strategy is about pulling tasks into your daily plan, not pushing tasks out. It connects to Todoist, Asana, Trello, Jira, GitHub, Gmail, Slack, and a few others. During your planning ritual, you import tasks from these tools into Sunsama, assign them time, and work on them there.

When you complete a task in Sunsama, it marks it done in the original tool. It's a hub model - Sunsama sits in the middle and coordinates everything else. This works great if you use multiple project management tools but want one place to plan your actual day.

Todoist has 80+ integrations and plays nicely with everything. Email to task, Slack commands, Alexa voice add, IFTTT automations, Zapier connections - if you want to build Todoist into your existing workflow, you can.

The API is solid too, so there are tons of community-built integrations beyond the official ones. Unlike Sunsama's hub approach, Todoist is more of a node in your productivity network - it connects to everything but doesn't try to be the center of your workflow.

Sunsama is $20/month or $192/year (saves you $48). No free tier, just a 14-day trial. That's expensive for a task manager - you're paying five times what Todoist costs. The pricing makes sense if the daily planning ritual genuinely changes your work, but it's a tough sell if you're just trying it out.

I justified the cost because I was constantly feeling overwhelmed and reactive. The structured planning fixed that for me, so $20/month feels worth it. But I totally get why people balk at the price.

Todoist Free gives you 5 projects and basic features - plenty for personal use if you're organized. Pro is $4/month annually ($5 monthly) and unlocks reminders, labels, filters, themes, and unlimited projects. Business tier is $6/user/month with team features and admin controls.

The free tier is actually usable unlike some apps that cripple their free version to force upgrades. For most people, either free works fine or Pro at $4/month is reasonable. Way cheaper than Sunsama, though you're getting a different tool entirely.