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The Pro version of Todoist is priced at $5 per month for individuals and $8 per user per month for businesses, with both plans offering discounts when paid annually. For those who prefer the free version, it allows for five active projects, each with up to 300 tasks. In most cases, five projects should be more than sufficient, based on our experience. If you need more, you can always archive or delete completed projects to make space for new ones. The app’s organization features, such as sections and subtasks, help you manage your tasks efficiently without needing too many active projects. For instance, instead of creating separate projects for different personal tasks like vacation planning, house building, and investment tracking, you can consolidate them into one project and divide it into sections. This approach can help you use the app for free indefinitely.
One downside of Todoist is that reminders are a paid feature, which seems unnecessary since many other GTD apps offer this for free. If reminders are essential for your workflow, you might want to consider alternative apps that either offer reminders for free or require a one-time purchase. In our experience, reminders aren’t crucial for a to-do app. Our team generally relies on calendar apps for external meetings, and we routinely check our to-do lists throughout the day, so reminders aren’t missed. The app does have notifications to alert you if something is forgotten, which might be enough if you’re already using the app regularly.
For collaboration, the free version lets you work with up to five people per project, which is usually enough for planning with friends or family. The Pro version increases this limit to 25 people. However, Todoist isn’t the best app for collaboration because, as the project owner, you can’t control collaborator permissions, meaning someone could potentially remove you from your own project. This lack of control can be a significant drawback.
The free version provides a week of activity history, while the Pro version offers unlimited history. Although this might be useful for some, I’ve never found myself needing to refer back to old tasks, so this isn’t a feature worth paying for in my opinion.
Todoist also offers five free themes, with an additional eight available through the subscription. While themes might personalize your experience, paying a subscription solely for themes doesn’t add much value. For example, I always stick with the default themes in my apps, even when other options are available.
The file upload limit in the free version is 5 MB, which increases to 100 MB with the Pro version. However, given the availability of cloud services like Google Drive, it’s often more practical to upload larger files there and share a link within Todoist.
Filters, or smart lists, are another feature where the free version limits you to three, while the Pro version offers 150. But realistically, it’s unlikely that you’ll need that many filters unless you’re part of a team, and even then, Todoist isn’t the most suitable app for team projects. Additionally, filters in Todoist can be complicated, and there are other apps that offer simpler and more effective filtering options.
Auto backup is a valuable feature that Todoist includes, unlike many other to-do apps that only sync across devices. While it’s nice to see this feature, it still doesn’t justify the cost of a subscription for several reasons.
In conclusion, we haven’t found a compelling reason to pay for a Todoist subscription. Most of its paid features seem unnecessary or have reasonable alternatives. For individual users, you can likely get by without ever paying, and for teams, Todoist doesn’t function well as a business tool.
