Todoist Pro is no longer a simple case of paying to make reminders work. As of August 2026, the free Beginner plan already gives you automatic reminders for tasks with a date and time, recurring dates, list and board layouts, and Google or Outlook Calendar integration.

That changes the question. The $60 annual fee is mainly about turning Todoist from a good task list into a more flexible planning system.

What Pro costs, and what it actually adds

Todoist Pro costs $7 per month or $60 per year, which works out to $5 per month when billed annually. There is a seven-day Pro trial, but it rolls into a paid subscription automatically unless you cancel. There is no one-time license, and one Pro subscription covers one Todoist account rather than a family.

The free plan allows five active personal projects, three custom filters, one week of activity history, and automatic reminders. Pro raises those limits to 300 projects, 150 filters, and full activity history. It also adds custom time-based, location-based, and recurring reminders.

For planning, the meaningful upgrades are the calendar layout, task durations, time blocking, and separate deadlines. Free users can connect a calendar, see events next to tasks, and sync scheduled tasks out to Google or Outlook Calendar. Paying adds the visual calendar workspace inside Todoist, where tasks can be arranged as blocks of time.

Pro also creates automatic backups on active days. Todoist keeps up to 21 of them, and they can be downloaded as project CSV files from the web or desktop apps.

The apps themselves are unusually easy to reach from almost anywhere. Todoist supports Linux, macOS, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch, Wear OS, browser extensions, and email add-ons. A Pro subscription follows the account across those devices.

The people who are most likely to get $60 of value

Pro makes the strongest case for someone who already trusts Todoist with several areas of life and reviews that system regularly.

If you keep separate projects for work, household maintenance, finances, health, travel, and longer-term goals, the five-project ceiling can become annoying quickly. Likewise, 150 filters are useful when your system depends on views such as urgent errands, tasks that need a computer, or work items due this week. They are wasted capacity if you mostly live in Today and Upcoming.

The calendar upgrade is valuable when time blocking is a real habit, not an aspirational one. Durations and a visual week make it easier to notice that six hours of tasks will not fit around five hours of meetings. Custom reminders also matter for tasks that need an alert before the due time, repeat at a specific interval, or should trigger at a location.

In other words, Pro is paying for planning control and capacity. It is not paying for basic task capture.

Why staying free is a sensible choice

Five projects can still cover a lot if you use broad buckets, sections, labels, and priorities instead of creating a new project for every small goal. The free plan already supports recurring dates, automatic reminders for timed tasks, and calendar connection. For a personal list centered on Today, groceries, errands, and a few routines, that is a complete product rather than a crippled demo.

The paid calendar also has real boundaries. Todoist can connect only one Google or Outlook Calendar account at a time. Calendar events are read-only inside Todoist and appear only in Today and Upcoming. There are also exceptions in how complex recurring tasks sync. Recent r/todoist discussions repeatedly raised the limited calendar control and the higher subscription price as reasons to reconsider Pro, and Todoist's own documentation confirms the underlying calendar limits.

Portability is decent, but not perfect. You can export a project as CSV, but completed tasks are omitted, and the start date of a recurring task is not preserved. Automatic backups also leave out completed tasks and archived projects. That is better than having no exit route, but it is not a clean, complete archive of everything you have ever done.

Cancellation does not delete your task data. Paid access continues to the end of the billing period, then the account returns to Beginner. If you are over the free limits, projects above the limit become view-only, and you cannot choose which projects Todoist restricts. Paid attributes such as durations, custom reminders, and deadlines remain in the data, but you cannot add or edit them after the downgrade. Monthly payments are non-refundable, while yearly purchases or renewals have a 30-day refund window.

Alternatives worth trying before paying

Microsoft To Do is the obvious free cross-platform test, especially if Outlook integration matters. It supports reminders and syncs across the web, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android with a personal Microsoft account.

Apple Reminders is already capable enough for many Apple-only households. It has recurring and location reminders, tags, Smart Lists, shared lists, and task visibility inside Apple's Calendar app. Its weakness is ecosystem reach if Windows or Android is part of the setup.

TickTick Premium is the closer paid comparison for someone who wants more features in one app. At the time of research, TickTick advertised a limited-time annual price of $35.99 and bundled full calendar features with a Pomodoro timer and progress tools. Android users who prioritize open source should also look at Tasks.org, whose free tier includes unlimited tasks, lists, tags, recurring notifications, and location reminders.

Verdict

Todoist Pro is worth it for a serious personal system when at least two of these are already true: five projects are too restrictive, custom filters drive weekly planning, time blocking happens inside Todoist, or custom reminders prevent meaningful mistakes. At $60 per year, the app needs to be a daily control center, not just a nicer shopping list.

Everyone else should stay on Beginner until a specific limit causes recurring friction. The free plan now handles the basics well enough that paying in anticipation of becoming more organized is the weakest reason to upgrade.