A to-do list is the lowest-stakes software you own — until you’ve trusted it with the dentist appointment, the medication reminder, and the thing you promised a colleague you’d send by Friday. At that point “does the free version actually remind me, on every device, without a charge” stops being a small question.
The trouble with “best free to-do app” lists is that they blur three different things: apps that do the whole job free forever, apps with a real free tier that fences off the one feature you wanted, and apps where “free” is a countdown. We graded the popular picks on the only thing this page measures — what the free tier gives you — and held every app to the same line: can a normal person capture tasks, set reminders, handle recurring chores, and sync across their devices, indefinitely, without a card? Two of the four below clear it outright. The other two are genuinely free to start but move something useful behind a subscription, and we’ll name exactly what.
How to judge a “free” to-do app
The pattern worth borrowing from the long-running r/productivity “what task app do you actually use” threads is that the best to-do app is the one you’ll keep opening, not the one with the most features. A free tier you abandon because it nags or because the limit you hit feels punitive is worth nothing. So the test we’d apply is concrete: write out a normal week — a few projects, some tasks with specific-time reminders, a couple of recurring chores like “bins out every Tuesday” — and see where the free version stops you. The apps that are free in name only stop you somewhere obvious: the reminder won’t fire without Pro, the fifth project won’t save, the calendar view is greyed out. The genuinely free ones let you run the whole week.
One sampling note worth stating out loud, because the threads don’t: the people posting about task apps skew toward power users with elaborate systems. They’ll hit free-tier limits a casual user never touches, so “the free tier is too limited” from a productivity-subreddit regular doesn’t always mean it’s too limited for you.
Why Microsoft To Do leads on “free”
Microsoft To Do takes the top spot on the only axis this page grades, and it’s a clean win: it does the entire core job for free, on every platform, with no card and no paid tier dangled in front of you. Unlimited tasks and lists, time and location reminders, recurring tasks, subtasks, the “My Day” planning view, file attachments, and sync across iOS, Android, Windows and the web — all free. It’s funded as part of the broader Microsoft 365 world, so there’s no upsell nagging inside the app, which is rarer than it should be in this category.
The honest knock is about feel, not features. It’s a touch utilitarian — clean and fast, but without the satisfying polish or the natural-language wizardry that makes Todoist a pleasure to type into. Its handling of complex nested projects is simpler than the power-user apps, by design. None of that blocks the job; it just means people who treat their task manager as a hobby sometimes find it a little plain. Who it’s not for: power users who want deep project nesting and a delightful interface, and anyone who refuses to keep data in a Microsoft account.
Apple Reminders — the other genuinely free one
If you live on Apple devices, the best free to-do app may already be on your home screen, and it’s no longer the toy it once was. Apple Reminders now does smart lists, tags, location-based reminders, subtasks, shared lists, and natural-language entry (“remind me to call Sam tomorrow at noon”), syncing across iPhone, iPad and Mac through iCloud at no cost. It earns the green badge cleanly. The limit is the same one every Apple built-in has: it simply doesn’t exist on Windows or Android, so the moment your life spans platforms, it’s off the table. There’s also no web app to speak of, which matters if you work mostly from a browser on a work machine. Who it’s not for: anyone on mixed platforms, and browser-first workers.
Between these two, the choice is almost entirely about which devices you own — both are free, both are capable, and neither will ever ask for a card.
The two with real free tiers and real ceilings
Todoist is the app a lot of people would name as their favorite, and the free tier is genuinely usable — a solid number of active projects, due dates, recurring tasks via the natural-language parser people love, labels, and sync everywhere. It earns 🟡 for one cap that free users notice almost immediately: time-based reminders are a paid feature. You can set a due date for free, but “ping me at 3pm” requires Pro, which feels backwards for a task app. The active-project limit is generous enough that most casual users won’t hit it, and the r/todoist regulars are largely happy on free for personal use — but reminders behind the paywall is the honest ceiling. Who it’s not for (free): anyone who relies on specific-time alerts, or who runs many parallel projects.
TickTick is the most feature-stuffed free tier in this group — it folds in a Pomodoro timer and a habit tracker that most rivals charge for or don’t have, plus tasks, recurring chores, tags and a basic calendar view, all free and cross-platform. It’s 🟡 because the free plan caps how many lists you can keep and how many tasks per list, which an organized person bumps into faster than they expect, and the better calendar views and the fuller habit tracker are reserved for Premium. The r/ticktick community tends to like the value even on free, with the list cap as the recurring gripe. Who it’s not for (free): heavy list-makers who’ll hit the count limits, and anyone who wants the full calendar without paying.
Neither Todoist nor TickTick is a trap — both are real free tiers with no card up front, which is why both are 🟡 and not 🔒. They’re simply less free than the two built-ins, and the specific thing each holds back is worth knowing before you build a system on it.
Where people genuinely disagree
The honest split here is less about quality than about devices and temperament:
- I’m all-in on Apple and want zero setup → Apple Reminders, already there and free.
- I’m cross-platform or in the Microsoft world → Microsoft To Do, free and complete across every device.
- I want the nicest typing experience and natural-language magic → Todoist, with the reminder cap in mind on free.
- I want a task app that’s also a Pomodoro timer and habit tracker → TickTick, with the list limits in mind on free.
There’s also a sensible camp in r/productivity who argue the whole debate is overthought — that a plain built-in app, or even a paper list, beats a system you spend more time configuring than using. For a lot of people that’s exactly right, and it’s the same logic that puts the two free, already-installed apps at the top here: the best free to-do app is usually the one with the least friction between you and writing the task down.