Basecamp vs Todoist Comparison 2026
Both cover project management. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Flat pricing that stops caring how big you get
A task list that survives being ignored for a week
At a glance
- Todoist starts cheaper, at $5.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Basecamp | Todoist | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $15 | From $5 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 30 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Basecamp
Flat pricing that stops caring how big you get
Basecamp organises work as projects containing message boards, to-do lists, files and a chat room, and it has stayed close to that shape for twenty years. The reason to choose it is the pricing rather than the features: above a certain team size it is one flat monthly fee for everybody, and clients and guests are never billed at all. That makes it unusually easy to reason about for a studio that grows and shrinks. The free package runs a single project, which is a real way to test it rather than a demo.
Only on this side
- Covers hiring & freelancers
Todoist
A task list that survives being ignored for a week
Todoist takes a typed sentence like "post the newsletter every Tuesday at 9" and turns it into a scheduled recurring task, which is the feature the whole product is built around. Five projects on the free account is enough for one person running one operation. Paying raises the limits, adds reminders and calendar layouts, and opens filters that make a large list usable. Teams get their own tier above that, and none of it tries to be a project management suite.
Our note
Treat the five-project free limit as the decision point rather than any feature, because a creator usually needs one project per channel and hits it in a month. At $5 the upgrade is not the question; whether you want a task list at all rather than a calendar is.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.