Todoist vs Motion Comparison 2026
Todoist is a task list you manage yourself, typing a sentence to set a recurring task, free for five projects and $5 a user a month for Pro. Motion goes further and schedules the tasks into your actual calendar, then rewrites the plan whenever a meeting lands or something slips, $29 a seat a month, or $19 billed annually, with no free plan at all. Todoist tells you what needs doing. Motion decides when you will do it and keeps deciding as the day changes.
A task list that survives being ignored for a week
Builds the day's schedule from the task list
At a glance
- Todoist starts cheaper, at $5.
- Only Todoist has a free tier.
Side by side
Todoist | Motion | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $5 | From $29 |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free plan, paid tiers | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier (they differ) | Yes | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes |
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.
Motion
Builds the day's schedule from the task list
Motion takes a list of tasks with deadlines and durations and writes them into the calendar itself, then rewrites the plan every time a meeting lands or something slips. The pitch is that deciding what to do next is the work you keep redoing, so a tool should do it. It suits somebody juggling a shoot schedule, client deliverables and a publishing calendar in one head. It is priced per seat and there is no free plan, only a trial.
Why people weigh these two
- Motion instead of Todoist
- Motion auto-schedules each task into a block on the calendar instead of leaving it on a list, starting at $29 with no free tier, a heavier automatic planner than Todoist's recurring capture.
- Todoist instead of Motion
- Todoist keeps the list itself simple and lets recurring tasks resurface on their own, from $5 with a free tier, a plain list instead of an auto-scheduled calendar.
Which one should you pick
Choose Todoist if you would rather see the list and decide the order yourself: five free projects are enough for one person running one operation, and Pro at $5 a month opens filters that keep a long list usable. It makes no attempt to schedule anything into a calendar automatically, which is the entire reason Motion costs six times as much.
Choose Motion if deciding what to do next is the work you keep redoing across a shoot schedule, client deliverables and a publishing calendar at once: tasks with a deadline and duration are placed into real calendar slots, and the plan rewrites itself when something slips. Pro is $29 a seat a month, or $19 billed annually, a 33 percent saving, and it is priced per seat, so a second person doubles the cost before any feature changes.
Common questions
- Which is cheaper, Todoist or Motion?
- Todoist, by a wide margin: $5 a user a month for Pro against Motion's $29, or $19 billed annually. Motion also has no free plan at all, only a trial of unstated length, while Todoist's free tier covers five projects indefinitely.
- Does Todoist schedule tasks into my calendar automatically like Motion does?
- No, nothing in its feature list does that. Todoist is a list you check and reorder yourself. Motion's entire premise is placing tasks with a deadline and duration into actual calendar slots and replanning when something changes.
- Is there a free plan for Motion?
- No, there is no free plan, only a trial whose length the pricing page does not state. Todoist's free plan is a real, ongoing option covering five projects for one person.
- Which one is built for juggling several kinds of work at once, like shoots and client deliverables?
- Motion is, by design: meetings and work sit in one calendar view, which is what makes an overcommitted week visible before it happens. Todoist keeps tasks and a calendar separate, so it suits a simpler, single-stream workflow better than several overlapping commitments.
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.