Todoist alternative

A Todoist alternative for the point where a list becomes a team

Todoist is a superb personal task manager. Most people searching this are not looking for a better one.

The short answer

Polaris is a free alternative to Todoist for people whose personal list has become a team's work. Todoist lists Free with five personal projects, Pro at five dollars per month billed annually or seven monthly, and Business at eight dollars per user per month annually or ten monthly, checked 21 August 2026. Polaris adds workstreams, docs, team chat and AI workers who deliver tasks.

Todoist Free: 5 personal projects
Todoist Pro: $5 / month annual, $7 monthly
Todoist Business: $8 / user / month annual
Checked: 21 Aug 2026

The honest version of this comparison

Todoist costs about the price of a coffee. Checked on 21 August 2026, Pro is five dollars a month billed annually or seven billed monthly, and Business is eight dollars per user per month annually or ten monthly, with the Free tier capped at five personal projects. Published reporting notes both rose in December 2025.

Nobody leaves Todoist over five dollars. People leave when the list stops describing their situation: when three other people need to see it, when tasks need a document attached, when the same six items get carried forward every Monday because the person who owns them has no capacity.

So this page is not arguing that Polaris is a cheaper Todoist. It is arguing that the search behind it is usually about scale and delivery rather than price, and the answer changes depending on which one you meant.

Head to head

Todoist prices checked 21 August 2026. The vendor pricing page omitted its figures when read, so these were cross-checked against multiple published 2026 summaries.

Todoist

Polaris

Cost

Free with 5 projects, Pro $5/mo annual, Business $8/user/mo annual

$0, unlimited humans, tasks, workstreams and docs

Capture speed

Natural language quick-add that is genuinely best in class

Chat capture plus an Inbox of prefilled task suggestions from connected tools

Offline

Full offline support across desktop and mobile

Web app plus an installable mobile PWA. No offline-first guarantee

Team model

Shared projects, comments, Business team workspace

Workstreams for any container of work, shared lanes across list and board

Docs

Task comments and file attachments

Nested doc tree with block editor, versioning, file review and comments

Recurrence

Rich recurring dates in plain language

Tasks with owners and dates. No natural-language recurrence engine

Who does the task

You

You, a teammate, or an AI worker on a cloud machine that returns files

Voice

Voice capture through mobile assistants

Mobile app with voice input and spoken replies, copilot at the centre

When you should stay on Todoist

This is the page in this cluster where staying is most often the right answer.

You are one person and the system works
A personal task manager that you have used for years, with your own labels and filters, is a habit rather than a subscription. Five dollars a month against a working habit is not a decision worth making.
Quick-add is why you use it
Typing a task with a date, project, priority and label in one line of plain English is Todoist's signature and nothing here matches it. Losing that would slow down the part you do fifty times a day.
You need it offline, on a plane, on a phone with no signal
Todoist works offline properly across platforms. Polaris is a web app and an installable mobile PWA, and that is a different reliability profile.
Recurring personal routines are the bulk of your list
Every second Tuesday, every last working day of the month, every three days starting Friday. That recurrence engine is deep, and Polaris does not have one.

If you do move

Todoist exports projects to CSV covering content, description, priority, due date and section, and it has a well-documented API. Tasks and sections map onto Polaris tasks and lanes without much friction, and a project becomes a workstream.

Filters, labels used as a personal system, karma and recurring date rules do not transfer. Rebuild the three filters you actually use and drop the rest, which is the same advice anyone would give about moving a personal system anywhere.

Go deeper

Todoist vs Asana

The question is not which is better. It is whether anyone besides the assignee needs to see the shape of the work.

Polaris for solo founders

Being the whole org chart is not a time problem. It is an accountability problem.

Polaris for small business

The jobs that never get done in a small business are not hard. There is simply nobody free to do them.

Focus lane

A commitment for a horizon, not a filter over everything you have.

What an AI worker costs, and how the hours are counted

The whole formula is on this page, including the parts that make it an estimate rather than a measurement.

Hire an AI executive assistant

Every commitment made in a meeting becomes a task with a name and a date on it before the next meeting starts.

Questions people ask

+Is Polaris a good personal task manager?

It is built for teams rather than for one person, and the Focus lane across today, this week and the next thirty days is the closest thing to a personal system in it. Someone happy with Todoist's quick-add, filters and offline support would be trading a sharp personal tool for a broader team one.

+How much does Todoist cost per year?

Checked on 21 August 2026, Pro is sixty dollars a year, equivalent to five dollars a month, or seven a month if billed monthly. Business is ninety-six dollars per user per year, equivalent to eight dollars per user per month, or ten monthly. Published reporting notes both increased in December 2025.

+Can Polaris import my Todoist projects?

There is no one-click importer. Todoist exports projects to CSV with content, description, priority, due date and section, and those map onto Polaris tasks and lanes. Filters, labels used as a personal method, and recurring date rules do not come across.

+What would an AI worker do with items from a personal list?

The useful ones are the tasks you keep deferring because they need an hour of research, a first draft or a set of comparisons. Assign one, a cloud machine wakes for it, and the result arrives as a comment with any files produced. Billing is roughly two dollars per human-equivalent hour, so a deferred hour costs about two dollars to clear.

+Does Polaris work on a phone?

Yes. There is a Flutter mobile app targeting iOS and Android, live today as an installable PWA, with the copilot at the centre of the interface plus voice input and spoken replies. It does not offer Todoist's offline guarantees.