You want to read twelve books this year. You set it up in Todoist as a project with twelve tasks, one per book. Twelve checkboxes, twelve due dates spread through December. Three months in, four boxes are checked and eight sit there in the list.
Todoist did its job. The tasks are clear, the reminders fire on time, and the project view shows you exactly what remains. What the app cannot tell you is how the year is tracking against the pace the goal needs, or what the remaining eight books mean for the weeks left. A checkbox list answers what comes next. It does not answer how far along you are.
That difference between managing tasks and tracking a goal is where people start looking at a Todoist alternative for their personal goals. A task list and a milestone tracker measure different things, and a reading goal needs the second one.
What Todoist does well
Todoist has been building task management since 2007, and it shows in the parts of the app you touch most.
Natural language input. Type “read forty pages every Saturday” and Todoist parses the due date, the recurrence, and the label in one pass. The entry takes four seconds. For anyone who has fought a date picker on a phone, this is the feature that keeps people in the app.
Cross-platform coverage. iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, the web, and a watch app, plus browser extensions and integrations with calendar and email tools. The same task list follows you across every device you own.
A free tier that covers real work. The free plan includes five personal projects, five collaborators, three filters, recurring tasks, and 300 tasks per project. For an individual managing a personal workload, that covers real use.
Speed and reliability. Quick add, filters, labels, and nested projects. The app opens fast and stays out of the way. Eighteen years of iteration produced an interface that does not make you think about the interface.
Todoist earned its place. The friction that matters here starts after the task list is working well, and it follows the same pattern as every other task manager pressed into goal duty.
Where tasks stop being enough
A task list empties and refills, so completion carries no weight. Checking off “read book four” removes it from the list. The list gets shorter for a moment and then you add the next thing. Nothing accumulates. A year of Todoist use leaves you with a clean slate and no record of the year. Each finished unit in a goal adds to a total that only grows.
Recurring tasks turn a goal into attendance. Set “read forty pages” to repeat every day and the app shows a completion pattern for the repetition. Miss three days and the pattern reads as broken. The recurrence converts a reading goal into a daily habit goal, and the measure becomes whether you showed up rather than how many books you finished.
Karma scores consistency. Todoist assigns points for completed tasks and tracks daily and weekly task streaks. Karma answers a specific question: did you engage with the app today. A year of daily engagement with zero books finished produces a strong Karma score, which is the wrong score for a goal that ends when you hit twelve.
Todoist added a Goals feature in 2026 that links tasks across projects into a progress view. It is a real step toward goal tracking, and the personal goal limit moved from three to ten. The feature is still in beta, still maps goals onto their underlying tasks, and still sits behind a subscription.
The core difference in what gets measured
Todoist asks what you need to do next. Notch asks how far you are from done.
A task manager organizes work that arrives continuously. The inbox fills, the list gets prioritized, and items get cleared. That model fits email, errands, and project work, where the supply of items never runs out and the value comes from processing them in order.
A milestone tracker measures distance to a target. You set a number, log each completed unit, and watch the total climb toward the finish. The units are finite here, and the point is reaching the last one.
| Notch | Todoist | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Milestone tracker | Task manager |
| Unit of work | Completed unit toward a target | Individual task |
| What completion means | Progress that adds to a total | An item removed from a list |
| Pricing | Free · $9.99 Pro (one-time) | Free · $5/month Pro · $8/user/month Business |
| Streaks | None | Karma points and task streaks |
| Resets | None | Karma decays, recurrence patterns break |
| Recurring items | Not applicable | Core feature |
| Platforms | iPhone and iPad | iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, web |
| Best for | Goals with a finish line | Tasks, projects, and shared work |
When Todoist is the right choice
Todoist is the better tool in a few situations, and they are not rare.
You manage a continuous workload. Email follow-ups, errands, work tickets, a renovation punch list. This kind of work has no finish line and Todoist handles the flow better than any goal tracker could.
You share lists with other people. Grocery runs, house projects, a team backlog. Collaboration is built into the app, and Notch has no sharing model.
You want one system across devices. A phone, a laptop, and a work machine all reading the same list is a genuine advantage that a single-platform app cannot match.
You track tasks and goals in one place. Keeping the two categories in one app avoids a second inbox, and the Goals beta makes that arrangement more workable than it was a year ago.
When Notch is the better fit
The case for Notch is narrower and it comes down to the shape of what you track.
Your goal has a target number. Twelve books, 500 kilometers, 100 workouts, 52 new recipes. Each of these ends when you reach the number, and the useful feedback is the distance remaining. Notch shows that on the first screen, and the ultimate guide to milestone goal tracking walks through how the same structure applies across goal types.
Your goal has a rhythm that includes gaps. Reading clusters around weekends and quiet evenings. Running follows a training block with a deload every fourth week. A cumulative count records everything before the gap and waits for the next entry. The gap changes nothing about the record.
You want the record to survive a bad month. Todoist shows a 4 of 12 progress bar, and a slow month leaves the bar sitting exactly where it was. A cumulative total does not care that March was slow, because the 340 kilometers from January are still on the board.
You prefer a price you pay once. Notch is free to download. The full app unlocks with a one-time $9.99 purchase. Todoist Pro runs $5 per month billed annually, which is $60 in the first year and $300 over five years. The subscription math works out the same way for every app in that model. For a longer list of apps you buy once and keep, see the ownership guide.
Frequently asked questions
Is Todoist worth the subscription?
For task and project management, the Pro tier earns its price. Calendar view, reminders, 300 projects, and the AI features are real additions. Judge the subscription against how you use the app. If Todoist runs your work and household, $60 a year is reasonable. If you subscribed to it for a reading goal that a checkbox list was never going to track, that is a different calculation.
Does Notch replace Todoist?
No, and it is not trying to. Todoist manages tasks across platforms with collaboration built in. Notch tracks goals that end. Plenty of people run both: Todoist for the workload, Notch for the goals that have a target number. The two apps answer different questions, and each one covers ground the other leaves alone.
Can I export my Todoist data?
Todoist supports backups and exports. Download your history before you change anything if the record matters to you.
What happens to my tasks if I switch?
Nothing happens to them, because tasks and goals are separate categories. Your errands and work items stay where they are. What changes is where you keep the goal: the book count, the kilometers, the recipe list. Move those into Notch and the total starts climbing from whatever you have already finished.
Does Todoist have goal tracking?
It added a Goals feature in 2026 that connects tasks across projects into a progress view, and the personal goal limit went from three to ten. The feature is in beta. Progress derives from completed tasks, so the underlying measure stays task completion instead of distance to a target number.
What if I want tasks and milestones in one app?
Todoist carries both categories, with the caveat that the milestone side is newer and task-based. Notch carries goals only, with no task list at all. The honest answer depends on which category holds more of your attention each week. If tasks dominate, stay in Todoist. If the goals with finish lines are the part that matters, a tracker built for that job will serve you better.
Todoist is a well-built task manager, and the case for it holds up. Two decades of iteration produced an app that handles a personal workload with speed and reliability that most productivity tools never reach.
The friction has a specific source. Todoist was designed around items that arrive and get cleared, so its measures are engagement, streaks, and checkboxes removed. Goals with finish lines need a measure that accumulates. Those are different jobs, and picking the tool that matches your job takes less work than bending one tool into the other shape.
Notch counts what you finish. Set a target, log every completed unit, watch the total grow toward the line. One-time purchase, no streaks, no resets.
Notch tracks the distance. Pick a number and start counting.
Try Notch
Every notch counts.
A milestone tracker without streaks, guilt, or subscriptions.
Download on App StoreFree · $9.99 Pro · No subscription