The best OmniFocus alternatives in 2026

OmniFocus is a deep, careful, exhaustively-engineered tool for people who run their life on Getting Things Done methodology. It is also $99.99 a year for the subscription, or $199.99 for a perpetual license that gets one major version. And it has a learning curve that puts off a real fraction of the people who try it.

If you bought OmniFocus, set up a careful project structure, and found yourself never opening it, you are not alone. The pattern is common. The features that make OmniFocus powerful (perspectives, deferred dates, contexts, custom filters, Omni Automation scripting) are the same features that make it heavy enough to abandon.

This post is for people who want most of what OmniFocus does without the complexity or the price. It covers the realistic alternatives, what each one trades away, and how to pick.

What you are actually replacing

Before any app comparison, it helps to separate what OmniFocus does into three layers.

Layer 1: Capture and complete tasks. Add a task, set a date, check it off. Every todo app does this.

Layer 2: Organize tasks into projects and contexts. Tag tasks by where they happen, what they need, or what stage they are at. Most serious todo apps do this with tags, labels, or both.

Layer 3: GTD-specific workflows. Deferred dates that hide tasks until they become relevant. Perspectives that filter your master list into focused views. Project review intervals. Forecast views that combine tasks and calendar events. Most apps do not do this layer at all.

When people abandon OmniFocus, they almost always abandon Layer 3. They were using it for Layer 1 and Layer 2 and paying for Layer 3 they never touched. The right replacement depends on which layer you actually use.

Things 3

The closest “feels nice” alternative. Things 3 covers Layer 1 and most of Layer 2 with a level of design polish that nothing else on the Mac matches. It is a one-time purchase: $49.99 on Mac, $9.99 on iPhone, $19.99 on iPad. Apple-only.

What you get: Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday, Logbook. Projects, Areas (groupings above projects), tags, repeat rules, natural-language dates, a global quick-add window, and the best-designed Mac task app on the market.

What you give up: perspectives. Things has a fixed information architecture. You cannot build a custom view of “all tasks tagged Office that are due this week and waiting on someone else.” If your OmniFocus workflow depended on custom perspectives, Things will frustrate you.

Best for: people who abandoned OmniFocus because it was complicated, not because it lacked features.

Todoist

The cross-platform option. Todoist costs $48 a year for Pro, half of OmniFocus’s annual subscription, and runs on every platform that exists. It is subscription-only at the useful tier.

What you get: filters (Todoist’s version of perspectives, with a real query language), labels (Todoist’s version of contexts), projects with sub-projects, priority levels, comments on tasks, and the most powerful natural-language input in the category.

What you give up: native macOS feel, deferred dates (Todoist has start dates but they work differently), and the depth of GTD-specific tooling. Todoist filters are powerful but they are not as expressive as OmniFocus perspectives. If you live in custom perspectives, this will feel limited.

Best for: people who liked OmniFocus’s flexibility and the ability to slice tasks by tag and date but want a cheaper, cross-platform option.

TickTick

The cheaper Todoist. TickTick is $35.99 a year for premium and covers most of Todoist’s feature set with a built-in Pomodoro timer and habit tracker thrown in. Cross-platform.

What you get: the core Todoist feature set plus calendar view, habits, and focus timer integration.

What you give up: visual polish. TickTick’s design is functional rather than considered. The Mac app feels like a port. If you are coming from OmniFocus’s careful UI, this will feel like a step down.

Best for: people who want Todoist’s shape at a third of the cost and do not care about whether the app feels native.

Apple Reminders

The free baseline. The version of Reminders that ships with current macOS supports tags, smart lists, location reminders, natural-language dates, and sharing with iCloud contacts. It is built in. It is free. It syncs through iCloud.

What you get: a competent baseline todo app with no purchase decision attached. Smart Lists can recreate basic filters. Tags work. Subtasks work.

What you give up: project review workflows, deferred dates, perspectives, any kind of GTD-specific feature, and the feeling of using a “real” productivity app. Reminders is intentionally bland.

Best for: people who realized they were using OmniFocus as a glorified notepad and want to stop paying for one.

TodoBar

The “I just need capture” answer. If your OmniFocus install had 12 active tasks at any given time, all of them due in the next two weeks, you were not actually using OmniFocus. You were using the part of OmniFocus that overlaps with a sticky note. TodoBar is built for that case.

TodoBar lives in the menu bar as a popover. There is no Dock icon. There is no separate window. There is a global hotkey for capture, natural-language date parsing, and iCloud sync between your Macs. It is one-time pricing: free up to 10 active tasks, then a one-time unlock.

What you get: friction-free capture, dates that work, an app that stays out of your way.

What you give up: everything OmniFocus is built for. No projects, no perspectives, no contexts, no review workflows, no iPhone app, no anything beyond “add a task, check it off, get reminded.” If you actually used OmniFocus, this is too small a replacement.

Best for: people who installed OmniFocus, never set up a serious system, and want to admit it.

NotePlan

The notes-plus-tasks hybrid. NotePlan combines a daily-note workflow (similar to Roam or Obsidian) with task management. Tasks live inside Markdown notes, organized by date.

What you get: a calendar-driven daily review, tasks embedded in context with notes, and a system that maps reasonably well to GTD if you set it up that way.

What you give up: the structured project hierarchy that OmniFocus enforces. NotePlan is freeform. You can build any workflow you want, but you have to build it.

Best for: people who already think in daily notes and want their tasks to live alongside their notes rather than in a separate app.

How to pick

The honest test is what fraction of OmniFocus you actually used.

If you used perspectives daily, go to Todoist or stay with OmniFocus. Nothing else replaces them.

If you mostly used the Inbox and the Forecast view, Things 3 will be a calmer home for the same workflow at a fraction of the price.

If you mostly used OmniFocus to remember to call your dentist, install Reminders or TodoBar and stop paying $100 a year for a tool you do not need.

The pattern with OmniFocus is the same pattern with every powerful productivity tool. Most people buy the most powerful option they can find, build an elaborate system in their first month, and then quietly use 5% of it for the next three years. Picking a smaller tool up front is almost always the better move.