Todoist, TickTick and Microsoft To Do are good apps. But each one asks you to accept a trade: a monthly subscription for the features that matter, or your tasks living in someone else's cloud, or both. And once your projects, recurring rules and history are in there, leaving is a chore.
That's why OpenTodo exists: a free, open-source task manager you host yourself, with the features people actually pay for. Here's how it compares, and how to try it in a minute.
The trade you make today
Todoist is fast and polished, and its quick add is the gold standard. The free plan is fine for a short list, but reminders, more projects and some views sit behind a paid plan, and everything lives on Todoist's servers.
TickTick packs a lot in: calendar, habits, focus timer. The best parts are in Premium, and again your data is theirs to host.
Microsoft To Do is free, but it's free because it's part of a Microsoft account. Your tasks live in Microsoft's cloud, sharing is tied to that ecosystem, and there's no way to run it yourself.
None of this is evil. It's just a deal: convenience in exchange for a subscription, lock-in, or both. OpenTodo is the other deal.
What OpenTodo gives you instead
Quick add in plain language. Type Dentist next Tue 3pm #health p1 +30m and you get a date, time, project, priority and a 30-minute estimate. It's parsed on your device, offline, in six languages.
Projects, sections and boards. Nest projects as deep as you like, split them into sections, and switch any project to a Kanban board with drag and drop on desktop and touch.
Recurring tasks and reminders. "every weekday", "every last weekday", "every 3 days after completion". Reminders arrive as push notifications on the devices you choose, with snooze and dismiss.
Plan your day. Give tasks an estimate and drag them onto a day or week calendar. You see at a glance whether your plan fits the day.
Filters and saved views. A one-line query like @work & due <= tomorrow & p1, pinned to the sidebar, or several views side by side on a dashboard.
Share with your family or team. Invite people to your server, share a project as viewer, editor or admin, assign tasks and talk in comments with @mentions.
Works offline, everywhere. Every phone and computer keeps a full copy and works without a connection. When you're back online, changes sync in a second or two, and edits from two devices merge field by field. No "pick a version" dialogs.
It installs as an app on iPhone, Android and desktop. And there's more for the tinkerers: CalDAV sync with calendar apps, webhooks for Home Assistant or n8n, a REST API, a command-line client, passkeys, two-factor, single sign-on, and optional end-to-end encryption.
No lock-in, by design
This is the part the big apps can't offer:
- One file. Everything lives in one SQLite file in one folder. Copy the folder and you have a complete backup.
- Export anytime as JSON. Scheduled backups to a folder, S3 or WebDAV are built in.
- Bring your tasks with you. The importer reads CSV and common JSON export formats, with a preview, duplicate detection and undo. The import guide shows how to get your data out of your current app.
- Open standards. CalDAV and a documented API mean your tasks aren't trapped, not even in OpenTodo.
- AGPL-3.0, no paid tier, no telemetry. Nobody can put your task list behind a paywall later.
Cheap to run
OpenTodo is one small container: a ~17 MB Go binary with SQLite and the web app inside, using about 20 MB of memory when idle. A Raspberry Pi or the cheapest VPS is plenty, and it costs you nothing beyond that.
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 -v opentodo-data:/data ghcr.io/pixari/opentodo:0.2
Open http://localhost:8080; the first visit creates your account. Coolify, Docker Compose and plain binaries for Linux, macOS and Windows are covered in the docs.
Try it without installing anything
The demo gives you a private sandbox with sample data: no sign-up, nothing to install, deleted after a few hours.
Honest status
OpenTodo is at version 0.2. Everything above works and is covered by tests, but some integrations still need real-world testing: specific calendar apps over CalDAV, single sign-on providers, and more real phones. A lot of the code was written with AI coding agents working from written specs, with a strict CI and review; the specs and the full history are public in the repo.
If you try it, I'd love to hear what works and what's missing for you to switch. And if it looks useful, a ⭐ on GitHub helps other people find it.
- Code: github.com/pixari/opentodo
- Demo: opentodo-demo.pixari.dev
- Docs: opentodo.pixari.dev/docs
Todoist, TickTick and Microsoft To Do are trademarks of their respective owners. OpenTodo is an independent project and isn't affiliated with them.
Top comments (0)