December 23, 2025

Switching between Google Calendar, sticky notes, email flags, and a half-finished notebook isn’t working anymore. This scattered effort to stay organized leaves you missing deadlines, forgetting follow-ups, and spending more time managing your to-do list than getting things done. That ends now. As a SaaS content writer, I’m constantly managing research, client deadlines, and content calendars across different projects. My work led me down the rabbit hole of finding to-do list apps that can help me juggle multiple freelance clients and run my daily life. Some apps lasted a week before I abandoned them. Others stuck around but felt like overkill for my needs. A few became essential parts of my workflow. What I learned was that there’s no universal or one-size-fits-all to-do list app. The app you eventually choose depends entirely on your workflow, team size, and how your brain works.  This guide covers the apps worth your time, based on real-world testing with client projects, recurring deadlines, and the chaos of freelance life. I’ll tell you what each app does well, where it falls short, and who should use it. How I tested these to-do list apps I tested these apps by using them to manage my work and day-to-day activities. For the tests, I focused on five key factors: how quickly I could add tasks, whether it synced reliably across devices, how well it handled different organizational styles, pricing for solo users and small teams, and whether I completed the tasks I added. Robust project management tools such as Asana and Monday.com are not on this list. Those are overkill if you just need a solid to-do list. I also skipped apps that required extensive setup before being useful. If it takes 30 minutes to configure before you can add your first task, it didn’t make the cut. The apps that survived testing either solved a specific problem really well or offered the best balance of features and simplicity for everyday use. Best To-Do list apps at a glance App Best For Starting Price Key Strength Platform TickTick Freelancers who need a calendar + tasks + habits $35.99/year Calendar view + Pomodoro + habit tracking included All platforms Todoist Power users who love keyboard shortcuts $58/year Clean interface, powerful filters All platforms Microsoft To Do Microsoft 365 users Free Deep Outlook integration All platforms Things 3 Mac/iOS users who want elegance $49.99 (Mac) Beautiful design, intuitive Mac/iOS only Google Tasks Gmail power users Free Built into Gmail/Calendar All platforms Any.do People who forget to use to-do apps $59.88/year Daily “Plan My Day” prompts All platforms Apple Reminders Casual Apple users Free Native Apple integration Apple only Notion Teams who need docs + tasks Free/$10/user/month Flexible databases All platforms Default phone apps Minimalists Free Already installed iOS/Android What makes a great to-do list app? For a to-do list app to be considered one of the greats, it needs to: Best all-in-one to-do list for freelancers: TickTick TickTick is what happens when you combine a to-do list, calendar, habit tracker, and Pomodoro timer in one app without the bloat.  I’ve been using TickTick for almost a year now, and it has become my central system for managing client deadlines, recurring invoicing, and personal goals. Most to-do apps force you to choose between simple (but limited) and powerful (but complicated). TickTick somehow manages both. The free plan is generous enough for serious use.  For example, TickTick’s free tier lets you create nine lists and 99 tasks per list. You also get 19 subtasks and two reminders per task. The premium plan adds features I need without charging premium prices. There’s also the native Pomodoro timer for deep work sessions.  It tracks how much time I’m spending on each task, which is invaluable for estimating future projects. For instance, I know a 2,500-word article takes me about four to five 30-minute sessions. No need to juggle TickTick, a separate timer app, and a time tracking tool. Everything lives in one place. Beyond client work, TickTick has a Habit Tracker that I use to track writing habits, exercise, and reading. Having habits and tasks in one app means I don’t have to check multiple tools to see what I should be doing right now. The streak tracking motivates me to maintain consistency. When I see a 47-day writing streak, I don’t want to break it over one lazy morning. TickTick also has native apps for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, plus a web app and browser extensions. Your tasks sync instantly across devices. I can add a task from my phone while grocery shopping and find it on my desktop two minutes later. Key features Pros Cons How I use TickTick as a freelancer I organize client work into separate projects for each client. One project for ongoing retainer work, another for one-off projects. Each project has recurring tasks for invoicing (first of the month), check-ins (weekly), and deliverable deadlines. This keeps client work compartmentalized so I’m not mixing research for Client A with deliverables for Client B. For research-heavy articles, I use TickTick’s note feature to store reference links and key points directly in the task. When it’s time to write, everything I need is right there. This is especially helpful for expert interview articles where I’m tracking interview notes, quotes, and follow-up questions all in one place. I can copy those notes directly into my writing doc and start drafting. The calendar view has become essential for realistic planning. If I have three client calls scheduled on Thursday, I can see at a glance that I only have about 4 hours of deep work time. That means moving Friday’s deadline to Monday before I commit to an unrealistic timeline. It’s saved me from over-promising and under-delivering more times than I can count. (If you struggle with this, I wrote about time management strategies for freelancers that work alongside TickTick.) TickTick pricing There’s a free version. The paid plan costs $35.99/year. There’s also location-based pricing, as my current plan costs only