The Best Wunderlist Alternative for 2021: Free List App Alternatives
Wunderlist was a popular to-do list app that helped many people manage tasks until its demise in 2020. We’ve put together a list of the best Wunderlist alternatives to replace it.
Wunderlist has been off the market for a while now, but plenty of people are still looking to find the best Wunderlist alternative. We’ve put together a list of five great candidates (well, four — one’s not so great) culled from our roundup of the best project management software that should help you replace the Wunderlist-shaped hole in your heart, or workflow setup, as the case may be.
Key Takeaways:
- Microsoft acquired Wunderlist in 2015 and then retired the app in May 2020, replacing it with Microsoft To Do.
- Our favorite alternative is Todoist because it offers a kanban board — albeit a very basic one — in conjunction with its to-do list.
- However, runners-up Any.do and TickTick offer much of the same functionality as Wunderlist.
We recommend you check out what we have to say about all five task management tools, and maybe even try them out for yourself for free before rendering judgment. For a quick answer, though, give Todoist’s free plan a go.
The exact reason is unclear, but it seems Microsoft preferred to have its own, custom-built app rather than use one developed by a third party.
Depending on your wants and needs, Todoist, TickTick or Any.do are the best list-building apps.
Most of our entries have the ability to manage subtasks, with Todoist and Any.do doing the best job.
All the options on our list have great free plans; you don’t need to spend a penny to make a to-do list.
Why You Need an Alternative to Wunderlist
Before talking about the best Wunderlist alternatives, it may be good to know why we even need one at all. Wunderlist was an independent, Berlin-based company until it was acquired by Microsoft in 2015. At first, the plan seemed to be for Wunderlist to continue as it had been, under its own brand, just with more integration with Microsoft’s many other products.
However, instead of integrations with Office 365, Outlook and the rest of Microsoft’s stable, Wunderlist lay somewhat ignored until the announcement in 2019 that the task-management app would cease to be in May 2020. Its replacement is Microsoft To Do, but that to-do list app just doesn’t have anywhere near the oomph Wunderlist had.
Wunderlist users are therefore out of luck and need to find an alternative somewhere else, which is where our list comes in. Luckily, there are more than a few options to choose from.
The 5 Best Wunderlist Alternatives
There are a number of list-based apps out there to pick from, but in the end it was pretty easy to pick just five, as few offer the versatility of Wunderlist. They are as follows:
- Todoist — A great to-do list app with a kanban board
- TickTick — One of the most versatile to-do lists
- Any.do — For a smooth user experience
- Google Tasks — A robust and very simple task list
- Microsoft To Do — The official Wunderlist replacement
Note that the top three task management tools are the ones most like Wunderlist in overall functionality, while Google Tasks is a lot simpler. We only added Microsoft To Do because it’s the official replacement of Wunderlist; it’s not very good, as you can read in the relevant section.
What Makes the Best Wunderlist Alternative
As you can read in our Wunderlist review, its main strength was the clearly laid-out interface and the resulting smooth user experience. Many of Wunderlist’s little extra features, like subtasks and assigning different priorities to important tasks, were used by its competitors even before its demise, so finding alternatives hinges on ease of use.
Thankfully, there are more than enough options to choose from, and picking the best of them was pretty easy. Our top three options all have a lot going for them, so it may be worth your while to check them all out individually. Our fourth is Google’s built-in list, which was mostly selected for its convenience, while the fifth entry is Wunderlist’s official replacement and mostly there for form’s sake.
1. Todoist
More Details About Todoist:
- Price: Free or $3 per month on the Pro plan
- Website: www.todoist.com
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Lots of functionality
- Kanban board
Cons:
- Some lag
- Privacy issues
We’re giving Todoist the top spot of all Wunderlist alternatives, thanks to having much of Wunderlist’s feature set, plus a few handy extras. The biggest of these extras is the kanban board, which won’t be winning our best kanban app award any time soon, but it does a decent job in a pinch (check out our Trello review for a truly great board).
As you can read in our full Todoist review, it offers all of Wunderlist’s features, like subtasks, and the ability to sort all your tasks by date — though that can get a little messy. If you sign up to the Pro plan, you also get access to the nifty location-based reminders, which will let you know if you’re ever close to the location of one of your tasks — handy for forgetful types.
Todoist Pricing
Speaking of upgrading, Todoist offers pretty decent pricing: the Pro plan will set you back just $3 per month when paying annually ($4 when going month to month) and will raise the caps on how many projects and collaborators you can have, as well as giving you some nice extra features.
If you have an entire team of people you’d like to sign up and delegate tasks to, Todoist’s Business plan only costs $60 per user per year ($6 per user per month if paying monthly), and offers all kinds of team-management features. It comes with a free trial, so may be worth checking out for businesses.
- 1 main user5 active projects5 collaborators (per project)5MB file uploads
- 1 main user300 active projects25 collaborators (per project)100MB file uploads
- Multiple users, (price is per user)500 active projects (per member)50 people (per project)
2. TickTick
More Details About TickTick:
- Price: Free or $2.33 per month when upgraded
- Website: www.ticktick.com
Pros:
- Cheap upgrade
- Different views
Cons:
- Buttons were designed for ants
- Pop-ups on free version
In second place you’ll find TickTick, which, as we discuss in our TickTick review, is a great overall option. You can create to-do lists easily, and thanks to the way it uses the whole screen, you can get an easy overview of everything you need to do, including things like subtasks or time-sensitive tasks.
Overall, TickTick is also pretty easy to use, though we found the buttons to be a bit small, even on a large monitor set to a high resolution. It shouldn’t be too big a deal for most people, but we can imagine misclicking a lot when you’re tired. Other than that, it’s a dream to use, thanks to its intuitive layout.
A Cost-Effective Option
TickTick is the cheapest app to upgrade on our list, at just $27.99 per year (there’s no monthly option). Not only is this price a lot friendlier than the competition, but TickTick also offers more in the way of views. Though upgrading TickTick won’t mean you’ll be able to keep track of all your projects, it definitely expands the scope of this productivity app.
- 1 user
- 1 user
3. Any.do
More Details About Any.Do:
- Price: Free or $2.99 per month for the Premium plan
- Website: www.any.do
Pros:
- Great overview
- Smooth functionality
Cons:
- Upgrade is mostly cosmetic
- Views can be a bit confusing
Our third pick for a great Wunderlist alternative is Any.do, which is a great app offering very smooth functionality. We like how you can quickly move tasks around the different sections, which can denote days, parts of days, or even weeks — it’s up to you, and you’ll still have the details of a task right there in front of you. It makes it easy to prioritize tasks.
Creating Tasks in Any.do
When it comes to features, Any.do is much the same as Todoist or TickTick: you can assign tasks to different team members, create subtasks for each task — you know the drill. Upgrading gives you more customization options and the ability to assign a different priority level to each task, which can be pretty handy for anybody dealing with a lot of small matters.
However, we’re not entirely sure if the juice is worth the squeeze with Any.do: though $3 per month isn’t a lot of money, the upgrade’s features are mostly cosmetic, with the exception of priorities and location-based reminders like Todoist has (read our Todoist vs Any.do piece). It really depends on your needs. The free plan is definitely worth a look, though. Read our Any.do review for more details.
4. Google Tasks / Google Calendar
More Details About Google Tasks:
- Price: Free
- Website: www.gmail.com
Pros:
- Free
- Only needs a Gmail account
- Simple
Cons:
- Maybe a bit too simple
- Lacks subtasks
Our fourth entry is one of the most basic — and ubiquitous — to-do lists of them all: Google Tasks. If you have Gmail, you’re likely already familiar with it as the pane that slides out on the right of your screen when you check your mail. Though it’s not a fully fledged list app like Todoist, it does fine in a pinch and also integrates with Google Calendar, which comes in very handy.
Tasks Integration With Google Calendar
Though there are very few options when you create tasks — you can attach files or write notes, but that’s pretty much it — you can also set a due date that automatically pops up in Google Calendar. This calendar is actually a lot better than most to-do apps offer, which could make it interesting if you need to know not only what, but also when something needs to happen.
That said, all the above apps have integrations with Google Calendar — Any.do even offers to set it up on its home screen — but still, Tasks is a pretty nifty application that takes no effort to set up. Give it a try — it could be that as simple as it is, it’ll be all you need.
5. Microsoft To Do
More Details About Microsoft To Do:
- Price: Free
- Website: www.todo.microsoft.com
Pros:
- Ability to set up flags from Outlook
- Simple navigation
Cons:
- No integration with other Microsoft products
- Few features
We’ll finish up this roundup with Microsoft To Do, not because it’s any good — it isn’t, really — but simply because it’s the designated successor to Wunderlist. However, it’s clear that whoever was behind To Do drew little to no inspiration from its source material, as it’s a drab affair that lets you set up a list and that’s really just about it: read our full Microsoft To Do review for all the details.
Microsoft To Do: A Poor Successor
One thing that is kind of nice about Microsoft To Do is that if you use Outlook Mail or Microsoft Planner, you can set up tasks to pop up into your to-do list. However, this does raise the question as to why you can’t do this with any of Microsoft’s other products. Office, Windows, Skype: To Do doesn’t integrate with any of them.
It’s a massive missed opportunity and, combined with its other flaws, makes To Do the turkey of this list. However, it is still a free program so you can try it to see if you love it or hate it.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully you’ll find your perfect to-do app in our above list of alternatives to Wunderlist. Though the legend is gone, it lives on in Todoist, Any.do and TickTick. Google Tasks, in combination with the calendar, can get a lot done, too. That said, if you’re looking for something that can handle actual project management, ignore all our suggestions and check out our monday.com review instead.
Let us know what you think of our selection in the comments below, or share with us the app that has replaced Wunderlist in your setup. Thank you for reading.
