Todoist Review UK 2026: Is It Worth It for Small Business Owners?
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The Problem With “Free” Task Managers
You’ve probably tried a free task manager at some point — set it up, added your to-do list, and then hit a wall. Maybe you ran out of project slots. Maybe the tool just wasn’t built for the way a small business actually works.
Todoist is one of the most popular productivity apps in the world, and it has a genuinely usable free tier — right up until it isn’t. If you’re a UK sole trader or small business owner deciding whether to stay free or upgrade to Pro or Business, this review is for you.
We’ll cover what you get at each plan, the real-world limitations, what it costs in pounds, and whether Todoist is genuinely useful for running a small business.
What Is Todoist?
Todoist is a task management app made by Doist, a fully remote software company. It runs on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, the web and as browser extensions. It’s been around since 2007 and has a reputation as one of the most polished, reliable task managers available.
It is not a full project management suite like Asana or monday.com. If you’re expecting Gantt charts, budget tracking or resource management, you’re in the wrong place. But if you need a seriously capable to-do list that scales from personal tasks through to small team coordination, Todoist is worth a close look.
Todoist Plans and Pricing in the UK
Todoist prices in pounds. Its pricing page carries a currency selector with GBP available, so you’re not exposed to dollar conversion or a foreign transaction fee. This is worth stating plainly because Todoist is frequently reported as a USD-only subscription, and the sterling figures happen to be numerically identical to the dollar ones — which makes the error easy to make and easy to miss.
| Plan | Billed yearly | Billed monthly | Yearly total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Beginner | £0 | £0 | Free |
| Pro | £5 per user/month | £7 per user/month | £60 |
| Business | £8 per user/month, plus local tax | £10 per user/month, plus local tax | £96 |
Committing annually saves £24 a year per user on either paid plan.
One detail worth noting: Business is quoted “plus local tax” while Pro isn’t. Check what that means for your invoice before budgeting, particularly if you’re not VAT-registered and can’t reclaim it. At 20% VAT, Business becomes £9.60 per user per month rather than £8.
There is no Enterprise tier. If you’re on a legacy plan from before Todoist’s most recent repricing, check what your renewal quote actually says rather than assuming your current rate continues.
Beginner (Free): More Capable Than Usually Reported
The free tier gives you:
- 5 personal projects
- Task reminders
- Smart Quick Add
- Flexible list and board layouts
- 3 filter views
- 1 week activity history
- Email, calendar and other integrations
- Ramble
Correcting a claim you’ll see everywhere: task reminders are included on the free plan. A lot of reviews state that reminders are Pro-only, and that isn’t right — what Pro adds is custom task reminders. If you’re using Todoist to prompt you about VAT return dates or client deliverables, the free tier can already do that.
The real constraint is the 5-project cap, and it fills up faster than it sounds. A sole trader might use one project for client work, one for admin, one for marketing, one for finances and one for personal tasks. That’s the limit reached before anything unusual comes along. Take on a new client or start a side project and you’re blocked.
The 1-week activity history is the other quiet limit. If you want to look back at what was completed a month ago, you can’t.
Pro — £5/user/month yearly, £7 monthly
Pro is where Todoist becomes a proper business tool. It adds:
- 300 personal projects, up from 5
- Calendar layout
- Task duration
- Custom task reminders
- 150 filter views, up from 3
- Full reporting history, replacing the 1-week limit
- Task Assist, Todoist’s AI feature
- Deadlines
- Unlimited Ramble
The jump from 5 to 300 projects removes the free tier’s main friction, and full reporting history means you can actually review what you’ve done rather than just what’s next.
Task Assist is the AI layer — helpful for breaking vague tasks into subtasks and processing natural language input. Not transformative, but a solid addition at this price.
At £60 a year, Pro is one of the cheaper productivity upgrades available. For most sole traders and freelancers, it’s the right tier.
Business — £8/user/month yearly, £10 monthly, plus local tax
Business is the team plan, and you can create a team for free before paying. It adds, for every member:
- A shared team workspace
- Up to 500 team projects
- Calendar layout for team projects
- Granular team activity logs
- Shared templates
- 1,000 team members and guests
- Team project folders
- Team roles and permissions
- Centralised team billing
Run the numbers before you commit. A three-person team on annual billing is £288 a year before local tax — £345.60 with VAT at 20%. That’s reasonable for a business tool, but weigh it against whether you genuinely need shared workspaces and permissions, or whether three individual Pro accounts at £180 a year would do the same job.
The deciding factor is usually visibility. If you need to see what your team is working on and control who can change what, Business earns it. If everyone just needs their own list, Pro is cheaper.
What Todoist Does Really Well
Natural Language Date Parsing
The feature that gets the most consistent praise, and rightly so. Type “email HMRC documents next Friday at 9am” and Todoist parses the date and time without you opening a calendar picker. Type “every last working day of the month” and it handles the recurrence intelligently. For anyone adding tasks on the fly between client calls, that saves real friction.
Cross-Platform Reliability
Todoist works consistently across devices. Add a task on your phone during a call and it’s there on your laptop afterwards. Offline functionality is solid, which matters on a train or anywhere with patchy signal.
Simplicity of Interface
Clean, fast, and it doesn’t get in your way. There’s a reason productivity writers have recommended it for years — it does what it promises without burying you in options you’ll never use.
Integrations
Todoist connects with Google Calendar, Outlook, Slack, Gmail and a range of other tools natively and through Zapier. If you’re already on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, it slots into your existing setup without much effort — and email and calendar integration is available even on the free tier.
Where Todoist Falls Short
It’s a Task Manager, Not a Project Management Tool
The most common criticism, and a fair one. No timeline view, no dependency tracking, no workload management, no budget fields. If you’re running a team on a complex project with milestones and deliverables, you’ll outgrow Todoist quickly. It’s built around individual and small-team task management, and it’s excellent at that — but it won’t replace ClickUp, Notion or Asana if your needs are more complex.
The Free Tier’s Project Cap Is Tight
Five projects genuinely isn’t many for a working business, and the 1-week activity history means you lose visibility of anything completed beyond that. Both are deliberate nudges towards Pro, and both work.
No Making Tax Digital or Financial Features
Todoist has no accounting, invoicing or MTD functionality. It’s a task manager, full stop. If you want one app handling both productivity and your HMRC obligations, this isn’t it — pair it with FreeAgent, QuickBooks or Xero.
How Does the Price Compare?
Worth an anchor, because Todoist sits well below the project management tools it’s often listed alongside.
Asana bills in pounds too. Its Personal plan is free for up to two users, Starter is £9.49 per user per month on annual billing (currently £8.49 promotional) or £11.59 monthly, and Advanced is £20.99 (£16.99 promotional) or £25.
So Todoist Business at £8 undercuts Asana’s entry paid tier, and Todoist Pro at £5 is roughly half the price of Asana Starter. You’re buying less — no timelines, no workload views — but if a capable task manager is genuinely what you need, you’re not paying project-management prices for it.
Who Should Upgrade?
Upgrade to Pro if:
- You’ve hit the 5-project limit, which happens quickly for most working adults
- You need full reporting history rather than one week
- You want custom reminders and calendar layout
- You want 300 projects and 150 filter views rather than 5 and 3
Upgrade to Business if:
- You have two or more employees or regular collaborators who need a shared workspace
- You need visibility over what your team is working on through activity logs, roles and permissions
- You want centralised billing rather than managing individual subscriptions
- You’re running many concurrent projects across a small team
FAQ
How much does Todoist cost in the UK?
Pro is £5 per user per month billed yearly, which is £60 a year, or £7 billed monthly. Business is £8 per user per month yearly, £96 a year, or £10 monthly — both plus local tax. Beginner is free. Annual billing saves £24 a year per user on either paid plan.
Does Todoist bill in pounds or dollars?
Pounds. The pricing page has a currency selector with GBP available. Todoist is frequently reported as dollar-priced, partly because the sterling figures are numerically identical to the dollar ones, but you can be billed in sterling and avoid conversion costs.
Does Todoist’s free plan include reminders?
Yes. Task reminders are included on the free Beginner tier, contrary to what many reviews claim. What Pro adds is custom task reminders. If your main reason for upgrading was reminders, check whether the free version already does what you need.
Is Todoist free to use in the UK?
Yes, with no credit card required. The Beginner tier includes 5 personal projects, task reminders, 3 filter views, 1 week of activity history and email and calendar integrations. The project cap is the limit most business users hit first.
Does Todoist integrate with HMRC or Making Tax Digital?
No. Todoist is a task manager with no financial, accounting or MTD functionality. You’ll need dedicated accounting software for HMRC obligations. Todoist can track reminders for filing deadlines if you set them up manually — and reminders are available on the free plan.
Is Business worth it for a three-person team?
At £288 a year before local tax, against £180 for three individual Pro accounts, you’re paying roughly £108 extra for shared workspaces, team roles, activity logs and centralised billing. Worth it if you need visibility over who’s doing what. Not worth it if everyone just needs their own list.
Conclusion: Is Todoist Worth It in 2026?
Todoist is one of the best task managers available. The interface is clean, the natural language input is genuinely impressive, and cross-platform reliability is as good as it gets in this category. It also bills in pounds, which removes a currency headache several competitors don’t.
The free Beginner tier is more capable than its reputation — task reminders are included, and so are email and calendar integrations. What will push you to upgrade is the 5-project cap and the 1-week activity history, both of which bite quickly for anyone running a business.
Pro at £60 a year is easy to justify once you hit those limits. Three hundred projects, full reporting history and custom reminders for £5 a month is solid value for a sole trader or freelancer, and it undercuts most project management tools by a wide margin.
Business at £96 a year per user, plus local tax, is worth it once you have a team needing shared visibility and centralised management — but do the arithmetic against individual Pro accounts first.
What Todoist won’t do is replace proper project management software or accounting tools. Know what you’re buying: it’s a task manager, arguably the best in its class, and for most small business owners who need to stay organised without complexity, that’s exactly right.
Our recommendation: start free and see whether the 5-project cap actually constrains you. When it does, Pro is the obvious step. Don’t pay for Business until you genuinely have a team that needs it.
Pricing and features correct at time of writing. Plans and capabilities are subject to change — always confirm current details on the provider’s website before purchasing.