Todoist alternative with habits and mood tracking
TL;DR. Todoist is the world's most-installed pure task manager — excellent at tasks, but it doesn't track habits or mood. The most common workaround is Todoist + Streaks + Daylio — three apps, three subscriptions, three siloed datasets. Keelify is the single-app alternative that combines all three in one weekly view, on a free-forever plan. If you only need a task list, Todoist is hard to beat. If you want the integrated picture, three apps is one more than necessary.
What Todoist gets right
Before the case for switching, the case for not switching. Todoist is genuinely excellent and deserves the credit.
Cross-platform perfection (15+ years of polish)
Todoist runs natively on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, web, Apple Watch, Wear OS, browser extensions for Chrome / Firefox / Edge / Safari, plugins for Outlook and Gmail, and integrations with seemingly every other tool you've ever used. The apps are fast, polished, and consistent across platforms in a way that takes nearly two decades to achieve.
If "I want this on every device I touch" is high on your list, Todoist's coverage is unmatched in the personal-task-manager category.
Natural-language input (best in class)
Type "Submit Q2 report every other Friday at 3pm starting next month" into Todoist and it parses every part correctly — the recurrence rule, the time, the start date. This is genuinely best-in-class natural-language parsing for tasks. No other tool handles complex recurring rules with the same effortlessness.
For users whose capture habit is "type the task as a sentence and let the parser figure it out," Todoist sets the bar.
Generous free tier
Todoist's free tier handles 5 personal projects, basic recurring tasks, and 3 filters. For a meaningful subset of users, the free tier is genuinely sufficient long-term. The Pro tier ($4/month) unlocks more projects, reminders, comments, and labels.
GTD/methodology integrations
The community ecosystem around Todoist — David Allen's GTD adaptations, the Filter Master approach, plugins for time-blocking on top of Todoist's data — is mature and active. If you've already built a Todoist-based GTD setup that works, the switching cost out of it is real.
These four strengths are why Todoist is the default recommendation in most "best task managers" articles. We're not arguing with that. We're arguing with the implicit assumption that "best task manager" is the only relevant question.
What Todoist doesn't try to do
The flip side of being the best at one thing: it isn't trying to do the others.
No habit tracking
Todoist has recurring tasks, which superficially look like habits — "meditate every day" repeats and shows up daily. But this isn't habit tracking. There's no streak (beyond the karma system), no strength score, no four-stage progression toward automaticity, no grace day, no pause feature. A recurring task is a task that recurs; a habit is a behavior whose consolidation you're tracking. Different goal, different data model.
No mood tracking
Nothing native. Todoist has tags and labels you could repurpose ("mood:7" as a tag) but no UI for it, no charts, no patterns surfaced. If mood and motivation matter to your understanding of your weeks, Todoist is silent on them.
No reflection/journaling
Comments on tasks are the closest thing — useful for project notes, awkward for daily reflection. There's no "what went well today" prompt, no gratitude space, no "what can be improved" field anchored to a specific day.
This is a feature, not a bug — Todoist is intentionally focused
It's important to be fair: Todoist's narrow scope is the deliberate product strategy. Doist (the company) has been clear for years that they would rather do one thing extremely well than become a productivity suite. That focus is what got them to 18 years of polish. It's also what means the gaps above will not be filled by future Todoist updates — they're not gaps the company considers gaps.
The "Todoist + 2 other apps" pattern
Most Todoist users who care about habits and mood end up running a multi-app stack.
Why people end up with Todoist + Streaks + Daylio
The standard combination, observable in any productivity-influencer setup video on YouTube:
- Todoist — for tasks. Inbox capture, daily / project lists, recurring routines.
- Streaks (or Habitify, or Productive) — for habits. Tracks the small daily behaviors with streak counters.
- Daylio (or Stoic, or Reflectly) — for mood and journaling. Daily mood check-in, optional reflection notes.
Each individual app is good at its one thing. Each is the recommendation in its own category. Stacking the three is what most "complete personal productivity setup" guides walk you through.
The three-app maintenance cost
The cost is paid in friction:
- Three subscriptions. Even with free tiers, the paid versions you'll eventually want add up to $10–$15/month combined.
- Three onboarding moments per day. Open Todoist for tasks. Open Streaks to log habits. Open Daylio for mood. Each open is a context switch.
- Three update cadences. When one app ships a redesign, the others don't follow. Visual coherence across your stack is impossible.
- Three places to recover when you take a break. Re-engaging with Todoist is one decision. Re-engaging with three apps requires re-deciding three times — and most people don't.
The friction isn't catastrophic. It's just present, every day, and it's the friction that integrated tools eliminate.
The siloed-data problem
The deeper cost isn't the friction — it's what the silos prevent.
Imagine being able to ask: "What does my motivation look like on weeks where I scheduled more than 30 tasks?" Or: "On days I logged my morning workout habit, did I complete more high-priority tasks?" Or: "My mood has been low for two weeks — what changed in my task patterns or habit consistency over that window?"
Three separate apps cannot answer any of these questions. Todoist doesn't know about your habits. Streaks doesn't know about your mood. Daylio doesn't know about your tasks. The data exists; it just lives in three buckets that can't talk to each other.
The integrated picture is exactly the picture you'd most want to see. The three-app stack is the picture you can't get.
Keelify as the integrated alternative
Tasks, habits, mood in one weekly view
Keelify ships all three as first-class features in a single weekly view. The week shows your tasks, your habits' completion grid, and your two daily mood-and-motivation sliders side by side. They're connected because they live in the same place at the same time.
You don't open three apps; you open one. You don't subscribe three times; you subscribe once (or stay on the free plan, which covers all three).
Patterns become visible because data lives together
Because the data lives in one system, the dashboard can surface patterns the three-app stack can't. Weekly summary widgets show task-completion against mood trends. Juno (the AI coach on Pro+) reads from all three data streams when generating its weekly narrative — including the calibration patterns from your time-estimate vs actual data, your mood swings, and your habit consolidation, in one coherent picture.
This isn't a marketing line; it's a structural consequence of integration. Three siloed apps physically cannot do this.
Free-forever plan
Keelify's free plan covers the weekly planner, daily mood tracking, and up to 3 habits forever. No trial expiry, no card required. Start with Keelify — there's no commitment to find out if the integrated approach fits your workflow.
Side-by-side: Todoist vs Keelify
| Todoist | Keelify | |
|---|---|---|
| Core scope | Pure task management | Tasks + habits + mood |
| Free tier | Generous (5 projects, 3 filters) | Generous (full week + mood + 3 habits) |
| Pro pricing | $4 / month | $4.17 / month (annual) |
| Native apps | Every platform, including watches | PWA (installs to home screen on all devices) |
| Natural-language input | Best in class — including complex recurrence | Solid — !priority, @category, dates, #tags |
| Habit tracking | None (recurring tasks aren't habits) | Built-in, research-backed strength score |
| Mood / motivation tracking | None | Built-in two-slider daily check-in |
| Reflection / journaling | Task comments only | Three-part daily reflection (Pro) |
| Karma / gamification | Karma system, levels | Deliberately none (why) |
| Streak design | Strict streak resets on miss | Grace day per 30 days (why) |
| AI | None native | Juno (Pro+, $7.50 / month annual) |
| Best for | Pure task power-users on every device | One-app integrated weekly picture |
When to stay with Todoist
To be honest: there are several reasons to stay.
If you only need tasks
If habits and mood aren't on your list of things to track, Todoist is a tighter, more polished choice for the narrower job. Keelify's strengths in habits and mood are wasted overhead if you're not going to use them.
If you live on iOS Watch / advanced filters
Todoist's native-watch apps and the depth of its filter language (compound queries like today & p1 & @home) are real, hard-to-replace power features. If your daily workflow depends on them, Keelify won't match that surface area.
If you've built a heavy karma-system around Todoist
The karma points and level progression are a real motivator for some users, and we don't want to talk anyone out of a system that's working. If karma is a meaningful daily reward for you, that's a strong argument for staying.
Migration considerations
If you're moving to Keelify (potentially as a one-app replacement, potentially as a Todoist + Keelify split):
Export from Todoist (Settings → Backups)
Todoist provides regular automatic backups in CSV format under Settings → Backups. Download the most recent one as your archive. Even if you don't formally import, the file is useful as a reference during transition.
1-week parallel run strategy
The cleanest approach: keep using Todoist for one week alongside Keelify. Add new tasks to both. After a week, you'll have a clear feel for whether Keelify covers your daily flow well enough to switch fully, or whether you want to keep Todoist as a capture inbox.
Import not yet supported (CSV mapping required for now)
Keelify doesn't currently have a one-click Todoist import. The Todoist CSV format includes recurrence rules, project paths, labels, and priorities that don't map cleanly to Keelify's simpler model — manual handling for the active subset is the practical path until native import lands. We're targeting Q3 2026 for an import flow that handles the most common Todoist export shape.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Todoist not track habits or mood?
It's a deliberate choice. Todoist has been a focused task manager since 2007 and its product philosophy explicitly rejects scope creep. The team has said publicly, multiple times, that they prefer to do one thing extremely well rather than be a productivity-suite-of-everything. That focus is exactly what makes Todoist great at tasks. It's also exactly what means you'll need a second tool if you want habits and a third if you want mood tracking.
Isn't "Todoist + Streaks + Daylio" fine? They each do one thing well.
It works, and many people run it for years. The cost is invisible until you look for it. Three subscriptions instead of one. Three onboarding flows for friends you recommend. Three daily check-ins instead of one. Three siloed datasets that can't tell you "your motivation drops on Wednesdays when you have more than 8 tasks scheduled." The pattern works; it's just less efficient than the integrated alternative, and the data you'd most want to see is the data the silos prevent.
Does Keelify have natural-language input as good as Todoist's?
Close, not equal. Todoist's natural-language parser has had 18 years of polish — recurring rules like "every other Tuesday at 3pm starting next month" work effortlessly. Keelify's Quick Add parses the basics: !high / !med / !low for priority, @work / @private for category, today / tomorrow / monday / next-friday for date, #tag for tags. For most everyday capture this is enough. For complex recurring rules, Todoist is ahead.
What about Todoist's karma system?
Todoist's karma awards points for completing tasks and increases your level over time. It's a gamification layer — Keelify deliberately doesn't have an equivalent because the research on long-term habit formation suggests gamification can crowd out intrinsic motivation. We've written about this in detail in The case against gamified habits. If karma is a real motivator for you, that's a meaningful argument for staying with Todoist.
Does Keelify replace Todoist completely?
For weekly personal planning, yes. For inbox-style capture across every device including a smartwatch, Todoist still has the edge — its native apps cover platforms Keelify (a PWA) doesn't reach as deeply. Many users keep Todoist as a capture inbox and use Keelify for the actual weekly plan plus habits and mood. That's a valid two-app setup that's still better than the three-app version.
Related reading
- Keelify vs Todoist — task list vs the whole picture — the side-by-side comparison version of this argument.
- Notion alternative for tasks — when to leave the workspace behind — the same case made against the other end of the spectrum.
- The best mindful-productivity apps in 2026 — broader survey of the category.
Last updated: 26 April 2026. Reviewed by the Keelify team.
Frequently asked questions
Why does Todoist not track habits or mood?
It's a deliberate choice. Todoist has been a focused task manager since 2007 and its product philosophy explicitly rejects scope creep. The team has said publicly, multiple times, that they prefer to do one thing extremely well rather than be a productivity-suite-of-everything. That focus is exactly what makes Todoist great at tasks. It's also exactly what means you'll need a second tool if you want habits and a third if you want mood tracking.
Isn't 'Todoist + Streaks + Daylio' fine? They each do one thing well.
It works, and many people run it for years. The cost is invisible until you look for it. Three subscriptions instead of one. Three onboarding flows for friends you recommend. Three daily check-ins instead of one. Three siloed datasets that can't tell you 'your motivation drops on Wednesdays when you have more than 8 tasks scheduled.' The pattern works; it's just less efficient than the integrated alternative, and the data you'd most want to see is the data the silos prevent.
Does Keelify have natural-language input as good as Todoist's?
Close, not equal. Todoist's natural-language parser has had 18 years of polish — recurring rules like 'every other Tuesday at 3pm starting next month' work effortlessly. Keelify's Quick Add parses the basics: !high / !med / !low for priority, @work / @private for category, today / tomorrow / monday / next-friday for date, #tag for tags. For most everyday capture this is enough. For complex recurring rules, Todoist is ahead.
What about Todoist's karma system?
Todoist's karma awards points for completing tasks and increases your level over time. It's a gamification layer — Keelify deliberately doesn't have an equivalent because the research on long-term habit formation suggests gamification can crowd out intrinsic motivation. We've written about this in detail in The case against gamified habits. If karma is a real motivator for you, that's a meaningful argument for staying with Todoist.
Does Keelify replace Todoist completely?
For weekly personal planning, yes. For inbox-style capture across every device including a smartwatch, Todoist still has the edge — its native apps cover platforms Keelify (a PWA) doesn't reach as deeply. Many users keep Todoist as a capture inbox and use Keelify for the actual weekly plan plus habits and mood. That's a valid two-app setup that's still better than the three-app version.