Short answer: Yes — It does everything Todoist does for half the price, plus a built-in calendar view.
Worth it for: Productivity nerds who want a calendar, task list in one app without paying Todoist Premium prices. Skip if: You prioritize pixel-perfect design above all else. Better alternative: Todoist Premium TickTick Premium is the app that makes other productivity gurus uncomfortable. It exposes the naked truth: you’ve been overpaying for a logo and a marginally nicer font. For $2.79 a month, you get a shockingly complete system: solid tasks and projects, a genuinely useful built-in calendar, a Pomodoro timer, habit tracking, and even Eisenhower Matrix views. feature-for-feature, it runs circles around Todoist Premium, which charges over twice as much and still makes you cobble together a calendar solution.
The value proposition is brutally simple. You are trading a sliver of design elegance for a massive pile of utility and cash savings. If that trade-off makes you hesitate, you might be in this for the aesthetics, not the actual productivity.
When It IS Worth It
It’s worth it when you’re sick of subscribing to three different apps (task manager, calendar, focus timer). The integrated calendar view is the killer feature Todoist lacks. It’s worth it if you’re on a budget but refuse to use glorified notepads. It’s absolutely worth it if you use the Pomodoro Technique or want to build habits alongside your tasks—having it all in one app reduces friction dramatically. Let me put the savings into perspective. TickTick Premium costs $33.48/year. To replicate its feature set with separate apps, you'd need Todoist Premium ($48/year), a standalone Pomodoro app ($5-10), a habit tracker like Streaks ($5 one-time, but iOS only), and a calendar integration workaround. That's $60-70 per year minimum, plus the mental overhead of switching between four apps every time you want to plan your day. TickTick consolidates all of that into one screen. The Eisenhower Matrix view alone — where you sort tasks by urgency and importance — is something Todoist still doesn't offer without third-party hacks. If you're the kind of person who makes priority grids on paper, TickTick just digitized your entire workflow for less than the price of a monthly coffee habit.
When It Is NOT Worth It
It is not worth it if you are a design purist who gets a visceral headache from an icon that’s a half-pixel out of place. It’s not worth it if you live inside the Google or Apple ecosystem and their specific task apps meet your bare-minimum needs. It’s also not worth it if your entire team is locked into Asana or ClickUp; the collaboration here is good, but not a migration-worthy reason alone. There's also an uncomfortable truth about productivity apps in general: the people most drawn to TickTick Premium — the ones comparing features across six apps and reading reviews like this one — are often procrastinating by optimizing their system instead of doing the work. If you've switched task managers more than twice in the last year, the problem isn't the app. TickTick won't fix a planning addiction. It'll just give you more toggles to fiddle with while your actual to-do list grows.
Who Should NOT Buy This
- The Apple Design Award Chasers: If you use software primarily for how it looks in a screenshot, stick with Things 3. You’ll pay more for less, but you’ll feel fancier.
- The Simple Listers: If your needs are “milk, eggs, bread” on a shared list with your spouse, just use the reminders app that came with your phone. You’re wasting money here.
- Enterprise Managers: This isn’t a Jira replacement. Move along.
Cheaper or Better Alternatives
| Alternative | Price | My Take |
|---|---|---|
| Todoist Premium | ~$5/month | Prettier, more polished, with slightly better natural language input. You pay a 100% premium for the design and brand, while losing the built-in calendar. A sucker's bet for the feature-conscious. |
| Google Tasks | Free | A bare-bones list that’s perfectly integrated with Google Calendar. It’s free and fine if your needs are infantile. |
| Microsoft To Do | Free | Surprisingly competent, completely free, and great with Outlook. Lacks advanced features like time blocking or serious project views. The best free alternative. |
| Apple Reminders | Free | Deeply integrated into Apple devices and finally somewhat powerful. Still feels like a sidekick to Calendar, not a unified system. |
Check out our Airtable review for comparison. Check out our Alfred Powerpack review for comparison. The built-in Pomodoro timer integration means you can start a focus session directly from a task, and the time spent automatically logs against it. This removes the friction of switching between a task manager and a timer app, which sounds trivial but is exactly the kind of micro-interruption that kills focus.
Final Verdict
worthit. This isn't a hard decision. TickTick Premium delivers 95% of the Todoist experience, throws in a calendar and focus timer, and charges you half the price. The only legitimate complaint is that its interface is slightly uglier—a bit more crowded, a tad less instantly intuitive. If that minor flaw is a dealbreaker for you, you have my pity, and Todoist has your wallet. For everyone else who actually wants to get things done without a subscription bouquet, TickTick is the obvious, correct choice.
FAQ
Is the calendar view really that good?
Yes. It's a proper time-blocking tool integrated with your tasks. You drag and drop. Todoist still doesn't have this natively, years later.
Can I share projects and collaborate?
Yes, Premium unlocks team features. It works well for small teams. For large corporations, look elsewhere.
Does the Pomodoro timer work?
It's basic but effective. It ties directly to your tasks. Having it in the same app you're already in eliminates one more "just let me switch to my timer app" distraction.
What's the catch?
The catch is the slightly cluttered, less refined UI. That's it. That's the whole catch. The company is based in China, which triggers data privacy concerns for some, though they claim data is stored in the US.