Best Things 3 alternatives for people who plan by goals

Things 3 is one of the most quietly loved to-do apps ever made. The typography is careful, the animations are calm, and nothing gets in the way. So why do so many people go looking for a Things 3 alternative? Almost always because the app stops exactly where their planning starts. It holds tasks beautifully, but it was never built for goals, for reflection, or for a life that reaches past a flat list of errands.

This is an honest look at why people leave, what actually matters if you plan by goals rather than loose tasks, and which alternatives fit which person. Every platform, calendar and pricing claim is checked against the makers’ own documentation, so you can weigh real trade-offs instead of guessing. And if you want the short version up front: for the reader who loved Things for its calm and only wishes it connected daily tasks to real goals and a reflection habit, the pick that keeps that calm while closing the gap is Vekto.

Why people leave Things 3

It only runs on Apple. Things is built for macOS, iPadOS, iOS, watchOS and visionOS, with no Android, Windows or web version. The moment a work laptop runs Windows, or a partner is on Android, the shared system quietly breaks. For anyone who lives entirely inside one ecosystem this never matters; for everyone else, it is the first wall they hit.

The calendar is read-only. Things can show events next to your to-dos, but only from Apple Calendar, and only inside the Today and Upcoming lists. There is no calendar-style timeline, and you cannot push a task back onto your calendar. Cultured Code’s own support note explains that Things “only mirrors the calendar events from Apple Calendar,” so anything you plan by dragging a task into a time slot has to happen somewhere else.

No goals, no reflection, no assistant. Entry is keyboard-friendly, but there is no full natural-language parsing of a whole sentence, and nothing that ever asks how a week or a quarter actually went. Tasks go in, tasks get ticked, and that is the entire loop. There is no place to name a weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly goal and watch today’s work feed it, and no built-in prompt to review a period before it slips away. If you think in outcomes rather than errands, the app simply never meets you there.

The scope is frozen. The current major version has been Things 3 since 2017. In 2026 it still ships as version 3.22.x, with no Things 4 announced. That stability reassures some people and worries others who want the app to grow with the way they plan.

You pay per device. There is no subscription, which many buyers prefer, but each platform is a separate one-time purchase: roughly $50 on Mac, $20 on iPad and $10 on iPhone, so about $80 to cover all three. Sync is included, and there is no recurring fee once you have bought in.

Things 3 is a lovely place to keep tasks. The apps worth switching to are the ones that also hold your goals, and ask how last week really went.

What to look for if you plan by goals, not just tasks

If your only complaint is that Things lacks a feature or two, almost any cross-platform app will satisfy you. If the deeper problem is that a flat task list never connects to what you are actually trying to achieve, the bar is higher. These are the things that separate a busier task manager from a tool that genuinely plans:

• Goal horizons. A real home for weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly goals, so today’s tasks ladder up to something bigger instead of floating free. A good starting point is a set of honest quarterly goals that this week’s work can actually feed.
• A reflection habit. Built-in review, not just checkboxes, so you close each period on purpose instead of letting it drift into the next. Even a light weekly reflection habit quietly changes how the following week begins.
• Calm you can keep. The reason you loved Things was restraint. An alternative that buries you in panels and badges is not an upgrade, it is a different problem wearing a busier coat.
• Capture that gets out of the way. Natural-language quick-add and dictation, so a thought like “call Anna tomorrow 14:30” becomes a scheduled to-do without touching a single menu.
• Offline-first sync. Your plan should open instantly and stay yours on a train or a plane, then sync across your devices the moment you are back, not stall behind a spinner.

The best Things 3 alternatives, compared

No single app wins for everyone, but they do not all tie either. Here is how the main options line up on the dimensions that matter most if you plan by goals rather than just tasks: how calm they feel, whether they truly hold goals and reflection, how quickly you can capture and sync, and how honest the pricing is.

Who each one is for

• Todoist if the main thing you need is to leave Apple behind. It is the safe cross-platform pick, and its natural-language input is genuinely excellent, among the best in the category. What it will not do is hold your goals: they still live in your head, not the app. If you are weighing it up, our Todoist alternatives piece goes deeper.
• TickTick if you want a lot of built-in tools in one place: calendar, habits, a Pomodoro timer and an Eisenhower matrix, all cross-platform. That breadth is a real strength, but it trades away exactly the restraint that made Things feel calm.
• OmniFocus if you want the deepest GTD setup on Apple. Its Review Mode, which prompts you to check projects on a schedule, is the closest thing to a reflection routine in a mainstream task app, and power users swear by it. The cost is a steeper learning curve, and projects rather than true goal horizons.
• Apple Reminders if you want free and simple and already live inside Apple. It handles subtasks, tags and smart lists without a second thought about cost, though it offers no structure above the list.
• Vekto if the missing piece is goals and reflection, not more task features. It keeps the calm, editorial feel Things people love, with a strict 0px-radius design, a full dark mode and curated accent colors, then adds goals at four horizons, reflection on each goal in free text, guided questions or a simple 1-5 rating, a Today view you can read as a list, a timeline or both, a 7-day Week board, projects with a text area, small notes for stray thoughts, and an “open from yesterday” carry-over that moves unfinished to-dos to today. All of it works offline first and syncs fast across iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The honest trade-off

Leaving Things 3 always costs you something, and it is only fair to say so plainly. Todoist and TickTick hand you every platform, but a busier interface comes bundled with it. OmniFocus gives you depth, at the price of a steeper climb. Apple Reminders is free, and structurally almost bare. Vekto, in the same spirit of honesty, shares one of Things’ own limits: it lives on iPhone, iPad and Mac, so if you genuinely need Android or Windows it is not your tool. What Vekto refuses to trade away is the thing you came for. It stays calm, it stays focused, and it adds the one layer Things never had: your daily tasks sitting under real goals, with a reflection habit built in. You can review each goal in whichever way fits, free text on a slow evening, guided questions when you want prompting, or a quick 1-5 rating when you are short on time, and an “open from yesterday” carry-over quietly rolls unfinished to-dos forward so nothing falls through. For a focused planner in the Apple world, that is the trade most worth making, because it is the only option here that fixes the actual gap without importing new noise.

The verdict: choose Vekto for calm, goals and reflection

Start from the reason you are leaving. If you truly need Android or Windows, take Todoist or TickTick and accept the extra noise that comes with them. If you want the most powerful Apple GTD engine, OmniFocus rewards the effort. If you just want free and simple, Apple Reminders is right there. But if you loved Things for its calm and only ever wished your daily tasks sat under real goals and an honest reflection habit, the recommendation is clear: Vekto was built for exactly that reader, around a plain “Plan. Execute. Reflect.” loop, with natural-language capture, dictation, offline-first sync, projects, small notes, recurring to-dos, more than ten languages, plain-text export, and a 60-day free trial before a single, simple monthly or yearly plan, with no ads, no tracking and no data selling. Whichever app you shortlist, move a full week of real tasks into it before you commit, and live with the daily rhythm rather than the feature list, because the feel of daily use tells you more than any comparison table ever will. For anyone who wants calm plus goals plus reflection in one place, that week almost always ends on Vekto.