MeisterTask vs Todoist

Disclosure: Breeze publishes this comparison and is one of the tools discussed here. Breeze does not compete for the personal-productivity half of this search, and it has no mind-mapping pipeline — both are said plainly below.

Review process: Written in late July 2026 from both vendors' published plan tables, including the feature-by-tier comparison grids, which is where the paywall differences below come from. Ratings and reviewer comments are from Capterra.

Short answer: MeisterTask if the team needs one shared surface everybody looks at — a board with status, assignees and hours on it. Todoist if the job is each person keeping their own commitments straight. The two facts that decide it: MeisterTask includes time tracking on every plan including free, and Todoist has none at any price.

The usual framing for this pair is "boards versus lists", which is true and not very useful. The better question is where a team's shared context lives. A Todoist project is a list individuals subscribe to; a MeisterTask project is a board the group stares at together. Everything else follows from that.

MeisterTask vs Todoist at a glance

MeisterTask and Todoist compared on the points that decide this pair

Feature	MeisterTask	Todoist
Best for	Teams sharing one visual board	Individuals managing their own load
Free plan	3 projects, unlimited members	5 projects, 5 per project
Entry paid plan	$7/user/month	$5/user/month billed yearly
Time tracking	Every plan, including free	Not available
Offline use	Web-dependent	Strong offline mobile
Subtasks	Business plan only	All plans
Mind map pipeline	MindMeister integration	None
Rating	4.7/5 on Capterra (1,157 reviews)	4.6/5 on Capterra (2,653 reviews)

Quick verdict: MeisterTask vs Todoist

Choose MeisterTask if:

• The team runs a standup off a board and needs status visible at a glance
• Hours need to sit against tasks, for billing or for capacity
• Brainstorms start as mind maps and should become tasks without retyping

Choose Todoist if:

• The main problem is your own commitments, not the team's status
• Capture speed and awkward recurring schedules matter more than visibility
• You work offline often and need the mobile app to hold up

Choose Breeze if:

• Client projects need timelines and reporting, not just a board
• Outside collaborators should see part of the work but not all of it
• You want tracked hours and project structure from the same tool

What each one puts behind a paywall

Both products are cheap, so the interesting comparison is not the price but which capability each one decided to charge for. Two of those choices are genuinely counter-intuitive.

MeisterTask gives away time tracking and charges for subtasks. Time tracking appears on every tier including the free plan — a feature most competitors reserve for paid tiers or omit entirely. Subtasks, by contrast, require the Business plan at $12.50 per user per month, alongside timeline views, roles and permissions, custom fields and custom reports. So a free MeisterTask account can bill hours but cannot break a task into steps.

Todoist gives away subtasks and charges for almost everything about scale. Sub-tasks, recurring dates, labels and priorities are all on the free Beginner plan. What the free plan restricts is size: five personal projects, three filter views, one week of activity history and 5 MB uploads. And regardless of tier, a personal project holds five collaborators.

Which tier each capability first appears on

Capability	MeisterTask	Todoist
Time tracking	Free	Never
Subtasks	Business, $12.50	Free
Timeline or Gantt view	Business, $12.50	Never
Roles and permissions	Business, $12.50	Business, $8
Recurring tasks and automations	Pro, $7	Free
Unlimited projects	Pro, $7	300 on Pro, $5
External sharing	Pro, $7	Business, $8
Calendar layout	Free	Pro, $5

Read down that table and the products' priorities are visible. MeisterTask charges for structure and reporting and gives away the collaborative basics. Todoist charges for scale and gives away the task mechanics. If you are choosing on the free plans alone, you are choosing between a board that cannot nest tasks and a list that cannot be shared past five people.

Key differences between MeisterTask and Todoist

The first difference is the atomic unit. MeisterTask's is a card in a section on a shared board, and its automations fire when that card moves. Todoist's is a line you typed in a sentence, and its intelligence is in parsing what you meant.

The second is the ecosystem each sits in. MeisterTask is one of the Meister products, so a MindMeister mind map can become a project board and MeisterNote covers documents. Todoist is deliberately standalone and connects outward through integrations instead of a suite.

Is MeisterTask better than Todoist?

MeisterTask is better than Todoist for any work where several people need the same picture — status by column, who has what, and how long it took.

Todoist is better than MeisterTask at personal throughput: capturing a thought in two seconds, handling a recurring rule nobody wants to configure twice, and working when the connection does not.

For the field around them, MeisterTask alternatives covers the board-first tools and Todoist alternatives covers the task managers people move between.

If documentation is the other thing your team keeps trying to solve, MeisterTask vs Notion is the next comparison to read.

What is MeisterTask?

• Pricing: free plan; Pro $7, Business $12.50, Enterprise $15 per user per month
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra from 1,157 reviews

MeisterTask, from MeisterLabs, is a board-first work manager. Against Todoist's private lists, the design assumption is that the work is shared: cards live in sections, sections carry automations that run when a card arrives, and every member sees the same state. The free plan is unusual in allowing unlimited team members while limiting projects to three — the opposite trade from Todoist, which limits people rather than projects.

Two things are worth knowing before you commit. The Meister suite is a real advantage — mind maps in MindMeister convert into MeisterTask tasks, and MeisterNote handles documents — and it is the reason creative and agency teams choose it. The real weakness is connectivity: reviewers are direct that it is web-based and depends on being online, which is exactly where Todoist is strongest.

What users say about MeisterTask

"Unfortunately, MeisterTask is web based and highly depends on internet due to lack of offline access capabilities."

Source: Capterra

What is Todoist?

• Pricing: free Beginner plan; Pro $5 and Business $8 per user per month billed yearly
• Rating: 4.6/5 on Capterra from 2,653 reviews

Todoist is a task manager optimised for the moment of capture. Where MeisterTask asks which column a card belongs in, Todoist asks nothing — you type "invoice Acme every first Monday" and it schedules itself. The recurring-rule handling is the feature people stay for, and it has no MeisterTask equivalent.

It has also grown a real AI layer, which older comparisons miss: Ramble for talking through work, plus Task, Filter and Email Assist, with unlimited Ramble sessions on Pro and Business. The company holds SOC2 Type II certification. What it still does not have, at any tier, is time tracking or a timeline view — so hours and dependencies live somewhere else.

What users say about Todoist

"I especially like how it automates recurring tasks. If there's something I need to do daily, or even on a weird schedule like every weekday, it will keep up with that."

Source: Capterra

MeisterTask vs Todoist features

Both hold tasks with dates, assignees, comments and labels. Below is where they stop overlapping.

Where MeisterTask and Todoist diverge on capability

Area	MeisterTask	Todoist
Primary view	Kanban board with sections	List, with a board layout
Natural-language capture	Standard forms	Core strength
Time tracking	Included on all plans	Not offered
Section automations	Fire when a card moves	Recurring rules only
Offline mobile	Weak, per reviewers	Reliable
Suite integration	MindMeister and MeisterNote	Third-party integrations
AI	20 to 350 prompts by tier	Ramble and Assist tools
Unlimited team members	Even on the free plan	Business plan only

The last row is the one to weigh if cost is what brought you. MeisterTask's free plan takes the whole team and limits projects to three; Todoist's free plan takes five projects and limits collaborators to five. A team of eight can share three MeisterTask boards for nothing; they cannot share a Todoist project at all without upgrading.

MeisterTask vs Todoist pricing

Both bill per user, so these are directly comparable — MeisterTask's prices exclude VAT and Todoist's Business plan adds local tax.

Annual cost by team size, from each vendor's published rates

Team size	MeisterTask Pro	MeisterTask Business	Todoist Pro	Todoist Business
5 users	$420	$750	$300	$480
10 users	$840	$1,500	$600	$960
25 users	$2,100	$3,750	$1,500	$2,400

Todoist is cheaper at every size, which is fair given it is doing less. The comparison people should actually run is MeisterTask Pro against Todoist Business plus a time-tracking tool — at ten people that is $840 against $960 plus whatever Toggl or Harvest costs, and the gap closes or reverses.

MeisterTask vs Todoist ease of use

Todoist is the easier tool to adopt alone. There is nothing to configure, the mobile apps are excellent, and reviewers describe the speed of getting something onto a list as the main reason they stay.

MeisterTask is the easier tool to adopt together. A board explains itself to a new joiner in a way a set of private lists never does, and section automations mean the process is encoded in the board rather than in someone's head.

The friction is in different places. MeisterTask's is connectivity, and reviewers say so bluntly. Todoist's is the moment a second person needs to see your work and you discover that a personal project holds five people, which is a limit no amount of familiarity gets round.

MeisterTask pros and cons

MeisterTask pros

• Time tracking on every plan including free, which Todoist does not offer at any price
• Unlimited team members even on the free plan, against Todoist's five-per-project ceiling
• Section automations that fire on card movement, where Todoist has only recurring rules
• MindMeister mind maps convert into tasks, and MeisterNote covers docs — no Todoist equivalent
• Board-first design that a whole team can read at a glance

MeisterTask cons

• Subtasks require the $12.50 Business plan, where Todoist includes them free
• Timeline views, roles, custom fields and custom reports are all Business-only
• Offline support is weak, which is Todoist's strongest ground
• Free plan caps you at three projects
• Costs more per user than Todoist at every tier

Todoist pros and cons

Todoist pros

• Natural-language capture and recurring rules that MeisterTask's forms cannot match
• Subtasks, labels and priorities all on the free plan, where MeisterTask charges for subtasks
• Reliable offline mobile use, the gap reviewers name in MeisterTask
• Cheaper per user at every tier, and free indefinitely for one person
• Ramble and the Assist tools, plus SOC2 Type II certification

Todoist cons

• No time tracking at any tier, where MeisterTask includes it on free
• Five collaborators per personal project on every plan, including Business
• No timeline or Gantt view, and no equivalent of MeisterTask's section automations
• Board layout is a second view of a list rather than a board-first design
• Free plan allows five projects and one week of history

When MeisterTask is the better choice

A ten-person design studio running client work. Everyone needs to see which jobs are in progress, hours have to land against tasks for invoicing, and the ideas that start the work arrive as mind maps. MeisterTask covers all three, and Pro at $840 a year is the whole bill.

It is also the better choice for any team that has quietly been using a personal task manager as a shared system and keeps discovering nobody can see anything.

When Todoist is the better choice

One person, or a small group whose shared work really is a list. Todoist is free at that size, faster to capture into, and its recurring rules handle schedules that would need manual repetition elsewhere.

It is also right when the work happens away from a desk. Reliable offline mobile is a genuine differentiator here, and it is precisely the thing MeisterTask reviewers flag as missing.

Breeze as an alternative

Breeze is not a personal task manager, so on Todoist's home ground it does not compete — if you are organising your own week, Todoist is the better answer and costs nothing. Breeze also has no mind-mapping pipeline of the kind MeisterTask inherits from MindMeister.

What Breeze adds over MeisterTask's board is the layer above it: timelines, cross-project reporting and client access without paying for a top tier to get them. Where MeisterTask puts timeline views and custom reports on its Business plan, Breeze treats project structure and tracked hours as the product rather than the upgrade.

For a like-for-like board comparison, where Breeze and Trello differ covers what changes once a board needs deadlines, hours and reporting attached to it.

What users say about Breeze

"Quite simply the easiest but most versatile Kanban board you'll ever use. While the interface is minimal, it still manages to get in every feature you'd possible need to manage a team or project."

Source: Capterra

Which tool should you choose?

The decision in one line each

Choose MeisterTask	Choose Todoist	Choose Breeze
Everyone reads one board	You manage your own load	Client work with deadlines
Hours belong on tasks	Capture speed wins	Timelines and reporting
Mind maps start the work	You work offline often	Outside collaborators

Running both is a legitimate outcome here, and more common than either vendor would like to admit. Personal capture and shared visibility are separate jobs, and people who move their team to MeisterTask frequently keep Todoist for their own week. If that is where you end up, it is a working arrangement rather than indecision.

Where it stops working is billing. The moment hours have to be defended to a client, the split becomes a reconciliation problem, and the tool holding the tasks should be the one holding the time. That is the point at which "we use both" turns into a real decision.

FAQ

Does Todoist have a Kanban board good enough for a team?

Todoist has a board layout, and on the free plan it works in label, filter and personal project views, with team projects added on Business. It is a second way to look at a list rather than a board-first product. MeisterTask is built around the board — sections, automations that fire on move, and a status view a team can run a standup from.

Can you turn a MindMeister mind map into MeisterTask tasks?

Yes, and it is the main reason creative teams pick MeisterTask. MindMeister and MeisterTask are both Meister products, so a brainstorm can be built as a mind map and its nodes converted into tasks on a project board without retyping. MeisterNote covers the documentation side. Todoist has no equivalent pipeline.

Does MeisterTask track time on tasks?

Yes, and unusually it is available on every tier including the free plan. Todoist has no native time tracking at any price, so billable work in Todoist means a second tool such as Toggl or Harvest. For agencies and consultancies this is often the line that decides the comparison.

Is MeisterTask or Todoist better for a small agency?

MeisterTask, in most cases. Client work needs a shared visual status, time against tasks and external sharing, and MeisterTask has all three, with time tracking even on the free plan. Todoist is the better tool for each person's own workload, which is why plenty of agencies end up running both rather than choosing.