Motion vs Microsoft To Do: AI Scheduling vs Free Basics in 2026?

Motion launched around 2021 with a bold pitch: what if AI just planned your entire day for you? Instead of spending 30 minutes every morning doing calendar tetris, you tell Motion your tasks, deadlines, and priorities, and it auto-schedules everything. Sounds like sci-fi but it actually works - most of the time anyway. The app is expensive as hell ($34/month) but targets people whose time is genuinely valuable enough to justify it.

Think founders, executives, consultants billing $200+ per hour. For them, if Motion saves even 2-3 hours per month, it pays for itself.

Microsoft To Do came out in 2017 after Microsoft bought Wunderlist and basically rebuilt it with less charm. It's free, syncs with Outlook, and does exactly what you'd expect from a basic task manager. Lists, due dates, subtasks. The My Day feature is the one genuinely useful thing - it surfaces tasks you should focus on today.

Otherwise it's pretty unremarkable. Fine if you're already using Microsoft 365 for work and want your tasks in the same ecosystem. Hard to get excited about though - it hasn't evolved much since launch.

The AI scheduling is why Motion exists. Here's how it works: you create a task, set the deadline, estimate how long it'll take, and choose the priority. Motion looks at your calendar, sees your free time, and automatically schedules when you'll work on it. Meeting gets moved? Motion reschedules your tasks around it. Something takes longer than expected? Motion pushes other tasks back.

After using it for about 6 weeks, I actually trust it now. First week was rough - it scheduled focus work at dumb times and I kept manually overriding it. But it learns your patterns. Now it knows I'm useless before 10am and schedules deep work in the afternoon.

Microsoft To Do has zero AI scheduling. You set due dates manually, you figure out when you'll work on things, you reschedule everything yourself when your day inevitably goes sideways.

The 'intelligent suggestions' feature is supposed to help but honestly it's pretty useless - mostly just reminds you about overdue tasks or suggests adding tasks to My Day. There's no automatic planning, no smart rescheduling, none of the AI magic that makes Motion worth its ridiculous price tag.

Motion combines your calendar and tasks into one unified view, which is the whole point. You see meetings and scheduled tasks together, so you actually know what your day looks like. The calendar pulls from Google, Outlook, Apple - whatever you use.

Time-blocking happens automatically when Motion schedules tasks, but you can also manually block focus time. The meeting scheduler is basically built-in Calendly - share your availability link, people book time, it syncs to your calendar. Honestly removed like three other tools from my stack when I realized Motion did all this.

Microsoft To Do has a calendar view but it's pretty bare-bones. You can see tasks by due date in a calendar layout, and tasks sync to your Outlook calendar as separate items. But there's no unified view where you see meetings and tasks together. No time-blocking.

No concept of scheduling when you'll actually work on tasks - just when they're due. If you need real calendar-task integration, this ain't it. You'll end up using Outlook Calendar separately anyway.

Motion added team features last year and they're actually pretty solid. You can see everyone's workload, so you know who's slammed and who has capacity before you assign tasks. The AI schedules around the whole team, not just you individually.

Project views help track what's in progress, what's blocked, all that. It's not going to replace Asana for complex projects, but for small teams (maybe 5-15 people) doing relatively straightforward work, it covers the basics while adding the AI scheduling magic. We switched our agency team to it back in August 2025 and honestly it's been smooth.

Microsoft To Do has basic sharing. You can share lists with other people, they can add tasks and check stuff off. That's about it. No real project management features, no workload views, no capacity planning.

Fine for sharing a grocery list with your partner or coordinating simple stuff with a few people. Absolutely not built for team workflows. If you need actual collaboration, you're using Microsoft Planner or Teams anyway, not To Do.

Let's address the elephant in the room - Motion is stupidly expensive. $34/month month-to-month, or $19/month if you pay for a year upfront. That's $228/year. For a task manager. When Todoist costs like $48/year. The only way this makes sense is if your time is genuinely valuable and the AI scheduling saves you meaningful hours.

I tested it for 3 months before committing because I needed to know it actually worked. It does. The time I save not manually planning my day every morning, plus the auto-rescheduling when things go sideways, is worth it for me. But if you're a student or your schedule is mostly predictable, this is total overkill.

Microsoft To Do is free. Completely, totally free. No freemium tier, no premium upgrade, just free. If you have a Microsoft account, you have access to the full app.

That's obviously compelling if you don't need any advanced features. The catch is that you're getting a very basic task manager that hasn't really improved much since 2017. Free is great, but when you compare it to what else exists at the free tier (TickTick, Google Tasks, even Todoist's free version), Microsoft To Do feels kind of dated. It works, but you're not getting much value even at the price of zero.

Motion's mobile apps are fine but clearly the desktop is where it shines. On mobile you can see your schedule, check off tasks, add new ones. The AI still works - if you mark a task complete early, it automatically uses that time for something else.

But the full planning experience with calendar and task management is better on a bigger screen. I mostly use mobile for quick checks ('what's next on my schedule?') and marking things done. Syncing is fast though, which matters - add a task on mobile and it shows up scheduled on desktop immediately.

The mobile apps for Microsoft To Do are actually solid. Clean interface, fast, works offline. Widgets look decent on both iOS and Android. Voice input with Cortana (lol remember Cortana?) is there if you use that.

Honestly the mobile experience is probably the best part of Microsoft To Do - it's simple and it works. Adding tasks is quick, checking things off is satisfying, and My Day gives you a clean view of what matters today. For basic mobile task management, it's good enough.

Okay, real talk about when Motion's price makes sense. Upgrade if: your calendar is constantly changing and you're tired of replanning your day every time a meeting moves. Your time is worth $100+ per hour and Motion saves you even one hour per week. You struggle with prioritization and need something to just tell you what to work on next. You manage a small team and coordinating everyone's workload manually is eating up time.

Don't upgrade if: your schedule is predictable and you're fine planning your own day. You're on a tight budget or your time isn't that valuable yet. You want a simple task list and don't care about AI scheduling. Honestly most people don't need Motion. But for those who do, it's weirdly worth the absurd price.

Here's the thing - you're not really 'upgrading' from Microsoft To Do because there's no premium tier. It's free, that's all you get. The question is whether you should switch to something better. Consider switching if: you want AI-powered scheduling (Motion). You need better integrations and features (Todoist, TickTick).

You want more sophisticated project management (Asana, ClickUp). Stick with Microsoft To Do if: you're deep in the Microsoft ecosystem and everything else you use is Microsoft 365. You literally just need lists and checkboxes. Free matters more to you than features. You're coordinating with others who also use Microsoft products.