Things 3 Review

Best Features, Pricing, Alternatives & Opinion

Things has been one of the classic names of task management space in the last 10 years, popularized with fantastic design and performance, but does it live up to the hype? Most importantly, is it right for you?

What is Things 3?

Things 3 is a simple to-do list app for planning your week & personal projects.

What is Things 3 used for?

Thousands of people find benefit in Things 3 for planning their week ahead with tasks, seeing what events they have (Apple Calendar only) and organizing what projects they'd like to focus on breaking them down into sections.

Things 3 is very much a solo user application meaning you cannot share it with others like you would in Todoist but allows you to plan with your own schedule ahead. There's a great in-depth exploration into how Things 3 works for Sweet Setup, to check out.

Things 3: Best Features

Let's look at the reasons to get Things 3 in 2024:

1. Stunning Look

This is one of the best looking to-do list app, if not, the best...

The minimal design combined with a clean UI makes Things 3 a beautiful thing to open in the morning when planning your task. Everything from the task capture to the planning of your project is easy to use and makes for a lovely experience.

Using this is a pleasure and that's why we scored the design an easy 10 out of 10.

2. Personal Projects

One of the biggest experiences that separates Things 3 from many other to-do apps is the focus on project management. Creating a project allows you to add a title, description, deadline, due dates, tags and convert it into an area (the way to organize projects).

This experience goes further allowing you to add tasks, organize them by sections that can be added and tasks can be re-scheduled all from here. They then populate in your today and upcoming area, easily clear what project they are part of, and allow you to plot your week ahead with project management in mind.

Overall the projects is better than Todoist as they have deadlines and due dates with Things 3 areas to organize what projects you have into areas of your life.

3. Productivity Focused

Things 3 is arguably built for GTD lovers.

There are many features like anytime and someday that are very integrated with the thinking of Getting Things Done by David Allen. Allowing you to break down context with tags for better task filtering in almost all views like today and projects.

You can also keep a tally of your completed tasks with logbook allowing you to scroll back over the time you've been working and see what you've done.

Things 3: The Cons

Things we didn't like about Things... sorry!

1. High Upfront Cost

Things 3 is one of the more expensive one-off applications.

If you were to download it on all your Apple devices (iPad, iPhone and macOS) it'll set you back shy of $80. One of the benefits of this is that you only have to pay one-off costs, but for some people this is a big investment upfront. There is a free trial to see whether Things 3 is right for you, but still something to be aware of if you have all those devices.

2. Subscription & Cloud

Whilst Things 4 hasn't been announced, Things 3 could well be the last version of Things.

There's general speculation to whether the Things application and the Cultured Code team decide to go with a subscription model where you will pay less upfront and pay that annually, recurring, like many of the other to-do list applications. The question is how does this affect Things 3 users, this might not, it could allow you to keep the software forever, but only time will tell and this is a model apps like Fantastical moved to.

This is total speculation but something most software productivity apps are moving too.

Things 3 also runs of a separate cloud service that backs up your tasks and stores them allowing you cross device access. From using this beforehand, we had no issues. This can switched on from the Settings pages.

Things 3 Pricing

Let's see how much Things 3 sets you back.

How Much Does Things 3 Cost?

Phone costs $9.99, iPad costs $19.99 and macOS costs $49.99 one-off fee.

Things 3 is priced independently per device. So you will need to pay per App Store account, meaning if you move devices, you will still (if signed in) keep your license.

Things 3 Review

If you're looking for a minimal, to-do app, with solo features, one-off pricing - this is the best to-do list application in the world for you.

Well-developed, outstanding functionality for solo use, this is one of the best to-do list apps on our list almost 5 years in a row now. It continues to bring reliable updates that are iOS centric allowing you the latest widget updates, control centre updates & more.

This is great for all-round use, those who stick to Apple & love not paying subscriptions.

Best Things 3 Alternatives

The best Things 3 alternatives are Todoist, TickTick & Sorted 3.