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A Todoist alternative where the AI is the architecture, not a bolt-on
Todoist is a genuinely good todo app, and if you're thinking about leaving it, it's worth being clear about why, because different reasons point to different apps. If what you're missing is team workspaces and integrations, you probably want to stay put or look at something like TickTick. If you want an algorithm that auto-schedules your tasks onto your calendar, that's Motion or Reclaim, not us.
Taskelo is for a third kind of searcher: you work solo, and what you actually want is an assistant that knows your tasks, notes, and goals well enough to be useful. That's the case this post makes.
What Todoist's AI actually is
As of August 2026, Todoist's AI Assist lives on the paid plans (Pro is $5/month billed annually, $7 month-to-month). It breaks a task into subtasks, suggests scheduling, builds filters from plain-language descriptions, and Ramble turns voice notes into tasks. Those are real features, and Ramble in particular is well done.
But notice the shape: each feature operates on one task at a time. The assistant doesn't know what your week looks like, what your long-term goals are, or that you've rescheduled the same item four times. It's a set of AI-powered buttons attached to a finished product, because that's what retrofitting AI onto a decade-old app gets you.
What Taskelo does differently
Taskelo started from the assistant and built the todo app around it. The app is one page: todos, a notes canvas, and Elo, an assistant powered by Claude. Every message you send Elo includes your todo list, your notes, your goals with their milestones, and (if connected) your Google Calendar.
That one design decision is most of the product. "Plan my day" gets you a timeboxed plan built from your real calendar and real backlog. "What should I drop this week" gets an answer that knows which tasks feed a goal and which are noise. And every morning the daily brief arrives by email or push: priorities, calendar conflicts, and a nudge on one goal you've been neglecting.
Side by side
Prices as of August 2026, annual billing where both offer it.
| Todoist Pro | Taskelo | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $5/month | $8/month, first 14 days free |
| Free tier | 5 projects, no AI | full workspace, no assistant after trial |
| AI scope | per-task actions (subtasks, filters, voice capture) | assistant with your whole workspace as context |
| Goals with milestones | no | yes, and Elo references progress |
| AI daily brief | no | email or push, reads your calendar |
| Calendar awareness | calendar layout view | Google Calendar as assistant context |
What you'd give up
This part matters, so honestly: Todoist has excellent native mobile apps, and Taskelo is a web app that works on a phone but is built for a laptop. Todoist has a decade of integrations, offline support, and a genuinely powerful filter-and-label system. It supports teams; Taskelo is strictly for one person. If any of those are load-bearing in your setup, the $5 is well spent where you are.
Try it
The way to know if ambient context matters is to feel it once. Open taskelo.com, sign in with a magic link (no card), and you get Elo free for 14 days on the latest Claude Sonnet model. Ask it to plan your day. After the trial the workspace stays free, and Elo plus the daily brief is $8/month. Details on the pricing page, the layout post goes deeper on why context-first beats bolt-on, and if you want the blunt side-by-side, there's Taskelo vs Todoist.