COMPARISON · MAY 2026
First Light vs Todoist — an honest comparison
You probably found this page because Todoist’s streaks and karma points started feeling like work about work. We’ve been there. Here’s how the two tools actually differ — including the parts where Todoist is still the better pick.
THE QUICK VERDICT
Pick Todoist if you want a battle-tested cross-platform task manager with deep native apps, natural-language parsing, and a project hierarchy you can lean on. It’s the safe choice and it works.
Pick First Light if you want a calm daily rhythm instead of a backlog. A morning brief that’s read once and closed. AI that re-sorts your day around your energy. Snapshot, voice, or paste a screenshot to get tasks. Two-way Google Calendar sync. No streaks, no karma, no badges — by design.
The honest case for Todoist
Todoist has been shipping since 2007 and it shows. The natural-language parser is industry-leading — type “Submit invoice every other Friday at 3pm” and it just works. Native apps on iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux, Apple Watch, and a respected REST API. If you live across 5 devices and you need bulletproof sync, Todoist has had a decade head start on getting that right.
The project hierarchy (Projects → Sections → Tasks → Subtasks) maps cleanly onto how a lot of people think. Saved filters with Boolean search are powerful once you internalize the syntax. Karma points and streaks, while controversial, do work for a non-trivial share of users — if external motivation lights you up, that’s a real feature, not a bug.
We don’t pretend First Light replaces this. It doesn’t. If your daily life is “100+ tasks across 12 projects on 4 platforms with team collaboration,” Todoist Pro at $5/mo is a reasonable answer and we’d be lying if we said otherwise.
The honest case for First Light
First Light is built on a different thesis: most people don’t have a task-management problem. They have an attention problem. The fix isn’t a better backlog. It’s a calm rhythm — read your day once in the morning, let AI shape it around your energy, work uninterrupted in deep blocks, close the day with a 30-second reflection, and get a Friday-style retro on the week.
Concretely, that translates into surfaces Todoist doesn’t have:
- Daily Edition. An editorial morning brief — written like a Sunday newspaper column — that pulls from tasks, calendar, notes, and goals. Read once, then closed. Not a checklist, not a backlog scroll.
- AI Plan-my-day. Re-sorts today’s tasks into the four Eisenhower quadrants and explains its reasoning. Apply all, apply some, ignore. The point isn’t the sort — it’s the conversation.
- Snapshot / Voice / Paste to task. Photograph a whiteboard, voice-record an idea, paste a screenshot of a Slack thread, or even paste meeting notes — AI extracts every task with the right date and priority.
- Two-way Google Calendar. Tasks and events on one grid. Drag a task — it creates a GCal event. Drag a GCal event — it reschedules. Real two-way, not display-only.
- Friday Weekly Review + Next-week Preview. Close last week. Pre-stage the next one with deep-work blocks scheduled around your peaks.
- Semantic search. Search “things I decided about Q4 pricing” and find the right notes, tasks, and reflections — without keyword gymnastics.
- Calmness as a feature. No streaks. No karma points. No “you missed 3 days!” nudges. The product is allowed to be quiet.
Feature-by-feature
| Feature | Todoist | First Light |
|---|---|---|
| Daily morning brief | — | Daily Edition · editorial |
| AI Plan-my-day | — | Yes · 4-quadrant + reasoning |
| Voice to task | — | Yes |
| Snapshot to task | — | Yes |
| Paste screenshot to task | — | Yes |
| Two-way Google Calendar | One-way display | Two-way drag-to-reschedule |
| Weekly review | — | Friday Review + Next-week Preview |
| Semantic search | — | Yes |
| Natural-language input | Best-in-class | Good, improving |
| Native iOS / Android apps | Yes | PWA only (today) |
| Public API | Yes | — |
| Karma / streaks | Yes | Intentionally none |
| Project hierarchy | Projects · Sections · Subtasks | Lists + Groups |
| Team collaboration | Yes | Groups (shared lists) |
| Free plan | 5 personal projects | Generous · Daily Edition included |
| Paid entry tier | $5/mo Pro (annual only) | $5/mo Plus (monthly) |
Pricing
Both products have free tiers that actually work. The paid plans are priced similarly, but the structure differs.
- Todoist Free: 5 personal projects, 5 collaborators per project, 1-week activity history.
- Todoist Pro: $5/mo billed annually only (so $4/mo if you commit to 12 months). 300 projects, reminders, calendar feeds.
- First Light Free: Daily Edition included. All capture (typing). Calendar, Inbox, Today, Next 7 / Next 90, The Sift.
- First Light Plus ($5/mo): Billed monthly (no annual lock-in). Voice / Snapshot / Paste to task. Weekly Review. Two-way GCal. Semantic search.
- First Light Pro ($9/mo): AI Plan-my-day. AI Plan-my-week. AI Goal Tracker. Morning Co-pilot. Priority human support.
The Plus tier is deliberately monthly because First Light is new and we’d rather earn your re-subscription each month than lock you into a year.
Who should pick what
Pick Todoist if: you need cross-device sync across 4+ platforms; you have an active developer integration (API/webhooks); you respond well to gamification; your work is high-volume task triage; you collaborate on shared projects with non-technical teammates.
Pick First Light if: you’re a founder, designer, writer, or knowledge worker whose problem isn’t volume but focus; you live in Google Calendar; you take messy notes (photos, voice memos, pasted Slack threads) and want them to become tasks without manual re-entry; you want AI to shape your day instead of you re-sorting it; you’ve quietly turned off Todoist’s karma feature because it made you anxious.
TRY IT
A calm place to get things done.
Free to start. No credit card. Daily Edition included on the free tier so you can read your morning brief before deciding whether to upgrade.