Todoist is $13 cheaper. Here is what you trade for it.

Calendar

Todoist has no calendar. You're always switching apps.

Add “Dentist Friday 2pm” in Todoist and it becomes a task with a due date, not a calendar event - you still have to open Google Calendar and block the time yourself. In Daylo, the same sentence lands directly on your week as a scheduled block, so your task list and your calendar are never two separate sources of truth you have to keep in sync by hand.

A side-by-side of the same task in Daylo and in Todoist, index 1.

Tasks

Todoist's tasks live in a list. Daylo's live on your week.

Todoist is genuinely good at capturing and prioritizing tasks - that's its whole job, and it does it well. But a due date isn't a time, so a full list can hide how much of today is actually already spoken for. Daylo turns each task into a real block on the calendar, so you can see at a glance whether today is even possible before you commit to it.

A side-by-side of the same task in Daylo and in Todoist, index 2.

Natural-language input

Both parse plain English. Only one puts it on a calendar.

Todoist's Quick Add is one of the best task-capture bars in the category - it correctly reads #project, @label, and dates out of a single line of text. Daylo uses the same kind of natural-language parsing, but the output is a scheduled time block instead of a dated task, so “prep deck Thursday morning” becomes an actual 9-11am hold instead of a Thursday-tagged to-do you'll reshuffle later.

A side-by-side of the same task in Daylo and in Todoist, index 3.

Automation rules

Todoist has filters. Daylo has rules that act for you.

Todoist's filters (things like “p1 & today”) are a great way to surface the right slice of a long list, but they only change what you see - you still do the rescheduling by hand. Daylo's rules engine watches for conditions, like a meeting with four or more people, and takes the action itself, automatically adding buffer time after it.

A side-by-side of the same task in Daylo and in Todoist, index 4.

Focus / time blocking

No timer, no focus blocks. Todoist doesn't do time.

Priorities and labels help you decide what's next, but Todoist has no concept of protected time or a focus session - it was never built to. Daylo's focus timer blocks the slot on your calendar so meetings can't land in it, then scores how deep the session actually was afterward.

A side-by-side of the same task in Daylo and in Todoist, index 5.