# OmniFocus alternatives for Mac, and what you are replacing

Most people leaving OmniFocus do not need a smaller task manager, they need something that answers a different question: not what is on the list, but which item on it can actually be started today.

- URL: https://swiftfox.studio/blog/omnifocus-alternatives-for-mac
- Covers: https://swiftfox.studio/apps/plexus, https://swiftfox.studio/apps/anchored, https://swiftfox.studio/apps/tally
- Published: 2026-08-27
- Updated: 2026-09-05
- Publisher: Swiftfox Studio (https://swiftfox.studio)

## In short

- OmniFocus is $74.99 for a Standard perpetual license, $149.99 for Pro or $99.99 a year, and it is the only mainstream Mac task app that models order through sequential projects and defer dates.
- Things 3 is $49.99 once on the Mac with a 15-day trial and is the usual right answer for someone who wants OmniFocus quality with a tenth of the machinery, though it has no dependencies at all.
- Reminders is free, already installed and syncs everywhere, and it is worth an honest week before spending anything.
- A list tells you what is available, which is not the same as what is next. Thirty available tasks paralyse exactly as well as thirty unsorted ones, and that is the failure that sends people looking for an alternative.

## What OmniFocus is actually good at

OmniFocus is the most complete task system on the Mac, and the only mainstream
one that takes ordering seriously. A project can be sequential, which means only
its first unfinished action is available and everything behind it stays out of
your way until it is reachable. Defer dates hide work that cannot start yet.
Perspectives, on Pro, let you build the exact filtered view your week needs.
Review cycles put every project back in front of you on a schedule. It captures
from anywhere, syncs through Omni's own server, and automates through
AppleScript and Omni Automation.

Pricing is $74.99 for a Standard perpetual license, $149.99 for Pro, or $99.99 a
year for a subscription that includes Pro everywhere plus the web app. There is
a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

If you run a real GTD practice, none of the alternatives below replaces that, and
you should buy it. What follows is for the much larger group who bought it, used
a tenth of it, and are now looking for something they will actually open.

## Why people go looking anyway

**The price is a decision.** $74.99 before you know whether the system fits is a
lot for software you might abandon in March.

**The ceremony outlives the motivation.** Contexts, defer dates, flags, reviews:
each is useful and each is a small tax, and the system stops working the week you
stop paying it. Half-maintained GTD is worse than no system, because now the list
is lying to you.

**The list still does not answer the question.** Even a well-kept OmniFocus tells
you what is available, and available is not the same as next. Thirty available
actions is the same paralysis as thirty flat ones, and this is the specific
failure that sends people looking.

## The cheaper end of the same idea

**Things 3** is $49.99 once on the Mac, macOS 13.3 or later, with no in-app
purchases and a 15-day trial from Cultured Code's own site. The iPhone and iPad
apps are sold separately. It is the usual and correct recommendation for someone
leaving OmniFocus: the same Apple-native quality, a calendar-aware Today view,
and far less machinery. What it does not have is dependencies. A project is a
list, and the order is whatever you remember.

**Todoist** and **TickTick** are the cross-platform answers, both freemium with a
subscription for the useful tier. Take them if you share lists with other people
or live on Windows and Android as well.

**Reminders** is free, already installed, syncs across your devices and now
handles sections and tags. For a lot of people it is genuinely enough, and it is
worth an honest week before spending anything.

None of the four models what has to happen before what. That is the gap.

## When the problem is order, not capture

![The Plexus new flow dialog named Conference talk, with a pasted paragraph in the Describe it for AI box and Cancel and Create with AI buttons](https://swiftfox.studio/plexus/listing/shot-2.jpg "Paste the prose and press Create with AI: the extraction and the wiring happen in the same pass.")

**[Plexus](https://swiftfox.studio/apps/plexus)** is not a to-do app and does not pretend to be. There
is no inbox ritual, no review cycle, no contexts. It does one thing OmniFocus
does with defer dates and sequential projects, and does it visually: it holds
what depends on what.

You paste the paragraph you already wrote - a brief, a meeting note, a message to
yourself - and Apple's on-device model pulls the tasks out of it, names the flow
and wires the order it can infer. Talk before outline, outline before slides,
demo recorded before the slides that describe it.

![The Plexus canvas with six colour-tagged task cards wired into a dependency graph, a reference file pinned beside one of them, and the inspector open on one task showing what it is blocked by and what it blocks](https://swiftfox.studio/plexus/listing/shot-1.jpg "Six tasks, wired. A task is startable only when every prerequisite and every subtask is done, and those are the ones ringed.")

After that the canvas answers the only question that matters on a Monday: which
of these can I actually start. A task is next-actionable when every prerequisite
and every subtask is finished, and those are the ones highlighted. Links you draw
by hand are never overwritten by a later analysis, and a wiring that would create
a cycle is refused rather than accepted quietly.

![The Plexus quick capture panel floating over the desktop with a typed task and a flow picker, above Cancel and Save buttons](https://swiftfox.studio/plexus/listing/shot-3.jpg "One field, one picker, Enter. The panel remembers where the last capture went.")

A global shortcut files a line into the right flow without opening the app, and
any flow exports as nested Markdown with the dependencies inline.

Where OmniFocus has Forecast, Plexus has Ready and Plan my day: Ready is every
startable task across every flow in one list, and Plan my day takes the hours you
say you have and fits today's work into them, in order, with a line where the
time runs out.

The constraints are real and you should weigh them before buying. The app
needs **macOS 26**, because that is what Apple's Foundation Models require; the
build itself is universal, and on a Mac where Apple Intelligence is unavailable
or switched off it runs in a fully functional manual mode and says so in a banner. There is no sync and no iPhone app. It does not write to
Calendar or Reminders, and it has no assignees or comments, so it is a
single-person tool. In exchange the analysis runs on your Mac: the app makes no
network calls of its own beyond licensing, updates and anonymous counts, which is the difference
between pasting a client brief into this and pasting it into a website.

Plexus is $10.99 once with a 30-day trial that needs no card and no email, and the
mechanism is covered feature by feature in
[turning notes into tasks on a Mac](https://swiftfox.studio/handbook/turn-notes-into-tasks-on-mac).

## Where the alternatives win

**OmniFocus** wins on being a whole system: capture from every device, sync you
can trust, review as a habit, perspectives, and automation deep enough to build
your own workflow on. Nothing here approaches it, and its sequential projects
solve the ordering problem too, just as a hidden list rather than a picture.

**Things 3** wins on the daily experience. It is the nicest of these to open
every morning, and $49.99 once for a Mac app of that quality is fair.

**Todoist and TickTick** win on other people and other platforms. Shared
projects, comments, assignees, and an Android phone.

**Reminders** wins on cost and on being everywhere already.

And all four win on the phone, which Plexus does not have and will not pretend
to. If you capture in queues and on trains, that matters more than any of the
above.

## Side by side

| Tool | Models dependencies | Sync and phone | Automation | Cost |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OmniFocus 4 | Yes, sequential projects and defer dates | Yes, Omni Sync | AppleScript, Omni Automation | $74.99 once, Pro $149.99, or $99.99/yr |
| Things 3 | No | Yes, Things Cloud, apps sold separately | URL scheme | $49.99 once on Mac |
| Todoist, TickTick | No | Yes | Integrations | Freemium subscription |
| Reminders | No | Yes, iCloud | Shortcuts | Free |
| Plexus | Yes, as a graph you can see | No | Markdown export | $10.99 once |

If your problem is that things get forgotten, buy a task manager, and the good
ones are above. If your problem is that nothing gets forgotten and you still
cannot tell what to start, that is a different piece of software, and it costs a
tenth as much.

The two pair better than they compete: keep the backlog wherever it lives, put
today's one commitment in [Anchored](https://swiftfox.studio/apps/anchored)'s menu bar, and find out
afterwards where the hours went with [Tally](https://swiftfox.studio/apps/tally). Both are pay what you
want, zero included.

_Prices and features checked on 5 September 2026._

## Frequently asked questions

### What is the closest cheaper alternative to OmniFocus?

Things 3, at $49.99 once on the Mac with a 15-day trial from Cultured Code. It keeps the Apple-native quality and the calendar-aware Today view and drops contexts, review cycles and perspectives. The iPhone and iPad apps are separate purchases. What you lose is sequencing: a Things project is a list, and the order lives in your head.

### Which Mac task apps understand that one task blocks another?

Very few. OmniFocus does it with sequential projects and defer dates, which hide anything that cannot start yet. Plexus does it as a visible graph, where a task is startable only when every prerequisite and every subtask is done. Things, Todoist, TickTick and Reminders have no concept of a dependency, so ordering is something you remember rather than something the app knows.

### Do I have to subscribe to OmniFocus?

No. Omni still sells perpetual licenses at $74.99 for Standard and $149.99 for Pro, both covering Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Vision Pro and including all 4.x updates. The $99.99 a year subscription adds the web app and keeps you on the latest Pro version. There is a 14-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee either way.

### Is Apple Reminders good enough?

For a surprising number of people, yes. It is free, on every Apple device, syncs through iCloud, and now handles sections, tags, subtasks and smart lists. Try it for a week before paying anyone. It runs out when you need a review habit, filtered views across projects, or any notion of what has to happen before what.

### Are AI task managers worth it, and where does the data go?

That depends entirely on where the model runs. Most of them send your text to a server, which is a real decision when the text is a client brief or a medical appointment. Apple's Foundation Models run on the Mac itself, so an app built on them can extract tasks from a pasted paragraph without the paragraph leaving the machine. The cost is a hard requirement: macOS 26 and Apple Silicon.

### What do these cost?

Reminders is free. Things 3 is $49.99 once on the Mac. Todoist and TickTick are freemium with a subscription for the useful tier. OmniFocus is $74.99 once for Standard, $149.99 for Pro, or $99.99 a year. Plexus is $10.99 one-time with a 30-day trial that needs no card and no email, and the license covers up to 3 Macs.