Todoist Pricing and Hidden Costs: the $5 Seat That Bills $7 Monthly

What Todoist actually charges

Todoist sells three plan levels and publishes two prices for each of the two paid ones. The pricing page shows the annual rate by default, which is why the $5 seat is the number repeated in every comparison — and why the $7 seat is a surprise on the first monthly invoice. Here is the full ladder as the page prints it:

Per-user rates as displayed on todoist.com/pricing, checked 28 September 2026, US regional pricing, annual figures shown as "$60 billed yearly" and "$96 billed yearly" on the plan cards. Monthly premium is computed from the two published rates rather than quoted by Todoist. The page's billing toggle summarises the yearly saving as "Save 20%". The free tier is named Beginner on the pricing page; older comparisons still call it the free plan.

What 5, 15 and 50 seats cost

Todoist prices per user with no published seat minimum, so a three-person shop pays for three. Below is each paid tier priced both ways at three team sizes — and the gap between the two cycles is the same $24 per user per year whichever tier you pick, which means the cycle decision is a fixed tax on headcount rather than a percentage of your plan.

Per-user rates multiplied out from the published tiers, September 2026. Taxes and the local-tax note on Business excluded; the Business card, and only the Business card, is printed "plus local tax". No seat minimum and no onboarding fee apply on any tier.

The $5 headline is the annual rate — behind a toggle

The plan cards render with the yearly control already active, so Pro reads "$5 per user/month — $60 billed yearly" and Business reads "$8 per user/month, $96 billed yearly — plus local tax". Switch the same page's billing toggle to monthly and the identical cards become $7 and $10. Nothing else changes: no feature is lost, no allowance shrinks. It is the same product at a higher rate in exchange for not promising a year.

Two practical consequences. First, when you compare Todoist against another tool, make sure both numbers come from the same cycle — a monthly Todoist quote against an annual competitor quote is a comparison of two different commitments. Second, the monthly option exists and is not punitive in dollar terms: $24 per user per year is a fraction of the free-tier ceilings that Pro lifts. It becomes expensive only at scale, where 50 users pay $1,200 a year for the flexibility.

"Save 20%" against the arithmetic

The billing toggle carries a single saving label — "Save 20%" — that applies to whichever plan you are looking at. Measured against the two published rates, it is accurate on Business and understates Pro by nearly nine points:

Saving computed from the two published per-user rates on the same page, September 2026. Todoist's label is a single string shown beside the toggle rather than a per-tier figure.

It is a small thing, but it cuts the other way from a hidden cost: on Pro the annual plan is better than the page says it is. We record it because the same pattern — a generic saving label that does not match any single tier's arithmetic — is turning up across the category, and because a buyer who trusts the label will undervalue the annual switch on the tier most people actually buy.

The free plan: 5 projects, 5 MB, one week of history

Todoist's free tier is a real working plan rather than a trial, and its limits are printed in the same plan table as everything else. Four of them are worth knowing before you plan around it:

From the plan comparison table on todoist.com/pricing, checked 28 September 2026. Archived projects do not count towards the project limit.

• Five projects, not five per person. The named plans are separated by this number first: 5 projects free, 300 on Pro. A user who files their own work by project runs out inside a month; a user who lives in one inbox can run the free plan for years.
• 5 MB uploads are a text-only allowance. A single phone photo can exceed it. Pro's 100 MB is a working limit for documents and screenshots, and there is no tier above it — file size, not file count, is the cap.
• One week of history is the auditability cliff. Free accounts see a week of changes on a task or project; Pro and Business see all of it. Teams that answer "who moved this and when" need the paid tier for that reason alone.
• Five people per project on every tier. The collaboration cap inside a personal project does not change with price — sharing work with more than five people runs through the Business team workspace instead.

Where Pro stops and Business starts

The $5 seat is the cheapest number in this category we have recorded, and it is cheap partly because Pro is a plan for one person. Everything that makes Todoist a team tool sits one tier up:

From the collaboration section of the plan comparison table on todoist.com/pricing, checked 28 September 2026.

What changed in September 2026

Todoist's Pro seat became more expensive this month. The annual per-user rate moved from $4 to $5, a 25% increase, which we recorded on 23 September 2026 and carried through the tables on this site. Business was unchanged at $8 per user per month on annual billing. The monthly-cycle rates on the page now read $7 and $10.

Two smaller observations from the same page, both visible in the plan table rather than the marketing copy. The Business card is the only one that prints "plus local tax" — Pro's does not — so a US buyer in a state that taxes business software should expect the Business invoice to sit above $8. And the page's own billing data still carries a grandfathered Pro Legacy tier for subscribers billed in currencies Todoist no longer offers to new customers, which is a reminder that a per-seat price is a snapshot of a plan line that can be withdrawn or repriced rather than a permanent rate — the reason every figure here carries the month we checked it.

How Todoist compares with what we have already priced

At 15 users on annual billing, the entry paid tier of the five task and work-management tools we have priced stands in this order:

Competitor rates are the ones we verified in September 2026 in our ClickUp, monday.com, Asana and Zoho Projects pricing breakdowns; Todoist figures are from the pricing page checked on 28 September 2026.

The caveat is the whole point of this page. Fifteen Todoist Pro seats are fifteen personal accounts, not one shared workspace. The like-for-like team comparison is Todoist Business at $1,440 a year, which lands above ClickUp Unlimited's $1,260 rather than below it. Todoist Pro's position at the cheap end of this table is real, and it is earned by pricing per person — the ranking changes the moment your work moves into a shared space, which for most teams is the reason they are buying a work tool at all.

Two other differences do not show up in a per-seat column. ClickUp's free plan has unlimited members against Todoist's 5 projects; monday.com enforces a 3-seat minimum that lifts its effective floor for very small teams. Todoist publishes neither a seat minimum nor an onboarding fee, and it is the only tool in this table whose paid entry tier includes an AI assistant at the entry price rather than as a per-seat add-on.

Who should not buy Todoist

• Teams who need a shared workspace and are budgeting the $5 seat. Pro has no team workspace; the plan that does costs $8 per user per month on annual billing, 60% more per seat. Budget the tier you will actually be on in month two.
• Anyone who plans to pay monthly for a full year. The monthly cycle costs $24 more per user per year: at 15 users, $1,260 against $900 on Pro, and $1,800 against $1,440 on Business. If the commitment is uncertain, price the monthly cycle into the comparison rather than discovering it on the invoice.
• Teams that attach files at volume. Uploads are capped at 100 MB per file on every paid tier with no higher-storage plan, and the free tier's 5 MB will not hold a photograph. Attachment-heavy work needs a tool with a storage allowance, not this one.
• Buyers who need more than 3 saved views, or an audit trail longer than a week, and are planning on the free tier. Both ceilings are printed in the plan table and both are lifted by Pro.
• Teams with more than five collaborators on a single personal project. That limit is identical on all three tiers. The workaround is the Business team workspace, which is a different price and a different plan.

Who should stay — and what to check before you commit

Pro is the cheapest credible per-seat task manager we have priced at $5 a month on annual billing — below ClickUp Unlimited at $7 and monday.com Basic at $9 — and it holds that position because it is priced per person rather than per team. That makes it the right buy for individuals, small teams whose collaboration happens in conversation rather than in shared projects, and anyone who wants one tool with a complete feature set at a flat seat price. Business at $8 is competitive on the same basis: it undercuts monday.com and Asana on the shared-workspace comparison and needs no add-on for AI.

Before you commit, run four checks: confirm which billing cycle your quote assumes, because the page's default is the annual rate and the monthly rate is 40% higher; count people who need to be in the same project rather than people who need a task list, because that answer decides Pro against Business and doubles the per-seat price; check your upload sizes against 100 MB; and decide whether one week of free-tier history is enough for anyone staying on $0. Those four answers set the bill — the tier names do not.

The same method applies to the rest of the stack. Price your whole stack in the cost calculator to see what your current tools total at your headcount, and if the work-management layer is the one you are comparing, our ClickUp pricing breakdown shows what a shared workspace and its automation ceilings cost per seat. For the alternatives view at the same headcount, our Asana alternatives guide prices Todoist against seven rivals at 5, 15 and 50 seats on both billing cycles.

FAQ

How much does Todoist cost per user per month?

Pro is $5 per user per month billed yearly ($60 a year) or $7 paying monthly. Business is $8 per user per month billed yearly ($96 a year) or $10 monthly, plus local tax. The free Beginner plan is $0. Verified on todoist.com on 28 September 2026.

Is the $5 price the month-to-month rate?

No. $5 is the annual-commitment rate per user per month, and the pricing page renders with the yearly toggle already selected. Switching that toggle to monthly changes Pro to $7, which is 40% more, and Business from $8 to $10, a 25% increase.

How much more does monthly billing cost?

$24 per user per year on both paid tiers: Pro $60 against $84, Business $96 against $120. That is +40% on Pro and +25% on Business. At 15 users it is $360 more a year on either tier; at 50 users, $1,200.

What does the free plan include, and where does it stop?

$0 with 5 personal projects, 5 MB file uploads, 3 custom filters, one week of reporting history, 4 themes and limited Ramble voice sessions. The 5-project and 5 MB ceilings are the ones that bite first, against 300 projects and 100 MB on Pro. Free-tier users are also capped at 5 people per personal project.

When do you need Business instead of Pro?

As soon as work is shared. Pro is a per-person plan; the shared team workspace — team projects up to 500, team activity, project folders, roles and permissions, centralized billing — is Business only at $8 per user per month billed yearly or $10 monthly. Moving a 15-person team from Pro to Business takes the annual bill from $900 to $1,440.

Did Todoist raise prices in 2026?

Yes — the Pro seat moved from $4 to $5 per user per month on annual billing in September 2026, a 25% increase we recorded on 23 September 2026. Business stayed at $8. No plan carries an onboarding fee and no seat minimum is published.