Private Alternatives to Todoist, TickTick, Notion, and Microsoft To Do

If you have already moved your notes, mail, or photos to privacy-respecting tools, your task manager is probably the next leak. Todoist, TickTick, Notion, and Microsoft To Do are all built on the same SaaS pattern: you create an account, your data lives on their servers, and the privacy properties of the rest of your stack collapse the moment you type a project plan in.

This article does two things. First, it makes the data flow of those four mainstream tools explicit so you can decide whether you actually care. Second, it lists the realistic privacy-respecting alternatives, what each one is good at, and what the trade-offs are.

For the broader picture of why local-first matters for productivity tools, see our privacy and productivity guide and the privacy-first productivity stack.

Why your task manager is sensitive data

A task list is not just a list of chores. Over six months it accumulates:

• Employer and client names.
• Project codenames before they become public.
• Working hours and patterns (when you start, stop, take breaks).
• Health notes, financial errands, family obligations.
• API tokens, server names, and account references for the tools you integrate.

For most knowledge workers this is more revealing than their email and roughly as sensitive as their browser history. Yet the default behavior is to type it all into a SaaS tool with a privacy policy that allows analytics, behavioral profiling, and – in some cases – fine-tuning for AI features.

If your threat model is “I don’t want my employer logging my keystrokes” or “I don’t want a vendor mining my workflow for ad targeting,” the task manager is one of the highest-leverage tools to switch.

What the mainstream tools actually store

Honest summaries based on each vendor’s published privacy policy and product behavior as of early 2026. Read the originals before deciding.

Todoist (Doist)

• Storage: vendor cloud. Required account.
• Encryption at rest: not end-to-end. Doist’s privacy policy references “physical and electronic safeguards” but does not document customer-managed keys, so the server-side encryption keys are under Doist’s control.
• Telemetry: product analytics, marketing tracking on web.
• AI features: Todoist Assist (Doist’s AI feature set) processes task content via third-party LLM providers (AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex AI). Doist states it does not train generalized AI models on customer data and contracts those providers to the same standard. The separate Task Assist browser extension is a noted exception – it routes queries through OpenAI, which may use them to improve its own models.
• Account deletion: supported. Encrypted backups are retained for 90 days after deletion per the privacy policy.
• Privacy property: standard SaaS. Tasks and metadata are visible to the vendor.

TickTick (Appest)

• Storage: vendor cloud. Required account.
• Encryption at rest: vendor-managed.
• Telemetry: Exodus Privacy’s static analysis of the Android app lists 8 bundled third-party trackers (Facebook, Google, and Bugsnag analytics / crash-reporting SDKs). Static analysis shows code presence, not necessarily runtime execution.
• Jurisdiction: developed by Appest (TickTick Limited registered in Hong Kong, with reported ties to mainland China). A separate Chinese-market product, “Dida” (滴答清单), is hosted in China; TickTick’s security page states that all databases and servers are hosted on AWS in the United States, though the specific AWS region is not disclosed.
• Privacy property: the highest data-flow surface of the four. If jurisdiction matters to your threat model, this is the riskiest mainstream option.

Notion

• Storage: vendor cloud. Required account.
• Encryption at rest: vendor-managed.
• AI features: Notion AI processes page content. Notion’s published policy is that customer content is not used to train its models by default; this stance can change, and AI features still require sending content to Notion’s servers for processing.
• Workspace exposure: workspace admins can access content in the workspaces they administer; on Enterprise plans this extends to private pages and content search.
• Privacy property: designed as a collaborative SaaS. Privacy controls exist but the model is fundamentally vendor-readable.

Microsoft To Do

• Storage: Microsoft cloud, tied to a Microsoft account.
• Encryption at rest: vendor-managed.
• Telemetry: standard Microsoft 365 telemetry posture.
• AI features: Microsoft 365 Copilot integration is rolling out across the suite.
• Privacy property: subject to Microsoft’s broader data-handling posture, which is enterprise-friendly but is not a privacy-first model.

A common misconception is that “encryption at rest” makes any of these private. It does not. Vendor-managed encryption protects against an attacker stealing a hard drive from the data center; it does nothing against the vendor itself, against subpoenas, or against AI features that read the data on the vendor’s side.

What “private” actually requires

For a task manager to give you the same privacy guarantees as a tool like Tuta, Standard Notes, or Ente, it needs to do at least one of:

1. Store data only on your device (local-first), with sync optional.
2. Encrypt sync end-to-end, with the key never reaching the vendor’s server.
3. Be open source, so the encryption claims are verifiable.
4. Ship no telemetry, because behavioral metadata is its own privacy leak.

Tools that satisfy all four are rare. Below are the realistic options.

The realistic alternatives

Super Productivity

• Storage: local-first. Works fully offline by default.
• Sync: optional. Super Sync with optional end-to-end encryption (AES-256-GCM, Argon2id), or BYO backend (WebDAV, Dropbox, local file sync) with optional client-side encryption.
• Open source: MIT licensed. Source and engineering docs in the main repo.
• Telemetry: none.
• Strengths: task management plus integrated time tracking, focus mode, Pomodoro, calendar integration. Native apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android. Opt-in integrations for 10 issue trackers (Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Linear, Azure DevOps, ClickUp, OpenProject, Redmine, Trello), Nextcloud Deck for boards, Google Calendar / CalDAV, and a REST API and plugin system, including automations and MCP plugins.
• Weaknesses: single primary maintainer; no third-party security audit; team collaboration is intentionally limited.
• Best for: individuals and freelancers who want one tool for tasks and time, with a privacy posture that matches the rest of a privacy-respecting stack.

Logseq

• Storage: local-first markdown files.
• Sync: Logseq Sync (E2EE, paid) or use Git/Syncthing with your own files.
• Open source: AGPL.
• Strengths: outliner with bidirectional links, journal-driven workflows, great for thinking-in-public-but-private.
• Weaknesses: task management is secondary to note-taking; no built-in time tracking; learning curve for non-technical users.
• Best for: users who want notes and tasks unified, and don’t mind a tool that thinks like a wiki.

Joplin

• Storage: local files plus optional sync.
• Sync: end-to-end encrypted via Joplin Cloud, Nextcloud, WebDAV, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3.
• Open source: AGPL.
• Strengths: mature, broad sync support, Markdown-first.
• Weaknesses: primarily a note app; tasks are checkboxes inside notes; no time tracking.
• Best for: users whose notes-and-tasks are mostly the same surface.

Standard Notes

• Storage: vendor cloud, but always end-to-end encrypted.
• Open source: clients and server.
• Ownership: acquired by Proton in April 2024; product remains open source.
• Strengths: rigorous E2EE posture, long privacy track record.
• Weaknesses: notes-first; not a task manager. Use alongside SP, not instead of.

Taskwarrior

• Storage: local task database; sync via Taskwarrior 3.x’s taskchampion-sync-server or supported cloud-storage backends.
• Open source: MIT.
• Strengths: the privacy-respecting power user’s choice. Scriptable, extremely fast.
• Weaknesses: terminal-only (with web GUIs available); no time tracking GUI; not realistic for non-developers.
• Best for: developers comfortable in a CLI.

Tracks

• Storage: self-hosted Rails app.
• Open source: GPL-2.0.
• Strengths: GTD-flavored, runs on your server.
• Weaknesses: dated UI, single-user oriented, niche community.
• Best for: GTD users who already self-host.

Quick comparison table

How to switch without losing your data

Migrating off a SaaS tool is the part most articles skip.

From Todoist

1. Todoist’s automatic backup feature is paid-plan only. It exports active projects as CSV inside a ZIP, including comments and file attachments on active tasks; it excludes completed tasks and archived projects. Free users can export individual projects as CSV from the per-project menu, or script an export via the Todoist REST API, including completed-task endpoints over date ranges.
2. Import the resulting data into your chosen tool. Most non-Todoist tools (Super Productivity included) do not have a one-click Todoist importer, so plan on a small conversion script or manual cleanup.
3. Verify counts match before deleting the Todoist account.

From TickTick

1. The export is web-only: open ticktick.com, click your avatar → Settings → Backup → Generate Backup. A CSV file downloads locally. The mobile apps don’t expose this option.
2. Convert via a script or a community-maintained importer.
3. Import into your chosen private tool.

From Notion

1. Export the database as Markdown + CSV.
2. Tasks come out as table rows; you’ll need to map fields manually unless you script it.
3. Realistically: most Notion-as-task-manager setups are too custom to migrate cleanly. Consider this a chance to start over with simpler structure.

From Microsoft To Do

1. Microsoft does not ship a one-click export, but the Microsoft Graph To Do API is first-party and exposes lists, tasks, and due dates. A short script (or a community-maintained exporter) is enough to pull everything out.
2. Lists become projects, tasks become tasks, due dates carry over.

What to do with your account afterwards

Delete it. Don’t leave a dormant data-flow surface around. Both Todoist and TickTick honor account deletion within their stated retention windows. For Notion and Microsoft, the deletion path is in the workspace/account admin settings.

What to do this week

1. Read the privacy policy of your current task manager. Look specifically for the “AI” and “marketing partners” sections. Notice how they make you feel.
2. Pick one alternative from the table above that matches your platform and team size.
3. Set up sync the way you’d want it long term – local-only, BYO encrypted backend, or self-hosted server. Don’t let the migration determine your sync model.
4. Migrate. Take a week to confirm the new tool fits.
5. Delete the old account.

If you want a deeper engineering view of how a privacy-respecting task manager works, start with the Super Productivity source code, privacy policy, and Super Sync privacy policy.

The point of this whole stack is that the privacy of any one tool is bounded by the leakiest one in your workflow. For most people, that’s the task manager.

Related resources

• Privacy and productivity guide – local-first architecture and BYO sync explained.
• Open-Source Productivity guide – why FOSS tools beat SaaS, and how to build a stack you own.
• Best local-first to-do apps in 2026 – a focused comparison of offline-first task managers.
• Privacy-first productivity stack – the broader set of tools we recommend pairing with SP.
• Super Productivity vs. Todoist, vs. TickTick, vs. Notion – feature-level comparisons.