Keel vs TickTick: Which Planner Fits How You Actually Work?

TickTick is the app Keel gets compared to most, and it is a fair comparison to draw: both put tasks, habits, and a calendar in one place instead of making you run three apps. They arrive at that from opposite directions, though, and the honest answer to "which one should I use" depends less on a feature checklist than on which of two problems you have.

I build Keel, so read this with that in mind. I have kept the comparison to things you can verify yourself — platform availability, pricing model, and the design philosophy each app is built around — rather than a long grid of feature ticks that would go stale in a month. Where TickTick wins, I have said so plainly.

The one-paragraph version

Choose TickTick if your core problem is capture and coverage: a lot of things arrive at you from a lot of places, on a lot of devices, and you need somewhere fast and reliable to put them all. Choose Keel if your core problem is follow-through: you already know roughly what you should be doing, you keep starting and stopping, and what you need is a single realistic plan for today plus a way to recover after you miss.

Where TickTick is genuinely stronger

Platform coverage. This is TickTick's biggest structural advantage and it is not close. TickTick ships native apps across iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, and the web, plus watch apps, browser extensions, and widgets. Keel is iOS and web only today. If you are on Android, or you live in Windows during the day, TickTick is the practical choice and Keel simply is not an option yet.

Maturity and breadth. TickTick has been shipping for over a decade. Natural-language date entry ("tomorrow 5pm" typed straight into the task title), nested lists and folders, tags, subtasks, recurring rules, priorities, multiple views including Kanban, a built-in Pomodoro timer, and shared lists for collaboration — it is a deep, well-tested toolbox. Keel is younger and deliberately narrower. If you want a lot of knobs, TickTick has more knobs.

Free tier. TickTick has a usable free tier with caps (on things like list and habit counts, and with some views reserved for Premium — check their pricing page for current limits, as these change). Its paid plan is a modest annual subscription. If "free forever, upgrade if I love it" is how you evaluate software, that path exists there.

Collaboration. TickTick supports shared lists and assigning tasks to other people. Keel is single-player by design. If you want to run a household or a small team out of the same app, that is TickTick.

Where Keel is different

It plans your day, it doesn't just hold your list. In TickTick, scheduling is something you do. In Keel, the day plan is the primary object: habits and tasks get placed into actual time slots for today, and an AI coach will do the first pass across your week — working around the habits you already have — so you start from a plan instead of a blank grid. You can drag things around, and moving a task changes when it happens without editing what it is.

Habits are first-class, not a companion feature. TickTick's habit tracker is a good extra that lives next to your tasks. In Keel, habits, tasks, and goals are three different kinds of thing with three different shapes: a habit has a weekly schedule and a part of day, a task has a due date and a place in a list, and a goal has a vision statement and a rating you move over time. Habits roll up to goals, so the daily grind stays connected to the reason you took it on.

It measures bounce-back, not streaks. This is the actual philosophical split. Streak counters are motivating right up to the day you break one, and then they punish you for the rest of the month. Keel's core metric is how fast you return after a miss. Missing Tuesday is not a failure state; missing Tuesday and then Wednesday and Thursday is the thing worth catching, and that is what Keel surfaces. If perfect-chain pressure works for you, that is a genuine reason to prefer a streak-first app.

Less to configure. Keel has fewer views, fewer settings, and no Kanban board. That is a cost if you want power and a feature if you have previously abandoned a productivity system because maintaining it became the hobby.

Pricing, honestly

Both are subscription apps with a free entry point. TickTick's free tier is more generous; Keel's free web app requires no download and no credit card, so the cheapest way to judge Keel is to open it in a browser for a week before deciding anything. Neither app is expensive relative to the time it is supposed to give back, and neither is worth paying for if you would not open it daily.

Can you use both?

Plenty of people reasonably would. TickTick as the universal inbox across every device, Keel as the thing you open in the morning to decide what today actually looks like. It is duplication, but it is the honest answer for someone who has an Android laptop-shaped life and an iPhone-shaped morning.

How to decide in ten minutes

1. Write down the last three things you dropped. If you dropped them because you never captured them, that is a TickTick problem. If you captured them and still did not do them, that is a Keel problem.
2. Check your devices. Android or Windows-primary ends the conversation: TickTick.
3. Ask what happens when you miss two days. If a broken streak makes you quit, the bounce-back model is worth trying.

Try Keel free in your browser — no download, no account required to look around. Or read the standalone TickTick review if you want the competitor assessed on its own terms rather than against us.