Deadline-aware planning · web, iPhone and Android
Your to-do list doesn’t know whether you’ll make it. This one does.
Tell otoodo what needs doing, when it’s due, and roughly how long it’ll take. It works out what today has to contain for everything to land on time — and when that’s arithmetically impossible, it says so, in hours, before the week starts rather than after it ends.
No card. Free plan forever after that. Free apps for iPhone and Android.
Can you actually make it?
Drag these. This is the same test otoodo applies to every deadline you give it.
62h of work · 48h available
You are 14h short. Three fixes, and there is no fourth:
- — find 1h 45m more in every working day
- — move the date 3 days later
- — cut 14h of scope
otoodo runs this against every deadline you have at once, then works backwards to what today must contain. That is the whole product.
Today
Thursday 10 September
3h 25m
of 6h planned
- 15m
Stand-up
09:00 · every weekday
- 1h 30m
Tender response — section 4
Due Friday · 6h left
- 1h
Q3 board pack
Due 24 Sep · 12h left
- 40m
Reply to the Almadar thread
Due tomorrow · 40m left
Q3 board pack is at risk. By 24 September you have 43 working hours and 51 hours of work due. You are 8 hours short — move the date, cut the scope, or find the time.
Every other to-do app takes your work and hands it straight back, in order.
Sorting is not planning. A list sorted by due date still doesn’t know that the four things due Friday need eleven hours and you have six. It will show you all four, cheerfully, on Thursday night.
So the arithmetic falls to you — every morning, in your head, across a dozen commitments. Most people don’t do it. They find out on Friday.
A planner that fills every day to the brim isn’t the answer either. That just puts work due in three months on today’s list, and a list you can’t finish is one you stop believing.
The useful question is narrower and much harder: what do I need to touch today so that everything still lands on time?
A planner that fills every day
Everything lands on time. Today is a wall, and day six onwards is empty.
otoodo
Everything lands on time. Every day is doable, and today is a list you'll finish.
How the planning works
No AI guessing at your priorities. Four rules, applied in order, every time you change anything — and every one of them plain arithmetic with tests under it, not a model’s opinion about what matters.
- 01
Your hours, honestly
Set how many focused hours each weekday actually holds — not how many you're at a desk. Override single days for holidays, half days, or a Saturday you're working.
- 02
Commitments come off the top
A stand-up every weekday at 09:00 isn't something a planner gets to move. Recurring work is subtracted from the day before anything else is considered.
- 03
Deadline work is spread, not crammed
A 10-hour task with 10 working days left asks for an hour a day. When a day is oversubscribed the nearest deadline wins the contested hours — and nothing is ever scheduled in slices under 30 minutes.
- 04
And it tells you when it can't
Feasibility is decided exactly, not guessed: for every deadline, does the work due by then fit in the hours available by then? If not you get the shortfall in hours, and three honest options.
What’s in it
A month you can read at a glance
The calendar is a load map, not a grid of appointments. An overloaded week is visible before you walk into it.
A week you can move work around on
Seven columns of cards, one per day per task. Drag a card onto a day and it stays there. Past days show what was actually done, not what was planned.
Pin work to a day and mean it
Eight hours pinned into a six-hour Thursday reads as over, not as an hour quietly leaking into Friday. The deadline is left alone, so a pin past it is late and says so.
Delegate, and plan their week tooPro
Assign work to someone else and it comes out of their hours, not yours — each person with their own working week. You still see everything.
Add work by talking to itPro
“Hey Siri, add to otoodo: review the tender docs by Friday, about three hours.” It reads back the date it chose, so a misheard one is caught in the same breath.
One email, Monday morning
How much work the next seven days hold against how many hours are in them, and anything that no longer fits. Sent at 07:00 in your timezone, not ours.
iPhone and Android
The same plan, in your pocket, for nothing.
Not a companion app with three of the features. It is the whole planner — Today, the week board, the calendar load map, the warnings — signed in to the same account, so what you change on a laptop is already true on your phone.
- Free to download, and free to use on the free plan
- Opens on Today, so the answer is the first thing you see
- Tells you when you're offline instead of quietly failing to save
- Plans and payment are handled on the website
Not in the stores yet. The web app already works on a phone today, and installs to a home screen from the browser.
Already using something else?
Most of these are good products with more engineering behind them than otoodo has. Each comparison starts by saying who should genuinely pick them, because usually there is a real answer.
- vs TodoistTodoist is a genuinely excellent to-do app with over a decade of polish, and for most people most of the time it is the right choice. The difference is narrow and it matters only if you commit to dates: Todoist can record how long a task will take, but it has no model of how many hours your Tuesday actually holds — so it can never answer whether the four things due Friday fit in the time before Friday.
- vs MotionMotion is the closest thing to otoodo on this list, and it is a bigger, more capable product: it does auto-schedule around your capacity, and it does warn you when a deadline is at risk. If you want your calendar actively managed, Motion is the better tool and it is not close. The differences that matter are what it does to your calendar, what it asks of your team, and what it costs.
- vs NotionThese are not really the same kind of thing. Notion is a workspace where you assemble whatever you need out of databases, and people build genuinely impressive task systems in it. What none of those systems do is arithmetic against your actual available hours — a Notion database can hold an estimate and a due date, but it has no notion of how many hours your Tuesday holds and no scheduler to spread work across the days before a deadline.
What otoodo won’t do
It won't make your day longer.
When the numbers don't work there are exactly three fixes: more hours, a later date, or less work. otoodo will tell you which one you need and by how much. It will not pretend there is a fourth.
It won't guess your estimates.
The plan is only as good as the hours you put in. Rough is fine — being wrong by twenty per cent still beats not knowing.
It won't hold your data hostage.
One click exports everything you have as JSON, on any plan, including the free one. Delete your account and it all goes, immediately.
Questions
How is this different from Todoist or Things?
Those sort your work; otoodo does arithmetic on it. It knows how many hours each of your days holds, how long each task will take, and when each is due — so it can say what today must contain, and tell you in hours when a deadline is already impossible. A list sorted by due date will show you all four things due Friday, cheerfully, on Thursday night.
Do I have to estimate every task?
Yes, roughly. Every task defaults to one hour, so you can move fast and correct later. The plan is only as good as the estimates — but being wrong by twenty per cent still beats not knowing, and the estimate you gave is right there to fix the moment a task turns out to be bigger.
What happens when the numbers don't work?
You are told, in hours, before the week starts rather than after it ends. Feasibility is decided exactly: for every deadline, does the work due by then fit in the hours available by then? If it does not, otoodo names the shortfall and the three fixes — more hours, a later date, or less work. It will not pretend there is a fourth.
Is there an iPhone and Android app?
Yes, and both are free. They are the same planner, signed in to the same account, so what you change on a laptop is on your phone by the time you look at it. Plans and payment are handled on the website.
Can I use it with my team?
You can delegate work to other people on the Pro plan. Each person has their own working week, and delegated work is planned against their hours rather than yours, so a task you hand over stops competing for your day and starts competing for theirs. They do not need their own login.
Can I add tasks by voice?
Yes, on Pro. otoodo exposes an API that a ChatGPT custom action or an iOS Shortcut can call, so you can say what needs doing and hear back the date it chose — which is how a misheard deadline gets caught in the same breath it was said.
Can I get my data out?
One click, on every plan including the free one, exports everything as JSON. Deleting your account removes all of it immediately. There is no export tier and no waiting period.
What does it cost?
Free for one person with up to three projects, and that plan keeps the whole planner — the deadline warnings, the calendar, the working hours, all of it. Pro is $9 a month or $79 a year and adds unlimited projects, delegation and the voice endpoint. Every new account starts with 14 days of Pro and no card.
Find out on Monday, not on Friday.
14 days of Pro, no card. A free plan that stays useful after that, on the web and on your phone.
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