Best Things 3 alternative for Mac
Things 3 is the better pick if you want the most polished Mac todo app and you organize your life in Areas and Projects. Focuh is the free Mac and web ADHD todo list if the leak is the day itself: Today next to Google Calendar, loops that wait until you pull them, and a Mac blocker that holds.
Free. Early beta. No subscription.
Where Things wins
Things 3 is the polished paid Mac todo app. Cultured Code won two Apple Design Awards for it, and it shows in every interaction. Areas and Projects give everything you own a place. Today, Upcoming, Anytime, and Someday give every task a time. It works fully offline, syncs through Things Cloud, and runs natively on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. You pay once per platform, about $50 on Mac, with no subscription. If your bottleneck is organizing everything you have committed to, Things is built for that. Focuh has no Areas, no Projects hierarchy, no iPhone app, and it needs a connection to sync.
Where Focuh wins
Focuh is an ADHD todo list for Mac and web, and the web app is the same list, so the Mac app and the browser stay in sync for free. Today sits next to the full Google Calendar day, not a row of events at the top of the list. Week is the week. Loops are standing to-dos with no date: you pull a copy onto today and the loop stays, so a skipped day does not become a pile of overdue repeats. Goals are the one win for the horizon. On Mac, website and app blocking is system-wide during a focus session, so it still holds when you leave the browser. Things has no blocker and no web app. A beautifully organized Today list does not close Reddit.
Price: Focuh is free. Early beta. No subscription. Things is a one-time purchase per platform. That is not a dig. It is fair pricing for a finished product, and Focuh is not finished.
Who should pick which
Pick Things if you want the nicest todo app on the Mac, you want it in your pocket on iPhone, and you want to buy it once and own it. Pick Focuh if the list was never the problem and the day is: you need Today next to GCal, loops that stay out of the way until you pull them, sync between Mac and web without paying for it, and the Mac blocker to hold. They can coexist, Things as the system of record and Focuh as the day. If you only pick one, pick the bottleneck you actually have.
Want the full side-by-side, with the feature table and FAQ? Read Focuh vs Things.