Life pulls everyone in a dozen directions at once, from major work deadlines to family events and personal projects. When you're relying on memory or a patchwork of notes, it’s far too easy for something important to get missed. A great online planner helps by bringing all those moving pieces into one place, creating a reliable, organized view of your work or daily life.
Finding the perfect planner can feel like a project in itself, which is why we did the research and created a list of suitable options. We tested the most popular apps to see how they handle everything from simple to-do lists to complex team projects. In this guide, we’ll share what we learned to help you choose the tool that truly fits the way you work and live.
The benefits of online planners
Great digital planner apps are packed with features to help you stay organized and productive. Here are the key benefits that make them such essential tools.
Access anywhere, anytime: Your plans are synced to the cloud, making them instantly accessible on multiple devices, like your phone, tablet, or computer, ensuring your schedule is always with you.
Effortless collaboration: Share your calendar with your partner, delegate tasks to your team, or plan a project with colleagues in real-time. Digital planners make teamwork and family coordination simple.
Smart reminders and notifications: Never miss an important event again. Set custom, automated reminders for appointments, deadlines, and even recurring tasks like paying bills.
Ample space and better searchability: Enjoy virtually unlimited space for all your notes and plans. You can also instantly search your entire history to find any appointment, note, or task from years past.
Automation saves time: Let the app handle the busywork. Automate repetitive tasks, schedule recurring meetings with one click, and create templates for your common projects.
Top 12 online planners in 2025
1. Lark: Best all-in-one suite for productivity
Imagine a world where you don't have to constantly switch between your calendar, your to-do list, your team chat, your video conferencing tool, and your document editor. That's what Lark offers. It's the ultimate online planner, offering an integrated digital workspace that allows you to handle all your tasks on one platform.
What truly sets Lark apart is its interconnectedness. You can be in a chat with a colleague and instantly create a task from a message, which then appears in your shared task manager. You can start a video call right from a calendar event, and Lark will be ready to take meeting notes for you, even providing a transcript afterward. This seamless flow eliminates the friction of using multiple, disconnected apps.
For scheduling, Lark's integrated calendar app is powerful yet intuitive. You can create and manage multiple calendars for different areas of your life—work, personal, family—and view them in a single, unified view. Scheduling meetings is a breeze with features that show you when your teammates are available. You can create detailed events, set reminders, and attach PDF documents or Lark Docs of your plans or topics to discuss. Lark Docs supports a wide range of elements and formatting, as well as collaborative editing, so your plans can be as detailed and dynamic as your projects require.
But planning is not as simple as scheduling events. It's also about managing tasks. With Tasks, you can create tasks, set deadlines, and assign them to others. For more complex projects or work-related tasks, you can use Lark Base to build a customized planner with Kanban boards, Gantt charts, automations, and more. The flexibility is immense, so you can customize your workflow your way. There is a wide variety of pre-built planner templates available, such as this personal development template, which comes with a dashboard. For even more online planner templates, go to the template center.
Key features:
Integrated suite: Combines chat, calendar, docs, sheets, email, and project management in one app.
Smart calendar: Manage different calendars, check team availability, and book meeting rooms.
Flexible task management: Create to-do lists, manage team projects with boards and timelines, and assign tasks.
AI-powered: Smart suggestions for categorizing records, automatic meeting transcription, and real-time translation.
Collaborative docs: Real-time co-editing on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that can be linked directly to calendar events and tasks.
Pricing:
Starter plan: $0. Access to 11 powerful products, supports up to 20 users with 100GB of storage, unlimited AI translation, and 1000 automation runs.
Pro plan: $12 per user per month (billed annually), 15TB of pooled storage, unlimited message history, video conferences for up to 500 people, and unlimited AI meeting transcriptions.
Enterprise plan: Contact Sales for custom pricing. More automation runs, and advanced security and management features.
2. Todoist: Best for minimalist task management
Todoist has been a favorite for individuals who value simplicity and efficiency. Its design is clean and unobtrusive, helping you stay focused on what matters: getting things done. The magic of Todoist lies in its natural language input. You can simply type "Schedule a dentist appointment every 6 months starting September 1st" and the app will automatically create a recurring task with the correct date. This feature makes it incredibly fast to add tasks and get them out of your head.
Image source: Todoist.com
You can organize your personal and professional tasks into projects, use labels for context, and set priority levels to highlight your most important daily tasks. While it started as a simple list, Todoist now also offers a board view, allowing you to visualize your workflow in a Kanban style, similar to Trello but with a more minimalist feel. It's a great daily task planner app that keeps things straightforward.
It excels at managing personal tasks, but it also has features for teams. You can share projects, assign tasks, and add comments. However, its collaboration features aren't as robust as dedicated project management tools like Asana, making it better suited for small teams or simple collaborative projects. The dark mode feature is also a nice touch for those late-night planning sessions.
Key features:
Natural language input: Quickly create tasks and set due dates using everyday language.
Recurring due dates: Easily manage repetitive tasks and build habits.
Productivity visualizations: Track progress and productivity streaks to stay motivated.
Templates: Use a planning template for projects like meeting agendas, blog posts, or personal goals.
Integrations: Connects with hundreds of other apps, including Google Calendar, Dropbox, and Slack.
Pricing:
Beginner plan: Free. Allows for up to 5 projects and 5 collaborators per project
Pro plan: $4 per user/month (billed annually) and unlocks up to 300 projects, reminders, and more
Business plan: $6 per user/month with team roles and permissions and 1000 project folders.
3. TickTick: Best for combining task management with habit tracking
TickTick takes the foundation of a great to-do list schedule planner and builds upon it by integrating features that support personal growth. If you're someone who wants to manage your to-dos and build better habits in the same app, TickTick is an outstanding choice.
Image source: ticktick.com
At its core, TickTick is a highly competent task manager. Like Todoist, it has a clean interface and supports natural language input for quick task creation. You can organize tasks with lists, tags, and priorities, and view them in a list or calendar view. Where it starts to differentiate itself is with its built-in habit tracker. You can set goals for habits like "Read for 30 minutes" or "Exercise" and check them off daily, with satisfying charts that visualize your progress over time.
Another standout feature is the integrated Pomodoro timer. This allows you to start a focused work session directly from a task, helping you break down your work into manageable intervals and stay focused. It also includes an Eisenhower Matrix view, a productivity technique for prioritizing tasks based on urgency and importance. It's a fantastic tool for managing everything from your daily work to your long-term financial goals.
Key features:
Integrated habit tracker: Build and track positive habits alongside your tasks.
Built-in pomodoro timer & stopwatch: Stay focused and track time spent on tasks.
Multiple calendar views: View your tasks in a daily planner, weekly planner, or monthly pages format.
Eisenhower matrix: Prioritize your upcoming tasks effectively.
Notes feature: A dedicated section for taking notes that aren't tied to a specific task.
Pricing:
Free plan: Core features with some limitations
Premium plan: $35.99 per year and unlocks full calendar functionality, more lists, a better habit tracking experience, and customized filters.
4. Trello: Best for visual project management with Kanban boards
If you’re a visual thinker, traditional to-do lists can feel restrictive. Trello understands this perfectly. It pioneered the use of the Kanban board for the masses, creating a business planner that is incredibly intuitive, flexible, and even fun to use. It turns project planning into a drag-and-drop experience.
Image source: atlassian.com
The concept is simple: you create a board for a project, add lists to represent stages of a workflow, and then create cards for individual tasks. You can then move these cards between lists as you track progress. It’s a beautifully simple way to visualize your work.
Each card is more than just a title. You can add detailed descriptions, checklists to break down work tasks into manageable steps, attachments, due dates, and labels. You can also assign members to cards, making it a simple yet effective tool for team collaboration. While it's a powerful business planner, it's also widely used as a personal planner for everything from vacation planning to managing a home renovation. Its visual nature makes it a great family planner as well.
The real power of Trello is unlocked through "Power-Ups," which are integrations that add extra functionality to your boards. You can add a calendar view, integrate with Slack or Google Drive, create repeating cards for recurring tasks, and much more. This allows you to start simple and add complexity as your needs grow.
Key features:
Kanban boards: The classic, intuitive visual system for managing projects.
Detailed cards: Add checklists, attachments, due dates, and comments to each task.
Automation: Create rules, buttons, and commands to automate common actions.
Power-Ups: Extend Trello's functionality with dozens of integrations and features.
Templates: A huge library of templates for every use case, from a daily work planner template paper to a full-blown planner for projects.
Pricing:
Free plan: $0 for up to 10 collaborators per workspace.
Standard plan: $5 per user per month (billed annually)
Premium plan: $10 per user per month (billed annually)
Enterprise plan: Variable pricing based on the number of users. $17.50 per user/month for 50 users.
For more on Trello pricing, see Trello Pricing: Plans, Features, and Tips to Find Your Perfect Fit.
5. Asana: Best for team collaboration and goal-oriented project management
While Trello is fantastic for visual workflow management, Asana is built for teams that need to manage complex projects and connect their daily work to strategic goals. It's a true work management platform, designed to bring clarity, accountability, and alignment to team projects. If your planning online involves coordinating with multiple people, Asana is a top contender.
Image source: asana.com
Asana allows you to visualize projects in multiple ways. You can use a traditional list view, a Kanban board, a timeline (Gantt chart) to see task dependencies, or a calendar view. This flexibility means different team members can view the same project data in the way that makes the most sense to them.
One of Asana's core strengths is its ability to create clear accountability. Every task has a single assignee and a due date, so there's never any confusion about who is responsible for what. You can also create task dependencies, ensuring that work happens in the right order. For managers, the Portfolio and Workload features are invaluable for seeing the status of multiple projects at once and ensuring no one on the team is overburdened.
It’s an excellent tool for structured project management, helping teams break down large goals into smaller tasks and set deadlines. The ability to link tasks to company-wide goals helps everyone understand how their individual contributions are making an impact.
Key features:
Multiple project views: Choose from List, Board, Timeline, and Calendar views.
Task dependencies: Create connections between tasks to ensure a smooth workflow.
Portfolio management: Track the progress of all your team's projects in one place.
Workload management: Get a visual representation of your team's capacity to prevent burnout.
Goal tracking: Set and track company goals, linking projects and tasks to them.
Pricing:
Personal plan: Free for up to 10 people
Starter plan at $10.99 per user per month
Advanced plan at $24.99 per user per month
For more on Asana pricing, see Asana Pricing Explained: Which Plan Is Right for You?
6. Notion: Best for building a customized personal or team workspace
Notion is less of a planner and more of a box of digital building blocks. It defies easy categorization because it can be whatever you want it to be: a simple note-taking app, a complex project planner, a personal wiki, a habit tracker, or all of the above. If you've ever thought, "I wish my planner app could just do this," Notion is likely the answer.
Image source: notion.com
The platform is built on a system of pages and blocks. A block can be anything: a piece of text, an image, a checklist item, a heading, or even an entire database. You can arrange these blocks in any way you like, creating a completely customized planner from the ground up.
For planning, you can create powerful databases that can be viewed as tables, lists, Kanban boards, calendars, or galleries. You can create a master task database and then create different linked views of that database around your workspace. For example, you could have a weekly schedule view on your main dashboard and a full monthly page view on a separate planning page, both pulling from the same set of tasks.
The learning curve can be steeper than with other tools. On the flip side, the Notion community is huge, and there are thousands of planner template free download options available, covering everything from a daily task list planner to a life planner online. It’s the perfect tool for those who love to tinker and build their own systems.
Key features:
High flexibility: Build any kind of document, database, or system you can imagine.
Powerful databases: Organize information with relations, rollups, and formulas.
Multiple views: View your data as a table, board, list, calendar, or gallery.
Slash commands: Quickly add any type of content block by typing "/".
Huge template community: Find a planning template for almost any purpose.
Pricing:
Free plan: Basic features, sufficient for individual use
Plus plan: $10 per user per month
Business plan: $20 per user per month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
7. ClickUp: Best for replacing multiple apps with a single, all-in-one solution
ClickUp's tagline is "one app to replace them all," and it comes packed with a staggering number of features designed to cover every aspect of productivity. It’s an app planner that truly tries to do everything. ClickUp offers more than 15 different ways to view your work, including List, Board, Calendar, Gantt, and Mind Map views. Its hierarchy system (Workspaces > Spaces > Folders > Lists > Tasks) allows for a high degree of organization, though it can be overwhelming for new users.
Image source: clickup.com
Where ClickUp shines is its customization. You can create custom fields for almost anything, from dropdowns and text fields to progress bars and formulas. You can save view settings, build complex automations, and tailor the platform to your exact workflow. It's a productivity planner app for power users who want to control every detail of their system.
In addition to task management, ClickUp also includes Docs, Whiteboards, a native notes feature, goal tracking, and built-in chat. It's a powerful platform, but this power comes at the cost of simplicity. It can take time to get comfortable with all the options, but for teams looking to consolidate their tech stack, it’s a compelling choice.
Key features:
15+ views: View your work in a way that suits your style, from lists to mind maps.
Deep customization: Custom statuses, fields, and views for a tailored workflow.
All-in-one features: Includes tasks, docs, whiteboards, goals, and chat.
Powerful hierarchy: Organize your work with a flexible and scalable structure.
Built-in time tracking: Track time spent on tasks without needing a separate app.
Pricing:
Free Forever plan: $0. Core features included, but only 60MB of storage.
Unlimited plan: $7 per user per month
Business plan: $12 per user per month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
For more on ClickUp pricing, see ClickUp Pricing: Plans, Features, and Value for Your Team.
8. Sunsama: Best for mindful daily planning and avoiding burnout
In a world obsessed with doing more, Sunsama asks a different question: "What's the most important work I can do today?" This daily planner is designed for professionals who feel overwhelmed by their workload and want to adopt a more intentional, sustainable approach to productivity. It's less about cramming your day full and more about mindful planning.
Image source: sunsama.com
Sunsama guides you through a ritual at the start and end of each day. In the morning, you pull in tasks from other tools (like Asana, Trello, or Slack), review your calendar, and decide what you'll focus on. Then, you drag those tasks onto your calendar, timeboxing your day, and creating a realistic plan. This process of daily planning helps you avoid over-committing and ensures you have a clear focus.
The app is built around the idea of a "workload," showing you how much time you've planned for the day versus how much is reasonable. It encourages you to be realistic about what you can achieve, which is a powerful tool for preventing burnout. It's a to-do agenda that forces you to be honest with yourself.
Sunsama is not a full project management tool; it's a day planner. It integrates with other tools, pulling in tasks and syncing your calendar, acting as your daily command center. It’s a premium product with a price tag to match, aimed at individuals who see the value in investing in a calmer, more focused way of working.
Key features:
Guided daily rituals: Start and end your day with a structured planning and reflection process.
Timeboxing: Drag tasks directly onto your calendar to create a visual plan for your day.
Workload management: See how much you have planned to avoid over-committing.
Deep integrations: Pull tasks from multiple sources into a single view.
Focus mode: A clean interface to help you focus on the task at hand.
Pricing:
$20/month, or $16/month if billed annually.
9. Akiflow: Best for unifying all your tasks from different apps into one inbox
If your tasks are scattered across a dozen different apps—Slack messages, emails, Trello cards, Asana tasks—Akiflow is designed to be your universal inbox. Its core premise is to help you consolidate and process all your incoming work tasks and personal tasks in one place.
Image source: akiflow.com
One key feature is the Command Bar. You can hit a keyboard shortcut from anywhere on your computer to open it and instantly capture a task. This "capture anything" philosophy means you never lose an idea. Akiflow integrates with a wide range of tools, pulling all your tasks into a single inbox.
From the inbox, you can quickly process each item: schedule it on the calendar, delegate it, or file it away. The calendar is central to the Akiflow experience. Like Sunsama, it encourages you to timebox your day by dragging tasks from your inbox directly onto your calendar. It's a digital planner that excels at speed and consolidation.
Akiflow is perfect for busy professionals who are constantly bombarded with requests from multiple channels and need a powerful system to regain control. It helps you quickly build out your daily schedules and ensure nothing gets missed, regardless of where the task originated.
Key features:
Universal inbox: Consolidate tasks from Slack, Gmail, Asana, Trello, and more.
Command bar: Instantly capture tasks from anywhere on your computer.
Timeboxing: Drag and drop tasks to schedule your day.
Powerful integrations: Connects with the tools you already use.
Notifications & reminders: Stay on top of your schedule with smart notifications.
Pricing:
Pro plan: $19/month billed annually and $34 billed monthly.
10. Motion: Best for AI-powered task automation and scheduling
Motion takes a radical approach to planning: it uses artificial intelligence to build your schedule for you. If you're tired of the constant "Tetris game" of trying to fit tasks into your busy calendar, Motion offers an intriguing solution. It’s a personal scheduling app powered by an intelligent assistant.
Image source: usemotion.com
You start by adding your to-do lists and projects, assigning priorities, and setting hard deadlines. Then, Motion's AI gets to work. It analyzes your tasks, your calendar events, and your priorities, and then automatically builds a detailed daily schedule for you, placing tasks into the open slots in your day.
The truly powerful part is that the schedule is dynamic. If an urgent meeting comes up, Motion will automatically reshuffle your entire task list to accommodate it. If you finish a task early, it will adjust your day accordingly. It's designed to take the manual effort out of daily planning, allowing you to focus on execution.
Motion is ideal for individuals with complex, ever-changing schedules, like entrepreneurs, executives, or freelancers. It's more than just a task manager or a calendar. It serves as an automated time manager that aims to optimize every minute of your day. For those who are comfortable letting an algorithm take the wheel, it can be a revolutionary way to manage work-related tasks and personal projects.
Key features:
AI-powered scheduling: Automatically builds your daily schedule based on your tasks and priorities.
Dynamic rescheduling: Your schedule automatically adapts to changes and interruptions.
Project management: Organize tasks into projects and track their progress.
Meeting assistant: An AI-powered tool to streamline the process of booking meetings.
Unified task & calendar view: See your meetings and your scheduled tasks in one place.
Pricing:
AI Workplace: $19 per user per month (billed annually)
AI Employees: $29 per user per month (billed annually)
Enterprise: Custom pricing
11. Any.do: Best for personal and family organization
Any.do has been a long-time player in the planner app space, carving out a niche as a great all-around organizer for your personal life. It combines a to-do list, calendar, and reminders into a simple, elegant package. It's a to-do planner that is particularly well-suited for managing your life outside of a large corporate environment.
Image source: any.do
One of its most unique features is the "Any.do Moment," a daily review that prompts you to go through your day's tasks, helping you decide what to tackle, what to postpone, and what to delete. It's a simple but effective way to start your day with intention.
Any.do also works well as a family planner. With a dedicated Family plan, you can share lists for groceries, assign chores to family members, and coordinate schedules. The integration with WhatsApp for reminders is another clever touch, meeting you where you already are. It has everything you need to set reminders, manage a weekly planner, and keep your household running smoothly.
While it has team plans, its core strength lies in being a personal planner and a hub for family organization. It's a reliable online organizer planner that helps you manage the many facets of a busy personal life.
Key features:
Any.do moment: A daily planning feature to help you focus on your priorities.
Smart reminders: Set one-time, recurring, or location-based reminders.
WhatsApp integration: Get reminders directly in WhatsApp.
Family plan: Share lists, tasks, and a grocery list with family members.
Cross-platform sync: Access your planner on your phone, tablet, web, and desktop.
Pricing:
Personal: Free, basic features included.
Premium plan: $4.99 per month (billed annually)
Family plan: $8.33 per month for 4 members (billed annually)
Teams: $4.99 per user/month (billed annually)
12. Google Calendar: Best for seamless integration with the Google ecosystem
No list of the best digital planners would be complete without mentioning the powerhouse that is Google Calendar. For hundreds of millions of people, it is the default calendar app, and for good reason. It's reliable, powerful, and completely free for personal use.
Image source: googleblog.com
Its greatest strength is its deep integration with the entire Google ecosystem. An event booked via email in Gmail automatically appears on your calendar. You can attach Google Docs to an event, start a Google Meet video call directly from a calendar entry, and see your Google Tasks with due dates right alongside your schedule. This interconnectedness makes for a frictionless planning experience if you're already invested in Google's tools.
Key features:
Deep Google integration: Seamlessly works with Gmail, Google Drive, Meet, and Tasks.
Easy scheduling: Create events, invite others, and find meeting times with ease.
Multiple calendars: Organize your life with separate, color-coded calendars.
Cross-platform availability: Works perfectly on the web, Android, and iOS.
Pricing:
Free for all users with a Google account. It's also included as part of paid Google Workspace subscriptions, which add business-grade features.
For more on Google Workspace pricing, see Google Workspace Pricing by Country: A Comprehensive Guide for 2025.
Conclusion
Finding the perfect digital planning tool is a personal journey. The best tool for a solo creative is different from the best tool for a corporate team leader. As we've seen, the options range from minimalist to-do list apps to AI-powered schedulers and all-in-one workspaces.
The key is to understand your own needs. Are you looking for a simple place to jot down your daily tasks, or do you need a robust system to manage complex personal projects? Do you work best with visual boards, or do you prefer simple lists? Do you need to collaborate with a team, or is this just for you?
Don't be afraid to experiment. Most of the tools on this list offer a free version or a trial period. Take a couple of them for a spin for a week. See which one clicks with your way of thinking and makes you feel more in control, not more overwhelmed.
But if you're looking for one place to start that has the power and flexibility to grow with you, we come back to our top choice: Lark. By integrating your calendar, tasks, notes, and communication, it provides a unified foundation upon which you can build a more organized and productive life.
FAQs for digital planners
Are there any work planner apps that are free to use?
Yes, many of the best online planners have excellent free versions, including our top pick, Lark, as well as Trello, Notion, and Google Calendar. These free plans are great for personal use but may have limitations on storage or advanced team features compared to their paid versions.
What is the best online planning app?
While the "best" planner is subjective, our top pick for 2025 is Lark for its powerful all-in-one design that reduces app switching. If you prefer a more specialized tool, consider a dedicated task manager like Todoist for its simplicity or a visual board like Trello for project planning.
How to make an online planner?
You can create a custom planner by using a flexible app like Notion or Lark Base, starting with one of their many pre-built templates. Simply choose a template for daily tasks or projects, then modify the sections, tags, and views to perfectly match your personal workflow.
