Todoist deadline vs due date

In Todoist, the date is when the task appears in Today and Upcoming — the day you plan to work on it. The deadline is when it must actually be finished, and it schedules nothing. Most tasks need only the date. Deadlines are a Pro feature, which is the part their own documentation is clearest about and most people miss.

What the date field controls

The date is Todoist's scheduling field, and it does all the work you feel day to day. It decides whether a task is in Today, where it sits in Upcoming, and — if the task repeats — what the recurrence counts from.

It is also the only field that moves when you reschedule. Postponing to tomorrow changes the date and nothing else, which is exactly right: your plan changed, the world did not.

What it is not is a deferring start date. This trips people up constantly, because "due date" sounds like it should hide a task until it is relevant. Todoist is explicit that it does not: it "does not support start dates that hide your tasks until their start date is due." A task dated next Tuesday is not hidden, it is simply scheduled for Tuesday and visible in Upcoming.

What the deadline controls

The deadline is a separate field, and the useful thing to understand is that it is almost entirely passive. It does not schedule the task, it does not put it in Today, and it does not move when you reschedule. It records that something is due, and surfaces that in Todoist's deadline views and visual treatment.

Todoist's own guidance on when to use it is a good rule regardless of app: set a deadline for tasks "in which missing the deadline has external consequences," and use dates to schedule tasks "for when you plan to begin working on them."

Deadlines are available on the Pro and Business plans. They are not on the free Beginner tier. If you have read somewhere that Todoist gives you two dates for nothing, that is out of date, and it is worth knowing before you plan a system around it.

The combination Todoist advises against, and what it actually does

Deadlines and recurring dates are usually described as mutually exclusive. They are not — Todoist advises against combining them and then documents exactly what happens if you do.

The guidance first: "for any task that needs to be repeated on a regular basis, add a recurring date instead of a deadline." Read on its own, that sounds like a limit. It is a recommendation.

The behaviour, in Todoist's own worked example: "if you create a recurring date every 2 days at 12:00 and add a deadline of February 28, as you work on this task, you will always see its deadline, while the recurring date will change."

So the pairing works, and it does something specific: the deadline stays put while the rhythm moves under it. That is exactly right for quarterly VAT — a task that recurs and is genuinely due on a fixed day. What it will not do is move the deadline forward with each cycle, which is why Todoist steers you away: after 28 February the deadline is simply in the past, and you have to reset it by hand each quarter.

Deciding which a task wants

A short decision you can actually keep:

1. Give every task a date. That is the plan, and it is what makes Today mean anything.
2. Add a deadline only if missing it costs something outside your own head — money, a lapsed renewal, someone else blocked.
3. If the task repeats, you can have both — but you maintain the cutoff. The deadline stays fixed while the recurring date moves, so it needs resetting each cycle. Todoist recommends against the pairing for that reason, not because it is blocked.
4. Never edit the deadline to get a task out of view. Move the date. If you are editing deadlines for visibility, the two fields have collapsed back into one and you have lost the benefit.

If you want both dates without Pro

Worth saying plainly, because this page exists partly because people arrive at that question: the alternatives are not free either, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something.

TaskPocket splits the same way with two differences. The scheduling date is a real start date — it defers a task rather than merely scheduling it, so it is out of Today until the day arrives, which is the thing Todoist says it does not do. And a repeating task can carry a deadline, so the quarterly-filing case works.

The honest part: the deadline field and the Deadlines view are Premium, just as Todoist's are Pro. The difference is what falls on which side of the line — TaskPocket's free plan includes the start date, unlimited tasks and the full repeat engine, and charges for the cutoff; Todoist's free tier includes five projects and the date field, and charges for the cutoff too. Both products paywall the second date. Ours costs less, and that is the whole of the claim.

Where Todoist is the better tool anyway

None of the above is a reason to move, and it is worth being clear about that. Todoist has reminders and notifications on every platform, native apps everywhere, sharing and assigning, an established API and hundreds of integrations. TaskPocket has none of those and is not building most of them.

If you need a nudge, or you share any part of your list with anyone, the date model is not the deciding factor and Todoist is the right answer. This page is about one field, not about which product to use.