People who compare Amazing Marvin and TickTick are usually asking one question in two parts: is Marvin worth roughly twice the price, and do I give up TickTick's free plan to find out?
Short version: TickTick is the better default, Marvin is the better specialist. TickTick is cheaper, has a permanent free plan, and covers ordinary task management very well. Marvin costs more, has no free plan, and earns its price only if you need help starting tasks, not just storing them.
TL;DR: TickTick Free is $0 forever; TickTick Premium is US$49.99/year. Amazing Marvin has no free plan, a 14-day trial, then $8/month billed as $96/year. TickTick bundles a habit tracker, Pomodoro timer and calendar views. Marvin's pitch is behavioural: Super Focus Mode, Task Jar, Procrastination Wizard, and 300+ settings that let you build your own system.
Amazing Marvin vs TickTick at a glance
| TickTick | Amazing Marvin | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes, permanent (9 lists, 99 tasks per list) | No |
| Trial | Not needed (free plan) | 14 days, full access, no card |
| Paid price | US$49.99/year (Premium) | $8/month, billed $96/year (Pro) |
| Plans | Free + Premium | One plan, everything included |
| Student pricing | 25% off, US$37.99/year (education program, students, faculty and staff) | 50% off, by email |
| Refunds | 14 days (Google Play, PayPal, Stripe); App Store via Apple | No standard refunds; trial extension instead |
| Platforms | Web, desktop, iOS, Android | Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android |
| Habits / Pomodoro | Built in | Built in (Pomodoro timer, habits) |
| Signature features | Habit tracker, Eisenhower Matrix, calendar and timeline views | Super Focus Mode, Task Jar, Procrastination Wizard, Accountability Pledge |
| Customisation | Moderate | 300+ settings, features switch on and off |
(Prices and limits read from TickTick's pricing page and Amazing Marvin's pricing page on 28 September 2026. Both change; check before you buy.)
Which is cheaper, Amazing Marvin or TickTick?
TickTick, clearly. Over a year:
- TickTick Free: $0, with no time limit.
- TickTick Premium: US$49.99. (Until 2026 it was US$35.99; we covered the increase in TickTick pricing in 2026.)
- Amazing Marvin Pro: $96, after a 14-day trial. There is no cheaper tier.
So Marvin costs about 1.9 times TickTick Premium, and infinitely more than TickTick Free. Discounts narrow the gap: Marvin gives students 50% off (about $48/year) and says it will work something out with anyone who can't afford the standard price. TickTick's education program brings Premium to US$37.99.
One difference matters more than the headline number: refunds. TickTick refunds within 14 days for purchases through Google Play, PayPal or Stripe. Marvin doesn't do standard refunds; its argument is that the full-access trial makes them unnecessary, and it extends trials on request. In practice that means Marvin's trial is your only evaluation window. Test it on a real, busy week, not a quiet one.
Is Amazing Marvin better than TickTick?
It depends on what's actually going wrong for you.
If the problem is organisation (tasks in too many places, reminders you miss, no calendar view), TickTick solves it for less. Its free plan includes list and Kanban views, natural-language input, reminders and sync across devices. Premium adds calendar depth, a timeline view, task durations and much higher limits. It's a mature, well-rounded app.
If the problem is doing the tasks (you have a tidy list and still don't start), Marvin is built for that. Its features have names because each one targets a specific stall:
- Super Focus Mode shows one task at a time.
- Task Jar picks your next task at random, for when choosing is the obstacle.
- Procrastination Wizard walks you through a task you're stuck on.
- Accountability Pledge lets you put real money on a deadline.
- Day Planning warns you when your plan for the day is over capacity.
TickTick has nothing comparable to these. Marvin, in turn, doesn't try to be a lean default. Its own homepage lists 300+ customizable settings, and setting it up well takes time.
Which is better for ADHD?
Amazing Marvin markets itself directly to people with ADHD ("Built for ADHD minds" is the first line of its homepage), and the features above are why. If starting tasks, estimating time, or choosing between tasks is the daily fight, Marvin addresses that head-on.
TickTick isn't built around ADHD, but it has two features many people with ADHD rely on: a built-in Pomodoro timer and a habit tracker. The habit tracker is on the free plan, capped at 5 habits.
A fair way to decide: try TickTick Free first, because it costs nothing and has no deadline. If you find yourself with a good list you still can't act on, that's the signal Marvin's $96 might be worth it. We wrote more on this in Amazing Marvin for ADHD.
What about mobile?
TickTick's mobile apps are a strength: fast capture, natural-language input and home-screen widgets (basic on the free plan).
Marvin is mid-rebuild here. It is running a public beta of a completely rebuilt mobile app, with AI braindump, voice capture and improved reminders that its beta page marks as "not on web yet". The beta page was last updated on 9 September 2026. If phone capture matters to you, test the beta during your trial rather than assuming the current store app is what you'll get.
Can you move from TickTick to Amazing Marvin?
Yes. Marvin's homepage lists TickTick among the services it imports from: you drag and drop your export file and Marvin handles the rest. If you trial Marvin, import your real TickTick lists on day one. Evaluating Marvin with dummy tasks tells you very little.
Who should pick which
- Pick TickTick if you want one reliable app for tasks, habits and a calendar, you'd like to pay little or nothing, and your problem is keeping things organised.
- Pick Amazing Marvin if you've tried "normal" to-do apps and still stall, you like tuning your own system, and $96/year is fine once the trial convinces you.
- Pick neither yet if your real friction is getting things into the app while you're busy elsewhere. That's the gap the next section is about.
Where Vyneron fits
We build Vyneron, so treat this as our pitch, kept separate from the comparison above.
Both TickTick and Marvin assume you open their app to add a task. Vyneron takes the opposite approach: you send a message to a bot in Telegram, Slack or WhatsApp (WhatsApp for text messages) and it becomes a task, a note or a reminder. In Telegram you can also send a voice note or a photo; photos go through OCR. Recurring tasks skip public holidays worldwide, and AI search finds tasks, notes and files by meaning, not just keywords.
Pricing, for comparison:
- Free: $0 forever. Unlimited tasks, notes and routines; Telegram, Slack and WhatsApp integration; 10 files / 50 MB. AI is included for the first 7 days (50 messages/day). After that, bring your own AI key: a Gemini key (Google AI Studio has a free tier), OpenAI or Anthropic Claude, with 0% markup.
- Solo: $6/month or $59/year. 150 AI messages/day, unlimited voice transcription, 500 files / 2.5 GB.
- Multi: bracket pricing for teams, from $12/month for 2 to 3 users. Enterprise for 26+ users.
- 14-day money-back guarantee.
What Vyneron won't give you is Marvin's depth of anti-procrastination tooling or TickTick's habit tracker. It's for people whose tasks arrive in chats and need to be captured where they arrive.
Comparing further? See the best Amazing Marvin alternatives, the best TickTick alternatives, or the pricing deep-dives for Amazing Marvin and TickTick. Or try Vyneron free, no trial clock on the core app.