Ultra Reminders vs Things 3: AI Capture vs Beautiful Stillness

Ultra Reminders vs Things 3 is AI-native capture vs award-winning stillness: Ultra adds on-device LLM and natural language, Things 3 ships beautiful project structure and zero AI.

A friend of mine, Maya, has been on Things 3 for nine years. Won't switch. The reason she gives, every single time someone asks, is "it doesn't get in my way". That's not a feature list. That's a mood. Ultra Reminders is the opposite mood. It does get in your way, in the sense that it actively reaches for your captures, parses them, clusters them, and proposes a plan. Two different philosophies. One quiet, one busy. Which one earns your daily slot depends on what's actually broken in your week.

This piece is the honest side-by-side, written after using both for a full month each in early 2026.

Quick verdict

Things 3 wins if you have a calm, well-defined project list and you want a tool that disappears. Ultra Reminders wins if your inbox is messy, you capture a lot from voice or hotkey, and you want the app to do triage work for you. Power users with multi-level subtask trees and on-device AI needs lean Ultra. Designers and writers who want a beautiful, opinionated container lean Things.

Side by side

Feature	Ultra Reminders	Things 3
Pricing model	$35 one-time	$50 Mac + $20 iPad + $10 iPhone (separate)
Total cost over 3 years	$35	~$80 (one device combo)
Free trial	14 days	15 days (Mac only)
Subscription required	no	no
AI capture and clustering	yes (Qwen 3 1.7B, on-device)	no
Natural language input that strips entities	yes	partial (date only)
Multi-level nested subtasks	yes	yes (3 levels via projects -> headings -> tasks -> checklists)
Custom recurrence (every Nth day, last business day)	yes	partial
Hourly recurrence	yes	no
Daily AI-generated plan	yes (10AM run)	no
Cross-device sync	yes (writes back to Apple Reminders)	yes (Things Cloud, separate sync)
iCloud as source of truth	yes	no (Things Cloud only)
Hindi or Hinglish input	yes	no
Apple Watch app	partial	yes
Quick entry from anywhere on Mac	sub-1 second hotkey	sub-1 second hotkey (excellent)
Design polish	functional, fast	award-winning, calm
Shortcuts integration	yes	yes (extensive)
Web app	no	no
Privacy posture	local-first, zero cloud calls	Things Cloud, encrypted

Where Ultra Reminders wins

• AI does the triage. You brain-dump 12 things, the local LLM clusters them into projects, surfaces the urgent ones, and demotes the rest. Things 3 hands you the raw list and trusts your discipline.
• Natural language that actually strips entities. "Email Vimal next Thursday at 3pm about the proposal" lands as "Email Vimal about the proposal" with the date and time set, not as the full string sitting in the title. Things gets the date but leaves the rest of the noise.
• Advanced recurrence. Every Nth day, last business day, hourly, every weekday at varying times. Things 3 maxes out at standard daily/weekly/monthly/yearly with some flexibility.
• Writes back to Apple Reminders. Your captures sync to your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and any other person you share an Apple Reminders list with. Things sync only inside Things.
• One-time price. $35. Done. Things charges per device, so an iPhone + iPad + Mac setup runs around $80.
• Hindi and Hinglish input. Genuinely useful for the Indian market and anyone code-switching. Things parses neither.
• Daily plan job. A 10AM (or your preferred time) job that proposes 3-5 tasks for the day, drawn from your inbox + calendar + completion patterns. Things has no equivalent.
• AI runs on your Mac. Qwen 3 1.7B, Apache 2.0, no telemetry, no cloud round trips. As of May 2026 this is increasingly the privacy-conscious default.

Where Things 3 wins

• Calm. It's the most peaceful task app on macOS. Period. Type, tab, enter. No notifications buzzing, no AI suggestions interrupting, no cards popping. Things just sits there.
• Project architecture. The Areas / Projects / Headings / Tasks / Checklists hierarchy is the cleanest in the category. If you live in projects with structure, this is your tool.
• Quick Entry on Mac. Cmd+Shift+Space. Best in class. Has been since launch. Includes Auto-Fill that pulls context from the current app (you're in Mail, it pre-fills the email subject as the task title).
• Apple Watch app. Polished, fast, syncs reliably. Ultra Reminders has a partial watch app (you see captures, you check things off) but Things has years of head start.
• Today + Evening + Upcoming + Anytime + Someday. This is the planning model GTD users want without having to build it themselves. The defaults are well-thought.
• Shortcuts depth. Things has been investing in Shortcuts for years. The action library is broader and more battle-tested than most competitors.
• Visual quality. The typography, the rubber-band animations, the way checking off a task feels. This is what nine-time Apple Design Award winning looks like. It does not feel like a productivity app, it feels like a piece of stationery.

"I bought Things 3 in 2017, on iPhone, then iPad, then Mac. I've spent $80 total. I have not opened a competing app for more than a week since. The thing is calm and I'm a calmer person for it."

• paraphrased from r/Things3, January 2026

"Switched from Things to Ultra last March because my brain dumps were getting away from me. Things is prettier. Ultra actually sorts them so I don't have to."

• quoted from a Hacker News comment, April 2026

Pricing

Ultra Reminders: $35 one-time. Free 14-day trial. No subscription, ever. Works on every Mac you own under one license (per Apple ID household).

Things 3: $49.99 on Mac, $19.99 on iPad, $9.99 on iPhone. No subscription. Each device is a separate purchase. A solo user with one device pays $50 to $80 depending on which devices they want it on. Family Sharing is supported, which softens the per-device cost across a household.

Three-year cost of ownership for a solo Mac + iPhone user:

• Ultra Reminders: $35.
• Things 3 (Mac + iPhone): ~$60.
• Todoist Pro for the same window: $144.
• Motion: $684.

Both are dramatically cheaper than the subscription apps in this category. Ultra is the cheapest option that includes AI. Things is the most-loved option that includes nothing AI and isn't trying to.

Who should pick which

1. You're a writer or designer who wants a beautiful tool that disappears. Pick Things 3. The peace is the feature.
2. You brain-dump constantly and triage poorly. Pick Ultra Reminders. The AI clustering is the unlock.
3. You're already happy in Things 3. Stay. Don't fix what isn't broken. Ultra is also good but it's a different mood.
4. You're already on Apple Reminders and want more horsepower. Try Ultra first. It enriches Reminders rather than replacing your existing data. See Ultra vs Apple Reminders for the side-by-side.
5. You want the cheapest, smallest, do-nothing-fancy option. Stay on Apple Reminders. The base layer is free and good.
6. You're switching from a subscription tool to save money. Both Things and Ultra qualify. See Ultra vs Todoist for the most direct apples-to-apples cost story.
7. Your week has more captures than projects. Ultra. The weight is on the inbox side.
8. Your week has more projects than captures. Things. The weight is on the structure side.
9. You speak Hindi, Hinglish, or any non-English at home. Ultra. Things doesn't parse those.
10. You want an Apple Watch experience that's been polished for years. Things, today. Ultra is catching up but not there yet.

For a wider lens on the comparison cluster, the Apple Reminders vs Every Major To-Do App hub piece covers how both stack against the rest. And Apple Reminders vs Things 3 is the dedicated piece if you're choosing between Things and the native option.

"I gave up on AI in task apps after three failed attempts. Ultra is the first one that didn't feel like a gimmick. It clusters my brain dumps into actual buckets, and I don't have to teach it anything."

• paraphrased from r/macapps, March 2026

For a longer list of options if neither of these fits, Apple Reminders alternatives covers the broader field.

A real week-by-week test

To make this less abstract, here's what a week with each app actually looks like for the same person, a freelance designer in Bengaluru.

Week on Things 3. Monday morning, she opens the app to a cleanly organized list of three projects, each with headings, each with tasks. She picks today's three. She works. Throughout the day she captures incoming requests via Cmd+Shift+Space (Things' Quick Entry), which is genuinely best-in-class on Mac. By Friday evening her project structure is intact, her Today view is empty, and she feels in control. The downside: the four times this week a client texted "can we move Tuesday's review to Thursday", she had to manually re-shuffle the project. No AI noticed. No suggestion came. She did the bookkeeping herself.

Week on Ultra Reminders. Same designer, Monday morning, opens the app to her Reminders inbox plus an AI-proposed plan for the day. She accepts most of it, edits two items, starts working. Throughout the day, captures fly into the inbox via Cmd+Shift+. The clustering kicks in around lunch and groups her client captures by project automatically. By Friday she's done about the same amount of work. The wins: the 10AM daily plan caught two scheduling conflicts she'd missed, and one of the brain-dump clusters surfaced a duplicate task she'd captured twice on different days. The downside: the app feels busier. There's always something happening. For a calmer brain this is friction, not help.

Same person, same workload, two different outcomes. The right tool depends on what your brain wants: the calm container (Things) or the active assistant (Ultra).

What we'd pick if forced to choose one

If we had to pick one for a working professional starting fresh in 2026 with no existing investment in either tool, we'd pick Ultra Reminders. The reasoning is that it sits on top of Apple Reminders rather than replacing it, so the data is portable. If Ultra ever goes away or doesn't work for you, your tasks are still in Reminders. With Things 3, your data is in Things Cloud and the export path back to Reminders is a manual project.

That portability matters more than design polish for the next decade of decisions, especially as on-device AI becomes the default and tools that can layer on top of native apps will keep adding value while standalone apps will need to keep up alone.

That said, if you've been on Things for years and love it, do not switch. The cost of changing your task system is way higher than the marginal benefit of any single tool.

FAQ

Q: Can I use both Ultra Reminders and Things 3 together?

A: Technically yes, but it defeats the point of either. Both want to be your task home. Pick one and commit. If you absolutely must, use Things for big-project structure and Ultra for inbox capture, but expect duplication.

Q: Does Things 3 plan to add AI features?

A: As of May 2026, Cultured Code (the Things makers) have publicly said they're studying AI but have shipped nothing. Their philosophy has historically been "do less, do it perfectly". Don't hold your breath for an AI Things 3 update in 2026.

Q: Will my Things 3 data import to Ultra Reminders?

A: There's no direct importer. The path is: export Things to Apple Reminders first (manual or via Shortcuts), then Ultra reads from Reminders. It's a half-day project for a few hundred tasks.

Q: Which one syncs better across devices?

A: Tied, with caveats. Things uses Things Cloud (separate from iCloud, very reliable). Ultra writes back to Apple Reminders, which uses iCloud (mostly reliable, occasional shared list sync issues). For solo users, both are fine. For shared lists, Apple Reminders + Ultra has known edge cases.

Q: Is the AI in Ultra Reminders worth $35 over Things 3?

A: Depends on your week. If you brain-dump 5+ times a day and feel constantly behind on triage, yes. If your weeks are calm and project-driven, Things is the better tool. The 14-day Ultra trial is the cheapest way to find out for yourself.

Ultra Reminders solves AI capture without giving up calm design. Free 14-day trial at ultrareminders.com.