HamsterBase Tasks as a Things 3 Alternative

Things 3 has spent more than a decade as the darling of the Apple productivity world. Beautiful interface, opinionated workflow, hard-to-fault polish. But the productivity landscape in 2026 looks very different from 2017. Users own more devices across more operating systems. Privacy expectations have tightened. People want to own their data, not rent access to it. HamsterBase Tasks is a younger, open-source task manager built around those new defaults — local-first storage, end-to-end encryption, every major platform, and pricing that doesn't punish you for picking up a Windows laptop. So how does it stack up against Things 3, and could it be your next home for tasks?

The Apple-Only Beauty

Things 3 launched in 2017 and quickly became the gold standard for what a task app could look like. Cultured Code's attention to typography, animation, and interaction won it a design award and a devoted following. The app's worldview is opinionated and small: you have an Inbox, a Today view, an Upcoming list, Areas, and Projects. You don't bend the app to your workflow — you bend your workflow to the app. For a lot of users that's a feature, not a bug.

But that opinionated worldview comes with hard edges. Things 3 is Apple-only. There is no Windows version. There is no Linux version. There is no Android version. There is no web version. If you live entirely inside the Apple ecosystem, that may not matter. The moment you don't — a Windows PC at work, an Android phone, a Linux dev box, a borrowed Chromebook — Things 3 stops being a complete answer.

HamsterBase Tasks starts from the opposite premise: your tasks should follow you, not your hardware. The app runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, and the web. The same database, the same tasks, on whatever device happens to be in front of you.

The Cross-Platform Problem

Things 3 ships native apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Within that walled garden the experience is excellent. Outside it, there is nothing. Users routinely report wishing they could check off a task on a work PC, dictate one into an Android phone, or open their list in a browser without rebooting into macOS. None of that is possible.

HamsterBase Tasks ships native desktop apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and a fully featured web app at tasks-app.hamsterbase.com. All six clients sync against the same encrypted database. If you switch jobs, switch phones, or just sit down at a friend's computer, your tasks are one login away. There is no "primary device" — every device is a first-class citizen.

For self-hosters there's a seventh option: a Docker image you can run on your own server, so even the sync layer lives on hardware you control. We'll come back to that.

The Price Tag Problem

Things 3 uses a one-time-pay-per-platform model. The Mac app is around 50 USD. The iPhone app is around 10 USD. The iPad app is around 20 USD. The Apple Watch app is included with the iPhone purchase. To use Things 3 on a Mac, an iPhone, and an iPad — a fairly normal Apple lineup — you pay roughly 80 USD upfront, and you pay again for any future major version. There is no family plan. There is no cross-platform bundle. There is no upgrade path; each major version (Things 2 → Things 3) was a fresh purchase.

HamsterBase Tasks works very differently:

• Free tier: every platform, with no cap on the number of tasks or projects. Cloud sync is not included — on the free tier data lives on each device locally.
• Pro: 20 USD/year. Adds three cloud-synced databases so your tasks move between devices, plus Cloud Inbox (the HTTP-API quick-capture feature).
• Lifetime: 60 USD one-time. Everything in Pro, forever.

A Pro subscription on HamsterBase costs less per year than a single Things 3 platform purchase, and the Lifetime plan is roughly 60% of the cost of buying Things 3 once across Mac/iPhone/iPad. Crucially, paid tiers are not split by platform — one subscription covers every client, with no separate "Windows tax" or "Android tax".

UI: Polish vs Practicality

Nobody is going to claim HamsterBase Tasks beats Things 3 on pure visual polish. Cultured Code has spent nearly a decade refining every shadow and easing curve, and it shows. If your top priority is "the prettiest task app on the App Store," Things 3 still wins that contest.

HamsterBase Tasks aims for a different kind of UI virtue: speed and consistency. Operations are instantaneous because writes hit a local database first and sync in the background — there is no spinner waiting for a server to round-trip. The interface uses the same vocabulary on every platform, so muscle memory carries from macOS to Windows to the web without retraining. Lists, projects, Today, areas, tags — they look and behave the same everywhere. Mobile and desktop diverge only where they have to.

The trade-off is honest: Things 3 looks slightly more delightful at rest. HamsterBase Tasks feels slightly more responsive in motion, and looks identical regardless of which OS you booted into.

Same Task Structure as Things 3

HamsterBase Tasks uses the same model Things 3 popularised: Inbox, Today, Areas, Projects, Tags, with a start date and a due date on each task. The vocabulary is essentially identical — open the app and you'll find Today front and centre, projects grouped under areas, and the familiar "mark for today / schedule for a specific future day" gestures. The recent "group Today by area and project" update brings the Today view even closer to how Things organises things visually.

Things users can migrate over seamlessly.

Quick Capture: Mail to Things vs Cloud Inbox

Things has an elegant quick-capture story on Apple platforms: a global hotkey, the share sheet, Siri, and the famous Mail to Things feature where you forward an email to a private address and it shows up as a task in your Inbox. It's well executed and entirely Apple-shaped.

HamsterBase Tasks approaches quick capture as a programmable surface rather than an Apple feature. The Cloud Inbox is a single HTTPS endpoint with a token:

curl -X POST https://cloud.hamsterbase.com/api/tasks/inbox/v1/append \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer tk_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" \
  -d '{"title":"Buy milk","due_date":1779235200000}'

That one endpoint becomes the foundation for any integration you can write — a Shortcuts action, an Alfred workflow, a Raycast extension, a Telegram bot, a cron job, a Zapier/Make webhook, a script on your CI server that opens a task when a build breaks. Things' Mail to Things only takes email. Cloud Inbox takes anything with a network connection.

(Cloud Inbox is part of the paid Pro/Lifetime plans and, as noted in the docs, stores payloads unencrypted on the server until the next sync — so it's the right tool for grocery reminders, not for confidential notes.)

AI: Bring Your Own Model, Built-in Agent

Things 3 has no AI integration. No model picker, no chat surface, no way to ask the app to do anything on your behalf. It's a 2017 product and it behaves like one.

HamsterBase Tasks lets you plug in your own large language model — OpenAI, Anthropic, or any compatible endpoint — and exposes a built-in agent that can create and modify tasks on your behalf. Tell it "schedule a dentist appointment for next Tuesday and tag it as health," paste a meeting transcript and ask it to extract action items, or have it tidy up the wording of a noisy project. The agent reads and writes to your task database directly, using the same operations you'd perform by hand.

Because you bring your own model, you choose which provider sees your prompts and which key gets billed. There is no HamsterBase-hosted AI middleman in the loop.

Sync and Privacy: iCloud vs End-to-End Encryption

Things 3 syncs via Things Cloud, Cultured Code's own service. It's reliable and invisible, which is what you want from sync. What it's not is end-to-end encrypted. Cultured Code's servers can technically read your task titles, notes, and deadlines. That's not a scandal — it's just how most sync services work — but it does mean your todo list is one data breach or one subpoena away from being visible.

HamsterBase Tasks is end-to-end encrypted by default. Task content, project structure, and notes are encrypted on your device before they ever reach the server. The server stores ciphertext. We can't read your data even if we wanted to. (The one carve-out, called out in the docs, is Cloud Inbox payloads in transit — those sit in plaintext briefly before they're pulled into the encrypted store, which is why we tell you not to use it for anything sensitive.)

For users who want even more control, the entire sync server is open source and shipped as a Docker image you can run on your own hardware. At that point your data never touches our servers at all.

Attachments

Things 3 does not support file attachments. You can link to a file on disk on macOS, but the file itself doesn't travel with the task, doesn't sync to your phone, and doesn't survive moving the original. For a lot of workflows — "the PDF I need to read before the meeting", "the screenshot of the bug" — that's a genuine limitation.

HamsterBase Tasks supports attachments, with a deliberate twist: the file bytes live in your own S3-compatible bucket, not on our servers. You point HamsterBase at AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, MinIO, or any S3-compatible service, and attachments upload there. The app stores only metadata in your encrypted database. You pay the storage bill, you control the credentials, you set the retention. We never see the files.

It's a more involved setup than "drag and drop a file into iCloud", but it's the only model that gives you cross-platform attachments without trusting a vendor with their contents.

Self-Hosting and Open Source

Things 3 is closed source. There is no self-hosted version. There is no way to inspect what the app sends home, beyond what Cultured Code chooses to disclose. The privacy posture is "trust us, we're a good company" — and they have been a good company — but it's not something you can verify.

HamsterBase Tasks publishes its source on GitHub. You can read the client code, audit how encryption works, fork it, or contribute. The sync server ships as a Docker image so you can run the whole stack on a home server or VPS. There's no telemetry; nothing phones home. If the company disappeared tomorrow, the apps would keep working and your data would still be yours, stored as plaintext after you exported it.

For users coming from Things 3 because of privacy concerns — or just because they've been burned once too often by a beloved closed-source app sunsetting — that combination of open source + self-hosting + E2E encryption is the part that's hardest to replicate elsewhere.

Collaboration

Worth being honest here: Things 3 is a single-user app, and so is HamsterBase Tasks. Neither one is built for shared projects, assigning tasks to teammates, or commenting threads. If your real need is team task management, neither app is the right answer — that's a different category (Asana, Linear, Todoist Pro, etc.).

What HamsterBase Tasks does offer that Things doesn't is multiple cloud-synced databases on the Pro plan. You can keep a personal database and a "work" database side by side, switch between them in one click, and keep each fully encrypted. It's not collaboration, but it scratches some of the same itches without compromising the single-user model.

Is HamsterBase Tasks a Good Things 3 Alternative?

So — should you replace Things 3 with HamsterBase Tasks? It depends on which Things 3 you fell in love with.

If you fell in love with Things because of the visual design, Things still wins on pure pixels. HamsterBase Tasks looks clean and modern, but Cultured Code has had nearly a decade of pixel-polishing head start.

If you fell in love with Things because of the mental model — Inbox, Today, Areas, Projects — HamsterBase Tasks will feel immediately at home. The vocabulary is almost identical and the migration cost is mostly retyping, not relearning.

If you're stuck on Things because it's the best thing on macOS, but you also use Windows, Linux, Android, or the web, HamsterBase Tasks is the more honest answer. Same tasks, same database, every platform.

If you care about privacy and ownership — end-to-end encryption, open-source code, self-hosting — there is no real contest. Things 3 is a closed-source app that syncs through someone else's server. HamsterBase Tasks is open source, end-to-end encrypted, and self-hostable.

If you care about price, the Lifetime plan at 60 USD covers every platform forever, which is less than the cost of buying Things 3 once across a typical Apple lineup — and there is a free tier underneath that for users who just want unlimited tasks across all their devices.

And if you've been wanting attachments, a scriptable quick-capture API, an AI agent that can read and write your tasks, or expressive recurring rules — four things Things 3 simply doesn't have — HamsterBase Tasks is worth a serious look.

Want to give it a try? Download HamsterBase Tasks or open the web app. The free tier has no time limit and no task cap, so there's no rush.