Microsoft To Do vs Planner: Which One for Your Tasks

Use Microsoft To Do for your own tasks and Planner for work a team shares. To Do is a personal list app: it works with a free personal Microsoft account, it is built around My Day and your own lists, and you can share a list with family or with colleagues. Planner is a team board: it needs a Microsoft 365 business, enterprise or education subscription, plans belong to a group, and tasks have assignees, buckets and progress. You do not have to choose, because the two are connected. Turn on one setting and every Planner task assigned to you appears in To Do, so the team keeps its plan in Planner and each person works from To Do. This comparison reflects Microsoft’s support pages as of September 30, 2026.

The short answer, from Microsoft

Microsoft’s own To Do vs. Planner page↗ (opens in a new tab) draws the line the same way: To Do is for managing individual tasks and making daily to-do lists, and Planner is for managing and scheduling teamwork visually. It adds that Planner needs an organization with a Microsoft 365 subscription, and that teammates get notified of assignments through Planner, Teams, email and mobile notifications. The page also says you can see To Do and Planner tasks side by side in Teams using the Tasks app. That app has since been renamed Planner, so treat the name as out of date, not the idea.

Side by side

• Who it is for: To Do is one person’s list, even when a list is shared. Planner is a plan that belongs to a team or group.
• Accounts: To Do works with a personal Microsoft account or a work or school account. Planner needs a work or school account in an organization with a Microsoft 365 subscription.
• Structure: To Do has lists, tasks, steps inside a task, and smart lists such as My Day, Important, Planned and Assigned to me. Planner has plans, buckets, labels, progress, priority, checklists and several views, including a Board view.
• Assignments: To Do can assign a task to a member of a shared list. Planner assigns tasks to people in the team, with notifications, and a task can have several assignees.
• Views: To Do is a list. Planner’s basic plans have Grid, Board, Schedule and Charts views, and premium plans add more.
• Where it lives: To Do has its own apps and shows your tasks in Outlook. Planner lives on the web and as a Teams app and channel tab.

What Microsoft To Do does well

To Do is at its best as your own list. My Day is a fresh list each morning that you fill from your other lists, and it clears overnight. Flagged emails from Outlook become tasks. Steps break a task into small pieces, and due dates and reminders keep things from slipping. It is free with a personal Microsoft account, which is why many people use it for home as well as work.

Shared lists go further than most people expect. According to Microsoft’s page on creating and sharing lists↗ (opens in a new tab), you can share a list by invitation link, limit it to current members, or stop sharing so the list becomes private again. Sharing works between personal Microsoft accounts, or between accounts in the same workplace or school, not across the two.

Inside a shared list, assigning tasks↗ (opens in a new tab) to any member takes a click, and on Windows you can type @ and a name as you create the task. One catch Microsoft calls out: moving an assigned task to another list removes the assignment, so you have to assign it again.

Where To Do stops is the team view. There are no columns for stages of work, no board, no charts of who has what, and no way to see a team’s workload at a glance. A shared grocery list or a two-person errand list works well; a project with five people and forty tasks does not.

What Microsoft Planner does well

Planner is built for exactly that project. A plan belongs to a Microsoft 365 group or a Teams channel, tasks sit in buckets you name, each has assignees, a due date, a priority, labels and a checklist, and the Board view turns the plan into columns you can drag cards between. Planner in Teams also gives each person a My Tasks view across every plan they are in.

The details of using Planner as a board, including basic and premium plans, buckets vs progress, and the limits Microsoft documents, are in Microsoft Planner as a kanban board, so they are not repeated here. The short version: it is a solid team board for a Microsoft 365 organization, with no work-in-progress limits, and with task history on premium plans only.

How To Do and Planner connect

The connection runs through one smart list. Microsoft’s page on seeing Planner tasks in To Do↗ (opens in a new tab) gives the steps:

1. Open To Do settings: your user name in the Windows app, the menu on iOS or Android, or the gear on the web.
2. Under Smart lists, turn on Assigned to me.
3. Under Connected apps, set Planner to On.
4. Open Assigned to me. Every Planner task assigned to you is there.

From To Do you can rename a Planner task, add or complete its checklist items, change its due date, edit its note, and add it to My Day. Anything else, such as moving it to another bucket or changing its assignees, means opening the task in Planner, which To Do links to under the due date. You need a Planner license for the option to appear.

The same idea works in the other direction inside Planner. Microsoft’s guide to My Tasks and My Day in Planner↗ (opens in a new tab) says My Tasks gathers private tasks that do not belong to a plan yet, tasks assigned to you across plans, Teams meeting notes, Loop task lists and To Do shared lists, and flagged emails. My Day there works as it does in To Do. So a person who lives in Teams can work entirely in Planner, and a person who lives in Outlook can work entirely in To Do, and both see the same assignments.

Which one to use

• Just you, work or home: To Do. It is free with a personal account and it is quick.
• You and one or two people on the same account type, such as a household or two colleagues: a shared list in To Do.
• A team in a Microsoft 365 organization with a shared piece of work: a Planner plan, with each person following their own tasks in To Do or My Tasks.
• Mixed personal and work accounts, or people outside your organization: neither fits well, because To Do sharing does not cross that line and Planner is for your organization.
• A team that needs flow, limits or a record of every change: see where Planner stops in the Planner kanban post, and consider a dedicated board.

If you are torn between a list and a board more generally, kanban board vs to-do list covers when to switch, and personal kanban covers using a board for your own work.

What about an AI assistant?

Microsoft builds Copilot into Planner, and people increasingly want Claude, ChatGPT or another assistant to read and update their tasks too. For To Do, that route goes through the Microsoft Graph To Do API and community-built MCP servers, since Microsoft ships no To Do MCP server; Microsoft To Do and MCP covers what exists and what you are trusting. For Planner, the Graph API reaches basic plans only. In both cases the assistant acts as the person who signed in, so a task it completed looks exactly like one you completed. Claude and Microsoft 365 covers what Claude’s own connector reaches.

Where a shared board fits instead

Some work sits between the two: shared by a small team, not all in one Microsoft 365 organization, with an AI assistant doing part of it. That is the job fenbs is built for. A fenbs board has four lanes, To Do, Next Up, In Progress and Completed, and every task is a feature, an enhancement or a bug with a priority from 1 to 10, where 1 is the most urgent. People and AI assistants are both members with a role, and History records who changed what, so an assistant’s changes carry its own name rather than yours. Assistants connect over MCP at https://fenbs.ai/api/mcp and read the team’s rules on the Decisions and rules page before they start.

It is honest to say what fenbs lacks next to To Do and Planner: no due dates, no reminders, no My Day, no settable assignee and no sprints. If you want tomorrow’s dentist appointment on your phone, To Do is the right tool. If you are moving a To Do or Planner list across, Add many takes a pasted list with one task per line.