When comparing Things 2 vs Taskwarrior, the Slant community recommends Taskwarrior for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” Taskwarrior is ranked 2nd while Things 2 is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Taskwarrior is:
The command line interface puts powerful filtering expressions, context, annotations, tags, due dates, reoccurrence, and user-defined-attributes totally in your hands. It’s fast and low friction.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Cloud sync
Users need to create an account for Things Cloud (the account can be created from any device). Once signed up, cloud sync will be active, and you’ll have to login on all of your devices to complete setup. From that point on, syncing happens in the background. It is invisible and always reliable.
Pro Daily review
At the beginning of every day, a yellow box appears at the top of the Today section, displaying all tasks scheduled for this day. You can investigate them, and then decide which ones you’ll have for that day and which one you’d rather want to delay.
Pro Easy to set up and use
Things 2 works from the moment you start it up. Simply add a task and when you want it done by. You can also add notes to tasks or tag when you need them. Things allows you to quickly and easily start keeping track of your tasks.
Pro Project support
Things 2 has a projects feature that allows you to organize your tasks together. You can select a project you need to get done and Things helps you focus on each task to get it done. You can even group projects together to focus on the most important aspect of your life at the time.
Pro Great for GTD
Things is one of the best apps of doing Getting Things Done.
Pro Nested tags
It's very easy filtering tasks that belong to various areas (etc private vs work)
Pro Responsive and easy naviagation
Logical and responsive navigation and editing. Easy to operate.
Pro Customized calendar
The calendar view (when selecting a due date for a task) is a customized, scrollable version of the default iOS calendar view. This makes it look familiar, but also functional for Things 2's requirements.
Pro Command line interface
The command line interface puts powerful filtering expressions, context, annotations, tags, due dates, reoccurrence, and user-defined-attributes totally in your hands. It’s fast and low friction.
Pro Extensible
Taskwarrior has many front-ends, services, extensions, hook scripts, and capsules available. Taskwarrior keeps a list of contributed tools on their site.
Pro Lightweight and fast
Taskwarrior is written in the speedy C++ language.
Pro Tasks stored in plain text files locally
Future-proof and easily integrated with version control system. You never lose access to your data.
Pro Sync across devices
When used in conjunction with the Taskserver, it can sync tasks (conflict-free) across your Taskwarrior devices. This includes integration with Mirakel.
Pro Supported internationally
It has UTF8 support and is translated into many languages.
Pro Customizability
Taskworrior allows you to define custom attributes and reports to your needs.
Pro Self-hosted Taskserver
You can be in full control of your data.
Cons
Con Expensive if you buy apps for Mac, iPhone and iPad (all sold separately)
As at May 2016 if buying all three apps it cost $80! That said there is no annual subscription and I've been using Things for years and have only paid once so far.
Con Poor calendar view
Could be more convenient with calendar interaction. Not an ordinary approach for visual people, if you want to see all the calendar events in the familiar format.
Con No file attachment available
Con No supported time based/location based alarms
Other apps have these abilities, and they are very useful. Especially for a $10 app, it would be great to include these premium features.
Con Command line interface
A command line interface is a arguably overly verbose, consequently tedious, way to interact with a To Do list.