Apple Reminders vs. Google Tasks

At a glance

Field	Apple Reminders	Google Tasks
Developer	Apple Inc.	Google LLC
Price	Free	Free
App Store rating	4.83 from 995,157 ratings	4.80 from 106,160 ratings
Current version	2.0, updated 2025-12-12	26.35.0, updated 2026-09-02
First released	2016-05-23	2018-04-27
Install size	4.2 MB	166.8 MB
Minimum iOS	10.0	17.0
iPad support	Yes	Yes

Pulled from the App Store on 2026-09-04. Prices, versions, ratings, install sizes and OS requirements change — check the current App Store listing before relying on any of these values.

Apple Reminders ships with iOS; its App Store entry exists so the app can be re-downloaded if it has been removed from a device. The version, update date, install size and minimum iOS shown for it above describe that store entry, not the copy of Reminders running on a current iPhone. Google Tasks is an ordinary App Store download, so its figures in those same rows describe the app itself — the two columns are not measuring the same thing.

Feature comparison

Field	Apple Reminders	Google Tasks
Price	Free, with no in-app purchases listed	Free, with no in-app purchases listed
Differs: Account it runs on	An Apple Account. Apple’s iCloud guide states you must be signed in to the same Apple Account on each device for Reminders to sync	A Google Account. Google states one is needed to store your preferences, sign you in, and get you tasks you created on other devices
Differs: Other accounts it will hold	iCloud, Microsoft Exchange and Yahoo accounts, per Apple’s iPhone user guide	Not stated. Google’s published material describes Google Accounts only
Differs: Where it exists beyond the phone	Its App Store listing names iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision. Apple’s iCloud guide separately names iPhone, iPad, Mac and iCloud.com	Its App Store listing names iPhone and iPad only. Google’s help lists Tasks in the side panel of Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, and on Chrome OS and in Keep
Differs: Relationship to other apps	Its App Store description names iCloud sync and nothing further	Its App Store description leads on integration with Gmail and Google Calendar, including creating a task directly from an email and viewing tasks in Gmail’s side panel
Published limits	None stated on its listing or in the Apple guides read for this page	None stated for a person’s lists or tasks. The only figure Google publishes is a courtesy limit of 50,000 queries a day on the Tasks API, which governs developer access rather than your own list
Differs: What the developer says about your data	Its listing describes iCloud sync and says nothing further about how the data is handled	Google states that tasks are stored in its data centres and encrypted in transit and at rest, and that it does not use information in apps where you primarily store personal content, including Tasks, for advertising
Languages	Not stated on its App Store listing	English and 54 more, per its App Store listing

Sources for this section: Apple Reminders App Store listing, Apple, Set up iCloud for Reminders on all your devices, Apple, Add or remove accounts in Reminders on iPhone, Google Tasks App Store listing, Google, Learn about Google Tasks, Google, How Tasks protects your privacy and keeps you in control, and Google Tasks API quotas and usage limits. All seven were checked on 2026-08-24. Published feature lists change — check the current pages before relying on any row above. A heavier amber rule marks a row where the two apps meaningfully differ.

Where each one fits

Apple Reminders reaches the most Apple surfaces of the two. Its listing covers iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision, and Apple’s iCloud guide separately describes it on Mac and at iCloud.com. It will hold Exchange and Yahoo accounts as well as iCloud ones, so it is not strictly a single-account app. And it has the lowest iOS floor of anything compared on this site, at 10.0, which matters if the phone in question is an old one. Against that, everything about how it syncs assumes an Apple Account, its listing says nothing about what happens to the data beyond the fact of iCloud sync, and nothing Apple publishes here describes it running anywhere outside Apple’s own platforms.

Google Tasks is best understood as a companion to Gmail and Google Calendar rather than as a standalone task manager, and Google’s own material describes it that way — its App Store description leads on those integrations, and Google’s help lists Tasks in the side panel of Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides. If your day already runs through those, the task list is already where you are. Google also publishes something Apple does not match here: an explicit statement that Tasks content is not used for advertising, and no ceiling of any kind on how many lists or tasks you keep. Against that, its App Store listing covers iPhone and iPad only — no Mac, no Apple Watch — and it requires iOS 17.0 where Reminders requires 10.0. Outside the Google side panel it is a thinner app than its rival.

Both of these stop well short of what a paid task manager does, and the ceiling you hit is a feature ceiling rather than a billing one. Where the paid end of this category draws its lines is set out in Todoist vs. TickTick, and what Todoist costs covers the one boundary most likely to catch someone moving up from a free default — that custom, recurring and location-based reminders are a paid feature there.

What we couldn’t verify

These are questions the published sources do not answer. They are listed here unresolved rather than guessed at.

• Whether Reminders can be used with no account at all, keeping lists only on the device. Apple’s guide names the account types Reminders will hold but does not address the no-account case
• Which devices Reminders actually covers. Its App Store listing names iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision; Apple’s iCloud guide names iPhone, iPad, Mac and iCloud.com. The two Apple pages describe different sets and neither reconciles them
• Whether Google sets any ceiling on lists or tasks per person. The only limits page Google publishes covers API queries, not a user’s own list
• Whether either app works usefully with no network connection, which neither listing nor either help centre describes
• Whether Apple applies to Reminders the same commitment Google publishes for Tasks about not using the content for advertising; Apple’s Reminders material makes no equivalent statement either way
• How either app behaves with a very large list, which no published source establishes

Ownership disclosure