Almost every kanban tool you can find was built for a team of eight. You get swimlanes, WIP limits, assignees, story points, and an onboarding flow that asks how your sprint works. Then you use it alone, for personal tasks, and roughly 90% of the interface is scaffolding for a meeting you are never going to have.
This is the roundup for the other case: one person, a handful of things in flight, and a board that tells you at a glance what you actually started. I build one of these apps, so treat the Taskaro section accordingly.
What "Simple" Has to Mean Here
Three tests, and most kanban apps fail at least one:
- Zero setup before the first card. If you have to name a workspace, pick a template or invite someone before you can type a task, that cost lands on day one and never comes back.
- The board is the default view. Not a tab you switch to, not a paid layout. If you have to go find the board, you will stop going.
- No team machinery in the way. Assignees, comments, activity feeds and permissions are pure noise when the only person on the board is you.
The Options, Compared
| App | Board free? | Setup before first card | Built for | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trello | Yes | Create a board, name lists | Small teams | $5/mo |
| Notion | Yes, after you build it | Database, properties, a board view | Whatever you design | About $10/mo |
| Todoist | No, Pro layout | Project, then switch layout | List-first task management | $4/mo |
| TickTick | No, Premium view | List, then enable kanban | Power users | $3.99/mo |
| GitHub Projects | Yes | A repo and an account | Developers | Free for personal use |
| Taskaro | Yes | None, board is the home screen | One person | $3.49/mo |
1. Trello: The Default, and Still Pretty Good
Trello invented the mainstream version of this. Drag cards between lists, done. The free tier gives you unlimited cards and up to ten boards per workspace, which is more than enough for one person.
Where it works: visual projects with stages. A house move, a job hunt, a content pipeline. Cards hold checklists, attachments and due dates without feeling heavy.
Where it grates: it is still a team tool wearing a personal hat. Every card has members, watchers and an activity log you will never use. There is no notes section, no stats, and the Power-Up system exists mostly to sell you Premium at $5 a month. Daily personal tasks also fit badly: Trello has no real concept of today, so recurring errands turn into cards that sit forever.
2. Notion: The Best Board You Have to Build First
Notion's board view is genuinely excellent, and the free personal plan will cover you indefinitely. The catch is everything before it. You create a database, add a status property, add a board view grouped by that property, and then decide on four more properties you will spend the next month maintaining.
Where it works: if the board sits next to project docs and notes you actually write, the integration is worth real friction.
Where it grates: slow to open on mobile, and there is nothing stopping you from redesigning the schema instead of working. I spent two weeks on exactly that, which I wrote up in Notion vs Taskaro.
3. Todoist and TickTick: Boards as an Upgrade
Both are list-first apps that grew a board layout. Both keep it behind the paywall: Todoist's board layout is Pro at about $4 a month, TickTick's kanban view is Premium at about $3.99. Both are good implementations.
Where they work: you already pay for one of them. Then the board is a free bonus and this entire comparison is academic, so switch the layout and carry on.
Where they grate: the board is bolted onto a list model, so it inherits list thinking. Everything still revolves around due dates and the Today view, and the board ends up being a different way of looking at the same list rather than a different way of working.
4. GitHub Projects: Free and Fine If You Already Live There
Worth a mention because developers keep rediscovering it. A GitHub project board is free, fast, and can pull in real issues and pull requests. For side-project work it is hard to argue with.
Where it grates: everything that is not code. "Call the dentist" does not want to be an issue in a repository, and you will not open GitHub on a Sunday to check a personal list.
5. Taskaro: Four Fixed Columns, Nothing Else
Mine, so here is the unvarnished version. The board has four fixed columns: Todo, Done, Cancelled and Overdue. It is one click from your task list. There is nothing to create first, no template to pick, no swimlanes to configure, and no assignee field, because there is only you. Alongside it: a flat notes section with no folders, a calendar week view, a contribution graph of your whole year, and a focus timer you start from a task rather than retyping the task into a second app.
Where it grates, plainly: you cannot add columns. You get Todo, Done, Cancelled and Overdue with no In Progress column, which is a genuine limitation if your work has real stages in the middle. No multiple boards, no labels on cards, no collaboration, no iOS app, and the board is web only. The free tier is the tightest here at 3 tasks a day, 3 notes and 2 focus sessions a day. Pro is $3.49 a month or $26.99 a year. If you want custom columns, use Trello and do not think twice.
How to Pick
- Pick Trello if you want custom columns and multiple boards for distinct projects.
- Pick Notion if the board needs to live beside documents, and building the system appeals to you.
- Pick Todoist or TickTick if you already pay for one.
- Pick GitHub Projects if your tasks are mostly code and already in issues.
- Pick Taskaro if four fixed columns are all you want and you would rather have a timer attached than a label system.
The Part That Actually Matters
Personal kanban works because of a constraint, not a feature: the In Progress column shames you when there are four things in it. That is the whole mechanism, and three columns deliver it just as well as thirty. Every app above can do it today. The one worth using is the one where you will still be moving cards in March, and that is almost always the one that asked you to configure the least in January.
If you are not sure a board beats your list at all, read kanban vs to-do list first. Choosing the app is the easy half.