Any.do vs Pokobot
A planner that messages you, or a message that is the whole planner.
Any.do is one of the oldest and best-looking task apps there is: a daily planner you actually want to open, grocery lists that sort themselves into aisles, a calendar in the same screen as the tasks, and shared lists for a household. It has been around long enough to have earned all of it.
It is also the only product in this comparison that already sends reminders to WhatsApp, which makes this the one page here that cannot lean on where the reminder lands. Both of these arrive in the same thread. The difference is what WhatsApp is to each one: a channel that Any.do syncs out to, or the place the product lives.
The short answer
Any.do and Pokobot both put reminders in WhatsApp, so the honest question is not which one reaches you. Any.do is a full task app, planner, lists, calendar and family sharing, with a WhatsApp bot attached to it: you link your number in Settings under Integrations, the bot rides on a Premium, Family or Workspace plan and is not part of the free plan, and recurring reminders still have to be created in the app itself rather than from the chat. Pokobot has no app to link, no account and no planner. WhatsApp is the whole product, so everything, including a repeat every two hours between 9am and 7pm, is one sentence sent in the thread. Pick Any.do if you want the planner and treat the chat as one more output. Pick Pokobot if the chat is the only place you want to touch.
Head to head
| Any.do | Pokobot | |
|---|---|---|
| Reminders that arrive in WhatsAppPokobot | Yes, through the WhatsApp bot, on Premium, Family and Workspace. Not on the free plan | Yes, and it is the only thing it does. Nothing to link, nothing to switch on |
| Getting to the first reminderPokobot | Install the app, make an account, then Settings, Integrations, WhatsApp, your number, a 6-digit code | Open a link and send one message. No install, no account, no code |
| Setting a repeat from the chatPokobot | No. The bot takes tasks and reminders, but recurring ones have to be created in the main app | Every repeat is a sentence in the chat. There is no app to go back to |
| How often something can repeatPokobot | Daily and upwards, with the interval rules (every 3 days, last Friday) on the paid plans | Faster than daily if you want, with a window of hours it is allowed to run in |
| Planning a dayAny.do | A real planner. Plan My Day, a calendar beside the tasks, and a morning review worth doing | No planner and no views. Send “list” and read what comes back |
| Lists, groceries and a householdAny.do | Shared lists, family boards, and a grocery list that files items into aisles by itself | No lists to share. One person's reminders, in one person's chat |
| Where the WhatsApp bot worksPokobot | Not available in a list of countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nigeria among them | Anywhere WhatsApp itself works |
| Off the network, and at a deskAny.do | Phone, web, desktop, watch and widgets, and it keeps working with no signal | WhatsApp Web, and that is the lot. No signal, no reminder |
| Free foreverAny.do | Yes, and the free plan is genuinely usable. It just cannot reach WhatsApp | No. 7 days free, then a small subscription (from ₹59/month in India) |
When Any.do is the better tool
This is the strongest product on the comparison list, and the WhatsApp bot is the least of it. If you want the thing Any.do is actually for, none of what follows is a reason to leave.
Any one of these on its own is enough to stay put.
- The morning planning ritual. Plan My Day is a habit, not a feature, and a chat thread has nothing like it.
- A grocery list that sorts itself into aisles, which is a small thing that people who use it refuse to give up.
- Shared and family lists, where two people need to see the same list rather than one person being nudged.
- The calendar sitting next to the tasks, so the day is one screen instead of two apps.
- Desktop, widgets, a watch app, and everything still working on a plane.
- A free plan that a lot of people never need to leave.
An integration, or an address
The Any.do bot is good, and it is an integration: something you connect, on a plan that includes it, that keeps a copy of your tasks somewhere else. That has one consequence worth thinking about before anything else. The app stays the source of truth, so the chat is where reminders show up, not where they are decided.
The clearest version of that is recurrence. The bot will take a task and it will remind you, but a repeating reminder has to be made in the app. So the thing you are most likely to want to change on the move, the daily one that should now be at 8pm, is the thing that sends you back to the app.
That matters more than it sounds because of what people actually create here. More than a third of the reminders set on Pokobot (35.8%) repeat more than once a day: every hour, every two hours, every twenty minutes, each one told which hours it may run in so the afternoon one never becomes the 3am one. That is not a planner's shape and no app on this list, Any.do included, goes below a day.
remind me to drink water every 2 hours between 9am and 7pmphysio exercises every day at 8pmchase the invoice every 3 hours until FridayWhat Any.do's WhatsApp bot actually does
Worth setting out plainly, because most pages that compare against Any.do have not noticed this exists. You link a number under Settings, Integrations, WhatsApp, confirm a 6-digit code, and switch on a personal bot (Family and Workspace accounts also get a workspace one). After that it works both ways: you can send it a task or forward somebody's message into it, and reminders come back to you as WhatsApp messages. Everything stays in sync with the app.
Three limits come with it. It is on Premium, Family and Workspace, so a free Any.do account cannot use it at all. It handles one WhatsApp number per account. And recurring reminders cannot be created through it, only in the app.
There is a fourth that is nobody's fault: the integration is unavailable in a list of countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Oman, Nigeria, Algeria and Tunisia. India is not on that list, so this comparison is a real choice here, but it is worth checking before you plan around it.
The repeat is the whole difference
If you only test one thing, test this. Open WhatsApp and try to tell each product that you want reminding every evening at eight, and then, a week later, that eight has become nine.
With Any.do that is a trip back to the app both times, because recurrence is created there. With Poko both are a sentence in the thread you are already in. Nothing profound is happening in either case, but the number of times a day you are willing to do something is decided almost entirely by how many taps it takes.
And the floor is different. Any.do's repeats start at daily and go up, which is the right design for a planner: days are what a planner is made of. Sub-daily is a different job. Medication every four hours, water every two, chasing somebody every ninety minutes until they answer. That has no cell in a day grid, which is why it lives in a chat here and comes with hours it is allowed to speak in.
What you are paying for in each case
Both of these cost money for the part you came for, so compare them on that footing rather than free against paid.
Any.do's free plan is real and good, and the WhatsApp bot is not in it. So if reaching WhatsApp is the reason you are reading this, you are looking at a paid Any.do plan, and what you get for it is the whole product: planner, lists, calendar, sharing, the bot included.
Pokobot is 7 days free and then a subscription, from ₹59 a month in India, and what you get for it is reminders. Nothing else. That is either exactly right or obviously bad value depending on one thing: whether you would have used the planner. If you have already got a task app you like and it is not the thing failing you, buying a second one to fix the reminding is the wrong shape of purchase.
Running both, which is the usual answer
These sit together more comfortably than most pairs on this site, because they are not competing for the same act. Any.do is where the day gets planned, the groceries live and the household list is shared. Poko is where the handful of things that must interrupt you actually arrive.
The split people land on is roughly this. Anything you will look at, put in Any.do. Anything that has to find you whether or not you look, and especially anything that repeats through a day, send to Poko.
There is nothing to connect between them and no sync to configure. Two chats, one of which talks back.
Questions, answered
- Does Any.do send reminders to WhatsApp?
- Yes. Any.do has a WhatsApp integration that works both ways: you can create tasks by messaging or forwarding into the bot, and due reminders come back to you as WhatsApp messages. You link it from Settings, Integrations, WhatsApp with your number and a 6-digit code.
- Is Any.do's WhatsApp integration free?
- No. It is part of the Premium, Family and Workspace plans, and a free Any.do account cannot use it. The free plan is a good free plan, it just does not reach WhatsApp, which matters if the chat is the reason you were looking at Any.do at all.
- Can I create a recurring reminder from WhatsApp in Any.do?
- No. The bot takes one-off tasks and reminders and forwards messages, but recurring reminders have to be created in the Any.do app itself. That is the sharpest practical difference here: with Poko a repeat, and any later change to it, is a sentence in the same chat.
- Can Any.do remind me every 2 hours?
- No. Its recurrence starts at daily and goes up from there, with the interval rules like “every 3 days” or “last Friday of the month” on the paid plans. Poko reads “every 2 hours between 9am and 7pm” as a single instruction, including the part about when to stay quiet.
- Does Any.do's WhatsApp bot work in India?
- Yes. India is not on the list of countries where the integration is unavailable, though several nearby ones are, including Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Pokobot works anywhere WhatsApp does, since it is an ordinary WhatsApp chat rather than an integration on top of one.
- Should I use Any.do and Pokobot together?
- For most people, yes, and it needs no setup. Keep the planner, the shared lists and the day view in Any.do, and hand Poko the few things that have to interrupt you, especially anything repeating faster than once a day. Nothing syncs between them, which is the point rather than a shortcoming.