# Looking for a Goblin Tools alternative

> An honest Goblin Tools alternative, from someone who built one. Where Goblin Tools wins, where steps on a 24-hour dial win, and how to tell which you need.

Published: 2026-08-19. Canonical: https://reassign.ai/resources/goblin-tools-alternative

First, the bias. Reassign is mine. I built it because my own days kept dissolving into lists, and this page argues for the fix I chose, so read everything below with that declared. Everything I say about Goblin Tools comes from its own site, its About and Privacy pages, its Pro page, and its App Store and Google Play listings, all checked on 19 August 2026. Where I could not confirm something from a page Goblin Tools owns, I say so rather than fill it in.

Second, the short answer. If you searched for a Goblin Tools alternative because it stopped working, ask what stopped. Goblin Tools is very good at one job: turning a task that is too big to look at into steps small enough to start. If that job is done and the steps still never happen, the missing piece is not a better breakdown. It is an hour. That is the only difference this page really argues, and I would rather you skip the rest and test it than take my word for it.

## The only question that matters

Which failure mode is yours?

**"I cannot start, because the task is too big to look at."** This is task paralysis, and Goblin Tools was built for it. Type "sort out the tax return", pick how spicy it feels, and you get a ladder of steps. The first rung is small enough to stand on. If this is your problem, Goblin Tools already solves it, on the web, for free, in seconds, and nothing on this page will do it faster.

**"I broke it down, and it still never happened."** This one is quieter and more common than it looks. The list was good. The steps were small. And the day went by anyway, because the list lived in a tab and the day lived somewhere else. Nothing on the list knew *when*. If this is your problem, a longer or spicier breakdown will not fix it. The steps need a position and a length on the day you are actually going to live, and that is a planner's job.

Goblin Tools' own export screen says this more plainly than I could. Its "Export as iCal events" option lays your top-level tasks onto tomorrow's calendar back to back from 9 AM, and the note under it reads: "this is a suggested schedule rather than a real one. It doesn't try to reflect when you'll actually do each task." That is an honest sentence, and it marks exactly where one tool stops and the other begins.

## What Goblin Tools actually gives you

Checked on 19 August 2026, from goblin.tools and its store listings.

- **Nine single-purpose tools.** The home page lists Magic ToDo ("Break down todo items"), Formalizer ("Text transformers for tone"), Judge ("Read a text for emotion"), Taskmaster ("Focus on one task at a time", marked New), Professor ("Explain anything"), Consultant ("Help me decide"), Estimator ("Guess an activity's timeframe"), Compiler ("Turn a braindump into actions") and Chef ("Create a recipe from ingredients"). The site's own line for the set is "A collection of small, simple tools, for when things feel too big or complicated."
- **Magic ToDo and the spiciness dial.** The help text describes it as "a standard todo list, with some special sauce": a button that comes up with the steps for a task, and a spiciness level that "gives the tool a hint about how hard or stressful you find the task. The spicier, the more steps it will attempt to break it down into." Items get an emoji category, can be reordered by drag, and each one carries its own estimator. Lists export to Todoist, Asana, Notion, TickTick, Amazing Marvin, Markdown and iCal.
- **No dates, no calendar.** From the same export screen: "Magic ToDo items don't have due dates". None of the nine tools is a calendar or a timeline.
- **Estimator.** "The Estimator will try to give a reasonable timeframe if you give it an activity. It's not exact, it's just a rough guess". Its spiciness setting is about how hard the activity is for you to focus on.
- **Taskmaster.** The newest tool "walks you through your Magic Todo items one at a time, with a timer based on the task's estimate and an optional 'what next' suggestion based on deadlines, category and the time of day." Tasks without an estimate get one generated when you press play.
- **Compiler.** Takes a ramble and "tries to distill a list of actionable items from it", then sends them straight to Magic ToDo.
- **Free on the web, no signup, no ads.** The About page: "goblin.tools is offered free and available to all. It will stay free without ads or paywalls." Accounts exist now, for history, cross-device sync and sharing, but they are optional.
- **Goblin Tools Pro.** A separate Pro page prices it at "$3 / €3 / £3 per month" with a "1 week free trial". It adds web sync of Magic ToDo lists, your last 50 results on every tool, saved templates, custom Formalizer tones and voice, standing instructions ("keep answers short", "I use a wheelchair"), and shareable lists. The same page says "Everything else in Goblin Tools stays free for everyone."
- **Mobile apps, paid once.** The About page: "Mobile apps of the tools are offered at a low price (on Android and iOS), which help cover the running and maintenance costs so the website can stay completely free." On 19 August 2026 the US App Store listed the iOS app at $2.99 and Google Play listed the Android app at $3.49 with in-app purchases; both prices vary by region, so check your own store. Pro is also sold as an in-app subscription there.
- **Who makes it and what it does with your text.** It is "written and maintained by Bram De Buyser, an AI, software and data engineer", the founder of Arcology; the store seller is Skyhook. The Privacy page says input goes to OpenAI to process a request and is not stored on Goblin Tools' servers, and that without a Pro account "nothing you type is stored anywhere but your own browser". The About page adds a warning worth keeping: "Nothing returned by any of the tools should be taken as a statement of truth, only guesswork."

That is a generous, well-made set of tools, and it costs nothing. Now the differences.

## Four real differences

### 1. Where the steps live

In Goblin Tools the steps live in a list. In Reassign they live inside a block.

A block on the [24-hour dial](https://reassign.ai/resources/why-a-day-is-round) already has a start, an end and a colour. Give it [microtasks](https://reassign.ai/features/microtasks) and you get an ordered checklist inside that one block, with a done-of-total count on its label, so a glance at the ring reads "2 of 5" without opening anything. On the desktop dial the label also lists the next few still open, each with its own tick box, so you can tick straight from the ring. Move the block to the afternoon and the checklist goes with it. There is nothing to re-file, and no second surface to keep in step with the first.

This is the whole argument. The failure mode in the second column above is not a bad list; it is a good list with no address. When the steps are attached to the hour, "go find the list, then decide when" is no longer between you and starting. It is nine o'clock, the block you already committed to is right there, and the first small step is written on it. The longer version is in [the microtasks post](https://reassign.ai/resources/adhd-task-breakdown).

The honest cost: you have to give the task a block first. Goblin Tools asks nothing of you before it helps. Reassign asks for a time.

### 2. What "how long" means

Goblin Tools' Estimator guesses a timeframe, and Taskmaster runs a timer from that guess. Reassign does not guess how long a task takes for you. It does something blunter: every block on the dial has a real length, drawn to scale, and the length is the estimate. A two-hour block is a wedge twice the size of a one-hour block, next to everything else the day holds. If you gave the tax return forty minutes and it needs three hours, the ring shows you the lie before the day does.

Where the AI does come in on our side, it reads that length rather than inventing one. On Pro, "Break this down" in [focus mode](https://reassign.ai/features/focus) and `/microtasks` in the command palette draft the checklist from the block's name, its length and its focus rhythm, so a two-hour block gets five or six steps and not twenty. That is a different bet from spiciness: Goblin Tools scales the breakdown to how hard the task feels, Reassign scales it to how much time you actually gave it. Both are reasonable. Only one of them knows what else is on your afternoon.

### 3. What happens to what is left

Taskmaster walks you through the list one item at a time with a timer, and that is a genuinely good design. Reassign's focus mode does the nearest thing on our side, and it is Pro. Press F on a working block: the real dial crops to an arc and turns under a marker pinned at now, and the block's microtasks sit beside it. On a phone it narrows to one step at a time over a small progress rail. There is no pause, by design, because the timer is your schedule and not a stopwatch.

The difference shows at the end of the day. In Goblin Tools an unticked step stays unticked in the list. In Reassign, when you [reflect on the day](https://reassign.ai/features/reflection), each block's microtasks are there in the state you left them, and on a one-off block you can send just the unfinished ones to your [Inbox](https://reassign.ai/features/inbox) in one tap, with an undo. They wait there as their own block, still the right size and colour, until there is room on a real day. That part is Pro, because the Inbox is Pro. Nothing counts up, nothing turns red, and an unticked step is information, not a score.

### 4. A set of tools, or one planner

Goblin Tools is nine tools you visit. Reassign is one planner you adopt. That is not a small difference and I am not going to pretend it is a point for us.

A tool you visit costs nothing to try and nothing to abandon. You can use the Formalizer once a month and Magic ToDo every day and never think about the rest. A planner asks you to put your day into it, and the return only arrives if you keep doing that. If you do not want a planner, or you already have one that works, Reassign is not the answer to this search and Goblin Tools plus your existing calendar is. If that planner is Tiimo or Structured, keep it; [the Tiimo comparison](https://reassign.ai/resources/tiimo-alternative) and [the Structured comparison](https://reassign.ai/resources/structured-alternative) are only worth reading when the line itself stops working.

If you do want one, the pieces are here. Compiler's job, a ramble in and a task list out, has a cousin in Reassign's [braindump](https://reassign.ai/resources/brain-dump-to-schedule) (Pro), which turns a multi-line dump into blocks on the days they name and drops the timeless lines into your Inbox. And because a block's microtasks are plain data, [Claude can manage them over MCP](https://reassign.ai/mcp) (Pro): read what is done, rewrite or reorder the list, and tick a step off by name.

## Where Goblin Tools is straightforwardly better

Not a rhetorical section. These are real, and for a lot of people they settle it.

- **Free, with no signup.** The web tools cost nothing and never ask who you are. Reassign is free to start too, but its AI breakdown is Pro, and Goblin Tools' is not.
- **It works for anyone in seconds.** No planner to learn, no day to draw first, no account. Type a task, tap the wand, start.
- **The spiciness dial.** A one-touch control for how small the steps get, tuned to how the task feels to you. Reassign has no equivalent; on Pro you can steer `/microtasks` in plain words ("just the writing bits", "I only have an hour"), which is more precise and less immediate.
- **The extra tools.** Formalizer, Judge, Estimator, Chef, Compiler, Professor, Consultant. Reassign does none of that and is not going to. If the Formalizer is part of why you use Goblin Tools, that alone is a reason to stay.
- **Native apps.** Goblin Tools has iOS and Android apps, paid once. Reassign is a web app you can install and use offline, plus a [Chrome extension](https://reassign.ai/extension); there is no App Store build.
- **A lighter footprint.** Nothing you type is kept anywhere but your browser unless you buy Pro, per its Privacy page, and its About page says the tools are "mostly designed to help neurodivergent people" from the first line.

If most of that list is why you were there, stay. That answer is real, and I would rather you had it than a sale.

## Where this one is better

- **The steps sit on a real day at a real hour**, inside a block whose length is drawn to scale. Free.
- **Tick from the dial or the list.** The desktop label carries tick boxes for the next few steps, and the List day mode (Pro) makes a step tickable in its row while you read the days ahead.
- **Focus mode works the list one step at a time** beside the turning dial (Pro).
- **Unfinished steps carry to your Inbox** from reflection instead of sitting unticked forever (Pro).
- **A checklist that resets on its own.** Put microtasks on a repeating block and the list is shared while the ticks stay per day, so a morning routine comes back empty each morning. Free.
- **The rest of the planner around it.** [Two-way sync](https://reassign.ai/features/calendar-sync) with Google Calendar, Outlook and Todoist (Pro), an [energy curve](https://reassign.ai/features/energy) (Pro), and an agent surface over MCP (Pro).
- **No engagement mechanics.** No streaks, no badges, no confetti when the last step is ticked. That is a design position, and it is [why we think planners get abandoned](https://reassign.ai/resources/why-adhd-planners-get-abandoned) around week three.

The Pro ones are marked. Writing and ticking microtasks, the dial, and the reset on repeating blocks are free.

## On price

Reassign is free to start with no card. Pro is $8 a month or $72 a year, with a 7-day Pro trial that needs no card. The full free and Pro split is on [the pricing page](https://reassign.ai/pricing).

Goblin Tools' web tools are free, its Pro page prices Pro at $3 / €3 / £3 a month with a one-week trial, and the apps are a one-time purchase whose price varies by store and region. On 19 August 2026 the US listings read $2.99 on the App Store and $3.49 on Google Play. Treat those as second-hand and check your own store.

Neither of us is expensive. The honest comparison is not the price, it is what you are buying: Goblin Tools Pro buys sync, history and templates for a set of tools; Reassign Pro buys the AI half of a planner you have already decided to keep. If you have not decided that, the free tier of each is the only fair test.

## Can you use Goblin Tools and Reassign together?

Yes, and it is a legitimate answer. I said this in [the time-blindness roundup](https://reassign.ai/resources/best-apps-for-time-blindness) and I will say it again here: Goblin Tools shrinks the task, the planner shows where it fits. You do not have to choose.

The workflow that works: break the thing down in Magic ToDo, then draw one block for it on the dial at the hour you mean to do it, and write the steps in as microtasks. Or skip the typing and let Reassign draft the list from the block on Pro. If your steps already live in Todoist via Magic ToDo's export, Reassign's [Todoist sync](https://reassign.ai/features/todoist) (Pro) brings a task with a due time onto the dial and an undated one into your Inbox. Either way the list gets an address.

## How to decide in one evening

Do not read more comparisons. Do this instead.

Take the one task you have been avoiding for a week. Put it through Magic ToDo tonight and look at the steps. If the relief is immediate and tomorrow you start, that was the whole problem, and Goblin Tools is your tool. Keep it.

If you look at the steps and feel the same dread, the list is fine and the day is the problem. Open [the dial](https://reassign.app), drag a block for tomorrow at the hour you actually have, and write those same steps into it. Then look at it at 3pm tomorrow. One of the two will show you a task with a place in your day, and the other will show you a list. That is your answer, and it costs one evening, not a fortnight of reading.

## FAQ

### What is the best Goblin Tools alternative?

It depends on which half of the problem you have. If you cannot start because the task is too big to look at, Goblin Tools is already the right shape: free on the web, no signup, and its Magic ToDo breaks a task into steps in seconds. If you break tasks down fine and they still never happen, the missing piece is time, not steps, and a planner that puts the steps inside a block on a real day is the alternative. Reassign does that with microtasks: an ordered checklist inside one block on a 24-hour dial, free to write and tick, with AI drafting on Pro. Many people use both, and that is a legitimate answer.

### Is Goblin Tools free?

Yes, on the web. As of 19 August 2026 its About page says it is offered free and available to all, and that it will stay free without ads or paywalls. There is an optional Goblin Tools Pro at 3 dollars, euros or pounds a month for sync, history, templates and custom instructions, and the mobile apps are a one-time purchase whose price varies by region. Nothing on the site needs an account unless you want your lists to sync.

### Does Goblin Tools schedule tasks or show time?

No. Magic ToDo items have no due dates, in Goblin Tools' own words, and the site has no calendar. The Estimator guesses a rough timeframe for an activity, and Taskmaster runs a timer from that estimate one task at a time. There is an export that lays your top-level tasks onto tomorrow's calendar back to back from 9 AM, and the export screen itself calls that a suggested schedule rather than a real one. If you need to see where a task sits in the day, you need a planner beside it.

### Does Reassign break tasks down like Goblin Tools?

Yes, inside a block. Any block on the dial can carry microtasks, an ordered checklist you tick as you go, and writing them is free. On Pro, focus mode offers Break this down and the command palette has a /microtasks command, and either one drafts the list from the block's name, its length and its focus rhythm, so a two-hour block gets five or six steps rather than twenty. The difference from Goblin Tools is that the steps sit on the hour you already gave the work, and move with it.

### Can I use Goblin Tools and Reassign together?

Yes, and the time-blindness roundup on this site recommends exactly that. Break the task down in Goblin Tools, then draw a block for it on the dial and write the steps in as microtasks, or let Reassign draft them from the block. Magic ToDo also exports to Todoist, and Reassign syncs two-way with Todoist on Pro, so a list can travel that way too. Goblin Tools shrinks the task; the planner shows where it fits.

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More from Reassign, a 24-hour circular day planner: https://reassign.ai/llms.txt