📋 Task Prioritization Calculator
Rank tasks using Eisenhower Matrix, RICE, and ICE scoring. Free workload optimization and productivity auditing. No signup required.
What Task Prioritization Calculator Does
This tool runs the numbers for three separate prioritization methods — it does not decide anything for you. You supply the judgment calls (is this task urgent, how many people does it reach, how confident are you), and the tool applies the arithmetic and sort order that each method defines, consistently, so the ranking is not quietly skewed by whichever task you happened to type in first.
The Eisenhower Matrix sorts by two yes/no questions — urgent and important — into four fixed buckets. RICE and ICE instead produce a single number per task by multiplying weighted estimates together and dividing by effort, then rank tasks by that number, high to low. The three methods can and do disagree about what to do first, because they are answering different questions: Eisenhower asks "does this need to happen now," RICE and ICE both ask "what produces the most result per unit of work."
None of the three methods can supply the input numbers. Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort are estimates you make about your own work; a wrong estimate produces a confidently wrong ranking, and the tool has no way to detect that.
How to Use Task Prioritization Calculator
- Choose a prioritization framework — Eisenhower Matrix, RICE, or ICE
- Enter your tasks with names and criteria (urgency/importance or reach/impact/confidence/effort)
- View the ranked priority order with scores and recommended actions
- Copy the prioritized list to share with your team or paste into a project tool
Formula Used by Task Prioritization Calculator
Eisenhower Matrix — four fixed quadrants
quadrant = f(urgent, important) → {Do, Schedule, Delegate, Eliminate}
- urgent
- Has a deadline or consequence attached to acting soon
- important
- Moves a goal you actually hold, independent of any deadline
Worked example
Three tasks: "Reply to angry client email" (urgent, not important to your goals), "Write Q3 strategy doc" (important, not urgent), "Fix production outage" (urgent and important).
- Outage → urgent + important → Do First
- Strategy doc → not urgent + important → Schedule
- Client email → urgent + not important → Delegate
Result: The matrix never produces a numeric score — it produces a bucket. Two tasks in the same bucket are tied; the tool preserves your original entry order within a tie rather than inventing a tiebreaker.
RICE score
RICE = (Reach × Impact × Confidence%) ÷ Effort
- Reach
- How many people or events this touches in a period — in Intercom’s original version, an actual count (customers per quarter); this tool uses a 1–10 relative scale instead
- Impact
- How much it moves the outcome per person reached. Intercom’s original scale is categorical: 3 = massive, 2 = high, 1 = medium, 0.5 = low, 0.25 = minimal. This tool simplifies that to a 1–5 slider
- Confidence
- How sure you are of the Reach and Impact estimates, 0–100%
- Effort
- Cost to build, in whatever unit you use consistently — Intercom used person-months
Worked example
A task rated Reach 8, Impact 4, Confidence 80%, Effort 3 (the tool’s own 1–10 / 1–5 / 0–100% / 1–10 scales).
- 8 × 4 = 32
- 32 × 0.80 = 25.6
- 25.6 ÷ 3 = 8.5333…
Result: RICE score 8.5. This is a ranking number, not a unit of anything real — it only means something next to another task’s RICE score.
ICE score
ICE = (Impact × Confidence%) ÷ Effort
- Impact / Confidence / Effort
- Same inputs as RICE, with Reach dropped entirely
Worked example
The same task: Impact 4, Confidence 80%, Effort 3.
- 4 × 0.80 = 3.2
- 3.2 ÷ 3 = 1.0667
Result: ICE score 1.07. Note this is not the canonical Sean Ellis version, which multiplies Impact × Confidence × Ease (all rated 1–10, no division) — this tool follows the more common web variant that treats ICE as RICE with Reach removed, dividing by Effort instead of multiplying by an inverted Ease score. The two produce different rankings from the same inputs, so do not compare an ICE number from this tool against one from a 1–10-multiplicative ICE calculator.
Same Three Tasks, Ranked Three Ways
One task set scored under all three frameworks. Eisenhower and RICE/ICE do not agree on an order because they are not answering the same question.
| Task | Eisenhower inputs | Eisenhower quadrant | RICE inputs (R/I/C/E) | RICE score | ICE score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fix checkout bug | Urgent + Important | Do First | 5 / 5 / 90% / 2 | 11.25 | 2.25 |
| Redesign onboarding flow | Not urgent + Important | Schedule | 8 / 4 / 80% / 3 | 8.53 | 1.07 |
| Add dark mode | Urgent, not Important | Delegate | 10 / 3 / 60% / 8 | 2.25 | 0.23 |
When RICE and ICE Disagree
Both tasks share Effort 2 and Confidence 100%, so only Reach and Impact differ. ICE ignores Reach entirely, so it favors the task with the higher per-person impact; RICE multiplies that same impact by how many people it reaches, and the broader task wins instead.
| Task | Reach | Impact | Confidence | Effort | RICE | ICE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niche power-user feature | 2 | 4 | 100% | 2 | 4.0 | 2.0 |
| Broad but modest improvement | 10 | 2 | 100% | 2 | 10.0 | 1.0 |
What Each Framework Assumes You Already Know
The arithmetic is exact; the inputs are not. This is the part no calculator can do for you.
| Framework | Hardest input to estimate honestly |
|---|---|
| Eisenhower | Whether something is actually important, versus merely loud |
| RICE | Reach as a real count, and Confidence as a real probability rather than a gut feeling dressed as a percentage |
| ICE | Impact and Ease, since dropping Reach makes it easy to favor small, self-serving wins over broadly useful ones |
How to Read Your Result
A quadrant is not a priority order
Two "Do First" tasks are tied. The Eisenhower Matrix was never designed to rank within a quadrant — it tells you which bucket a task belongs in, not which of three urgent-and-important tasks to start with. If you need a strict order inside "Do First," you need a second method, such as RICE, layered on top.
RICE rewards reach; ICE rewards depth
In the second table above, the same effort and confidence produce opposite winners under RICE and ICE because RICE multiplies impact by how many people feel it, and ICE does not. Use RICE when breadth of effect matters (most product and marketing decisions); use ICE when you are optimizing one thing for one audience and reach is roughly constant across your options, so it would only add noise.
A high score is not a probability of success
Confidence is self-reported. Multiplying a high Impact estimate by a high Confidence estimate produces a large score even when both numbers were guessed rather than measured. The score is only as trustworthy as the two softest inputs feeding it — Impact and Confidence — and the arithmetic gives no warning when those are weak.
Scores are only comparable within one run, one framework, and one person’s calibration
An 8.5 RICE score from your list means nothing next to an 8.5 from someone else’s list unless you both use the same Reach units, the same Impact scale, and roughly the same standard for what counts as "80% confident." Comparing RICE scores across teams without agreeing on scales first produces an ordering that looks objective and is not.
Limitations & Accuracy Notes
- It cannot tell you whether a task is actually urgent or important, or estimate real Reach, Impact, Confidence or Effort for you — every input is a manual judgment call, and the output is only as accurate as those four guesses.
- The Eisenhower quadrant has no way to break a tie between two tasks in the same bucket; the display order among ties is simply the order you entered them.
- This tool’s ICE formula divides by Effort, following the common web convention; it is not Sean Ellis’s original 1–10 multiplicative Impact × Confidence × Ease model, and the two are not interchangeable.
- RICE here uses a 1–10 relative Reach scale and a 1–5 Impact scale rather than Intercom’s original actual-headcount Reach and its 0.25–3 categorical Impact scale, so a score from this tool is not directly comparable to one built the way Intercom describes it.
- Nothing here accounts for dependencies between tasks, deadlines that force an order regardless of score, or the fact that Confidence tends to be systematically overstated by the person doing the estimating.
- This is a sorting and arithmetic tool, not a planning system — it has no memory between sessions, does not save your task list, and does not track whether you actually did the tasks it ranked.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Eisenhower Matrix?
What is RICE scoring?
What is ICE scoring?
Which framework should I use?
How do I score Impact?
Is my data stored anywhere?
References & Further Reading
- Intercom — Using the RICE scoring model to prioritize product features — Origin of RICE, its formula, and the original Reach/Impact/Confidence/Effort scales (Impact rated 0.25–3, Confidence 50/80/100%)
- ProductPlan — ICE Scoring Model — The canonical ICE definition attributed to Sean Ellis: Impact × Confidence × Ease, each rated 1–10, multiplied rather than divided
- Asana — The Eisenhower Matrix: How to Prioritize Your To-Do List — The four-quadrant definitions and actions (Do First, Schedule, Delegate, Delete), and the framework’s attribution to a 1954 Eisenhower speech, formalized by Stephen Covey