とか vs たりする what's the difference?

Question

What's the difference between とか and たりする when listing verbs?

Answer 1

The differences:

I think this is an excellent video answering precisely your question.

Let me explain anyway for who doesn't understand the video (which is only in Japanese). For starters, as you understand the meaning is basically the same. They are both used to list and express a sequence of actions.

Grammatically speaking, the main difference is the following:

You cannot use とか after adjectives. It can only follow nouns and verbs.

For example the following sentences are equivalent:

国語とか数学とかの宿題が多くて忙しい。

国語だったり数学だったりの宿題が多くて忙しい。

Notice that とか always follows nouns. In case of verbs consider for example:

平日は学校へ行くとか、働くとかしています。

平日は学校へ行ったり、働いたりしています。

These are also equivalent. Another example is:

ジュースをこぼしちゃったり、あわてて変な声を出したりしちゃった。

ジュースをこぼしたとか、あわてて変な声を出したとかしちゃった。

These are also both correct but notice that it is more natural to use たり.
とか isn't wrong but less natural for native speakers.

Last is the case of adjectives. In this case as I said you can only use たり.

For example:

東京は暑かったり、寒かったりする。

In this case you cannot use とか.

These are other sources that seem confirm above (they never mention とか after adjectives):

link_1 (point 12 a. b.) - link_2 (look at 文法, only mentions nouns and verbs plain form)。

The similarities:

I think you pretty much got this covered. However, I just wanted to add that both these forms are quite colloquial. That is, you would not use them in formal situation where you'd better use honorific language or in formal writing. Here are a couple of links with more info: link_3, link_4. I won't go too much in detail as you ask for the differences after all.

EDIT:

According to the comments, it seems you could actually colloquially use とか after an adjective. However, always according to the comments this is too casual or "a bit slangy" so I think we could say you could forget about it.