Asana vs Jira

In an Asana vs Jira match-up, Asana will be the better choice for you if you’re looking for a classic or general project management software tool, while Jira will be the better option if you work in engineering or software development and are looking for an agile project management solution. What’s more, during our recent tests, Asana performed quite a bit better than Jira when it came to completing a variety of standard project management tasks.

Even if you’re a total beginner when it comes to project management, Asana’s straightforward task lists and built-in timeline view will make your transition over to the platform relatively simple, and the rule-based automation builder will help you streamline your team’s workflows once you’re set up. If your business isn’t in a position to invest in software right now, Jira’s free plan is impressive, but you’ll experience a steeper learning curve than you will with Asana. Although Asana wins this match-up, you’ll find that Teamwork is actually easier to use, contains better task management features, and retails at a cheaper starting price than Asana.

In this Asana vs Jira head-to-head, we explain the merits and pitfalls of each software solution so you can decide which is the best tool for your own needs. Alternatively, you can use our quick, free project management comparison tool to see how they compare.

In this Guide:

• Asana vs Jira: Which is Best?
• Best for Value: Jira
• Best for Features: Asana 
• Best Free Plan: Jira
• Best for Usability
• Quickest Set Up: Asana
• Best for Managing Multiple Projects: Asana
• Asana Pricing
• Jira Pricing
• Other Project Management Providers
• Can You Connect Jira and Asana?
• About Our Research
• Asana vs Jira: The Verdict

Asana vs Jira: Which is Best?

While both Asana (4.5/5) and Jira (4.3/5) are capable project management platforms, Asana is the better project management option in most scenarios, with the all-important exception of software or web development teams, who should definitely stick with Jira.

For more general project management scenarios, Asana is one of the best choices on the market – although it didn’t score quite as well as ClickUp (4.8/5) or monday.com (4.9/5) last time we tested the trio. It does, however, have a free tier that’s ideal for personal projects that can be used by up to 15 people.

• Asana is the best choice for teams looking for “classic” project management software
• Jira is the best choice for software or web development teams
• Jira is the best choice for small teams on a tight budget
• Jira has a better free plan, and a cheaper starting price
• Asana is the best choice for individual projects

That’s our quick rundown of reasons to choose Asana or Jira. But before you make your mind up, let us guide you through each of these project management software brands in a little more detail, below.

Best for Value: Jira

Jira scores 4.2/5 for value, whereas Asana scores 3.9/5. Jira’s free plan includes a lot more features than Asana’s free plan, such as custom charts and widgets for displaying data, while its first paid plan is $7.75 per user, per month. In Asana, a number of key features require at least a $10.99 per user, per month commitment.

Jira’s Premium plan ($15.25 per user, per month) is also cheaper than Asana’s comparable Business plan ($24.99 per user, per month). Asana has more collaboration tools like a team messenger, but Jira has much better customer support options, including 24/7 live chat. Jira also has automation tools on every plan, whereas Asana doesn’t provide any on its free plan and you’ll have to purchase the Business plan if you want to build custom automations.

By the time you get to these plans, both providers offer an impressive range of task management, workflow creation, and data display tools, but it’s Jira that will allow you to access more of these features for less money. Neither are quite as good value for money as Zoho Projects, however, which is available for just $4 per user, per month and scores 4.8/5 for task management, higher than both Jira and Asana.

Best for Features: Asana

Asana came out on top when it came to features, scoring 4.3/5 compared to Jira’s 3.9/5. One area that both providers excelled in was data visualization. Asana and Jira both provide dashboards (Asana’s is pictured below), upon which you can place both custom and preset charts for your team to view. Both Asana and Jira offer Timeline views that function in similar ways too, and you can display task dependencies on them easily.

Asana’s data dashboard. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

Asana scores 4.4/5 for task management, offering multiple ways for users to view takes, such as a Kanban board and a spreadsheet-style view (although if you’re a fan of spreadsheets, we’d recommend Smartsheet’s new $7 per user, per month Pro plan). There are also features like custom fields that can be used to input relevant data into tasks. Like Asana, Jira offers all of these features – and it achieved a 4.3/5 in this assessment area. The only minor difference is that Asana has a spreadsheet-style view, whereas Jira doesn’t.

As we mentioned in the previous section, Jira lacks collaboration features. Its resource-management tool was very difficult to find, and communications can only be sent via comments on particular tasks. Asana, on the other hand, scores 3.3/5 for collaboration, which was actually the 4th best score out of 14 providers. There’s a project message board and a calendar view on all Asana plans, neither of which Jira offers.

In Asana, it’s slightly easier to build automations, which helped it to a higher score for workflow creation (4.3/5) than Jira (3.8/5). On top of a more capable, easier-to-use rules-based automation builder, Asana includes a form builder on all of its paid plans, which isn’t a feature in Jira – and it’s useful for compiling post-project feedback and generating final actions.

Best Free Plan: Jira

While this rule doesn’t always hold true, many individual freelancers have relatively simple needs for staying organized. They usually know what’s going on and what needs to be done, but having a project management solution makes it easier to stay on track.

Jira’s free tier is ideal for people in this situation. It’s got the provider’s full range of data display tools, which helped it to a 5/5 score in this assessment area, plus task management tools like custom fields and a Gantt chart, which aren’t available on Asana’s free plan.

All in all, Asana’s free plan doesn’t include a lot of the features that make it useful, such as its automation builder, whereas Jira includes a surprising number of paid plan features on its free offering – unlike most project management software tools.

Every now and then, freelancers also need to bring on colleagues or clients to work together, which is where Jira’s 10-person team limit comes in handy – although Asana sets its free plan limit at 15, so there’s little to separate them here.

As we’ve said, the main problem with Jira as a program is its poor collaboration score (2/5) – it’s not very user-friendly in that regard. But if you’re working solo, or in a very small group and can make do with the classic Kanban view, you’ll probably be able to live without them.

Jira’s Kanban board. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

Best for Usability: Asana

One of the most important aspects of software is how much you can actually achieve with it, and Asana tops Jira in this regard, scoring 3.9/5 to Jira’s 3.5/5. A lot of tasks that can be completed swiftly with Asana took a lot of menu navigation to finish in Jira, and on the whole, a lot more mentally taxing.

For example, in Asana, the left-hand menu has a number of useful shortcuts, including a “my tasks” area so you can see what’s in your pipeline and a dedicated space for adding team members – overall, things like this were easier to find than they were in Jira.

In Asana, the task box that pops up when you click on tasks, although packed full of information, ensures you don’t have to travel to other places in the interface to do things like change dates, draw dependencies, or re-assign team members. It’s pretty similar to Jira in this regard, but Asana’s cleaner interface made it slightly less overwhelming.

Managing tasks in Asana. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

Due to Jira’s leaning toward the world of software development, a lot of the signposting might confuse other types of teams. For example, ‘tasks’ are called ‘issues.’ This sort of thing makes Jira very usable for teams that spend their days fixing bugs in programs, but less so for teams that aren’t using an Agile framework.

“Jira Software will be ideal for any team needing to be agile, particularly software, engineering, and tech delivery teams” Cameron Blair, who heads up an SEO team that uses Jira, told Tech.co.

“We find Jira’s Kanban board functionality particularly useful when it comes to team visibility and prioritization for our planned technical SEO projects,” he explained, but added that in “most use cases, I probably wouldn’t champion [Jira] above other project management tools or software”.

Indeed, while both have very capable automation builders, we found Jira’s to be trickier to use than Asana’s. As we mentioned previously, Asana scores higher for workflow creation (4.3/5) than Jira (3.8/5) largely thanks to the intuitive way the rule-based automation builder is designed.

Asana’s automation builder. Image: Tech.co’s testing process

What’s more, in July 2023, Asana added “workflow bundles” which let users apply combinations of automations, task templates, and custom fields across multiple projects at once. The provider also updated its automation builder very recently, to include variables like task assignee, task creator, due date, and custom field values.

Quickest Set Up: Asana

For small teams that need to get up and running without much fanfare, Asana is the better choice. There’s a free plan that has some good basics, as we detailed above, but it’s pretty limited compared to Jira’s no-fee offering and ClickUp’s free plan.

Asana’s Premium plan, which will set you back $10.99 per user, per month, is also really easy to get started with. Once you’ve entered some basic information and imported your tasks or project plan, setting task deadlines, assigning work to team members, and creating sub-tasks won’t take very long – it only took us about an hour to configure all the basics with Asana, and this was a far easier process than getting started with Jira’s Premium plan, within which a lot of the setup process is geared toward tech and IT teams.

Asana offers multiple views depending on what your team requires. If you need the Kanban-style card-and-board interface, that’s available to all users from the minute they log in. For those who’d rather have a list of tasks and mark them as they go, then the list view will suit.

There’s also a calendar view to get an overview of the project and a time-tracking feature was added in early 2023 too. However, Jira also has plenty of ways to view project progress, such as the timeline view below. On this front, they’re pretty neck and neck.

The Timeline view in Jira. Image: Tech.co’s testing process.

While Jira has a better free plan than its rival and a cheaper initial paid plan, which retails at $7.75 per user, per month, as it’s geared towards teams that are already going to have highly capable computer whizzes in their ranks, it’s simply not as intuitive.

As we’ve covered, the language Jira uses is geared toward its primary target market – as are many of its functions. If you’d like a program that sits in the middle of the two – which still has a pretty quick setup – try Smartsheet’s Pro plan, which is better at handling complex tasks than both Jira and Asana.

Best for Managing Multiple Projects: Asana

Asana will be the better option for most large teams running multiple projects across multiple teams (of course, aside from those in the software development world). Asana’s Enterprise tier includes several key features that larger companies need, such as SAML, user provisioning, and custom branding.

If the Enterprise tier is too expensive for your large team, the $24.99 per user, per month Business tier may suffice. Asana Business boasts Portfolios (to get a top-level view of ongoing projects), as well as support for forms and proofing.

Asana also provides communication features that teams working across a number of different projects will find useful, such as comments and “at mentions.” There’s also Slack integration for receiving notifications about tasks, and for taking actions inside said notifications (such as changing assignees or due dates).

Slack is just one of many key business software integrations that Asana supports. There’s also Dropbox support for attaching files to tasks, while Microsoft Office 365 lets you receive notifications in Microsoft Groups. Asana also supports integration with Adobe Creative Cloud, Box, Google Drive, Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, One Drive, and Salesforce.

Jira, on the other hand, offers integrations like GitHub, Dynatrace, Scriptrunner, and Miro, which will be familiar to most software development teams.

If you’re looking for a general project management tool and you’re still not convinced, find out how Asana compares to other project management tools.

Asana Pricing

Asana has four plans: a free plan, a Premium plan ($10.99 per user, per month), a Business plan ($24.99 per user, per month), and an Enterprise plan without public pricing.

The free version of Asana won’t exactly set your business up for growth. It’s an excellent taster which may just suit individuals or very small teams, but in most cases, you’ll need to reach into your wallet for the Premium version. of Asana. This is still great value – Asana Premium at just $10.99 per user, per month.

We look at all the Asana price tiers in our table below, but you can see how Asana compares to other providers using our quick, free comparison tool.

Asana summary

One of the most appealing aspects of Asana is how distinctly modern it feels. The interface is very easy to read and understand, which is particularly helpful once you start loading up Asana with tasks for each team member.

Individual tasks support attachments, sub-tasks, dependencies, and tags. Team members can also mark certain tasks as milestones, and use Asana’s Portfolios feature to track the status of each project.

Asana supports all sorts of features, but what you get depends on how much you pay. One downside of the platform is that many important features are locked behind higher pricing tiers – milestones, task dependencies and timelines, for example, are restricted to the Premium tier ($10 per user, per month). For Portfolios, meanwhile, you’ll need the Business tier.

The Portfolios feature is nice, but not necessarily a must-have. Milestones and dependencies, however, are key components for managing an effective project.  That means choosing one of Asana’s paid services is often preferable. Still, if you need a free service, Asana is fairly capable – it offers task basics, board and calendar views, assignees and due dates, and the ability to collaborate with up to 15 teammates.

See our full guide to Asana Pricing

Jira Pricing

Aside from their free tier, Jira offers three pricing plan options. The first is the Standard tier ($7.75 per user per month), which, as expected, offers a pretty minimalistic set of features and limits. This is the same as the free tier, with highlights being great data visualization options and project workflow creation.

Next is the Premium tier ($15.25 per user per month), which allows for resource management features and unlimited data storage. Finally, like Asana, Jira’s Enterprise tier has no public pricing – you’ll have to contact sales for a custom quote.

Jira summary

Developed by Atlassian, the main appeal of Jira is its simplicity. Each task is represented by a card, with these cards then placed under different categories – To Do, In Progress, and Done.  Jira’s task cards support task titles, descriptions, attachments, checklists, linking between cards, and linking to Confluence Pages (documents).

If that’s all you need, then Jira’s project management solution is an excellent choice. However, if you need items such as calendar integrations, Gantt charts, or other common project management tools, then you’ll need to look at Jira’s add-on catalog. Jira supports close to 2,000 third-party app integrations, where you can customize Jira to include the project management tools you need – often at an additional cost. You can use our free comparison tool to see how Jira compares to other providers.

Jira’s basic service is also paired with Confluence, which adds document creation for keeping meeting notes, marketing plans, blog posts, and anything else you might need a document for. Confluence documents also support features such as “at mentions”, for keeping team members informed when something requires their attention. In addition to the add-ons for Jira, there are around 2,000 third-party integrations for Confluence.

See our in-depth guide to Jira Pricing and discover Jira’s top alternatives here. 

Other Project Management Providers

If these two platforms aren’t doing it for you, that’s ok! We’ve done the research and found a wide range of other tools that can help you keep track of your team’s productivity. Use our free comparison tool to see how the best platforms perform, or take a look at our top picks below:

Asana vs Jira: Can You Connect the Two?

Yes – Jira and Asana both integrate with one another, which means you can transfer project data and other information between the two platforms quickly and efficiently. This can come in handy, for sure, but it won’t be useful for every single business.

If you haven’t purchased either project management software yet, we wouldn’t recommend downloading both and connecting them up. It’s highly unlikely you’ll need both of them, especially if you’re a small team.

But if your tech or development team already uses Jira, and you’re choosing a project management software solution, Asana will have an advantage over a platform that doesn’t integrate with Jira. Conversely, if you’re a software development team on the hunt for some new software, and people in your business already use Asana, Jira is a natural choice.

In fact, being able to integrate the two will come with some significant advantages, including increased visibility over workflows and the fact you won’t have to manually update both platforms when information that’s need-to-know for both teams.

How we Analzyed Asana vs Jira

Here at Tech. co, we conduct independent research into the products and services we write about. For this Jira vs Asana head-to-head, we drew on our findings from our latest project management research, which involved rigorous user testing of 14 providers.

When testing project management software solutions, we focused on five key areas: usability, pricing, customer support, features, and average customer score. Each provider’s overall features score was determined by how well they fared when we attempted to set up a project, manage tasks, create projects and workflows, visualize data, and collaborate with other users.

Although we have commercial partnerships with some of the providers we review, they never influence our research procedures, practices and results.