Asana vs Trello – Which Is Best for Your Business?

When it comes to Asana vs Trello, Asana is the better project management software overall, scoring 4.4/5 in our independent testing overall, compared to Trello’s score of  4.1/5. Asana has the best automation builder out of the 14 providers we tested, and it’s definitely the one to go for if you’d like to streamline the repetitive parts of your day-to-day work life. Trello, on the other hand, includes far fewer features and is a simpler program.

Although not quite as impressive as monday.com, Asana contains a raft of data display tools you can use to keep a close eye on the progress of your project and a project message board that’ll help you both simplify your communication and cut down on confusion and mistakes. During our testing, Asana proved easier to set up than Trello and scored highly for task management (4.4/5) and workflow creation (4.3/5). Trello is great if all you’re looking for is a place to track tasks, but if you’re managing complex projects, you’ll find Asana more helpful.

However, Trello is a lot cheaper than Asana, with a starter plan of $5 per user, per month compared to Asana’s $10.99 per user, per month plan. Read on to find out why Asana wins this Asana vs Trello head-to-head, or see how these two providers compare to other top project management software by using our comparison tool, which is updated to include the latest deals.

In this guide:

• Asana vs Trello Head-to-Head
• Best for Ease of Use: Trello
• Best Value: Trello, But Only Just
• Asana vs Trello: Which Has the Best Free Plan?
• Asana vs Trello: Key Features
• Asana vs Trello Alternatives
• Asana vs Trello Verdict
• About Our Research
• Asana Vs Trello: Frequently Asked Questions

We’ve tested Trello, Asana, and 12 other top providers using an assessment framework developed by Tech.co’s insights team. Among other assessment areas, they’ve evaluated the pricing plans, feature sets, and customer support options offered by each project management software provider, and then put each one through a rigorous usability test to determine just how useful it is.

Asana vs Trello Head-to-Head

Compared to Trello, Asana has more features and is the most useful project management tool, all things considered. Asana is better for businesses managing complex tasks within even more complex projects, whereas Trello is only really suitable for managing basic projects and doesn’t have quite the range of data visualization, collaboration, and task management tools available on Asana’s plans that you need for that higher-level, granular management.

Both providers offer automation builders, but Asana’s simple, rule-based automation builder was more impressive than Trello’s when we attempted to streamline workflows in our mock project. On the whole, however, Trello was a little bit easier to use, but as we’ve just discussed, you won’t have as many dedicated features for various tasks.

Asana and Trello both offer relatively limited free plans, with Trello omitting task management features like sub-tasks and a spreadsheet-type view, and Asana leaving out data visualization tools and setting a user limit of 15. Here’s a summary of the key differences between the two providers:

• Trello does not provide a custom chart or widget builder, whereas Asana does
• Asana is better than Trello for complex task management and budget planning 
• Trello is easier to use than Asana, but it’s more basic and less useful overall
• Asana integrates with more programs than Trello does
• Trello paid plans start at $5, whereas Asanas start at $10.99 per user, per month
• Asana offers onboarding assistance for its paid plans, while Trello doesn’t
• Asana provides a form builder, whereas Trello doesn’t offer this on any plans

For more information on Asana’s plans and costs, check out the scorecard below or head over to our Asana pricing page.

Alternatively, if you’d like to learn more about Trello, then visit our Trello pricing page, or find out more about other Trello alternatives aside from Asana.  Otherwise, check out the below scorecard for more info:

Best for Ease of Use: Trello

Ease of use is always going to be a subjective issue, and these products are both among the easiest-to-use project management software on the market. However, Trello is the king of basic, stripped-back project management, and is marginally easier to use than Asana because it’s a bit more of a straightforward approach.

You’re less likely to get overwhelmed with or confused by a bunch of new features, functions, and tools if, well, they’re not included in the software. To an extent, this is how Trello remains easy to use.

Trello doesn’t seem to overcrowd the interface with too many buttons, which makes navigation easier compared to other platforms, such as Jira. To see what we mean, here’s a picture of  Trello’s user interface:

It’s a lot harder to get lost when most changes can be performed with the click of a mouse and you don’t have to sift around a busy dashboard overloaded with icons.

Asana is similar, with an easy layout and an intuitive flow of actions – but it does require quite a lot of setting up and has more features than Trello. This is why Asana achieved a better usability score (3.9/5) than Trello (3.6/5) – it’s going to let you get more done – but it’s not quite as easy to use.

Katie, an SEO Campaigns executive who uses Asana every day, admitted to Tech.co that it did need “a super organized team member to set everything up/get a team started” but that using the software “was easy once that’s done”. Check out Asana’s user interface in the gallery below to see for yourself:

Best Value: Trello (But Only Just)

Trello was awarded 4/5 for pricing on our tests, compared to Asana’s 3.9/5. This means you’ll get slightly more value for your money with Trello, especially on the earlier plans – but that’s mainly because Asana is pretty pricey.

Trello’s first paid plan (Standard: $5 per user, per month) is more than half the price of Asana Premium ($10.99 per user, per month), and Asana’s Business package ($24.99 per user, per month) is well over double the cost of Trello’s Premium plan for businesses ($10 per user, per month). You’ll get more features with Asana, granted, but you’ll also be paying a lot more.

Asana’s plan for Enterprise has no public pricing and you’ll have to contact the provider’s sales team, whereas Trello’s is available for $17.50 per user, per month. Like the rest of its plans, however, Asana has more features, especially ones that larger businesses will benefit from.

Asana and Trello both offer free plans (more on this below), but naturally, they’re quite limited compared to the rest of their respective plans. Asana’s free plan has no data visualization tools and no form builder, while Trello’s free plan has a 10-project limit, no Gantt chart and you can’t add guests to your project either.

If you’d like to find the best value-for-money project management software packages currently available, visit our comparison page.

Asana vs Trello: basic/starting plans

Asana’s first paid plan, the Premium Plan ($10.99 per user, per month), is geared toward small to mid-sized teams. You’ll get the ability to build custom charts and widgets as well as access to a dashboard for data, none of which Trello offers on its first paid plan, the Standard plan ($5 per user, per month), which is geared to the same demographic.

With Asana Premium, you’ll get useful task management features initially omitted from Asana’s free plan, such as sub-tasks, milestones, and custom fields – in other words, this Asana plan is built for managing complex tasks. Trello doesn’t include a Gantt chart, sub-tasks, or task dependencies on the Standard plan, which is part of why it only scores 3.4/5 for task management compared to Asana’s 4.4/5.

Asana vs Trello: mid-tier plans

Asana Business ($24.99 per user, per month) is geared towards, as the provider notes on its website, “teams and companies that need to manage work across initiatives” – which basically means multiple teams working on multiple projects. Trello has a Premium plan for less than half the price ($10 per user, per month) that’s designed for a similar purpose.

On Asana’s Business plan, you’ll get advanced integrations and Portfolios, a tool for managing groups of projects rather than just one.  This is also the first Asana plan with custom automations you can build yourself, so you’ll have the freedom to streamline what you want rather than picking up pre-built suggestions. On Trello’s Premium plan, you’ll have access to priority support and workspace-level project templates, as well as unlimited automations. If you’d like to see how these two plans compare to other similarly-priced offerings, visit our comparison page.

Asana vs Trello: plans for enterprises

Both Asana and Trello have plans for Enterprises, however, they’re hard to compare on a pricing front as Asana has no pricing plans. Still, Asana does have usage authorization and user provisioning features, which are vital to keeping your company’s data secure. It has a variety of other features that support data compliance.

Trello’s Enterprise plan offers similar user provisioning features, guest access across multiple boards, and an administration feature for “Power-Ups” (Trello’s name for integrations).

Trello vs Asana: Which Provider Has the Best Free Plan?

In short, Asana has the better free plan, despite a 15-user limit. It has better collaboration features than Trello’s free plan, such as a calendar, and more task management features too.

Asana Basic also comes with unlimited projects, integrations, and storage, so it may prove a good fit for businesses wary of Trello’s 10-project free plan limit. However, it doesn’t include Asana’s data visualization options, form builders, pre-built or custom automations, as well as some task management features, like milestones and task dependencies.

Trello’s free plan is decent, but nothing outstanding in the realm of project management free tiers. You can only have 10 projects on the go at any given time, so it’s suited for personal use or very small businesses. There are also key task management features missing, such as Gantt charts and sub-tasks, and collaboration tools like a calendar aren’t included.

In other areas, however, Trello’s free plan is pretty well stocked, at least compared to some other free plans. It includes some of the workflow features that are usually reserved for higher pricing tiers, like project templates and automations – but Asana still edges it overall. Find out how the two plans compare with other providers.

Asana vs Trello: Key Features

Asana key features (on lowest paid tier):

• Unlimited projects, users, storage, and automations
• Two-factor authentication, guest access, and user permissions
• Gantt, Kanban, and Spreadsheet views
• Sub-tasks, milestones, and task dependencies
• Preset and custom project templates
• Data visualization dashboard, chart, and widget builders

Asana has solid features across the board, and doesn’t really miss out on any crucial tools that come with other project management systems, unlike Trello. If we have to name a weakness, its collaboration features could be improved, as there is no team instant messenger or an online whiteboard, but these are small gripes.

Overall, Asana’s powerful data visualization tools and its task management features are great, which helped it to that impressive overall score of 4.4/5. You’d have to be after some particularly niche services in order for Asana not to fit what you’re looking for — but if you are, you can use our free comparison tool to find a suitable alternative.

Trello key features (on lowest paid tier):

• Unlimited projects, users, and storage
• 1,000 automated actions per month
• Two-factor authentication, guest access, and user permissions
• Gantt, Kanban, and Spreadsheet views
• Preset and custom project templates and automations

At a glance, you can tell that Trello has fewer features and tools than Asana, but this isn’t necessarily a fatal blow for Trello. Trello does have a couple of things over Asana, namely a larger maximum file size (250MB over Asana’s 100MB) and Agile Project Templates.

That’s pretty much everything Trello has over Asana feature-wise. But at a significantly lower price, and with a more streamlined interface, some might decide that Trello fits their needs better than Asana.

Asana vs Trello Alternatives

There are plenty of alternatives to Trello, as well as Asana, currently available – and we’ve user tested 14 of them. ClickUp, for instance, has a free plan, a $5 per user, per month starter plan, and scores 4.8/5 overall, higher than both these providers.

According to our research, monday.com is also better than Asana, and scores 4.7/5 overall, second only to ClickUp. It also scores higher than Trello for usability (4.1/5) and data visualization (5/5).

Jira, on the other hand, will be more suitable than Asana for tech and engineering teams thanks to a huge range of task management tools that are included in all Jira’s plans. The provider’s 4.3/5 score for task management also makes Jira a better option than Trello for complex projects and displaying data.

On top of this, we found Smartsheet more usable than both Asana and Trello, as it has more features and makes for an easy transition for spreadsheet users. Smartsheet’s first paid plan is actually cheaper than Asana’s and available for just $7 per user, per month (but there’s no free plan). Check out the best Trello and Asana Alternatives in the table below.

About Our Research: How Asana and Trello Scored Against Other Providers

If you’ve been shopping around for software online in 2023, you’ll know it’s not easy to work out which websites you can trust, and who’s actually testing the products they’re reviewing. Here at Tech.co, however, we perform hours of market research and then create assessment frameworks for different software industries with which to road-test all the top providers.

For project management software apps like Asana and Trello, we focused on usability, pricing, features, customer support, and customer score. “Features” – which is quite a broad assessment area – was divided into task management, project and workflow creation, data visualization, and collaboration, and these sub-categories were assessed separately.

We do have commercial partnerships with some of the providers we review and compare against one another, but crucially, this never affects how we rank and review products, which is based solely on the research we conduct. We see our research as key to preserving our editorial independence in this way, and vital to providing our readers with the most accurate and up-to-date information, day in, and day out.

Asana vs Trello: Frequently Asked Questions