Asana vs Wrike – Which is Better?

We tested 14 project management tools comparing pricing, usability, project and workflow creation, and task management functionality and found that when it comes to Asana vs Wrike, Asana is the better project management tool overall, but only marginally.

Wrike is a better project management tool for mid-to-large size organizations because it’s easier to use and offers better complex task management tools – and it’s especially good for managing marketing projects. However, Asana is better than Wrike for much smaller teams, as it offers a wider range of workflow creation features, is slightly better value for money, offers better customer support options, and is better at visualizing project data. Compare deals to find the best value for your business.

Wrike (which has a good free version to try) is ideal for teams who want their project to have a very strict organizational hierarchy. Asana, meanwhile, appeals to teams who just want a list of tasks, with milestones and task dependencies to help guide them along. And yes, there’s a free Asana tier you can try out, too.

Both Asana and Wrike performed really well in our testing, tying in score across a number of categories including overall features (4.3/5) and collaboration tools (3.3/5), but Asana just had the slight edge overall.

In this guide we break down the differences and explain how they compare, so you that you can make your own decision. Alternatively, you can view our deals comparison chart to filter project management tools based on your own criteria.

In this Guide:

• Asana vs Wrike: Table
• Asana vs Wrike: Pricing
• Asana vs Wrike: Team Sizes
• Wrike vs Asana: Head-to-Head
• Asana vs Wrike: Our Methodology
• Asana vs Wrike: The Verdict
• Frequently Asked Questions

Asana vs Wrike: Which is Best?

Deciding on which is best between Wrike and Asana really comes down to the needs of your company or team, but Wrike has the edge on Asana if you need a project management tool for a large team or business. Asana is a better choice than Wrike for individuals and small teams.

• Asana is best for individuals and personal projects, with its simpler hierarchy and more generous collaborator rules on the free tier
• Wrike is best for large organizations that want a very clear hierarchy for their projects
• Wrike is best for marketing teams, with specific features on the business plan geared towards the industry
• Wrike is best for mid-sized teams, thanks to its many helpful integrations

These two products use the same basic idea of a left-rail interface, and a double pane primary interface. Even so, they couldn’t be more different. Asana and Wrike are two capable project management tools that differ greatly in terms of execution. While Asana is a popular choice for project management thanks to its attractive and modern interface, San Jose-based Wrike has plenty of useful features to challenge it.

Asana vs Wrike: Pricing

Arguably one of the most important metrics to consider when it comes to installing a new software at your business, pricing comparisons between Asana and Wrike can be incredibly helpful. Use our free comparison tool to see how the two stack up against other providers, or see a quick breakdown of both pricing plans below.

Wrike Pricing

Wrike has five tiers. The three publicly priced tiers are the Free plan, the Professional plan ($9.80 per user per month), and the Business plan ($24.80 per user per month). There’s also Pinnacle and Enterprise plans with custom pricing you’ll have to contact sales for.

For more information, check out our in-depth Wrike pricing guide.

Asana Pricing

Asana has three payment plans, as well as a bespoke plan where the price depends on the limits and options you include. Their three payment plans are the Free plan, the Premium plan ($10.99 per user per month), and the Business plan ($24.99 per user per month).

For more information, check out our in-depth Asana pricing guide.

Wrike Review Summary

If you compare Wrike to other project management services, you’ll notice its more conservative interface and approach. For example, Wrike uses a folder hierarchy by default, although you can opt to ignore this uncommon approach and use a Kanban-style board instead. There is also a spreadsheet-like view, rather like you’ll get with Microsoft Project.

For those who like a well-organized hierarchy of tasks, Wrike is the ideal choice – but a well-structured way to keep your data sorted isn’t all it has to offer. For example, Wrike provides you with multiple customizable calendars, which can be assigned to individual projects, teams, or even a specific folder.

For those who like a well-organized hierarchy of tasks, Wrike is the ideal choice.

Check out our in-depth Wrike Pricing guide for more information

Another great feature is document history, which is available for files you upload to Wrike. It requires Wrike’s desktop plugin, but once that’s up and running, you can make changes to a document and view past versions in a single location. Document versioning is a must-have feature for any company, and while you can find it in online services such as Google Docs, it’s nice that Wrike offers it as part of a project management tool.

When it comes down to it, what Wrike specifically does better than Asana can be boiled down to a couple of things. Wrike offers more ways of visualising project progress, as users are given three chart options over Asana’s one.

Wrike also beats Asana in spreadsheet functionality, as Wrike provides “formula” columns, which enable automatic calculations. Asana has no such feature.

Features

• Built-in time tracking
• Capable free tier
• Multiple views, including spreadsheet
• Customizable calendars

Asana Review Summary

Asana is a popular option for project management for a number of reasons. It has a great interface, and offers all the key features required for basic project management in its two lower tiers. Tasks, subtasks, dependencies, and milestones are all available with Asana Premium. There’s also a timeline as part of Premium for those who need it.

Asana’s project templates are also helpful if you’re just getting started with project management. The idea is to create the bare bones of a basic project, and then have the team fill in the rest. Asana’s basic templates include a cross-functional template for projects that involve team members from different departments. There’s also a template for marketing, product launches, and many other options. There are a number of templates available at the free tier, with other options only available for Premium subscribers and upwards.

Asana’s project templates are helpful if you’re just getting started with project management.

Check out our in-depth Asana Pricing guide for more information

For those with larger teams, Asana offers a number of solid options to keep projects on track. These include Portfolios, which offers an overview of all team projects and their current state. Workload complements this by providing a look at each team member’s workload, to help better manage the team’s overall effectiveness.

Looking at ways where Asana specifically beats Wrike, Asana comes out on top in both its forms and its automation builder. While Wrike has a form builder, Asana’s is a lot more streamlined and easy to use. The same applies to their automation builders as well. Wrike does have one, but it’s hidden away and also much harder to use. Asana’s is once again more smooth and streamlined.

Features

• Clean design
• Free tier allows up to 15 team members
• Portfolios and Workload are helpful features for large teams
• Useful project templates

Asana vs Wrike: Team Sizes

Asana and Wrike are both very respectable options when it comes to project management software. The most important way to identify which project management tool one might be better for you and your business is the size of your team. We break down the differences with a few helpful comparisons below, but you can also use our free comparison tool to see which how the two compare against other providers.

Asana is better than Wrike for individual projects

Asana is a great option for individual projects, or for freelancers looking to keep their work in order. Most people should be able to get by with the free tier, Asana Basic. This tier doesn’t include sub-tasks or dependencies, but as long as you can do without those features, Basic should be all you need.

Basic’s essential features include task creation (naturally), as well as list view, board view, and calendar view. Basic supports up to 15 team members, compared to Wrike’s 5, meaning you can invite collaborators as needed. Basic also lets you assign tasks to others when you’re collaborating.

For anyone who needs more than that, it’ll cost $9.99 per user, per month to move up to Premium. This tier is where the feature set really explodes, offering milestones, dependencies, subtasks, timeline, and advanced reporting. It’s a lot of functionality – so much, in fact, that it’s probably overkill for most single person projects.

Why Asana is better for individual projects:

• Asana Basic (free tier) is likely to be enough for most single users
• Free tier supports up to 15 collaborators
• Going beyond the free tier is overkill for most individuals
• Offers more users than Wrike’s free tier, as well as user permissions, two-factor authentication, and a calendar

Asana’s List and Timeline views, chart creation area and resource allocation tool

Wrike is better than Asana for mid-sized teams

When teams start to grow to a certain size, keeping your data organized so things run smoothly becomes even more important. Wrike offers a good way to do this with its folder structure. Many project management services offer a project, and then lists of tasks under that. Some of these services allow you to create lists to better organize your tasks.

None, however, allow as much depth of organization as Wrike, with its ability to create folders and sub-folders within a project. That may be too much organization for some teams, but for those who need to keep an unruly project on track, those folders are a big help. There’s also built-in time tracking for the Business tier and higher, as well as a large amount of storage.

The document versioning history, which requires a desktop plugin, is another great feature to have. A centralized place for keeping tabs on document changes that the whole team can access may be standard for online document editors, but isn’t all that common in project management software.

Why Asana is better for mid-sized teams

• Folder structure makes it easier to keep ungainly projects organized
• Good amount of storage for video and documents
• Built-in time tracking and document versioning
• Wrike’s Professional tier ($9.80 per user per month) is far cheaper than Asana’s equivalent Premium tier ($10.99 per user per month)

Wrike is better than Asana for large organizations

Wrike doesn’t mess around when it comes to adding features that large companies and enterprises will benefit from. It comes with the usual features, such as SAML 2.0 for single sign-on management, password policies, and two-factor authentication.

It can also integrate with many business intelligence tools via the company’s application programming interface for moving data. There’s also a built-in integration tool for Tableau, a popular data management service.

Other key features for enterprise include network access and compliance policies to restrict Wrike to whitelisted IP addresses. There are also “advanced user access controls” for controlling inheritance permissions on folders and sub-folders, as well as access reports to see who can get into all the various company projects.

Wrike’s Enterprise tier also inherits features from all the other pricing tiers except for Wrike for Marketers. Those lower tiers include helpful features such as Salesforce integration, branded workspaces, and time tracking.

For more information on enterprise-facing options, check out our Asana vs Basecamp comparison page

Why Wrike is better for large teams

• Key enterprise features such as SAML 2.0, Active Directory integration, and password policies
• Integration via API for Business Intelligence tools, plus a Wrike-built integration for Tableau
• Access reports and whitelisted IP addresses offer greater control for large organizations
• Wrike’s Business tier ($24.80 per user, per month) is cheaper than Asana’s equivalent Business tier ($24.99 per user per month) while also including time tracking and the potential for CRM functionality.

Wrike’s Table and Calendar view, Analytics dashboard, and its automation builder. Images: Tech.co’s testing process

Asana vs Wrike: Head-to-Head

Below, there is a short review of both Wrike and Asana, but we’ve got individual sections for things like business features and customer support further down in this article. here’s a rundown of the sections:

• Best Value: Asana 
• Best for Business Features: Tie
• Best for Ease of Use: Wrike
• Best for Customer Support: Asana
• Best for Customer Satisfaction: Wrike
• Best for Small Businesses: Asana
• Best for Marketing Teams: Wrike

Best Value: Asana

Arguably one of the most important metrics to consider when it comes to installing new software is how much value you’re getting for the price you’re paying, and how many features you can obtain for the lowest price.

After assessing the two provider’s pricing plans, we rate Asana 3.9/5 for pricing, whilst Wrike scores 3.5/5 for pricing. Although Asana’s first paid plan, the Premium plan, is $10.99 a month whereas Wrike’s Professional plan is $9.80 per user, per month, it has a lot more features for that extra $1.09.

For example, on Asana’s Premium plan, you get custom charts and widgets as well as preset charts and widgets, whereas you only get widgets on Wrike’s Business plan. There’s also no automation function on Wrike’s first paid plan and no calendar feature either, but there is on Asana’s, and Wrike’s Professional plan has a user limit of 200, whilst Asana’s is unlimited.

Best for Business Features: Tie

Both Wrike and Asana score 4.3/5 for features, a criteria made up of four sub-categories; task management, workflow creation, data visualization, and collaboration.

When it comes to workflow creation, Asana rules the roost (4.3/5) – putting it joint first for this criteria out of all the providers we tested – thanks to the best automation builder we tested. It is incredibly straightforward and easy to use, and there are quite a few competitors (like ClickUp) that although being great programs, made this function overly complicated.

Task management, on the other hand, is a far better experience when performed with Wrike. Wrike scores 4.6/5 for this criterion, including a spreadsheet-style view with formulas (Asana comes without). However, Asana scores 4.4/5 in this category because it also had a broad range of task management features, many of which were discussed further up in this article.

In terms of data visualization, both providers scores 5/5 for offering things like custom charts on their respective paid plans, but neither include any of these tools on their free plan. ClickUp, our top-rated provider overall (4.8/5), offers a dashboard, as well as preset and custom widgets, on its free plan.

When it comes to collaboration, Wrike (3.3/5) and Asana (also 3.3/5) are inseparable, which led to a dead heat in our last round of testing, and both provide task comments, a project message board, and a calendar, as well as a resource management tool on their more expensive plans. See how Wrike and Asana compare to other providers.

Best for Ease of Use: Wrike

Wrike scores 4/5 for usability, but Asana scores 3.9/5, so there’s really very little in it. Although Asana has the brighter (and some would say cleaner) interface, it’s not quite as straightforward to use as Wrike once your project is underway, especially if you don’t have a dedicated feature for a certain task.

Wrike, on the other hand, isn’t quite as smooth to set up, but you’ll find it more useful if you want to instate a strict, organizational hierarchy and have detailed oversight over all your tasks (see gallery below).

Both these providers were among the easier-to-use pieces of software, although neither is quite as easy-to-use as Smartsheet (4.6/5 overall, 4.3/5 for usability), which is effectively the most useful spreadsheet you’ll ever use and thus keeps it simple to great effect.

Best for Customer Support: Asana

Asana has better customer support than Wrike, although neither has a very impressive offering. Asana scores 2.8/5 whilst Wrike scores just 1.8/5.

Wrike customers can only contact the company via email, but there’s a knowledge base/help center and community forum you can use too if you feel like you can solve the problem with a bit of advice.

Asana offers the same but also offers onboarding assistance, which you can obtain through contacting sales on all its plans bar the free plan. Wrike doesn’t offer onboarding assistance on any of its plans, including the Enterprise and Pinnacle plans.

Best for Customer Satisfaction: Wrike

Despite not having many customer support options, one thing Wrike does have is an excellent customer score, compiled from the views of real users who have purchased one of Wrike’s plans.

Wrike’s customer score overall is 4.1/5, which is the fourth highest out of the 14 project management software tools we tested and higher than Asana’s (3.9/5) and Smartsheet’s (3.8/5).

However, these scores are dwarfed by modnay.com’s 4.5/5, which is the best customer score achieved by any of the project management software brands we tested.

Best for Small Businesses: Asana

Although this is a head-to-head comparing Asana vs Wrike, it’s safe to say both providers will satisfy the needs of small businesses, despite Asana marginally having the edge. They both score 3.3/5 for collaboration, 5/5 for data visualization (although you get more features on cheaper plans with Asana), so it’s hard to separate them.

If you’re a small business with very little budget to spend on project management software, then you’ll be wanting as much bang for your buck as you can get. Asana’s cheapest paid plan edges Wrike’s cheapest paid plan, with a calendar, custom, and preset charts, custom fields, and unlimited storage, all of which Wrike doesn’t provide. Overall, it’s a better value-for-money plan despite being $1.19 more expensive per user, per month.

Another reason Asana is better for small businesses is onboarding assistance, which is available on all plans but the free plan. This will be particularly useful for your small business if you don’t have an IT team or simply the time to teach staff the ins and outs of a new software program.

However, Wrike is better for small marketing teams thanks to an array of marketing features included on the Business plan. As well as this, as we’ve covered, Wrike is slightly more usable, particularly for managing ongoing projects. If the $24.80 per user, per month Business Plan is within your budget, you’ll have one of the best sets of task management features currently available, and features like file and video proofing which will be useful for marketing campaigns.

Best for Marketing Teams: Wrike

• Integration with Adobe Creative Cloud
• Wrike Proof lets teams invite stakeholders to view assets within Wrike
• Tailored Workspace helps marketing teams jumpstart new projects

Wrike used to have a custom plan for marketers, Wrike for Marketing Teams, but this plan has been discontinued. However, Wrike has moved many of the features to its Business plan, which now includes key features that make it easier for marketing teams to integrate assets with their projects, such as marketing-specific templates, and analytics tools for assessing the success of campaigns.

On top of this, Wrike throws in the Wrike Extension for Adobe Creative Cloud, which lets users access Wrike from within Adobe CC and improves collaboration between team members. Wrike’s Business plan also integrates with Wrike Proof, which allows teams to invite stakeholders to view PDFs, videos, Word documents, and other assets within Wrike.

Asana vs Wrike: Our Methodology

At Tech.co, we do all our own research in-house. For our project management software category, our research team tested 14 high-quality providers and ranked them based on a variety of different criteria.

The specific criteria were decided upon after conversations with business owners and employees, and reflect many of the common pain points that working people experience when trying to decide which software is the best. Our key assessment areas for project management were:

• Usability: An assessment of how easy it is to complete basic project management tasks with the software
• Pricing: An analysis of whether the product is good value-for-money, based on what you get for what you pay
• Customer Support: Review of the customer support options available, and how useful they are for common problems.
• Features: Assessing how quantity and quality of features that facilitate task management, workflow creation, visualizing data, and collaborating with other team members.
• Customer Score: An average of the score given by genuine users of the software.

Although we have commercial partnerships with some of the providers we write about, this never ever affects our editorial independence or the conclusions we arrive at in our articles. All of our verdicts and scoring are solely based on the research we carry out.

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