Trello vs. Asana: Which Project Management Software Can Boost Your Workflows?

Trello vs. Asana: both are outstanding project management tools, but some differences set them apart. With so many software options available, it can be hard to pick the best project management tool for your team.

Trello and Asana are two industry giants that have grown into powerful project management apps. But which platform is right for you?

Our complete comparison of these tools can help you make an informed decision. We’ll cover key features, pricing, integrations, and everything you need to know.

Trello vs. Asana: At a glance

Trello and Asana can both help you with project management. The most significant difference when deciding between the two is that Trello is a Kanban-style app. On the other hand, Asana is a conventional project management tool.

Both platforms are popular because they’re easy to use and provide everything you need for project management. The answer to which is better comes down to your team’s needs and personal preferences.

Here’s an overview comparing the two platforms.

Trello vs. Asana feature comparison
Features	Trello	Asana
Team and task management	Yes	Yes
Built-in subtasks	No	Yes
Built-in task dependencies	No	Yes
Automation	Yes	Yes
Time tracking	Yes, with integrations	Yes, with integrations
Assignees and due dates	Yes	Yes
Integrations	Yes	Yes
Templates	Yes	Yes
Ease of use	Yes	Yes
Customer support	Yes	Yes
Project views	Yes, 7 project views	Yes, 6 project views
Pricing	Free plan, paid plans ranging from $5-$17.50	Free plan, paid plans ranging from $10.99- $24.99
Free trial	Yes	Yes

Team and task management

A project management platform’s most essential features are its team and task management tools.

Trello has a very visual interface that enables your team to manage projects, workflows, or tasks. With Trello, you can create new tasks and use timelines or calendars to organize your workspace.

Teammates can easily share and update tasks. They can also add checklists, attachments, due dates, and comments. Managers can use admin controls to manage their teams and set permissions for specific boards.

With Asana, you will have access to high-level project management. Managers can assign tasks to team members and move projects through a pipeline. You can group tasks together, and then easily change the status of the group.

Asana’s workflow management allows you to customize workflows to fit your team and ensure that everyone always knows when their projects are due.

The winner: Asana is the overall winner, thanks to its team management features. Trello gives you the essential tools to manage tasks, but Asana has much to offer in terms of keeping your team aligned and up-to-date.

Subtasks

The subtasks feature can help you split projects into more manageable pieces while remaining under the same parent task.

Subtasks are a feature that Trello does not directly offer, but you can add subtask capability to their software with Power-Ups.

In Asana, you can add a Subtask to a project once you create it, just like you would add a new task to a project.

The winner: Asana is the winner of the subtasks category. Trello doesn’t enable built-in subtasks and requires you to use add-ons to create subtasks.

Task dependencies

You can use task dependencies to show what steps are blocking other work.

For instance, a task like “ship items to a customer” is dependent on “package customer order.” That’s important, so that way your team can always know if others are waiting on them.

Trello doesn’t include built-in task dependencies, but you can use their automation tool to link up tasks.

With Asana, you can easily create task dependencies. Teams can connect subtasks to parent tasks and make them dependent on one another.

The winner: Overall, Asana gets our vote for the dependencies category. Trello’s automations can be set up to provide some dependency-like functions. However, your ability to manage these tasks is less sophisticated as compared to Asana.

Automation

Automation can save you countless hours of administrative work. When you automate processes, you save time and boost your productivity.

With Trello’s built-in automation tool, Butler, you can access excellent automation tools with minimal effort. Trello enables free users to create up to 250 automations per month.

You can upgrade your plan for even more automation workflow commands. With Trello, you can also create buttons on Trello cards or boards to kick off an automation sequence.

Asana also offers automation triggers, but you’ll need to get out your wallet to access these tools.

Even with a Premium plan, you will have limited access to automation with Asana. Business plans, however, offer automation similar to what you will get with the Trello free plan.

The winner: Trello easily beats out Asana with automation. It has much better automation abilities available with its cheaper pricing options.

Time tracking

Adding time tracking to your project management tool can boost productivity and reporting.

Both Asana and Trello lack native time tracking abilities, but they integrate easily with platforms that do.

You can integrate Trello or Asana with Hubstaff’s time tracking software. With our Chrome extension, you can track time from your browser, and explore optional screenshots and activity levels.

Check out these step-by-step instructions to set up a time tracking integration with Asana and Trello.

The winner: There’s no winner in this category; let’s call this a tie. Just know that either integrates well with third-party apps.

Assignees and due dates

Assigning tasks and due dates are some of the most important aspects of project management.

Trello enables team members to set due dates for each card and add checklists. Plus, you can color code your cards to help set them apart.

However, you can’t directly assign tasks to team members. Instead, projects have “Members” that can be tagged and notified about project progress.

Asana’s task assignment system is more advanced. In Asana, you can add due dates to tasks and subtasks. Plus, you can assign tasks to individual team members and color coordinate the assignments.

With Asana, you can do more than just assign tasks. It also enables you to oversee multiple projects simultaneously. Using the “My Priorities” widget, you can organize tasks into “upcoming,” “overdue,” and “completed” categories.

The winner: Overall, if you’re looking for a robust task assignment system, Asana is the better pick. Trello offers some similar tools, but they’re not as full-featured.

Integrations

Trello and Asana offer an impressive lineup of integrations with other applications to improve your workflow.

Trello’s 200+ integrations and Power-Ups enable you to add additional features to your Trello boards. You can integrate Trello with Slack, Mailchimp, Microsoft Teams, and Jira.

Asana offers 200+ app integrations plus API for custom integration solutions. Asana integrates with popular tools like Google Drive, Salesforce, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Dropbox.

Plus, both can be connected to other applications using Zapier, even if no direct integration is available.

The winner: The platforms are pretty comparable when it comes to integrations. They offer many of same. But, check out their integrations for yourself and see which integrates with the tools your team needs.

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Templates

Templates can help you reduce manual work and the time needed to start a new project. Trello has an impressive template library. Some examples of Trello templates are employee manuals, a grant tracking template, and a template for a freelance branding guide.

Asana also offers an extensive template database. Their templates include automation workflows, commonly-used projects, and recommended app integrations. Asana templates include an editorial calendar, event planning, and a product marketing launch template.

The winner: Both Trello and Asana offer templates, but Asana’s templates are much more in-depth. This gives them a slight edge over Trello, so we’re declaring them the winner.

Ease of use

It’s crucial to use software that doesn’t have a steep learning curve. You should choose a tool that fits your team’s technical expertise and familiarity.

Luckily, Asana and Trello are both easy to use. They have a simple user interfaces and new users can pick them up quickly. However, using each platform for more advanced projects might get a bit more complicated.

Trello can be more challenging if you begin to add a lot of information to cards, since your extra notes, requirements, or subtasks will be truncated underneath each “card.”

Asana can be tricky if you don’t set up your tasks or subtasks correctly. If you don’t have a standardized system, projects and folders can get lost easily or be hard to keep organized.

Overall, both platforms are great to use but require a little bit of time for onboarding. They both have great tutorials to help you learn how to use them. Check out the Asana and Trello YouTube pages for some tips.

The winner: There is no clear winner in this category. Both platforms are easy to use and simple to set up for basic use.

Customer support

If you run into issues with your project management software, you need to ensure the platform you’re using has resources to help you solve the problem. You’ll also need specific guides and tutorials to onboard yourself and your team.

As soon as you use Trello and Asana, you will notice these platforms are made to support you as you grow. With pop-ups and tutorials to use while you’re learning the platform, many users don’t end up needing much customer support.

Trello has a contact form you can use if you run into issues with the platform. This makes their team more accessible to users and can help you report problems or get help if the site crashes.

Asana offers some great tutorials and support, but the Asana customer service isn’t as simple to contact. Mainly, Asana just directs you towards their help articles.

The winner: Trello wins this category, in our opinion. Both options have great tutorials and help guides, but Trello enables you to easily contact their team to get help.

Project views

The ability to sort projects, drag and drop tasks, and filter your views can really simplify project management. Trello offers most of its views to all users, including Board View, Timeline View, Table View, Calendar View, Dashboard View, Map View, and Workspace View. To access additional views, you will need a Premium or Enterprise account.

Asana offers six views for your projects: List View, Kanban Board View, Timeline View (Gantt chart), Calendar View, Progress View, and Form View. Asana enables you to save your favorite as a default view.

With Asana, you’ll have to pay more to access the Timeline (Gantt chart) view. Plus, they offer fewer views than Trello overall.

The winner: Trello is known for its visual Kanban-style board, but they actually offer much more. With seven board views available for all users, they are the clear winner in this category.

Pricing

Trello pricing:

• Free plan
• Standard plan: $5 per user/month
• Premium plan: $10 per user/month
• Enterprise plan: $17.50 per user/month

Asana pricing:

• Basic plan: free
• Premium plan: $10.99 per user/month
• Business plan: $24.99 per user/month

Both Asana and Trello come with a free version that you can use to try the product out and see if it works for your team, but Asana allows for a max of 15 users on their free tier, while Trello is unlimited.

Trello is a bit cheaper overall and provides an option for small businesses between their free and premium plans. Small teams and freelancers might use Trello rather than Asana because it is more affordable.

Asana’s enterprise or business class plans are more expensive but come with collaboration features that can be invaluable for teamwork and complex projects. Trello’s business plan may be cheaper, but Asana offers a lot more with the price of their business plan.

They both offer free trials, so you can try each platform before buying.

The winner: The winner depends on your pricing and feature set needs. Trello is cheaper, but they offer fewer options. We’re giving this win to Asana based on the number of features you get for the price you pay.

Final verdict

After poring over the perks of each platform, our final take is that Trello is great for individuals or small teams, while Asana is better for professional use. Here’s a breakdown of what each platform offers.

Trello is the best pick for:

• Individuals who want an affordable project management platform
• Teams who prefer to use Kanban-style boards
• Users looking for built-in automation

Asana is the best pick for:

• Big teams or freelancers who want more project views 
• Users looking for subtasks, dependencies, and templates
• Users who need advanced project management software features 

The most important step when picking a project management tool is identifying what you need to enable your team to do their best work. There is no single platform that is perfect for every team.

Asana and Trello can easily manage your team’s projects. The real winner is whichever platform improves your team’s workflow. Try a free trial of both and see which one’s the right fit.

And if you’re still undecided, there are always other options. Hubstaff Tasks is an Agile project management tool that allows your team to do more with less. Track time on desktop, iOS, or Android devices, or from our Google Chrome extension.

We offer robust solutions to enhance team collaboration with efficient project management. Our pricing plans range from free to $4.17 per user/month.

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