ClickUp vs. Asana: Which project management software should you use? [2026]

If you're anything like the average software user, you've signed up for a bunch of apps you're not actually using. It's a problem that costs millions of dollars a year for some businesses. So naturally, in each software category, there are products that step in to become an "everything app," aiming to become your digital headquarters and, in the process, helping you cancel those unused apps and save money.

In the world of project management tools, ClickUp is that app—positioning itself as an all-in-one platform that can replace your task manager, document hub, chat platform, and whiteboard tool all at once. With features ranging from mind mapping to built-in video recording, ClickUp wants to be the only workspace your team needs. Meanwhile, Asana is on the other end of the spectrum: strictly focused on project management. Rather than trying to do everything, Asana has spent years perfecting its core features, becoming the reliable choice that countless teams trust to keep their projects running smoothly.

I've spent extensive time testing both platforms to compare their strengths, limitations, and ideal use cases. In this article, I'll explain the pros and cons of Asana and ClickUp to help you decide which you should use.

Table of contents:

• Asana vs. ClickUp at a glance

• Asana is a project management app; ClickUp is an all-in-one workspace

• Both platforms offer powerful AI features

• Asana's automations are unlimited and easy to build

• ClickUp has a stronger free plan and more features—but AI costs extra

• ClickUp has more integrations, but both apps integrate with Zapier

• ClickUp vs. Asana: Which is best?

Asana vs. ClickUp at a glance

Here's a breakdown of the key differences between these two project management apps:

• Asana is best for teams focused on pure project management. Its streamlined workflows, intuitive design, and enterprise-ready features make it the go-to choice for organizations that need reliable task management without feature bloat.

• ClickUp is best for teams looking for an all-in-one workspace. In addition to project management features, it offers a full suite of collaboration and meeting apps and a comprehensive AI productivity platform.

Asana is a project management app; ClickUp is an all-in-one workspace

Asana is pretty solidly in the project management app category. ClickUp, on the other hand, is a central workspace for team collaboration: it's a project management tool, shared inbox, to-do list, internal knowledge base, whiteboard, chat app, and OKR tracker all in one. And with ClickUp Brain, which I'll dig into more in the next section, it also attempts to replace your subscription to AI chatbots, AI notetakers, and other business apps. While ClickUp's extra features are a net positive, especially if you like the idea of consolidating everything into a single "superapp" for work, the drawback is that they make the app more complex to learn.

Let's start with project management. Both Asana and ClickUp offer the typical views to display your projects: list, board, timeline, Gantt, and calendar views, and you can use templates to launch pre-built projects with multiple views built in.

Here's what a typical project looks like in Asana.

ClickUp 4.0, a recent update, introduced a new global navigation (the black vertical nav bar on the left), which gives you quick access to ClickUp products like Chat, Docs, Whiteboards, and Brain. Otherwise, ClickUp's interface for boards and other project views is similar to Asana's.

Asana's deep focus on project management means it offers some specialized project features that ClickUp doesn't compete with (yet), including:

• Strategy Maps that show how your company goals connect with your work

• Weighted Goals to customize how much each project or task contributes toward reaching your goal

• One-click PowerPoint exports for enterprise users giving project updates during executive presentations

If you're focused on how each project contributes to the bigger business picture, Asana has everything you need built in.

ClickUp has its own advantages when it comes to project management. You get access to a unique set of project views, including an activity feed, map view (for geographic visualization), and team view (which shows you what each member of your team is working on). You can also assign multiple assignees per task in ClickUp, which Asana doesn't support.

Mind maps and whiteboards are native features in ClickUp and conveniently show up as another project view for easy access.

ClickUp also goes far beyond project management with a suite of complementary apps including:

• ClickUp Chat, a Slack-style chat feature, accessible anywhere

• Clip, a Loom-style screen recording feature with AI transcriptions

• Sync Ups, a Zoom-style audio and video call tool

• ClickUp Docs, a document editor with real-time collaboration

• ClickUp Calendar, which schedules your tasks automatically

• Forms that connect to your workflows and project views

• Wikis for knowledge base functionality

• Email in ClickUp to manage your email from the app

• ClickUp Brain AI features including Agents, Notetaker, Talk-to-Text, and Enterprise search

Going all-in on ClickUp isn't cheap, but when used to its full potential, you could theoretically replace not only your project management app but also your Slack, Loom, Notion, Zoom, and ChatGPT subscriptions.

Of course, the flip side is that if you're only looking for an app that does project management really well, ClickUp's huge ecosystem can be overwhelming—and Asana might have exactly what you need. Most businesses already have an established tech stack for things like video calls, docs, and AI notetakers, which means that, unless you're excited to consolidate everything, ClickUp might just add complexity and cost without adding much more value.

Both platforms offer powerful AI features

Asana AI is mainly focused on project management use cases. One standout feature is Smart Projects, which can build complete project frameworks from just a name: type "LinkedIn Marketing Campaign," and Asana gives you everything you need to get started fast.

Asana's AI suite includes other practical project management features that, like Smart Projects, are all prefixed with "Smart":

• Smart Goals for refining objectives

• Smart Charts for AI-generated charts

• Smart Rules for natural-language automation creation

• Smart Fields to auto-generate and auto-fill fields

• Smart Chat for finding information quickly across projects

• Smart Editor for writing task descriptions and comments

• Smart Summaries for condensing project updates into actionable highlights

AI Teammates, currently in beta, is Asana's take on AI agents. Just like with human teammates, you can assign tasks to an AI agent; you can watch the actions they take, see the reasoning behind those actions, and refine the output through a chat interface. For example, an AI Teammate can work as a campaign strategist to handle tasks like preparing ROI reports.

ClickUp offers a similar set of AI project management features. One difference is its AI agents. Whereas Asana AI Teammates are designed to collaborate with humans on relatively complex projects, ClickUp Autopilot Agents are designed for more specific, routine tasks. ClickUp also offers "always-on" Ambient Agents that absorb the context of your workspace and jump in instantly when they can help (like when your colleagues ask questions in the chat instead of checking your project notes).

ClickUp's AI features—like the rest of its platform—go far beyond project management. ClickUp Brain offers a persistent AI layer across the entire product suite, from Docs to Chat to Whiteboards, which means you can ask AI to answer questions or complete tasks anywhere. You also get access to a built-in AI translation, an AI meeting notetaker, a talk-to-text feature, and an AI search tool that gives context-aware answers that pull from data generated across your organization (including third-party apps).

ClickUp's most ambitious AI goal is to replace AI chatbots like ChatGPT in your business's tech stack. With ClickUp Brain, you can choose from multiple models (including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude) and use them to get work done within ClickUp. You can also download Brain MAX, which extends ClickUp's AI functionality, productivity tools, and context-aware search to Windows, macOS, and Chrome.

ClickUp's AI features are far pricier than Asana's. With Asana, nearly every AI feature is baked into the standard paid pricing, with only a handful of features (like smart goals) requiring an upgrade. 

ClickUp doesn't offer any AI capabilities on its standard plan. You need to upgrade to ClickUp Brain for an additional $14/month per user, or $33/month per user if you want unlimited use of agents along with access to Talk to Text, AI Notetaker, and Enterprise Search. And you need to upgrade your entire workspace—not just the handful of users who benefit the most from AI—which means adding ClickUp Brain can double or triple your costs.

Asana's automations are unlimited and easy to build

Until recently, Asana's automation builder was powerful but relatively hard to use, while ClickUp's was a bit more limited but user-friendly. Now that Asana has launched AI Studio, which uses AI to create complex workflows with Asana, it's better on both counts.

Asana's flowchart-style workflow builder gives you the flexibility to create complex automations with multiple paths and dependencies. Just type what you need into AI Studio's "Create with AI" chat dialogue, and you'll get a sophisticated workflow in a few seconds. All you need to do is review and publish.

Even better, Asana lets you provide guidance and context for AI to reference each time the rule runs, which is especially helpful if you need to reference SOPs or write context-aware comments on tasks.

ClickUp's automation builder isn't quite as flexible, though it's certainly easy to use, especially if you start with one of its 100+ pre-built automation templates. It also includes some nifty AI-enabled triggers and actions, like ability to create tasks, subtasks, or docs dynamically depending on the context and trigger. While you can replicate much of what's possible with Asana using ClickUp, it'd be hard to incorporate the same AI-powered flexibility or condition dependence.

Asana doesn't give you any automations on its free plan, but every paid plan offers unlimited automations. With ClickUp's free plan, you get five 100 automation runs per month. ClickUp's paid plans are limited to 1,000-250,000 runs per month, depending on the plan.

ClickUp has a stronger free plan and more features—but AI costs extra

ClickUp's Unlimited plan starts at $10/user/month, including unlimited storage, integrations, dashboards, and core features like Gantt charts and goals. Stepping up to the Business plan at $19/user/month adds advanced automations, workload management, and timeline views, plus deeper team features like custom permissions and advanced dashboard customization.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a catch to ClickUp's pricing: if you want AI features, you'll need to add ClickUp Brain for an extra $14/user/month. (ClickUp Brain also has a $33/user/month "AI Autopilot" add-on that offers more AI features like Talk to Text, AI Notetaker, and Enterprise Search.) If you want AI features, ClickUp's entry-level plan is far pricier than Asana's. The increased cost might be worth it, but it depends a lot on your existing subscriptions, how committed you are to your current tech stack, and whether or not you like the idea of consolidating everything into a "work superapp."

Asana's Starter plan costs $13.49/user/month and includes Asana AI right out of the box, along with project dashboards, timeline views, and unlimited automations. The Advanced plan jumps to $30.49/user/month, adding features like workload management, approvals, time tracking, and specialized enterprise integrations.

For free users, ClickUp is extraordinarily generous. You get unlimited users, unlimited tasks, and surprisingly advanced features like sprints, whiteboards, basic automations, and dependencies—though storage is capped at 60MB. Asana's free plan is more modest but still solid: you get unlimited tasks, projects, and storage, but you're limited to two users and don't get any automations.

ClickUp has more integrations, but both apps integrate with Zapier

Any project management app becomes more powerful when you can connect it to the other apps in your tech stack. Both Asana and ClickUp offer a wide range of integrations on all their plans; Asana integrates with 270+ apps, while ClickUp connects with 1,000+.

Because both Asana and ClickUp integrate with Zapier, you can connect either one with thousands of other apps so you can pull data from everywhere you work into your project management process. With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you can add AI and automation to your work wherever you need it. Learn more about how to automate Asana and how to automate ClickUp, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

ClickUp or Asana: Which should you use? 

The right platform for you comes down to what you need and what will help you get your work done most efficiently. 

Choose Asana if: 

• You're focused purely on project management

• You prefer AI features included in your paid plan without add-on costs

• You want unlimited automations and access to AI Studio's workflow builder

• You value enterprise-ready features like Strategy Maps and weighted goals

Choose ClickUp if: 

• You want an all-in-one workspace to replace multiple tools

• You need a generous free plan with unlimited users and 100 automations/month

• You don't mind paying extra for AI features ($14-$33/user/month)

• You need collaborative features like docs, whiteboards, and chat

ClickUp is one of the best Asana alternatives for people who want more from their project management software, but Asana is still the old reliable that many teams use for their project management.

Related reading:

• Asana vs. Jira: Which is best?

• Trello vs. Asana: Which project management app should you choose?

• Trello vs. Jira: Which should you use?

• The best enterprise project management software

• ClickUp vs. monday: Which should you use?

• Asana vs. Smartsheet: Which is best?

• The best AI project management tools

This article was originally published in June 2022 by Holly Stanley and has also had contributions from Nicole Replogle. The most recent update was in December 2025.