If you've only heard of two project management apps, it's probably Trello and Asana. Both for personal use and for collaboration between people and even across teams, Trello and Asana are two of the most popular apps for corralling large projects and getting stuff done.

Trello and Asana both do the same thing—help manage your projects—but they go about it differently. When it comes down to it, Trello is a Kanban tool, and everything else is gravy. Asana is a more traditional project management app that's a bit better suited for team projects.

I spent some time testing both apps, so keep reading to see how they stack up.

Trello vs. Asana at a glance

While these PM tools share a lot of features and functionalities, Trello and Asana are built for different audiences.

• Trello is better for individuals and small teams on a budget that prefer to manage project tasks using Kanban boards.

• Asana is best for small to large teams that want to build projects off templates, prefer a list-style view, and require reporting features.

Asana is more generous with its views, but Trello offers more customization with Power-Ups

Trello's primary UI is a no-nonsense, drag-and-drop Kanban board. Within each board, you can create lists, and within those lists, you can create task cards that can be dragged and dropped between lists as you progress through your project.

While Asana's Kanban (Board) view isn't the primary focus of the app (and is therefore less polished than Trello's), Asana's free plan comes equipped with more views than Trello's free plan. Asana's Calendar view, for example, is available in the free plan, whereas you have to upgrade to Trello Premium or use a Power-Up to access this view in Trello.

Asana also offers a List view that Trello lacks. And I gotta say, checking off tasks and watching them fade as they're completed is satisfying.

With Asana for Business, you also have access to Portfolios, which come with a handy Workload view for project managers. With this view, you can monitor team bandwidth to ensure proper resource allocation and avoid overworking teams.

That said, while Trello may not appear as customizable as Asana at first glance, Trello's Power-Ups, which are essentially built-in app modifiers and integrations with other apps, open the door to a lot of customization. In 2021, Trello began granting all plans access to unlimited Power-Ups, arguably making it the more customizable platform (as long as you're willing to dig into its more "hidden" features).

You can add apps to Asana, but these are just integrations with standard apps for communication, CRM, marketing, etc. Many of Trello's Power-Ups are designed specifically for Trello. For example, with Card Snooze, you can temporarily "snooze" a Trello card you know you won't get to until a later date.

Trello is better for individuals; Asana is better for larger teams

Yes, I know—Trello can absolutely be used by teams. And, in fact, there's no limit on the number of members in a workspace, even for free plans. But there are some major limitations that make it tough for big teams. The biggest one: you can't really assign tasks to individual people. Instead, tasks have "members" that are tagged and notified about progress. In theory, if a task only had one member, you could consider that an "assignment," but it's not the best system.

Asana lets you assign tasks, and it also does a better job of allowing project managers to oversee multiple projects simultaneously without having to keep separate tabs open for each. For each individual, the My Priorities widget on the homepage sorts tasks into "Upcoming," "Overdue," and "Completed." These tasks are collated from all of the user's projects, providing a master list of tasks, so users don't have to toggle between project pages to keep track of to-dos. 

Asana's collaboration features don't end there. Unlike Trello, it offers in-app direct messaging. From the Inbox tab, I could access all of my notifications and direct messages (ignore the crickets in mine). Just click Send message near the top-left of your inbox to access an email-like messaging interface and send individuals or entire teams DMs. Make full use of the feature by adding attachments, emojis, and even recorded videos.

Asana's plan structure also caters more to larger teams than to individuals. Its free Basic plan supports unlimited projects, whereas Trello's Free plan only allows you to create 15 shared boards.

Plus, Asana has reporting features that are important for larger teams that Trello lacks. Premium Asana users have access to a reporting dashboard that can measure a wide range of metrics using custom fields. For example, if you add a custom field to your tasks for cost, you can pull a report on costs per project or tasks per cost range.

Trello's built-in reports, on the other hand, are extremely bare-bones even for paid users, consisting of "cards per list," "cards per member," "cards per label," and "cards per due date." You can definitely use Power-Ups for reporting in Trello, but you'll want to be sure an integration exists to produce the reports you need. It's also trickier to set up if you're a beginner who isn't sure yet what they should be measuring.

Asana offers robust template options, but Trello offers more automation features

Trello's templates really aren't all that useful—they're all formatted the same (since all Kanban boards have the same structure), just with different titles for each list and a few task cards pre-loaded. Since you'll have to delete each template card or replace all of the existing info with your own, these templates seem to create more work than they save.

The templates Asana provides are much more robust than Trello's. Each template suggests the best primary view (Calendar, Board, List, or Timeline) for different project types, and pairs the template with suggested automation workflows and app integrations. They also offer templates from specific brands that use Asana, so you can set up your projects the same way. For example, the template below allows users to see how ClassPass manages its marketing campaigns.

That said, Trello really shines when it comes to automations. It allows free users up to 250 automation workflow command runs per month (and the $5/month plan bumps that up to 1,000). Those automations kick off whenever there are project actions—for example, when cards are moved between lists or tasks are completed. Another cool feature: Trello users can set up buttons on cards and boards to perform automation sequences. That means you can trigger your own automations for one-off tasks.

Asana users have to upgrade to implement automation triggers at all. Even Premium users on Asana are limited to a pre-set menu of rules. Custom and dynamic automation rules are reserved for Business users. Once you get to the Business plan level, though, Asana's automations are about as capable as those offered by Trello's Enterprise plan.

The good news: both apps integrate with Zapier, which means you can connect them with the other tools in your tech stack to automate your cross-app workflows. Here are a few examples of what you can automate. Plus, discover other popular ways to automate Trello and Asana.

Trello vs. Asana: how to make your choice

So here's the final rundown:

Trello is better for:

• Kanban lovers

• Individuals looking for a task or project management app

• Folks who want built-in automation

• Individuals and small teams on a budget

Asana is better for:

• List lovers

• Larger teams and organizations

• Teams that need a variety of templates and reporting options

• Individuals who want more views on a free plan

Still undecided? If none of the factors above are tie-breakers for you, take a look at our guides on creative ways to use Trello, a list of Trello alternatives, and how these companies use Asana to manage different projects, and see if either set of examples inspires you.

Related reading:

• Trello vs. Jira: Which is right for you?

• Trello vs. Pipedrive: Which tool do you need?

• The best free project management software

• Asana vs. Jira: Which is best?

• Asana vs. Todoist: Which should you use?

This article was originally published in July 2019 by Marshall Gunnell and has also had contributions from Amanda Pell. The most recent update was in May 2023.