The 6 Best Asana Competitors for 2023

You might be looking to change from Asana or decide which tool is the best choice to start with. 

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the best Asana competitors and alternatives, and help you choose the right tool for you!

Why Do You Need Project Management Software?

The days of keeping track of personal tasks and team projects on pen and paper are over. Most work happens in front of a computer or smartphone, using digital files, folders, and the internet.

Technology has enabled us to be more productive but has added complexity and more processes to what we do.

Using a project management software you can:

• Plan,
• Manage tasks,
• Collaborate,
• Prioritize, and
• Solve issues.

This allows for work to be streamlined and react faster to changes. Ultimately, a good project management tool and the right processes can give an edge to your business by increasing productivity and quality.

What is Asana?

Asana is a complete project management software designed to manage projects and help teams collaborate effectively and efficiently. 

Asana Pros

Asana comes with all the functionality and features needed to track your daily tasks or complex projects:

• Has a free plan for up to 15 users,
• Easy to use,
• Great at task management, milestones, and time tracking.
• Includes Gantt charts, calendar view, and a kanban board
• Comes with project management templates,
• Good team collaboration features.

Asana Cons

Of course, there are some downsides to Asana as well:

• Has a small learning curve,
• Difficult customization,
• No resource & file management*,
• Not ideal for handling multiple teams.

*You can upload files but Asana does not track versioning and a complete resource library.

Best Asana Competitors Compared

All Asana alternatives in this article offer a lot of functionalities, features, and integrations which makes them very hard to compare in a single table. 

Based on your use case, level of customization, and budget, you can decide which project management tool is best for you. Even teams within an organization of different sizes and functions use different project management software, as their needs differ.

Here is a quick comparison table of all the Asana alternatives mentioned in this article:

*Prices were taken on December 24th, 2022.

Monday.com – A Cheaper Asana Alternative

Monday.com is the closest competitor to Asana on this list and offers much of the same capabilities give or take. There are two major differences between Monday and Asana. 

The first is the focus on UI/UX and visual presentations, where it outshines Asana. Monday allows you to build a visual overview of your project to more quickly have a bird’s eye view of the project on a single page instead of moving through different pages to figure this out.

The second is price. While Monday.com allows for only 2 users on its free plan, it is much cheaper than Asana per team member on the paid plans. 

For general project management of a team between 15-50 people, Monday.com can be a great way to reduce operational costs by 40% without cutting down on functionality.

Jira – For Agile Project Management

Jira by Atlassian is a project management tool originally designed to track bugs and issues,, and has since evolved to cover more cases and be customizable.

While Jira is still mostly used by software development, DevOps, and agile teams for its scrum and kanban boards, it can also be used for bigger organizations and more diverse teams.

The best use cases for Jira are companies and organizations with a dev team ready to take on the optimization and set up the workflows and automation to fully utilize its capabilities. For example, you can connect with GitHub to get updates, pull requests, deployments, branches, builds, and commits.

Compared to Asana, Jira works better for more technical teams or much bigger-sized organizations that require customizable project management software for multiple departments.

➡ Compare Jira to Asana

Wrike – Most Customizable Solution

Wrike is a work management and collaboration tool for anyone looking for an easily customizable solution (compared to Jira). Wrike’s mission is to provide a flexible and versatile project management platform with added security for its users.

Similar to Asana and the other tools in this list, you can create and manage tasks, subtasks, or even create checklists with due dates to track each project.

Most project managers though would choose Wrike for its customizable reports, analytics, and dashboards, making it ideal for a manager to monitor a project or to create and issue reports for clients (internal and external).

➡ Compare Wrike to Asana

Trello – Best Kanban Project Management for Teamwork

Trello is the original competitor of Asana (also acquired by Atlassian), but more focused on Kanban-style project management, but you can also choose to use task lists and card views.

It does not have many advanced features and functionalities. Trello is the embodiment of ease of use and excels at it!

Trello is probably the simplest software for project planning in this list, and is better suited for individuals, smaller and remote teams. 

Airtable – A Smart Asana Alternative

Airtable tackles project management customization in its own unique way, with an extensive marketplace of Airtable Apps.

While it’s not as easy to use as Asana or has a beautiful user interface as Monday, it comes with added functionalities to track projects or build unique workflows.

It goes beyond a simple project management solution and to-do lists and becomes customizable by adding specific key features for unique projects. It can be customized to keep track of a roadmap, build dependencies, or link-building.

It even accepts simple scripts to be written and automate simple tasks, customize reporting, and more!

Airtable is better compared with Wrike over Asana as they both work well for small business customizations in different ways.

Bonus: Slack – Best for Team Communications

If project management is not at the core of your team, but you prefer real-time communications and teamwork, then Slack is a great alternative to Asana (See my comparison of Slack vs Asana).

Slack excels at messaging, immediate notifications, file sharing, and has also recently added voice and video calls.

While it’s not great at keeping project progress, you can create channels and task lists, as well as build upon its many integrations.

Slack is being used by smaller teams, but also by bigger organizations for real-time communication between teams and individuals.

The Best Asana Competitor is: Monday.com

In my opinion, the top Asana competitor is Monday.com.

As a current heavy Asana user, looking to change I would be looking for a more familiar software with similar features than Asana. Monday fits all the requirements and would be:

• Similar to Asana,
• Cheaper for premium plans, and
• Comes with a better user interface.

Choosing the Top Asana Competitor

Deciding to buy a task management software is not an easy choice. They are not very comparable and come with many small and big differences, but the right choice can streamline your project and workflows!

Most of these software come with Gantt charts, kanban boards, workflow automations, and various reporting methodologies. In the end, it comes to your use case. How much you care about customizability, your (or your team’s) technical capabilities, and budget.

It is also important that your tool of choice plays well with your other tools. Whether you use DropBox or Google Drive for resource management and what CRM you are using.

The market is full of project management software for every use case, and there are many popular ones I haven’t even mentioned in this article like:

• Basecamp,
• Clickup,
• Salesforce,
• Proofhub,
• Timesheets,
• Smartsheet …

… and more. In this article, I have focused on software which I have personally worked with as part of my work (Asana, Slack, and Jira) or in collaboration with agencies and partners.

Good luck choosing the right tool for you!

FAQ

Which is better than Asana?

Compared to Asana, Monday takes the lead by offering a similar solution but at a lower price and better user interface.

Is there a free version of Asana?

Yes, Asana is free forever for up to 15 users on its basic plan.

Which is better, Trello or Asana?

Asana offers much more functionality and features than Trello but comes at almost triple the price for a premium plan than Trello.

How is Asana different from Jira?

Jira is more suitable for more technical teams, software developers, DevOps, etc. Jira is also more customizable than Asana but comes with a steeper learning curve and setup.

Why is Asana the best?

Asana is the most popular project management software, but it is not an absolute winner. It was one of the earliest complete solutions that came to disrupt the project management industry and has kept its lead from competitors since then.

What are some other alternatives to Asana?

• Monday.com,
• Jira,
• Wrike,
• Trello,
• Airtable,
• Basecamp,
• Clickup,
• Salesforce,
• Proofhub,
• Timesheets, and
• Smartsheet.