Trello
Kanban boards simple enough that nobody needs training.
- Productivity
- Marketing
- Development
- from $5/mo
Trello is a visual task manager built on boards, lists and cards, owned by Atlassian since 2017. Its enduring appeal is that the whole model can be explained in one sentence, which makes it the tool teams actually adopt when heavier project software has failed to stick.
Trello: the short answer
Every line below is drawn from facts verified on 9 August 2026.
- What it is
- Kanban boards simple enough that nobody needs training
- Best for
- Small teams tracking work without process overhead
- Starts at
- Free for up to 10 collaborators; Standard from $5 per user/month
- Free option
- Free plan available, 14 days on Premium trial
- Biggest strength
- Immediately understandable with no training required
- Biggest drawback
- No real dependency, capacity or resource management
- Closest alternative
- Asana - Better once work spans teams and needs real reporting
- True annual cost
- from $60 a year at the cheapest paid tier
Trello at a glance
| Best for | Small teams tracking work without process overhead, Editorial calendars, campaign planning and simple pipelines, Anyone who has abandoned a heavier project tool |
|---|---|
| Category | Productivity, Marketing, Development |
| Starting price | Free for up to 10 collaborators; Standard from $5 per user/month |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | 14 days on Premium |
| Pricing model | freemium |
| Company | Atlassian Corporation |
| Founded | 2011 |
| Headquarters | Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Founders | Joel Spolsky, Michael Pryor |
| Platforms | Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android |
| Public API | Yes |
| Browser extension | Yes |
| Mobile apps | iOS + Android |
| Self-hosting | No |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Data source | Vendor pricing page and public records |
| Last checked | August 2026 |
Trello pricing
Prices below were read from the vendor's own pricing page on 9 August 2026. Pricing model: freemium. Free trial: 14 days on Premium.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | per month | Up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, unlimited cards |
| Standard | $5 | per month | per user, billed annually - $6 billed monthly. Unlimited boards, advanced checklists |
| Premium | $10 | per month | per user, billed annually - $12.50 billed monthly. Adds calendar, timeline and dashboard views |
| Enterprise | $17.50 | per month | per user, billed annually - $210.00 per user per year. Adds Atlassian Guard and admin controls |
What Trello actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above multiplied out to twelve months, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way.
| Plan | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|
| Standardper user, billed annually | $5 | $60 |
| Premiumper user, billed annually | $10 | $120 |
| Enterpriseper user, billed annually | $17.5 | $210 |
Which Trello plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A small team wants a simple shared board | Free | Up to 10 collaborators per Workspace with unlimited cards. Genuinely sufficient for many teams. |
| You need unlimited boards and advanced checklists | Standard | $5 per user billed annually. |
| You want calendar, timeline and dashboard views | Premium | $10 per user billed annually, and views are the usual reason to upgrade. |
| You need Atlassian Guard and admin controls | Enterprise | $17.50 per user billed annually. |
| You are coordinating several teams with dependencies | Consider Asana or Jira instead | Trello deliberately has no dependency or resource model. |
| You need to report on effort or capacity | Do not buy Trello | It does not track either. This is a board, not a planning system. |
Verdict by who you are
Small team tracking simple workYes
The free tier is genuinely enough, and Trello's simplicity is why people actually keep it updated.
Editorial or campaign plannerYes
A board per pipeline stage is the right shape for this work.
Multi-team delivery organisationNo
No dependencies, no resourcing, no portfolio view.
Manager needing capacity reportingNo
Not what Trello does, at any tier.
Should you buy Trello?
Buy Trello if…
- Small teams tracking work without process overhead
- Editorial calendars, campaign planning and simple pipelines
- Anyone who has abandoned a heavier project tool
Do not buy Trello if…
- Multi-team delivery with dependencies and resourcing
- Reporting on effort, capacity or timelines
- Organisations needing granular permissions
Key features
- Boards, lists and cards with drag-and-drop
- Checklists, due dates, labels and attachments
- Power-Ups for calendars, voting, time tracking and integrations
- Butler automation rules without code
- Timeline, calendar, table and dashboard views on Premium
- Templates for common workflows
- Card mirroring across boards
- Inbox and Planner for personal task capture
Integrations
- Slack and Microsoft Teams
- Jira and Confluence
- Google Drive and Dropbox
- Zapier
- Trello REST API and Power-Up platform
Trello screenshots
Captured by us in August 2026 at 1440px, unedited. Interfaces change, so these show the product as it looked on the date we verified this profile. Vendors localise pricing by visitor region, so a pricing screenshot may display a different currency to the USD figures recorded above.
Our assessment
Trello's value is its refusal to grow complicated. A board, some lists and cards you drag is a model anyone understands in a minute, and that is why it succeeds where configurable trackers get abandoned. The limits arrive predictably: once you need to know who is overloaded, what depends on what, or how long anything actually took, you are fighting the tool. Premium adds timeline and dashboard views that soften this, but a board is still a board. Use it deliberately for work that suits it rather than expecting it to scale into project management.
What works in Trello
- Immediately understandable with no training required
- Free tier is genuinely usable for small teams
- Butler automation is surprisingly capable for a simple tool
- Cheapest paid tier in its category at $5 per user
What doesn't
- No real dependency, capacity or resource management
- Reporting is thin even on Premium
- Boards degrade into unusable card graveyards without pruning
- Free tier caps collaborators per Workspace rather than per board
EveryAny Decision Score
Scored by dimension rather than averaged into one number, because the trade-offs are the useful part. 3 of these 8 dimensions are calculated from verified facts by published formula; the rest are editorial judgement, labelled as such. How each score is calculated.
- Cost position7.9/10
derivedentry tier at $5 a month against a category median of $9.99 across 24 comparable tools
- Portability5/10
derivedpublic API
- Subscription flexibility9/10
derivedfree plan, free trial, freemium, monthly billing
- Feature depth4/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- Ease of learning10/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- Collaboration8/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- AI capability5/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
- Professional adoption9/10
editorialeditorial judgement, reviewed at last check
What leaving Trello would cost
moderate lock-in
Calculated as 10 minus a portability score of 5, built from four signals (self-hosting, a public API, open-source licensing and a documented export path) . Trello scores on: public API. Formula.
Trello competitors and alternatives
| Alternative | Why you might pick it instead |
|---|---|
| Asana | Better once work spans teams and needs real reporting. |
| Notion | If you want documents and databases alongside the board. |
| GitHub Projects | Free and sufficient when the work is software and lives in GitHub. |
Asana
Productivity
Work management for teams that have outgrown a board but not hired a PM.
monday.com
Productivity
A colourful work OS you configure rather than adopt.
What the free tier really limits
Unlimited cards, ten collaborators per Workspace. That is generous for a small team and a hard stop for a growing one, and the limit counts people in the Workspace rather than per board. Teams frequently discover it when inviting a contractor.
Where Trello stops working
The failure mode is consistent and worth recognising early. A board works beautifully until roughly the point where someone asks one of these:
- Who has too much on right now?
- What is blocking this, and what does it block?
- How long did that actually take?
None of those are board questions. If they are being asked weekly, the team has outgrown Trello and no amount of Power-Ups will fix it.
Butler is the underrated feature
Trello’s automation quietly does real work: move a card when a checklist completes, assign on label, post to Slack when something reaches a list. For teams running repeatable processes, Butler removes more manual effort than the paid views do, and it is available on the free tier in limited form.
Trello or Asana?
Choose Trello when simplicity is the point and the work fits a board. Choose Asana when work spans teams, has dependencies, and someone needs to report on it. The price difference is real but rarely decisive; the structural difference is.
Trello questions, answered
- Is Trello worth it?
- Trello's value is its refusal to grow complicated.
- How much does Trello cost?
- Free for up to 10 collaborators; Standard from $5 per user/month. The cheapest paid tier we recorded works out at $5 a month, or $60 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Trello have a free plan or free trial?
- Trello has a free plan. A free trial is available: 14 days on Premium.
- What is the best Trello alternative?
- It depends on the job. Asana: Better once work spans teams and needs real reporting. Notion: If you want documents and databases alongside the board. GitHub Projects: Free and sufficient when the work is software and lives in GitHub.
- Can I self-host Trello?
- No. Trello is a hosted service only, so your data lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
What has changed
-
August 2026
- Per-user pricing verified, annual and monthly
- Added plan picker and verdicts
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Trello pricing - checked 9 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
