Jira vs Trello: Battle of the Project Management Software

When it comes to Jira vs Trello, our research suggests that Jira is the better project management tool overall. Compared side-by-side, Jira beats Trello in almost every assessment area including features and customer support, scoring a 4.3/5 overall in our last round of testing, compared to Trello's overall score of 4.1/5.

We found that Jira has a better range of task management features than Trello, including time-tracking, task dependencies, burndown charts, and a full suite of data visualization tools on all of its plans — which Trello doesn't have, plus a free plan equipped with more features than Trello's. In this article, we'll reveal exactly why Jira is far better value for money.

However, we found Trello easier to use than Jira. It's simpler than Jira overall and perfect for basic task management, so will suit a lot of small teams and individuals that don't need a vast range of features. Before you sign up for anything, check out our project management comparison page with additional providers, and make sure your investment is worthwhile.

In this guide, we cover:

• Jira vs Trello: Head-to-Head
• Best for Value: Jira
• Best for Features: Jira
• Easiest to Use: Trello
• Best for Individuals: Trello
• Best for Small Teams: Trello
• Best for Large Teams: Jira
• Best for Teams Working With IT: Jira
• Jira Pricing Plans
• Trello Pricing Plans
• Verdict: Why Jira is Better Overall
• Jira vs Trello: FAQs

Jira vs Trello – Head-to-Head

Jira and Trello are both great choices for teams managing projects. Trello is a simple, basic project management program that will suit teams that need a central location to track tasks and check on project progress, whereas Jira is a full-fledged project management and issue-tracking tool with a wider range of capabilities. All in all, Trello is easier to use than Jira.

Jira is geared towards IT teams and software development teams so is more capable than Trello when it comes to task management (4.3/5 to Trello's 3.4/5), workflow creation (3.8/5 to Trello's 3.5/5) and data visualization (5/5 vs Trello's 1.8/5).

Jira vs Trello: Key Differences

Jira has multiple ways to view projects on all plans, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and a spreadsheet-style view with formulas – which is why it's for complex task management and the kind of issue-tracking software development, engineering, and tech teams do on a daily basis.

Jira's Kanban board. Image: Tech.co's testing process

Trello, by contrast, doesn't offer a spreadsheet-style view (which is available on the Premium and Enterprise Trello plans, but without those useful formulas Jira offers) or the classic Gantt chart view, which is called a “Timeline” in Jira.

Another difference is the fact that Trello offers virtually no tools to visualize data on its free plan or Standard plan, with no custom or preset charts and no widget builder, whereas Jira has a lot more options for data visualization on its cheaper plans. Dashboards and preset charts are only available on Trello's pricier plans, while Jira offers data dashboards with a custom chart builder on every plan.

Overall, Trello is a much more basic program for simple task management, whereas Jira is better suited to larger teams, especially in software development and IT.

• Trello is best for independent workers or personal projects since it has a free tier with unlimited personal boards
• Jira is better for visualizing project data and better for data-intensive projects
• Trello is best for small teams that want a flexible, straightforward tool
• Jira is best for software development teams or IT departments, with great issue-tracking features
• Trello is better for basic task management and a minimalist approach
• Jira is better for large teams who want to centralize their workflows around a singular app

Jira Is Better Value Than Trello – But Trello Is Cheaper

Overall, Jira is a better value provider than Trello, scoring 4.2/5 for pricing to Trello's 4/5. Both Jira and Trello offer free plans, but Jira's is much better from a features point of view – there are lots of tools for visualizing data, for example, whereas these aren't included in Trello's free plan.

Although Trello's first paid plan is cheaper than Jira's ($5 per user, per month vs $7.75 per user, per month), again, Jira has a much vaster set of features, including a Gantt chart for visualizing project progress, and just like Trello, includes custom and pre-built automation capabilities for streamlining workflows.

There are other crucial tools that you'll find in most project management software tools – such as task dependencies – which Trello just doesn't provide. Jira, on the other hand, offers this feature on all of its plans.

Drawing dependencies between tasks in Jira's Timeline view. Image: Tech.co testing process

What's more, Trello doesn't offer live chat support, while Jira does on all of its plans, so although Trello's a lot simpler and easier to use overall, help isn't at hand in quite the same way. There are also no resource management features or other tools suited to large-scale projects involving lots of team members.

The bottom line is this: Trello may be cheaper – along with a cheaper starter plan, its Premium plan is $10 per user, per month compared to Jira's equivalent retailing at $15.25 per user, per month – but with Jira, you'll get significantly more bang for your buck.

Jira Has More Features Than Trello

Jira was initially popular among software development businesses, but thanks to its broad range of features, lots of companies now use it. In fact, over 65,000 companies have signed up with Atlassian, Jira's parent company – which also owns Trello.

Jira scores 3.9/5 for features overall, with custom project templates and pre-built and custom automation for managing workflows. There's also a very strong range of task management tools contained in all Jira plans, including a Kanban board, custom fields, and a time-tracking function.

Trello only scored 3.1/5 for features and doesn't include some key features, such as a Gantt chart and task dependencies. Scrum and burndown charts are also not included in Trello, but Jira offers them – which makes it a better option for agile teams. ClickUp, on the other hand, scores 4.5/5 overall for features – and its first paid plan is $5 per user, per month, the same price as Trello (check out our full ClickUp review for more info).

Trello scores 3.5/5 for workflow creation, and impressively for a cheap provider, offers custom automations on all of its plans. However, it struggles a little with budget information, and there's no billing or invoicing function.

Jira scores much better than Trello (5/5) for data visualization, with chart customization options all the way from the free to the enterprise plan, but scores just 2/5 for collaboration and doesn't offer a team instant messenger. Trello only scores 1.8/5 scores for both collaboration and data visualization, however, and is very limited in these areas.

Neither Jira nor Trello have as many collaboration features as the likes of Teamwork, which scores 4/5 for collaboration thanks to features like a project message board and instant messenger. In Trello, there's no live chat feature or team messenger, and Jira doesn't provide either of these.

Most companies will probably want to turn to at least the business tier, which costs $5 per user, per month (billed annually). For that money, the service includes custom fields for inputting anything you data you please, plus 1,000 automations (which Trello calls “workspace command runs”) to improve the efficiency of your workflow. It also supports Google single sign-on.

Trello Is Easier to Use Than Jira

The advantage of not providing a huge list of features is that Trello is a lot easier to use and set up. Trello has a similar card-and-board interface to Jira, but makes it much easier to get up and running and most things can be edited pretty easily with a couple of mouse clicks.

Trello's Kanban board. Image: Tech.co's testing process

For that reason, Trello is often the better choice for smaller businesses that just need a barebones project management program, rather than a more complex offering such as Jira.

Trello itself is very easy to understand, and any team choosing the free tier will probably find themselves frustrated with it unless their needs are simple.

“I love Trello,” says Tech.co’s head of commercial content support, Robyn Summers-Emler, who uses software every day. “I’m a big fan of the simple visualization of how I’m making progress – it’s just the right level of customization without being confusing.”

“I also like that it’s simple to collaborate with other people by adding members to each card I’ve made” she continued. “Some of the other project management software have felt a little bit like they’re overcomplicating things, but Trello is perfect for managing my team’s tasks.”

“Overall, I think it’s a really simple idea executed really well – from what I can tell, Jira would have a lot of features I just wouldn’t need” she added.

In Trello, you'll be able to choose from a multitude of different views, but as one of our researchers put it on their testing notes, it is “less competitive with the more in-depth aspects of project setup” such as budgeting.

Trello Is Better Than Jira for Independent Workers

Since it offers a free tier with unlimited personal boards, there's no question that Trello is the best choice for freelancers working alone. It also supports up to 10 team boards, meaning you can invite colleagues – or even clients – when a team effort is required.

For a singular user, Jira might feel somewhat overwhelming – it's got so many settings and features that a solo freelancer just wouldn't get much use out of. Trello is less intimidating and is likely to have everything you need to orchestrate simple task-tracking.

Setting task labels in Trello. Image: Tech.co's testing process

A downside of Trello’s free tier is that file attachments are limited to 10MB each, while the paid tiers support a maximum of 250MB per file attachment – although this is unlikely to affect those working solo or freelancers as much as it might multiple team members trying to work together. You'll just have to store your files locally or on a cloud drive.

Trello Is (Usually) Better Than Jira for Small Teams

For very small teams with fewer than 10 members, Trello is the better choice, especially if your project is pretty straightforward and you just need a place to keep all of your tasks and information.

If what you need is effectively a glorified to-do list, then Trello's uncomplicated interface will be your best bet. However, small teams with highly complex tasks may want to opt for Jira, simply because of the wider range of features for higher-level task management that we discussed in the Features section.

Jira and Trello both offer free plans with user limits of 10. However, Jira's free plan has a much larger array of features across almost all areas of project management, from task management to collaboration.

So, if you have a small team, don't want to spend anything at all on project management, and want the most features, then Jira is your way to go.

Compare Jira and Trello to other suites – see our guide to the Best Project Management Software

Jira is Better Than Trello for Large Teams

Trello is more flexible than Jira and will have you up and running quickly, but it just doesn't have the range of features Jira does which make it the better option for larger teams.

On Jira's Enterprise plan, you'll have access to centralized security controls, user subscriptions, and Atlassian's powerful data analytics tools, as well as 24/7 Enterprise support.

Jira's integration with Confluence, plus its document templates under the Pages tab, provides easy ways to add necessary documents to a project. It also supports helpful features such as “at mentions”, which can draw a colleague's attention to a document. Jira supports nearly 2,000 app integrations created by third parties, while Confluence has about 874.

Trello can still be used by large businesses and teams to manage projects – and its enterprise plan is one of the cheapest around – but it's still a more basic program that teams with complex project needs are likely to find more limiting than Jira.

Jira is Better Than Trello for Teams Working With IT

For companies that are already invested in Jira for bug tracking, developing a company website, or creating products, using Jira as an extension of that makes a lot of sense. This is especially true for teams that have to work closely with the software development team. Using the same tool makes it easier for teams to communicate, and to understand how their project management workflow is structured.

Jira is purpose-built for software development, but it's still flexible enough to work as a general project management tool. The only thing you'll have to do is add some of the features that you feel are missing, such as Gantt charts or calendars. Jira marketplace apps typically cost money, but if you're careful about how many you add, it still offers very good value.

Once you start adding apps, Jira becomes a little more complicated, and you can tell that many of the apps feature instructions and designs aimed at software developers. That may be a downside for some, and for those people, Trello may be the better choice.

Jira Pricing

Jira has four tiers, which include a free tier and an Enterprise tier without public pricing. Jira's Standard and Premium plan prices decrease in line with the number of users that will be using the software if you add any more than 100 of them.

The free tier has quite a lot included for a free tier, offering 2 GB of storage, and the same set of data visualization features that you'll have on the paid plans, like the ability to make custom charts.  It's not quite as good as ClickUp's free plan though, which has 24/7 live support, a spreadsheet view for task management, and a team instant messenger, all of which Jira's free plan doesn't.

ClickUp has a higher ease-of-use score (4/5) than Jira (3.8/5) after perfoming better on Tech.co's usability tests.

However, it does have a user limit of 10, which increases to 35,000 when you move to the Standard plan ($7.75 per user, per month), and you'll also get 250 GB of storage space. This is still cheaper than monday.com's first paid plan ($9 per user, per month). Aside from monday.com edging Jira when it comes to collaboration (3.8/5 vs Jira's 2/5), Jira's standard plan is far superior for task management, customer support, and data visualization.

The Premium tier costs $15.75 per user, per month, and also allows 35,000 user profiles. The storage cap is removed completely, meaning you won't have to worry about how much data you include in your account. You'll have to contact Jira's sales team to get a quote for the Enterprise tier's pricing, as it's not public.

For more information, check out our in-depth Jira pricing guide.

Trello Pricing

Trello has four plans, a free plan, a basic plan, a premium plan, and an enterprise-level plan. The free plan only allows a max of 10 MB per file, which is very small, so most businesses might find themselves getting stopped frequently by this. You'll also only be offered 10 boards. It's not as good as Jira's free plan, however, with no features for displaying data (Jira has many options) and no Gantt chart view for managing tasks.

The Standard plan is ideal for small businesses that don't require a lot of advanced features. It raises the file size to 250 MB, and gives the user unlimited boards. You get all the core functionality of a project management system, without a lot of bells and whistles – which explains why it scores slightly higher for usability (3.6/5) than Jira does (3.5/5). Most notably, you only get the on, albeit very popular, board view, whereas the next plan opens up a lot more.

The Premium plan is $10 per user, per month. You'll be given priority support if you need to contact Trello. This plan also adds a wide range of new board views, including map, calendar, timeline, team table, and more.  You'll also get access to unlimited automations, which is always attractive for saving time.

The final paid tier is the Enterprise tier, which costs $17.50 per user, per month. This plan gives your organization a little more control over the software, allowing for branding on boards, attachment permissions, and custom fields.

For more information on Trello's pricing plans, check out our Trello pricing page.

Alternatives to Jira vs Trello

Jira vs Trello isn't the only project management head-to-head you should be thinking about – in fact, there are providers out there that scored better than both of them on our last round of testing.

Our best project management software tool is ClickUp, not only because it scored the best for features (4.5/5 – including 4.9/5 for task management and 5/5 for data visualization), but also because it's just $5 per user, per month for the Unlimited plan.

monday.com provides one of the best user experiences with loads of opportunities to customize the software, but is slightly more expensive than Trello and Jira, with its first paid plan available for $8 per user, per month. monday.com scores better than both Trello and Jira for task management and collaboration.

Wrike's pricing plans are also a bit more expensive than both Jira and Trello, but it has a free plan with no user limit and scores higher than both (4.5/5) overall too, and we found it better for managing complex tasks than Trello's simple software.

Read our guide to the top Jira alternatives, or compare Jira vs Trello and various other matchups using our table below:

About Our Project Management Research

At Tech.co, we conduct extensive research into all the software, services, and products that feature in our reviews and head-to-head. We devise bespoke testing criteria to put the best providers on the market through their paces and then utilize them during extensive usability tests.

When we tested and assessed the top 14 project management software solutions, we focused on five key areas: Value for Money, Usability, Customer Support, Customer Score, and Features. Within the “features” criterion, each project management software application was given a score for collaboration, task management, data visualization, and workflow creation.

Although we do have commercial partnerships with some of the providers we write about, insights from our research allow us to maintain editorial independence. All of the conclusions we draw in our articles are based solely on our own research – which is the way it'll always stay.

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