Asana vs Monday.com (2026): Which Project Tool Wins
Two of the biggest names in project management, priced seat by seat. Asana runs deeper on work structure. monday.com wins on visual boards and price. The tables below carry the current numbers.
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Asana and monday.com sit on almost every project management shortlist, and they price close enough that the decision usually comes down to how your team actually works. Asana is built around tasks, dependencies, and reporting depth. monday.com is built around boards you can bend into a CRM, a sprint tracker, or a content calendar.
I priced both at their published rates on July 16, 2026 and pulled the plan limits straight from the vendor pages. Both run promotions and both climb fast once you need automations at volume, so treat the tables as the honest starting point and confirm at checkout.
Choose Asana if
Your work has real structure: dependencies, portfolios, workload balancing, approvals. The Advanced tier at $24.99 a seat is where Asana earns its keep for operations and PMO teams.
Choose monday.com if
You want flexible visual boards, a lower entry price at $9 a seat, and a platform your non-PM departments will also touch. It gets teams moving with less setup ceremony.
Bottom line
monday.com is the better default for small teams and mixed departments on price and approachability. Asana wins when project complexity, not board flexibility, is the actual problem.
Visual boards, flexible workflows across departments
Free plan
Up to 2 users, unlimited projects and tasks
Up to 2 seats, 3 boards, 3 docs
Entry paid price
$10.99 per user/mo billed annually
$9 per seat/mo billed annually
Mid tier
Advanced, $24.99 per user/mo annually
Pro, $19 per seat/mo annually
Automation limits
Unlimited automations from Starter
250 actions/mo on Standard, 25,000 on Pro
AI
AI Studio credits included per tier
AI credit allowances per tier (1,000 to 3,000/mo)
Enterprise
Quote only, SAML and SCIM
Quote only, 250,000 actions/mo
Asana vs monday.com pricing (per user per month, billed annually)
Plan level
Asana
monday.com
Free
$0, up to 2 users, unlimited tasks, 100MB per file
$0, up to 2 seats, 3 boards, 8 column types
First paid tier
Starter, $10.99 ($13.49 billed monthly)
Basic, $9, unlimited items and viewers
Second tier
Advanced, $24.99 ($30.49 billed monthly)
Standard, $12, timeline and calendar views
Third tier
None (jumps to Enterprise)
Pro, $19, private boards and time tracking
Top tier
Enterprise, quote only
Enterprise, quote only
Prices checked on the vendor sites July 16, 2026. monday.com bills by seat and displays annual pricing by default; its own page marks the annual rate as an 18 percent discount against monthly billing.
Feature limits, side by side
Asana
monday.com
Timeline / Gantt view
Starter and up
Standard and up
Automations
Unlimited from Starter
250 actions/mo Standard, 25,000/mo Pro
Integration actions
Native integrations, no metered cap
250/mo Standard, 25,000/mo Pro
Portfolios
Advanced and up, unlimited
Enterprise (portfolio management)
Workload / capacity
Advanced and up
Enterprise (resource management)
Time tracking
Advanced and up
Pro and up
Approvals and proofing
Advanced and up
Not a core feature at mid tiers
API calls
Rate limits by tier, not seat-metered
1,000/day Standard, 10,000/day Pro
AI included
AI Studio Basic, 50K credits (Starter)
1,000 to 3,000 AI credits/mo by tier
SAML SSO
Enterprise
Enterprise
What Asana does well, and where it costs you
Asana treats a project as a system: tasks with owners, dependencies that shift dates, portfolios that roll ten projects into one status view. The free Personal plan now covers only 2 users, so real teams start at Starter, $10.99 a user each month on annual billing. Starter carries timeline views, dashboards, forms, and unlimited automations, which is generous next to monday.com metering automations by action count.
The catch is that the features managers actually buy Asana for, portfolios, workload, approvals, time tracking, all sit in Advanced at $24.99. A 15-person team on Advanced runs about $4,500 a year. Pay it if dependency chains and capacity planning are your daily reality. Skip it if your projects are lists with dates.
Pros
Unlimited automations from the first paid tier
Dependencies, portfolios, and workload views built for real project structure
Clean reporting dashboards
Forms and intake included at Starter
Cons
Free plan capped at 2 users
Portfolios and workload locked behind $24.99 Advanced
monday.com starts from boards: rows, columns, and colors that any department can read at a glance. Basic at $9 a seat is one of the cheapest entries among the big names, and Standard at $12 adds the timeline, Gantt, and calendar views most teams actually need. The platform stretches into CRM, dev, and service editions sold separately, which is why you see whole companies standardize on it.
The metering is the thing to model before you buy. Standard includes 250 automation actions and 250 integration actions a month, and a busy 20-person board burns that in days. Pro raises the pool to 25,000 actions at $19 a seat, and Enterprise raises it to 250,000. If your workflows lean hard on automation, price Pro from the start, not Standard.
Pros
$9 entry price undercuts Asana
Boards flex into CRM, content, sprint, and ops use
Fast for non-technical teams to adopt
Timeline and Gantt arrive at the $12 tier
Dashboards across boards
Cons
Automation and integration actions are metered until Pro
Portfolio and resource management sit at Enterprise
API calls capped per day by tier
Deep task dependencies are weaker than Asana's
Pricing head to head at team sizes
At 10 seats on annual billing: monday.com Basic $1,080 a year, Standard $1,440, Pro $2,280. Asana Starter $1,319, Advanced $2,999. At 25 seats: monday.com Standard $3,600 versus Asana Starter $3,297, and monday.com Pro $5,700 versus Asana Advanced $7,497. The pattern holds at most sizes. Comparable tiers run cheaper on monday.com, and the gap widens at the tier managers usually want.
The exception is automation-heavy small teams. Asana Starter includes unlimited automations at $10.99 while monday.com wants $19 Pro before the action pool stops being a constraint. A 5-person team living on automated handoffs can be cheaper on Asana.
Who should choose Asana
Teams whose projects have real interdependence: launches with 40 tasks across 5 owners, agencies juggling client portfolios, ops groups that need workload balancing before someone burns out. Asana Advanced is built for exactly that buyer, and the reporting holds up in front of executives. Pair the seat math with our SaaS cost calculators if you are pricing a rollout.
Who should choose monday.com
Teams that want one visual system for mixed work: marketing calendars, simple sprints, hiring pipelines, event plans. Also price-sensitive teams of 2 to 15, where $9 to $12 a seat covers everything needed and the automation meter stays comfortable. If you outgrow it, the Pro tier is still cheaper than Asana Advanced.
How to run a fair trial
Rebuild one real project in each tool for two weeks, with the actual team, not a champion. Count clicks to answer three questions a manager asks weekly: what is late, who is overloaded, what ships next week. Then check the automation counter on monday.com against your burn rate. That single number decides more of these purchases than any feature list.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Asana or monday.com cheaper?
monday.com is cheaper at comparable tiers on published pricing: $9 and $12 a seat against Asana at $10.99 and $24.99, billed annually. The exception is automation-heavy small teams, since Asana includes unlimited automations from its first paid tier while monday.com meters actions until the $19 Pro plan.
Does monday.com have a good free plan?
It covers 2 seats, 3 boards, and 3 docs, which works for personal use or a first test. Asana's free plan also caps at 2 users but allows unlimited projects and tasks. Neither free tier fits a real team anymore.
Which is better for marketing teams?
Usually monday.com. Content calendars, campaign boards, and intake flows map naturally to its board model, and non-PM colleagues read it without training. Asana wins when campaigns have long dependency chains and shared resources.
Which is better for software teams?
Neither is a Jira replacement for heavy engineering process. monday.com sells a separate dev edition from $9 a seat, and Asana handles sprint-like work with sections and custom fields. For mixed product and business teams, both work; pure dev shops usually look elsewhere.
How do the automation limits actually compare?
Asana includes unlimited automations starting at Starter ($10.99). monday.com includes 250 automation actions a month on Standard and 25,000 on Pro, where every triggered action counts against the pool. Busy boards exhaust 250 fast, so automation-reliant teams should price monday.com Pro, not Standard.
Do Asana and monday.com both include AI now?
Yes, metered by credits. Asana bundles AI Studio Basic with 50K credits a month at Starter tier, rising by plan. monday.com includes 1,000 credits on Basic, 2,000 on Standard, and 3,000 on Pro. Both sell more credits when you run out.
What do the enterprise tiers add?
SAML SSO and SCIM provisioning on both, plus Asana's capacity planning and view-only licenses, and monday.com's 250,000 monthly actions, portfolio management, and 24/7 support. Both are quote-only, so model seats and automation volume before the call.
Can I switch from one to the other later?
Yes, and teams do it in both directions. Both offer CSV export and importers for the other tool. Board structures move cleanly; automations, dashboards, and permissions have to be rebuilt by hand, which is the real switching cost.
