monday.com vs. Asana

Figuring out the best tool for project management starts with narrowing your options. That’s why, in this comparison article, we’ll look at monday.com vs Asana.
Both tools’ core philosophy is to manage tasks, teams, and projects while improving productivity, communication, and decision-making. However, monday.com and Asana differ in their approach, where monday.com focuses on ease of use, which is ideal for smaller teams, whereas Asana focuses on features aimed at larger teams.

In this comparison review, we’ll examine Asana and monday.com and see which best meets your needs based on adaptability (how easy it is for your team to adapt the software), team size, and project type. We’ll also consider features, integration, ease of use, pricing, and customer support. Let’s get started.

monday.com vs Asana – which project management tool should you choose?

Choosing between monday.com and Asana is a matter of preference. Both of them are excellent project management software that focuses on getting things done with features that let you manage tasks, generate reports, and organize projects. Both improve decision-making while ensuring ease of use.

So, to pick the right software, you must look at the integrations offered, pricing, ability to adapt, and project type.

monday.com launched commercially in 2014 (with the daPulse name), with headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel. It quickly gained popularity with sustainable growth, now serving 225K+ customers across 200+ countries, with revenue of $717 million in 2023 (37% year-over-year growth).

Asana was founded in 2012 and has its headquarters in San Francisco, US. Its revenue is $652 million, growing 19% year over year, and it is expected to reach $716 million in 2025.

To get a better understanding, let’s go through their key features below.

monday.com vs Asana: Key Features

To successfully manage day-to-day or weekly actions, you need task management. Task management deals with the short-term goals of a project (hence, it differs from project management).

Both Asana and monday.com come with proper task management features.
On monday.com, you can create efficient task management with a to-do list. This enables you to avoid “task paralysis,” i.e., getting overwhelmed with the number and complexity of tasks. Each task can be assigned and has dependencies to ensure optimal output.

monday.com lets you visualize everything in one place, making it easy to organize your workspace. It also supports multiple views such as a Gantt chart, Kanban board, Timeline, Calendar, etc., enabling you to better understand your tasks and projects without the need to have multiple copies of the same task or data. Yes, you can switch between the views to get a better understanding of tasks.

However, changing from one view to another requires some column data, such as the timeline and dependency column, to show the Gantt chart correctly.

Each view offers easy search and the ability to filter by person or other aspects such as date, status, etc. You can also sort the board by column or hide columns. To improve readability, you can change item height and conditional color grading for visual task status updates.

You also get features such as Daily Task Manager, which helps managers manage daily tasks and improve time management and goals.

Asana offers similar task management features, including the ability to create tasks, assign them, filter them, and display them using different views such as Timeline, Calendar, Board, etc. You can invite members to projects and add project roles for efficient task management. Each task can have detailed information, including due dates, goal setting, priority, etc.

Some of the notable Asana task management features include:

Both Asana and monday.com offer task automation and integrations (which we discuss in detail in the automation and integration section, respectively).

Overall, I found monday.com to offer a less cluttered and more streamlined task management system. Its ease of use makes it a great tool. Asana also has extensive task management features, making it ideal for teams that need more granular control over tasks.

monday.com offers decent task management features with its free plan, but not all. Paid plan offers all task management features.
Asana also limits task management features on the free plan. Paid plan offers all task management features.

monday.com and Asana both offer excellent workflow management, improving end-to-end processes through dependencies and specific sequences of activities.
monday.com supports popular workflow management tools, including Kanban, Gantt, and Calendar. You can also utilize organizational project templates to customize workflow management, such as sales and CRM, design, elevate, etc.

You also get templates based on industries such as Education, Real Estate, and Construction and for business types such as freelancers, startups, non-profits, and real estate. Each of these templates supports appropriate integrations for optimal use.

For example, I used its Customer Request template to manage clients and handle any client requests. It also supports automation, so you can automate incoming client requests.

Asana also offers capable workflow management features that allow teams to work towards the same goal with efficient tracking and completion. For example, you can use Asana workflow management capability in marketing campaigns, sales pipeline, new hire onboarding, product roadmaps, and so on.

Like monday.com, Asana also supports primary workflow management tools such as Gantt, Kanban, Calendar, etc. It also supports templates so that you can quickly set up a workflow for different use cases, including software development, employee engagement, etc. For example, its Sprint planning template lets agile teams execute sprints.

In short, both offer excellent workflow management with access to templates, dependency-based views, automation, and time-tracking capabilities.

Paid plan offers access to all features.

Managing your organization through Asana and monday.com can be challenging. Learning about the tool at hand is required to ensure optimal team handling. Asana lets you manage an organization with extensive control over teams, projects, and tasks. Its detailed guide covers everything in detail.

If you’re new to Asana, you can also use pre-made organizational planning templates such as the “Team Gaols Planning Template” or “Operations Project Plan Template.”

monday.com offers more straightforward yet effective organization management. It provides a Teams page where you can view and manage your team. In an organization, the manager can create multiple teams and assign team leaders as well. It is also easy to add members or invite new users for onboarding.

Asana and monday.com supports portfolio management so that you can have a collective view of the projects, their resources, performance, and risks without needing to shuffle between projects.

Asana’s portfolio management is an effective way to learn about each project status by simply zooming out of day-to-day tasks. It also offers a mission control center that lists all the projects and helps collaborate across teams. The mission control lets you quickly build a portfolio, streamline reporting, and monitor projects in real-time. With a clear view, you can manage risks and get updates from project managers.

monday.com also offers a dedicated portfolio management board with relevant views, settings, columns, and more. Here, you get two customizable parts, including:
Portfolio board: gives you a high-level view of all projects in your portfolio.
Project board: helps you manage low-level details of all connected projects.

When it comes to integrations, there is no clear winner. Both Asana and monday.com offer a good collection of integration options, including Gmail, Outlook, GitLab, MailChimp, etc.

These integrations open up a better way to use project management tools such as Asana and monday.com. If you set up integrations correctly, you can see improved productivity and accuracy. It also helps centralize data and makes your choice of project management tool more resourceful and automated.

monday.com supports more than 200+ integrations and apps across different categories, including communication (Slack, Gmail, Outlook), Collaboration (Zoom, Google Drive, Calendar, OneDrive), Marketing (MailChimp, SuperMail), CRM and finance (DocuSign, QuickBooks), and Development (GitLab, GitHub, Open AI).

However, the free plan doesn’t offer any integrations or automation. So, if you want to use these integrations, you must get a paid plan. Also, not all integrations are free, as you need to pay additional costs based on your requirements. On the brighter side, monday.com integrations can be set up and used smoothly as they extend monday.com’s native functionality.

Asana, on the other hand, houses 270+ integrations similar to monday.com. It offers access to popular integration options such as Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. Like monday.com, it has free and paid integration options.

Both monday.com and Asana offer API access. This allows you to add integrations for systems that are not natively supported. Moreover, you can use the APIs to work with Zapier and Make automation platforms, enabling you to create complex automation workflow.

Overall, I found both platforms to offer similar value when it comes to integration for smaller teams. However, for larger teams, Asana is the right pick as it doesn’t limit integration use based on plans. monday.com limits 250 integration actions per month in its Standard plan, whereas the Pro plan goes up to 25,000. Needless to say, teams that rely heavily on integration can see a huge jump in cost if they opt for monday.com, which they can avoid if they choose Asana.

When it comes to analytics and reporting, monday.com shines. It supports both basic and advanced reporting with the use of formulas that you can apply to columns. This way, you can quickly run formulas to get an update on what’s happening, such as the budget left for each department.

You also get advanced board filters that help you narrow down your data. As for visualization, you get chart views, which let you gain insights from raw data. Additionally, monday.com offers dynamic dashboards and a Search Everything feature so that you can find anything you want!

monday.com takes reporting to another level with its advanced reporting offering features such as:

For analytics, monday.com offers mondayDB, a secure infrastructure solution that lets you work with large datasets.

Asana’s outlook on analytics and reporting is basic. With Asana, you can create a sharable reporting dashboard (up to 20 customer charts) with access to six data visualization charts, including bar charts, burnup charts, lollipop charts, numbers, line graphs, and donut charts. You can pull data from goals, tasks, or projects and visualize data. Also, it supports data filtering.

As for analytics, Asana offers exciting features, including a customizable Goals Dashboard with goal tracking.

Overall, I like monday.com’s analytics and reporting features. It has plenty of options with both basic and advanced features. Furthermore, it also offers excellent analytics features. Asana is limited but is ideal for most teams. If you want, you can always connect BI tools such as Power BI to improve visualization and reporting.

Both monday.com and Asana support automation, which directly impacts task management and workflow management.

monday.com offers a no-code workflow builder that automates repetitive tasks and streamlines any work process, such as Sales, HR, IT, and PMO. It also enables managers to create cross-team workflows and easily integrate third-party apps, such as Gmail, Outlook, etc.

Asana also excels at automation. It offers one of the best automation tools, which lets you create a complex workflow with ease. You can start with templates and quickly customize them to meet your requirements using rules. It additionally offers forms to standardize work requests. Furthermore, you also get bundles that let you create, apply, and update processes across projects. Like monday.com, you can also connect third-party solutions with over 270+ apps.

So, which one do you pick if your business relies heavily on automation?

For large businesses, Asana is the right pick as it doesn’t limit the number of automation. In contrast, monday.com limits automation to 250 per month for the Standard plan and 25,000 actions per month for the Pro plan. However, if you need a lower barrier to entry for automation, monday.com’s Standard plan is the right pick ($12 per seat per month). For Asana, you need to get its Advanced plan, which starts at $24.99 per seat per month.

Both Asana and monday.com are developed with collaboration at their core. You can swiftly collaborate with team members working on your project. The focus is to assimilate information so that it is easy to collaborate and talk about stuff without losing context.

Both these project management tools offer the ability to share files, coordinate work (determine milestones and task dependencies), schedule tasks using Calendars, and communicate through in-built messaging, email apps, or using third-party communication tools such as Skype or Slack (through integration).

Managers can easily invite team members and assign them to projects. You can also tag others, ask for information, or delegate a task if needed.

There is no doubt that if you’re trying to incorporate Asana or monday.com into your organization, you need to know its ease of use.

Based on these criteria, monday.com is a clear winner because of its target audience. monday.com mainly targets small to medium-scale businesses. That’s why most of its features are fine-tuned for easy adoption without any steep learning curve.

monday.com follows a simple structural hierarchy, which makes managing projects and teams easier.

Asana, on the other hand, offers advanced features that make it ideal for large or enterprise teams, making the learning curve steep. However, this doesn’t mean that Asana lacks ease of use. But, it does mean that it takes time and effort to get used to Asana, which makes it much easier to get accustomed to monday.com.

Asana also follows a clever hierarchy that instills communication and efficiency.

monday.com vs Asana: Other Aspects to Consider

Both monday.com and Asana support native time-tracking.

monday.com allows you to use the Time Tracking Column making it available for each task and subitems. To add, click on the + icon on your board (top right) and then more columns. From the list of columns, choose Time Tracking and click on “Add to board.” Once the timer is added, it can be started or stopped at any time.

It also supports manual time addition. All the logged time can be accessed through tracking log history, which can be summarized using formulas as well. If you want detailed analytics, you can also export the Time Tracking Column to Excel.

Asana offers a better native time tracking functionality with the option to add time manually. To activate, go to Customize (top right) corner > select Time tracking. To manage time, you can set custom fields, including actual time and estimated time, to help better manage time and understand how much time the assignee is taking to complete the task.

monday.com offers time tracking capability in Pro and Enterprise plans.
Asana offers this feature on Advanced Enterprise and Enterprise+ tiers only.

AI is deeply integrated with monday.com and Asana. It enables executives and team members to use these platforms smartly.

monday.com provides AI automation through action blocks, which let you do things like categorization, summarizing, and improving text. You can also build an automated recipe that is entirely customizable through “custom block by AI.” Additionally, you can also take advantage of monday.com AI native apps that let you do various tasks, such as:

Additionally, you can use AI on your columns via Monday AI Columns, which gives you the ability to use AI across any board.

Asana, on the other hand, showcases similar AI capabilities but still needs to offer something substantial (at the time of writing). Currently, they offer:

In short, I found monday.com to fare better than Asana. Both offer decent AI implementation to help user fasten their work with promising updates to come.

To improve workflow, you need templates. Both monday.com and Asana offer templates to strengthen plans and projects, giving teams the tools to start projects quickly or manage them systematically.

Both offer a good collection of templates, including featured categories such as marketing, employee engagement, design, project planning, etc.
Asana offers 80+ ready-made templates, whereas monday.com provides a collection of 200+ templates.

monday.com offers 24/7 customer support through live chat, email, and phone calls. Additionally, you can also get help from its community forum or help yourself by browsing its knowledge base.

Asana, on the other hand, offers support via email and chat. They don’t provide phone support. However, you get access to an excellent knowledge base full of written tutorials, use cases, and videos.

monday.com vs Asana: Cost Analysis

monday.com and Asana follow similar pricing models with free plans available by both.

monday.com free plan lets team members (2 members max) work up to 3 boards with limitations of 200 items. It offers an increment of 100 items for every person you refer to their platform (a pretty clever marketing tactic). However, I found it very limited during my usage, as I hit 200 items after a few days as a freelancer. For organizations, the 200-item limit can be more limiting. Apart from that, the free versions limit views, such as you cannot use the Gantt view or calendar view.

I found Asana less restrictive. The free version is available for up to 10 workers and allows you to create unlimited projects, activity logs, tasks, comments, and storage. The free plan also offers basic customer support. Overall, I found the Asana free plan a better way to learn about the platform. Small teams can use Asana to good effect before moving to a paid plan.

The basic plan starts at $9 per seat per month and offers unlimited items, boards, and 200+ templates.

The standard plan starts at $12 per seat per month. It includes everything in the basic plan plus access to automation (250 actions per month) and integrations (250 actions per month). It also offers access to Timeline, Gantt, and Calendar views.

Pro plan starts at $19 per seat per month and offers everything in the Standard edition plus access to features such as private boards, time tracking, chart view, and Formula column. You also get increased automation and integrations (25,000 actions per month each).

Both monday.com and Asana offer enterprise plans with enterprise-focused features and integration. They also offer mobile apps.

monday.com is cheaper compared to Asana, but you must have 3 minimum seats for monday.com. There is no such minimum seat limitation for Asana.

Alternatives to monday.com and Asana

There are many alternatives to monday.com and Asana, including Clickup, Trello, and Smartsheet.

monday.com vs. Asana – Final Conclusion

So, which one should you choose: monday.com or Asana? Well, it depends on your requirements. Both have similar features. However, your final choice should depend on your budget, your team’s ability to adapt, and the project type.

If you’re a small team that wants better accessibility, less learning curve, and overall better task management and collaboration, then monday.com is the better choice. However, if you want to manage a large-scale project with deep task management capabilities, then Asana can work better.

Both solutions offer excellent task and workflow management. You also get top-notch organizational management. However, what impresses me is monday.com’s WorkOS, which improves cross-departmental workflow and provides an impressive ecosystem of integrations and automation.