Project management · projects, portfolios and goals

Asana logo, project management software

Asana

last verified ·tracked since ·reviewed byOleh KemOleh Kem

Asana is a work management platform that Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein founded in 2008, built around a shared store of tasks, projects, portfolios and goals the vendor calls the Work Graph. As of , Asana costs $13.49 per user a month on Starter and $30.49 on Advanced, with Enterprise and Enterprise+ quoted on request.

Price chart of the project management category from 6 dollars to 30 dollars 49 a month, plotted on a linear price axis. Markers: Trello at 6, Todoist at 7, Nifty at 7, Hive at 7.50, ClickUp at 10, Basecamp at 15. A dashed line crosses at the 10 dollars category median. Asana holds the range from 13 dollars 49 to 30 dollars 49 with two tier posts at 13.49, 30.49 dollars.

the $10 median
Asana range
$13.49 to $30.49
Trello$6/moTrelloTrello STANDARD$6/mo-$7.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 8, 2026See live pricingOfficial Trello siteTodoist$7/moTodoistTodoist Pro$7/mo-$6.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 8, 2026See live pricingOfficial Todoist siteNifty$7/moNiftyNifty Personal$7/mo-$6.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 16, 2026See live pricingOfficial Nifty siteHive$7.50/moHiveHive Starter$7.50/mo-$5.99 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 16, 2026See live pricingOfficial Hive siteClickUp$10/moClickUpClickUp Unlimited$10/mo-$3.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 8, 2026See live pricingOfficial ClickUp siteBasecamp$15/moBasecampBasecamp Pro$15/mo+$1.51 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 16, 2026See live pricingOfficial Basecamp site
$6$30.49Scale: entry prices plotted linearly, monthly rates in USD · hover a rival mark for its reading, or tap it to jump to its comparison
$6$30.49
the $10 median
Trello$6/moTrelloTrello STANDARD$6/mo-$7.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 8, 2026See live pricingOfficial Trello siteTodoist$7/moTodoistTodoist Pro$7/mo-$6.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 8, 2026See live pricingOfficial Todoist siteNifty$7/moNiftyNifty Personal$7/mo-$6.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 16, 2026See live pricingOfficial Nifty siteHive$7.50/moHiveHive Starter$7.50/mo-$5.99 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 16, 2026See live pricingOfficial Hive siteClickUp$10/moClickUpClickUp Unlimited$10/mo-$3.49 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 8, 2026See live pricingOfficial ClickUp siteBasecamp$15/moBasecampBasecamp Pro$15/mo+$1.51 vs the $13.49 entrychecked Jul 16, 2026See live pricingOfficial Basecamp site
Scale: linear, USD/mo
§ 01 · the essentialsThe product

What is Asana: projects, portfolios and AI Teammates on one work graph

Tasks, projects, portfolios and goals in one store, with agents alongside people

Asana is work management software that Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein founded in 2008, built on a store the vendor calls the Work Graph. A task carries an assignee, a due date, subtasks, dependencies, followers and fields you define, and it sits in several projects without being copied. Projects render as a list, a board, a calendar or a timeline, portfolios group them, and goals sit above those. Paying opens the views that answer scheduling and reporting: Timeline and dashboards first, then portfolios, Goals and Workload. The top of the published lineup adds single sign-on, provisioning and view-only licences.

Read what the company shipped this year and the direction is plain. An AI Teammate here is not a chat panel bolted to a task list: it holds a role, takes assignments like a colleague, and sees exactly what the person who authorised it sees.

The recordVendor pages and developer docs, checked August 2026
Maker
Asana, Inc.Public company, NYSE and LTSE ticker ASAN
Founded
2008Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein
Data model
Work GraphTasks, projects, portfolios, goals, teams, people, agents
Customers
170,000+ organizationsVendor's own figure on its product page
Free plan
2 usersUnlimited tasks and projects, 100 MB per file
Entry rate
$13.49 a userStarter monthly, $10.99 on annual billing
Published ceiling
$30.49 a userAdvanced; two tiers above it are quote only
Agent access
27 MCP tools18 read, 6 write, 3 with a confirmation step

The lineup is Personal, Starter, Advanced, Enterprise and Enterprise+, and what separates them is which views and controls you get, not how many tasks you may create. See every plan and what each step buys.

§ 02 · features12 capabilities × 2 plans

Asana features by plan: Timeline, dashboards, rules, Goals and Workload

Timeline, dashboards, forms and rules, then portfolios, Goals and Workload

One product, one data store, and a widening set of ways to look at it. Everything below is a view or a control over the same tasks, which is why turning one on never means re-entering work.

The views split into two jobs. Scheduling asks when something happens and what blocks it, and that is Timeline with its dependency arrows and its critical path. Reporting asks whether a body of work is healthy, and that is dashboards, portfolios and Goals. Teams usually discover which half they need the first time somebody senior asks a question the current view cannot answer.

Declared capacityVendor plan tables, checked August 2026
Seats
Unlimited from StarterFree stops at two users
Tasks and projects
Unlimited on every planIncluding Personal
Guests
Free and unlimitedFrom Starter up
File size
100 MB per fileStorage itself is unlimited
What each plan opens12 capabilities · 2 plans · 24 cells · 5 numbered quotas
Capability ↓ · plan →Starter
$13.49/mo
$10.99 annual
Advanced
$30.49/mo
$24.99 annual
Row 01See the scheduleTimeline and Ganttdependency arrows and critical path, the view that catches a slip earlyyesTimeline and Ganttyesplus critical path
Row 02Report on progressdashboardscharts read from live tasks, not a copied status slideyesdashboardsyesadvanced reporting
Row 03Roll work up to goalsGoals and portfoliosprojects into portfolios, portfolios onto objectivesnounlimitedportfolios and Goals
Row 04Balance who is overloadedWorkloadcommitted effort per person; universal view waits for Enterprisenoyesby portfolio
Row 05Approve creative workproofingcomments pinned to a point on the image, with sign-offnoyesapprovals and proofing
Row 06Automate the repetitive partrules and AI Studiorules are unlimited; AI Studio adds the judgement steps50Kcredits a month75Kcredits a month
Row 07Collect requestsformsa form fills the fields so the task arrives completeyesforms and rulesyesbranching forms
Row 08Bring clients inguestsguests comment and approve without taking a seatfreeunlimited guestsfreeunlimited guests
Row 09Track time against budgetTimesheets and Budgetshours recorded on the task they belong toadd-on$5.99 a userbuilt intime tracking
Row 10Let agents do the workAI Teammates and MCPan agent holds a role and takes assignments like a colleagueyesMCP and AI StudioyesMCP and AI Studio
Row 11Call the API hardrate limitsrequests a minute per token, before the traversal cost applies1,500a minute1,500a minute
Row 12Connect the identity providerSAML and SCIMjoiners and leavers handled by your identity systemnonoEnterprise only
readingHover or tap any cell for its quota, its tier rate and what it means for the bill
every column includes exactly 1 user · full disclosure: 2 of 2 tiers priced

Read down a column to price a team, across a row to find the tier a capability starts on

everywhere

On every plan: tasks, dependencies, and three ways to look at them

Unlimited tasks and projects, with subtasks, dependencies, followers and comments on each one. The same project renders as a list, a kanban board or a calendar. Files attach up to 100 MB each, storage is not capped, and over a hundred integrations connect the usual tools. For one person or a pair this is a complete product, not a preview.

starter

From Starter: Timeline, dashboards, forms, rules and free guests

Timeline draws the project against dates and shows what blocks what, which is the view that makes a slipped dependency visible before it moves the launch. Dashboards chart live project data instead of a copied status slide. Forms capture requests with your own fields. Rules automate the repetitive handling, unlimited of them. Guests join free, so clients and contractors comment without a seat. AI Studio also opens here for building workflows without code.

advanced

From Advanced: portfolios, Goals, Workload, approvals and formulas

Portfolios group projects and roll their status up; Goals attach those portfolios to objectives, so progress reporting stops being assembled by hand. Workload shows committed effort per person across a portfolio. Approvals and proofing add sign-off, including comments pinned to a point on an image, which is how creative teams close a review. Formulas compute custom fields, time tracking records hours on the task itself, and branching forms ask different questions by answer.

enterprise

On Enterprise: identity, provisioning, service accounts and view-only seats

SAML for single sign-on and SCIM so joiners and leavers are handled by your identity provider rather than by an admin. Service accounts let integrations act without a human owner who might leave. Universal Workload and capacity planning widen the resourcing view past a single portfolio. View-only licences cover the people who read dashboards but never touch the work, and guest invitation controls decide who may bring outsiders in.

Rules replace the weekly triage meeting

Pick a trigger, an event on a task or a change to a field, then attach actions: move it to a section, set the assignee, add a follower, shift a date, post to Slack. Four or five rules usually absorb the recurring conversation about who picks up what.

Forms make requests arrive complete

Someone outside the team fills in the fields you defined, and the submission lands as a task in the right section with those fields populated. On Advanced the form branches, so a bug report and a design request ask different questions and still arrive in one queue.

Workload answers who cannot take any more

Each person shows as a column of committed effort across the projects in a portfolio, counted in tasks or in a numeric field such as hours. It answers the question a delivery lead actually has, which is not what is due this week but who is already full.

Free is a working product for one or two people rather than a trial that expires. It has unlimited tasks and projects, three views and integrations, and it stops hard at two users.

§ 03 · plan limitsWhere it stops

Asana limits: no burndown, Workload by portfolio, pooled AI credits

Sprint metrics absent, Workload bounded, AI credits shared by the account

The headline numbers are generous: unlimited tasks, unlimited projects, unlimited storage. The ceilings that matter are functional, and four of them decide whether a team can actually run its process here.

No velocity, no burndown, at any tier

Not built

Asana plans work as tasks and dates, not as points in a sprint. There is no velocity chart, no burndown, no sprint report at any price, and no add-on from the vendor that adds them. Engineering teams that run scrum either accept a different rhythm here or keep Jira for the sprint and use Asana for everything around it.

Workload is bounded by the portfolio it reads

Per portfolio

On Advanced, Workload shows committed effort for the people inside one portfolio. A person who also carries work in a portfolio you did not open still looks free. The universal view that reads across the whole organisation, and capacity planning with it, sit on Enterprise.

AI credits belong to the account, not the person

50K, 75K, 200K

AI Studio Basic draws from a monthly pool: 50,000 credits on Starter, 75,000 on Advanced, 200,000 on Enterprise, counted per billing account. Ten people and a hundred people on the same tier share the same allowance, so a workflow that fires on every incoming request is the one to watch.

The free plan stops at two editors

2 users

Personal never expires and carries unlimited tasks, projects and storage, so it is a working tool rather than a trial. What it will not do is admit a third editor at any price. Guests are not a way round it either, because free guests start at Starter.

The API is metered by how far a request walks the graph

150 vs 1,500

A free domain allows 150 requests a minute and a paid one 1,500, per token, with search capped at 60 and five export runs at once. Beyond the count, each call is priced by traversal: a task name is cheap, while every task in a project with assignees, followers, custom fields and reactions can follow thousands of links and exhaust the quota on its own.

Seats are also sold in fixed steps, one at a time to five users, then in fives to thirty, tens to a hundred, twenty fives to five hundred. It is the only limit on this list that is purely arithmetic, and it is the one people forget at renewal.

Rates above are per user a month. Annual billing brings Starter to $10.99 and takes roughly 18 percent off both paid tiers, and tax is added on top per local law.

§ 04 · add-onsSold apart

Timesheets, AI Teammates and Compliance: what Asana sells apart

Timesheets and Budgets, AI Teammates, Compliance and Permissions management

Four capabilities sit outside the plan you buy. Each answers a job the base product deliberately leaves alone, and it is worth knowing what they do before deciding whether you need them.

Timesheets and Budgets$5.99per user a month, billed annually

Hours and cost recorded on the work itself

Timesheets turn logged hours into a weekly sheet a person submits, and Budgets hold the money side of the project: an estimate, the burn against it, and the rate that converts one into the other. Because both live on the same tasks as the delivery, a project manager sees effort and remaining budget in the view where the work is planned rather than in an export. Agencies use it to bill; internal teams use it to prove where capacity went.

without itYou track hours in a separate tool and reconcile at month end. That is the usual reason an Asana team also runs Everhour or Harvest, and the reconciliation is manual either way.

AI TeammatesContact salesStarter and above

Agents that hold a role and can be assigned work

AI Teammates are named agents with a defined remit: triage incoming requests, write a status update from what changed this week, chase missing fields, summarise a thread into next actions. Thirty ship prebuilt for marketing, operations and IT, and a Skills library holds the repeatable procedures they follow. They read the same projects your team does, take work through the normal assignment flow, and connect out to Gmail, Outlook, Slack, HubSpot, Figma and Canva. Industry versions exist for manufacturing and retail.

without itAI Studio still automates the deterministic work on your tier. The judgement layer is what stays missing: something that reads a messy request and decides where it belongs instead of following a rule you wrote in advance.

Compliance managementContact salesEnterprise plans

Evidence of who did what, kept and exportable

Detailed audit logs record account and content events, network level rules restrict where the product can be reached from, and the data preservation tooling holds and exports records for legal obligations. This is the package a security team asks for when Asana holds work that ends up in a regulated process or a dispute.

without itAudit log events are readable through the API, so you can build a feed. Retention, enforcement and defensible export are the parts you would be building yourself.

Permissions managementContact salesEnterprise plans

Access shaped like the organisation

Roles defined once and applied across projects, control over which third-party apps may connect, rules for guest and device access, and enforcement of content sharing so a project cannot be made public by an enthusiastic member. It replaces per-project permission fiddling with a policy an admin sets in one place.

without itPermissions still work project by project. At a few hundred people, keeping them consistent quietly becomes somebody full-time job.

Only the first of the four is something a team can switch on by itself. The other three are bought through a conversation, which tells you which buyer the vendor built them for.

§ 05 · the extension economyThe app directory

Everhour, Instagantt and Flowsana: what the App Directory adds

Time tracking, Gantt baselines and scheduled automation from other makers

The App Directory lists 556 apps, counted on 8 August 2026, and almost none are written by Asana. They exist because the base product deliberately stops at certain lines: it does not track time by default, it does not draw a real Gantt with baselines, and its automation follows rules rather than schedules. Independent developers fill exactly those gaps, using the public API and app components that render their own screens inside a task.

Free to installBilled by the maker
Writes itAn independent developer, working against the public API and app components
Lists itAsana, through the App Directory and the partner tiers Strategic, Premier and Platform
Runs itThe developer's own service, reached from inside your projects and tasks
Bills youThe developer, on their own terms, with no line on your Asana invoice
EverhourTime tracking on the task
from $8.50 a seat

Adds a start and stop timer inside the Asana task itself, then reports hours by person, project and client, with budgets and invoicing on top. Teams reach for it when they bill by the hour and do not want a second place to type what they did.

InstaganttGantt charts with baselines
from $10 a month

Draws your projects as a full Gantt: every dependency type, milestones, baselines to compare planned against actual, critical path and a workload view. It goes further than Timeline, which is why construction and agency planners use it alongside Asana rather than instead of it.

FlowsanaAutomation Asana rules do not cover
from $4.99 a user

Shifts dates automatically when a dependency moves, runs recurring workflows on a schedule, and applies rules across a whole project rather than per task. It is the answer when your process is a template that must reschedule itself.

The directory is a good sign and a warning at once. Whatever your team does, something in it connects; and the moment your process needs baselines, hourly billing or scheduled automation, the real cost of running Asana includes somebody else products.

§ 06 · data accessIn and out

Asana data access: REST API, webhooks, SCIM and graph exports

REST API, webhooks, SCIM, audit log events and graph exports

Asana treats the graph as something other systems are expected to read and write. The REST API is the main door, and the vendor documents the quotas rather than hiding them.

Your systems→The work graph150 requests a minute free, 1,500 paidFree and up

Per authorization token, with a 429 and a Retry-After header when you exceed it. Official client libraries wait and retry on their own. Search is separately capped at 60 a minute.

The work graph→Your warehouseFive export runs at once, per userFree and up

Graph exports, project status exports and CSV. That ceiling counts work started in the web app too, so a colleague duplicating a large project competes with your export.

User accounts←Your identity providerSCIM provisioningEnterprise

Automated joiners and leavers alongside SAML. On lower tiers you add and remove people by hand, which is the honest reason large companies end up on a quote.

Task and project events→Your listenerWebhooks and audit log eventsFree and up for webhooks

Webhooks push changes as they happen instead of making you poll. Audit log events cover who did what, and the retention tooling around them is what Compliance management sells.

Tasks and rules←Your own codeApp components and script actionsFree and up

Custom interfaces rendered inside a task or a rule, plus scripted actions. This is how the directory apps put their own screens in front of your team without leaving Asana.

One quota is unusual enough to plan around. Beyond the request count, Asana prices a call by how far it has to walk the graph: asking for a task name is cheap, asking for every task in a project with assignees, followers, custom fields and reactions can follow thousands of links and eat the budget. Fetch narrow fields and page through, and the ceiling stops mattering.

§ 07 · ai and agentsAgents

Asana AI: AI Teammates, AI Studio, Dash and the MCP server for agents

AI Teammates, AI Studio credits, Asana Dash and 27 tools over MCP

This is the part of Asana that changed most in 2026, and the part worth judging the product on. The vendor groups four things under Agentic Work Management: AI Teammates, AI Studio, Asana Dash and the connectors that let an outside assistant reach the graph. The framing behind it is the vendor's own: it cites 75 percent of knowledge workers using AI at work against 5 percent of companies reporting real productivity gains, and blames four things, including that agents are hard to govern and arrive without any context about how a team works.

In Claude or ChatGPTMCP server

Find all my incomplete tasks due this week

The assistant calls one of 18 read tools on the hosted server at mcp.asana.com and answers from your live projects. Eighteen read, six write, three that show a confirmation screen first.

It cannot reach a project you could not already open. Authorising a client asks for every tool, then inherits your own permissions and nothing wider.

In Claude or ChatGPTInteractive tools

Create a project to manage our Q4 product launch

The project is proposed for review first, with sections, tasks, assignees and dates laid out before anything is written. Confirmation screens exist only in these two clients.

Other MCP clients skip the review step and call the write tools directly, so a mistake lands in the workspace instead of on screen.

In the admin consoleAI Studio

Enable AI Studio for this domain

Builders can assemble intake, routing and status workflows without code, drawing on the account credit pool that comes with the tier.

Nobody can build until an admin switches it on, and the Plus and Pro levels above Basic are priced by sales rather than published.

Each morningAsana Dash

What needs me today

Follow-ups from meetings, email and Slack threads are turned into structured work in the graph, and the day is ordered by what is at risk.

It reads what already lives in Asana. Work tracked somewhere else stays invisible to it.

Starter50,000 creditsa month for the whole billing account
Advanced75,000 creditsa month, still per account not per seat
Enterprise200,000 creditsa month, quote only tier
MCP tools27 published18 read, 6 write, 3 with a confirmation step

Two details separate this from the assistant bolted onto most rivals. Searching the graph with a type of actor returns people and AI Teammates together, because both are things work can be assigned to. And authorising an MCP client does not create a new permission surface: the token requests every tool, then reaches only what the person who authorised it could already open. The advanced task search is the one tool gated by plan, documented as Premium only.

§ 08 · the applicationsApplications

Asana products: Service Management, Client Management, Command, StackAI

Service desk, client work, product planning and cross-system agents

Asana is sold as five applications, not one. Work management is the one with a published rate and the one this page prices. The other four were added during 2026, and they are not separate tools: each is an interface over the same store of tasks, projects, portfolios, goals, teams and people. That store is what the vendor means by the Work Graph, and it is the reason these applications behave differently from buying four products from four companies. A request raised in Service Management becomes the same kind of object as a task someone typed by hand, so it can turn into a project without being re-entered anywhere.

The practical question for a buyer is which of them you can actually use. Below is what each one adds to the graph, who it is built for, and whether it can be bought today.

Agentic Work Management

AI Teammates, AI Studio, Asana Dash and the connectors that reach the graph from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Agents exist here as objects work can be assigned to, alongside people.

Every team on a paid tier

Runs inside the plans today, with AI Studio Basic included from Starter

WritesAgents

Asana Service Management

Ticketing for IT, HR, facilities and legal, with a knowledge base that improves as it resolves. A request needing another team becomes a project instead of a handoff into a second system.

IT, HR, facilities and legal teams

Announced 4 June 2026, sold through the vendor's sales team

WritesRequests

Asana Client Management

Client accounts on the same graph as the delivery they pay for, so history and project status stop living in a separate tool from the work.

Agencies and professional services firms

Announced 4 June 2026, sold through the vendor's sales team

WritesClients

Command by Asana

Planning for product and engineering, where specifications assemble from earlier decisions and scope, dependencies and pacing are tracked as a release moves.

Product managers and engineering leads

Announced 4 June 2026, currently a waitlist

WritesSpecs and releases

StackAI by Asana

A drag-and-drop builder for agent workflows that run beyond Asana, across CRMs, databases, support desks and contracts, under one set of governance rules.

Operations and IT builders

Acquired 28 May 2026, sold through the vendor's sales team

WritesOutside systems

The Work GraphTasks, projects, portfolios, goals, teams, people and agents, stored as linked objects

For a buyer today this comes down to one thing: you are choosing the graph, and work management is the part of it you can run this quarter. Everything else on the list either needs a sales conversation or has not shipped, so none of it belongs in a budget yet. The reason to care anyway is that these applications share your data rather than integrate with it, which is the argument for standardising here instead of assembling a service desk, a client tracker and a planning tool from three vendors. Ask which of the four you would use, then ask the vendor when it is available and what it costs, because neither answer is published.

§ 09 · changesThe year

Asana in 2026: StackAI bought and an operating system for agent teams

StackAI acquired in May, three applications announced in June

Asana spent 2026 rebuilding its story around agents, and the record is unusually easy to date because the company is public and had to say all of it out loud.

first trackedlatest check
New finance chief and the fiscal year close Asana reported its fourth quarter and full fiscal 2026 results on 2 March and named Aziz Megji chief financial officer the same day.
StackAI acquired On 28 May, alongside first quarter fiscal 2027 results, Asana bought StackAI, a no-code builder for agent workflows. The point of it is reach: workflows that run across CRMs, databases, support desks and contracts, which are systems the work graph does not hold.
An operating system for human and agent teams At its summit in London on 4 June the vendor announced what it called its most significant product evolution to date: a next generation of AI Teammates, Asana Dash, and three applications packaged on the same graph. Service Management for IT and HR, Command by Asana for product and engineering, and Client Management for agencies. Command is on a waitlist.
FedRAMP Moderate for the government edition On 24 June Asana Gov reached FedRAMP Moderate authorization, which is the bar a US federal buyer checks before a procurement conversation can start.
Next results dated On 3 August the company scheduled its second quarter fiscal 2027 results for 3 September, the first report that will show how the June launches sold.

What a buyer should take from the run is the direction, not the headlines. Everything announced this year assumes your work already sits in the graph. The more of it that does, the more the new lines are worth to you, and the less true that is, the more you are paying for a task tracker priced above the category median.

§ 10 · who it fitsFit

Who should use Asana: agencies, IT teams, marketing and operations

Agency delivery, IT and HR intake, campaign reporting, process design

Asana rewards work that involves several people, more than one department and someone who has to answer for the result. Below are four shapes of team that use it well, what they actually build in it, and the cases where another tool fits better.

The agency running client work

Delivery runs as a project per client engagement, with proofing on the creative and a form as the intake so briefs arrive complete. Clients join as free guests to comment and approve, which keeps review in one thread instead of an email chain. Timesheets and Budgets records the hours against the same tasks, so the invoice and the work agree.

inputsTen staff, thirty client guestsinvoice floorfirst limitApprovals and proofing sit on Advanced, and client work usually needs them

The IT or HR team drowning in requests

A form replaces the shared inbox: the requester picks a category, the fields come with it, and rules route the task to the right section and owner. Recurring work runs as templates. What this shape needs and does not get from the base product is deflection, a knowledge base that answers before a ticket exists, which is exactly what the Service Management line announced in June is meant to add.

inputsSix staff, requests from the whole companyinvoice floorfirst limitTicket deflection and a knowledge base are a separate product, not a feature of your tier

Marketing operations reporting to a head of department

Campaigns run as projects inside a portfolio, the portfolio carries a status the whole department reads, and Goals connect it to the objective it was funded against. Dashboards replace the weekly status slide, and the numbers move as the work does rather than the evening before the meeting.

inputsTwenty people, four portfoliosinvoice floorfirst limitWorkload is per portfolio at this tier; the universal version is on Enterprise

The operations lead automating repetitive work

The work here is process design: intake forms, rules that assign and escalate, templates that reschedule themselves. AI Studio adds the judgement steps, deciding what an ambiguous request is and where it belongs, on top of the deterministic rules underneath. The pattern is to automate the repeated ninety percent and leave the rest visible.

inputsTwelve people, several intake formsinvoice floorfirst limit50,000 credits a month on Starter for the entire account
Four reasons to passfour reasons

You run sprints and read velocity → Neither velocity nor burndown exists at any tier. A scrum team either changes how it measures or keeps a second tool for the sprint.

You need a real Gantt with baselines → Timeline shows dependencies and a critical path, not baselines to compare planned against actual. Planners in construction and heavy delivery reach for Instagantt or leave.

Your team is two or three people → Personal covers two completely and stops. At three, a simpler tracker does the same work without portfolios and goals nobody will open.

Nobody senior reads the output → Portfolios, Goals and Workload are the reason to be here. If reporting never leaves the team, you are paying for a reporting layer you do not use.

The test is not headcount, it is whether the work crosses a boundary: between teams, between a request and a project, or between doing the work and reporting on it.

§ 11 · alternativessix rivals · gap to the $13.49 entry

Asana alternatives: Trello, Todoist, Nifty, Hive, ClickUp and Basecamp

Trello, Todoist, Nifty, Hive, ClickUp and Basecamp on capability

Six rivals with published rates, read on the same schedule as ours. The spread runs $5 to $24, which puts the median at $10. Five of the six open between $6 and $10, then the strip goes quiet until $15. Rates shown are entry prices per user a month, the same figures our category ranking and each rival's own pricing page carry.

$6Asana entry: $13.49 →

The useful axis here is not price, it is what happens when work needs to be reported on. ClickUp matches Asana feature for feature and asks you to tolerate the density; Basecamp removes the reporting layer on purpose; Trello and Todoist never had one. Hive and Nifty include what Asana sells apart. The full ranking sits on the project management category page.

§ 12 · our verdictCE 4.5/5 · signed

Is Asana worth it in 2026: our verdict on the work management platform

Where reporting depth earns the rate, and where missing sprint metrics end it
Verdict · Asana · ★★★★★★★★★★CE 4.5/5

The seat count you are allowed to buy decides this bill, not the published rate. Above five people Asana sells seats in fives, so a team of seven is invoiced for ten. That is $396 a year for three seats nobody sits in, and an effective $15.70 a head against a published $10.99. The rate itself is unremarkable: a little over the $10 median of the eighteen project management tools we price. The rounding is not.

What the money buys at the top is goals and portfolios, and that step is steep: $10.99 to $24.99 is a 127 percent increase for a reporting layer. Buy it when objectives genuinely roll up from the work, because Advanced is the only tier that does that. Buy Starter and mean it otherwise, since guests are free there and most teams never open a portfolio.

The block logic also inverts once, and it is worth knowing where. Sitting at six or seven is the worst position on this card. Hiring from seven to ten costs nothing, because the seats are already on the invoice. A team that knows it is growing buys the block early and grows into it. A team that is staying small is the one actually paying the rounding.

what drives this invoice
  • the block boundary above your headcount: between two of them every hire is free, and crossing one costs a full step whether you fill it or not.
  • goals, or a spreadsheet nobody minds: that one question is the whole distance from $10.99 to $24.99, and nothing else on Advanced covers the gap alone.
when not to buy Asana
  • You run sprints and read velocity: neither velocity nor burndown is on the Asana feature list at any tier, and buying up will not add them.
  • Your team is six or seven and staying there: you pay for ten seats indefinitely, which puts the real rate above every rival on this page.
  • Documents and tasks belong in one place: Notion Plus does that at $10 a seat, and Asana treats a document as an attachment.
  • You are pricing Enterprise against a fixed budget: four unpriced items in one contract is a negotiating position, and no seat floor is published to anchor it.
what it does well
  • One store under every view: a task in a list, a timeline and a portfolio report is the same object, so reporting updates itself instead of being rebuilt each week.
  • Rules are unlimited from the entry tier, and they cover the routing and assignment that usually eats a weekly triage meeting.
  • Forms with branching turn an inbox into a queue where requests arrive complete and already categorised.
  • Agents are objects with roles rather than a chat panel: an AI Teammate can be searched for, assigned work, and never sees more than the person who authorised it.
  • The MCP server is real and documented, with 27 tools and confirmation screens in Claude and ChatGPT before anything is written.
  • Guests are free and unlimited from the entry tier, which makes client review and contractor work practical.
  • Personal is a complete tool for two people rather than a countdown, with unlimited tasks, projects and storage.
where it gets in the way
  • No velocity, no burndown and no sprint report at any tier, which rules it out for teams that measure work that way.
  • Timeline draws dependencies and a critical path but not baselines, so planned against actual comparison needs an outside app.
  • Workload reads one portfolio on Advanced; the universal view and capacity planning sit on Enterprise.
  • AI Studio credits are pooled per billing account, so the allowance thins as the team grows rather than scaling with it.
  • Time tracking with budgets is an add-on rather than a feature, which is a second vendor for agencies that bill by the hour.
  • SAML and SCIM sit on a tier with no published price, so identity requirements turn into a sales conversation.
  • Personal caps out at two editors with no third seat at any price, making the first upgrade a cliff rather than a step.
  • Four of the five product lines announced this year are sold by conversation or still on a waitlist.
The short of it
  • Entry $13.49/mo, $10.99 on annual billing · verified
  • Number 17 of 19 by entry rate, $1.49 over Coda and $1.51 under Basecamp
  • Starter costs $13.49 a user a month and Advanced $30.49, with $10.99 on annual billing at the entry tier. Two tiers above that are quoted. Every plan, seat rules and the annual discount
The plansEvery tier, what the annual cycle changes, and the seat increments that decide what you actually buy.
signed Oleh Kem Oleh Kemmethod: live price list, dated recordverified tracked since
§ 13 · questions16 questions

Asana answers: the free plan, the Work Graph, AI credits and agents

Q1What is Asana used for?

Running work across a team: tasks with owners and dates, projects that group them, portfolios that group projects, and goals the whole lot rolls up to. Teams use it when several people and usually several departments need to see the same plan.

Q2Is Asana free?

Yes, for up to two users. The Personal plan carries unlimited tasks, projects and storage with a 100 MB cap per file, plus list, board and calendar views. It does not expire, and there is no third seat available on it at any price.

Q3Is Asana worth it in 2026?

It is worth it when someone senior reads the reporting. Goals, portfolios and Workload are what the price above the category median buys. If your work never rolls up to a portfolio, a cheaper tracker does the same job.

Q4What is the Work Graph?

Asana's name for its data model: tasks, projects, portfolios, goals, teams, people and now agents, stored as linked objects rather than separate lists. It is the reason a change to one task moves the goal reporting without anyone re-entering anything.

Q5Can AI agents use Asana?

Yes, through a hosted MCP server that exposes 27 tools, 18 of them read only. Claude and ChatGPT also get three tools that show a confirmation screen before a change commits. An agent sees only what the person who authorised it can already see.

Q6What are AI Teammates?

Prebuilt agents, thirty of them at launch, for marketing, operations and IT, with industry versions for manufacturing and retail. They are objects in the graph, so they can be searched for and assigned work. Asana sells them through its sales team and publishes no rate.

Q7Do I need an admin to turn on AI Studio?

Yes. AI Studio is available from Starter upwards, but an administrator has to enable it in the admin console before anyone can build with it.

Q8How many AI credits does each plan include?

AI Studio Basic includes 50,000 credits a month on Starter, 75,000 on Advanced and 200,000 on Enterprise. The allowance belongs to the billing account rather than to each person, so it does not grow as you add seats.

Q9Can I buy exactly the number of seats I need?

No. Seats move in steps: one at a time up to five users, then five at a time to thirty, ten to a hundred, twenty five to five hundred, and fifty above that. A team of thirty two buys forty seats.

Q10Are guests free on Asana?

Guests are free and unlimited from Starter upwards, which is what makes client and contractor collaboration workable. Enterprise adds controls over who may invite them, and separate view-only licences for internal people who only read.

Q11What did Asana acquire in 2026?

StackAI, a no-code builder for agent workflows, announced on 28 May 2026. It extends automation beyond Asana into CRMs, databases, support systems and contracts, which are the systems the work graph does not itself hold.

Q12What is Asana Dash?

A daily brief the vendor describes as an AI chief of staff. It pulls follow-ups out of meetings, email and Slack threads, turns them into structured work, and shows each person what needs attention that day.

Q13Does Asana have an API rate limit?

Yes, and it depends on the plan. A free domain gets 150 requests a minute, a paid domain 1,500, per token. Search is capped at 60 a minute and exports at five runs at once per user. There is also a cost limit based on how much of the object graph a request has to traverse.

Q14Is Asana approved for US government use?

Asana Gov reached FedRAMP Moderate authorization on 24 June 2026, which is the level most federal buyers check before starting a procurement.

Q15Who should not use Asana?

Teams of two or three, anyone who wants a flat bill rather than per seat arithmetic, buyers who need single sign-on but cannot get an unpriced quote approved, and teams whose work is a simple list that nobody reports on.

Q16Which alternatives cost less?

Almost all of them. The category opens at $5, and Trello, Todoist, Nifty and Hive all sit near that end. ClickUp is the closest rival on capability and still undercuts Asana. Basecamp answers the per seat complaint with a flat rate instead.