Asana vs. ClickUp Comparison (2024)

Asana and ClickUp are two work and project management solutions with options for businesses of all sizes. Both software come with all the tools you’d expect, like various project views, task management options, workload management, and more. 

Asana, though, focuses more on hierarchies and scaling with your team. ClickUp, on the other hand, emphasizes team collaboration and customizing your software experience.

We’ll help you compare pricing and features to figure out whether Asana or ClickUp will better fit your team’s needs.

Asana vs. ClickUp: Which is better?

Table details up to date as of 5/24/2023.

Asana: Better for project administration

Asana is a work management platform that includes many project management features along with some workload and workflow automation tools. (It’s also one of our picks for the best project management tools.)

Aside from the usual project management tools, Asana has some top-notch features for your project management team―like an admin console, portfolio management, deliverable proofing, and task approvals. Those features, along with a robust top-tier plan, make Asana well suited to scaling with your business. If your team is growing quickly and you need to keep order, Asana could be the right platform for you.

ClickUp: Better for team collaboration

ClickUp positions itself an all-in-one productivity solution. It offers project, workload, and workflow tools―along with lots of team collaboration tools such as docs, chat, and built-in email.

With those tools and more (like virtual whiteboards), ClickUp has everything your team needs to stay in touch and effectively collaborate. Plus, ClickUp even designs its project management tools with collaboration in mind. It makes it easy to tag people, assign multiple team members to one task, and create a source-of-truth wiki for your team. So if you want your team to truly work together to plan and tackle projects, you’ll likely love ClickUp.

Asana vs. ClickUp: A detailed comparison

Pricing

No matter your team’s size and needs, you want a work management software that fits within your budget. In many cases, that means you’ll need to find the best compromise between plan cost and features. And since Asana and ClickUp have pretty different pricing, plan costs may be a big factor in your overall decision.

Asana and ClickUp both offer multiple tiers of paid plans, so their overall affordability will depend on what plan tier you choose. They also both have a more basic free plan, if you want to stick with free project management software.

Table details up to date as of 5/24/2023.

Asana

Asana offers three different plans (along with a more customizable enterprise plan). 

Asana’s free plan limits you to 15 users and locks you out of many of its best tools, like forms, guests, automations, and timeline views.

So most teams will want to go with a paid plan. Asana’s Premium and Business plans have fairly average pricing compared to most other project management software out there. They may not be cheap,  but they likely won’t break the budget―especially since many businesses won’t need the more advanced portfolio features of the Business plan. And if you’re not sure which plan you need, take advantage of Asana’s 30-day free trial to find out which features you really use.

ClickUp

ClickUp is one of the more budget-friendly project management solutions out there. All plans come in under $20 per month, with paid plans starting at just $7 per user per month.

Plus, ClickUp has one of the best free plans out there. It gives you unlimited users, unlimited tasks, and access to most of ClickUp’s important features―including whiteboards, time tracking, and even 24/7 customer support.

ClickUp’s paid plans offer upgrades to those features, like unlimited storage, dashboards, and integrations. They also add extra features like goals, workload management, and conditional form logic (on the low-, mid-, and high-tier plans, respectively). As an added bonus, ClickUp offers three paid plans. That gives its plans more granularity than Asana―making it easier to find a plan that fits your budget and needs. 

Which to choose for pricing?

ClickUp. Here’s why: While Asana has average pricing overall, ClickUp has a much better free plan along with cheaper plans. It also has more plan options, making it easier to find the right balance of feature and pricing.

Project management

Both Asana and ClickUp offer much more than project management, but their project management features are their bread and butter―and the main reason most teams pick one of these platforms. So you need to be sure you pick the software that best fits your team’s project management style and needs.

Think about, for example, what project views you need, how your team likes to organize tasks, what kind of permissions you want, and so on.

Table details up to date as of 5/24/2023.

Asana

Asana offers all the project views you’d expect from a premium project management tool, from board views to Gantt charts. It also lets you create tasks and subtasks with hierarchies, assign tasks to team members, and add due dates.

These kinds of essential tools make Asana versatile enough for many project management styles. You can make it work for your Agile team just as well as your waterfall team. Likewise, Asana has enough core tools to work for various industries. It can handle engineering project management and construction project management as well as software project management.

That doesn’t mean Asana is at all basic, though. In fact, it has some advanced project management tools for more complex needs. You can get portfolio management to help your team tackle whole groups of projects at once, proofing to keep the whole project design process inside your software, and approvals to make sure every task goes through the necessary channels. All that makes Asana great for not just managing projects―but for keeping them very well organized. 

ClickUp

ClickUp, like Asana, has common project management views. It lets you mark task priorities, add task dependencies, and create and use project templates.

While you can stick to basic project management, ClickUp emphasizes customizability. It lets you create unlimited task hierarchies, for instance, so you can use the task and subtask system that makes sense for your team. You can add relationships―and not just dependencies―between tasks to link things together. And you can put a single task in multiple lists.

Even better, ClickUp gives you all these project management features on every plan―including the free one. So you can manage tasks through your customized workflow, no matter your budget.  

Which to choose for project management?

It’s a tie. Here’s why: Both Asana and ClickUp have a full suite of project management tools. Asana offers a few more features for portfolios and can help you maintain strict organization. ClickUp gives you more customization for your project workflow. Your team will likely prefer one style over the other.

Collaboration

Good collaboration tools help your team work together easily and to get things done quickly.

Of course, you can always choose to use external collaboration tools. But some teams prefer having collaboration features included in project management software for seamless teamwork.

Table details up to date as of 5/24/2023.

Asana

Frankly, Asana has very few collaboration tools to speak of.

In fact, some teams will find that it makes collaboration a little harder. Asana doesn’t let you assign more than one person to the same task, for example. That’s a big downside for teams that regularly work together on a single task.

Asana does offer some collaboration in the form of task approvals and proofing―but even those features feel more administrative than collaborative. 

ClickUp

ClickUp, on the other hand, is all about collaboration. Its platform includes team chat, built-in email, virtual whiteboards, docs, and more.

With so many collaboration tools, ClickUp could very well replace other team collaboration software you use―from Slack and Teams to Notion to Lucidchart.

Plus, ClickUp bakes collaboration into its project management tools. You can collaborate on projects by assigning multiple people to one task. You can delegate task reminders to other people to move your task easily from one person to another. You can add users to project groups. It all adds up to a software that makes it easy to tackle projects as a team.

Which to choose for collaboration?

ClickUp. Here’s why: Asana doesn’t even try to include collaboration tools. ClickUp, however, can replace multiple other collaboration apps―and it encourages teams to collaborate together on projects. 

Integrations

You’ll want to make sure your project management tool connects with other important software you use. So make sure you look at what kind of integrations your next PM tool offers.

Some project management platforms even connect with other PM tools to help you easily import data and switch platforms. If you have lots of project data you don’t want to lose, look for that.

Table details up to date as of 5/24/2023.

Asana

Asana offers over 200 native integrations. Its list includes plenty of popular software (like Microsoft Teams and Adobe Creative Cloud) as well as less-popular software you may not use.

Plus, Asana offers a Zapier integration―which lets you create new integrations with other software. So if you don’t see an integration you need, you can use Zapier to fix that. 

ClickUp

ClickUp has fewer integrations than Asana―a little over 50. Still, it covers lots of the most common software, like HubSpot, GitLab, OneDrive, and more. (Unfortunately, it also includes less helpful tools like Giphy.)

Which to choose for integrations?

Asana. Here’s why: Asana doesn’t have a huge advantage over ClickUp, since both tools let you use Zapier to add more integrations. But Asana does have more ready-made integrations, making it easier to connect with the software you use.

Asana vs. ClickUp: Ready to choose?

Asana and ClickUp are both strong project management platforms with plenty of great features to recommend them. Either option can work for many project management styles and industries.

Ultimately, Asana has better tools for the administrative side of task management. ClickUp offers better options for team collaboration. These key differences should help you decide between the two platforms.

Or, if neither Asana nor ClickUp quite fits the bill, check out our Project Management Software Guide to find alternative options.

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