Trello

What is Trello?

Trello is a visual project management platform built on the Kanban methodology, owned by Atlassian (which acquired it in 2017 for $425 million). Its drag-and-drop interface with boards, lists, and cards remains one of the most intuitive approaches to task management available — popular with everyone from freelancers tracking personal projects to enterprise teams managing product roadmaps. Over 50 million users rely on Trello as of 2026.

Trello's AI capabilities are powered by Atlassian Intelligence, the same AI layer that runs across Jira, Confluence, and other Atlassian products. AI features include card content generation (describe a task and AI writes the card details), task decomposition (breaking large cards into actionable subtasks), comment summarization across busy cards, smart suggestions for labels, due dates, and assignments, and natural language search across boards. These AI features are available on Premium and Enterprise plans.

Butler, Trello's built-in automation engine, is arguably its most powerful feature. It creates rules, buttons, and scheduled commands that automate repetitive board management tasks — moving cards between lists when due dates pass, assigning members when labels change, sending Slack notifications when cards are created, and hundreds of other triggers. Butler runs on all plans, though paid plans get significantly more automation runs per month (unlimited on Premium and Enterprise).

Power-Ups extend Trello's functionality with integrations for Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, Jira, Figma, and hundreds of other tools. The ecosystem is Trello's moat — it connects to virtually every tool a team uses. Premium unlocks advanced project views (Timeline, Dashboard, Calendar, Table, and Map) that transform Trello from a simple Kanban board into a full project management suite.

Trello Pricing

Trello offers four tiers, all priced per user per month. Annual billing saves approximately 20%.

• Free — $0: Unlimited cards, up to 10 boards per workspace, 1 Power-Up per board, 250 Workspace command runs per month, 10MB file attachment limit
• Standard — $5/user/mo: Unlimited boards, unlimited Power-Ups, advanced checklists with due dates and assignments, Planner view, 1,000 Workspace command runs, 250MB file limit
• Premium — $10/user/mo: Everything in Standard plus Timeline, Dashboard, Calendar, Table, and Map views, unlimited automation runs, Atlassian Intelligence AI features, workspace-level templates, priority support
• Enterprise — $17.50/user/mo (25-user minimum): Everything in Premium plus organization-wide permissions, SSO/SAML, attachment restrictions, public board management, dedicated account manager, 99.9% uptime SLA

Key Features

• Kanban Boards — Drag-and-drop cards across customizable lists representing workflow stages, with rich card details including descriptions, checklists, attachments, and comments
• Atlassian Intelligence AI — AI-powered card content generation, task decomposition into subtasks, comment summarization, and smart suggestions for labels, dates, and assignees (Premium+ plans)
• Butler Automation — No-code automation engine with rules, scheduled commands, and card/board buttons that automate repetitive tasks like moving cards, sending notifications, and updating fields
• Power-Ups Marketplace — Hundreds of integrations including Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, Jira, Figma, Salesforce, and Zapier, extending Trello's functionality without leaving the board
• Advanced Views — Timeline (Gantt-style), Dashboard (charts/metrics), Calendar, Table, and Map views that provide different perspectives on the same project data (Premium+)
• Custom Fields — Add dropdowns, numbers, dates, checkboxes, and text fields to cards for structured data tracking beyond the default card properties
• Advanced Checklists — Checklists with due dates, assignees, and progress tracking per item, turning simple to-do lists into mini-project plans within cards
• Templates — Pre-built board templates for common workflows (sprint planning, content calendars, hiring pipelines) plus the ability to create and share custom workspace templates
• Workspace Views — Cross-board views that aggregate cards from multiple boards, letting managers see all team work in a single Dashboard or Calendar view
• Natural Language Search — AI-powered search across all boards and cards using conversational queries instead of exact keyword matches (Premium+)

Pros & Cons

Best For

• Small teams and startups who need visual task management without the complexity and cost of Asana, Monday, or ClickUp
• Content and marketing teams managing editorial calendars, campaign workflows, and creative approvals with Kanban-style boards
• Freelancers and solo professionals who need a free, lightweight tool for personal project organization and client work tracking
• Teams already in the Atlassian ecosystem using Jira and Confluence who want a simpler tool for non-engineering project management