Plane vs Trello

Plane is an open-source project management and issue tracking tool founded in 2022 that sits between Jira's flexibility and Linear's simplicity. Teams organise work into issues, cycles (sprints), modules for larger initiatives and saved views, and can switch between list, kanban, calendar, spreadsheet and Gantt layouts. Pages provide built-in documentation and Intake collects requests for triage.

The Community edition is free to self-host under the AGPL with Docker or Kubernetes. Plane Cloud has a free plan for small teams and paid Pro and Business tiers per user that add time tracking, custom workflows and work item types, bulk operations, dashboards, advanced permissions, SSO and Plane AI, while Enterprise covers self-managed deployments with support and audit logs. Importers from Jira, Linear, Asana and GitHub ease migration, and an API, webhooks and Slack and GitHub integrations connect it to the rest of the stack.

Plane fits engineering and product teams who want Linear-style workflows with data ownership, a self-host option or lower per-seat prices. It is less polished than Linear, its integration ecosystem is smaller than Jira's, self-hosting requires maintenance and reporting is still maturing. Linear remains the benchmark for speed and design, Jira for enterprise reporting and marketplace apps, and Huly or OpenProject are other open-source options. The project has grown quickly, with a large GitHub following and frequent releases.

Trello is the kanban board tool created in 2011 at Fog Creek Software and acquired by Atlassian in 2017. It introduced millions of people to visual task management: boards hold lists, lists hold cards, and cards hold descriptions, checklists, due dates, labels, attachments, comments and members.

Power-Ups extend boards with calendars, voting, custom fields, and integrations with Slack, Google Drive, Jira and many other tools, while Butler automation moves cards, assigns people and sends notifications based on rules, buttons and schedules. Inbox and Planner features help individuals capture tasks and block time on a calendar. The free plan supports up to 10 collaborators per workspace with unlimited cards and a monthly automation allowance; Standard adds unlimited boards and custom fields, Premium adds calendar, timeline, table, map and dashboard views with unlimited automation, and Enterprise adds organization-wide permissions and SSO.

Trello fits individuals, small teams, freelancers, editorial calendars and simple workflows where a visual board is enough. It struggles once projects need dependencies, workload planning, portfolio reporting or many interconnected boards. Asana and monday.com are better for structured team project management, ClickUp packs more features at a low price, Jira is the natural upgrade for software teams already on Atlassian, and Notion suits teams that want boards inside a broader wiki.