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monday.com vs Trello

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors. monday.com starts at $9, Trello at $5. Both have a free tier. Both ship a public API.

monday.comWork platform of boards, automations and dashboards, with AI agents metered by a separate credit pool.TrelloKanban boards for teams, with AI that drafts whole boards and summarises cards and comments

Side by side

Factmonday.comTrello
CategoryTask & Project ManagementTask & Project Management
Pricing modelFreemiumFreemium
Starts at$9 seat_month$5 seat_month
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, APIWeb, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, API
Companymonday.com Ltd.Atlassian
Launched20122011
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

monday.com

The most visual of the big work platforms, and the easiest to get a non-technical team onto. The AI layer is broad — agents, notetaker, triage, workflow builder — but metered by credits, which makes it hard to predict what heavy use costs. Splitting CRM, service and dev into separately priced products means the real bill is usually higher than the headline seat price.

Pros

  • Boards, automations, forms, docs and dashboards without writing code
  • Four product lines share one platform: work management, CRM, service, dev
  • AI notetaker, ticket triage, workflow builder and agent workforce built in
  • Public company with a long track record, founded 2012 and listed

Cons

  • Free plan is capped at two seats, effectively a trial
  • AI features consume a separate credit pool on top of seat cost
  • CRM and Service lines are priced well above the work-management tiers
  • Pricing is billing-country dependent, so quoted currency and figures shift by region

Trello

Still the easiest board tool to hand a non-technical team, and the AI additions are sensibly scoped - board generation and summarisation rather than an agent that reorganises your work. The limits are the old ones: a board is a board, and anything needing dependencies or resourcing outgrows it.

Pros

  • AI-generated boards turn a written goal into a populated board rather than an empty template
  • Summarisation works on both card descriptions and long comment threads
  • Inbox captures tasks from email and chat without leaving those tools
  • Apps on every platform plus a long-stable public API and a large Power-Up ecosystem

Cons

  • Calendar, timeline and dashboard views are held back until the $10 Premium tier
  • Free workspaces cap at ten collaborators, which small teams hit quickly
  • The board model does not express dependencies, so complex plans go elsewhere

Which one fits

Choose monday.com if you need

  • Non-technical teams who need visual boards and no-code automations
  • Organisations that want CRM, service desk and project work on one underlying platform
  • Teams willing to trade per-seat cost for fast adoption

Choose Trello if you need

  • Small teams that need a shared board today with no setup ceremony
  • Personal and side-project tracking, where the free tier is genuinely enough
  • Teams already inside Atlassian who want Jira's neighbour rather than Jira

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