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Swatle 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. Swatle starts at $7, Trello at $5. Only Trello has a free tier. Both ship a public API.

SwatleKanban, sprints, chat, docs and forms in one workspace, with an API slot for your own AI agentTrelloKanban boards for teams, with AI that drafts whole boards and summarises cards and comments

Side by side

FactSwatleTrello
CategoryTask & Project ManagementTask & Project Management
Pricing modelPaidFreemium
Starts at$7 seat_month$5 seat_month
Public APIYesYes
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, API
CompanySwatleAtlassian
Launched—2011
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Swatle

Swatle is priced to undercut ClickUp and Jira while covering roughly the same ground plus team chat and a support chatbot. The bring-your-own-agent API is the unusual bit — you point an external agent at the workspace rather than accepting whatever assistant the vendor ships. It is a young product from a small Chennai team, so judge it on your own trial rather than on the customer counts and testimonials the site prints.

Pros

  • Kanban, Scrum, planning, Gantt and epics all present rather than split across add-ons
  • Knowledge-base chatbots can be embedded on a website and auto-create tickets
  • Documented REST API and API keys for connecting external AI agents
  • $7 per user per month is well under the comparable ClickUp or Jira tiers

Cons

  • Basic caps at 25 users and withholds Gantt, reports, API access and AI features
  • No free plan, only a trial
  • Landing-page testimonials and the 10,000-teams figure are unverifiable
  • Small vendor with no published legal entity beyond a Chennai office and a mobile contact number

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 Swatle if you need

  • Small agencies that want boards, chat and docs on one bill
  • Teams already running an in-house AI agent that needs a task backend
  • Budget-conscious teams comparing against per-seat ClickUp or Jira pricing

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

More comparisons

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