Notion vs Asana: What’s the Difference? (2024) (2024)

As 2 of the most popular task and project management platforms available today, Notion and Asana are often pitted against each other in user reviews. So, I’ve decided to thoroughly test both tools, eager to see what they excel at.

Read on to see how these tools compare in terms of pricing, features, user experience, support, and security — and which one triumphs in the end.

What are the main differences between Notion and Asana?

The main differences between Notion and Asana are that Notion is highly customizable and has a larger selection of features, while Asana is easier to navigate and better suited for less tech-savvy users.

Before we move on to the comparison, here’s an overview of the tools’ top features.

Notion is more affordable than Asana overall

Both Notion and Asana offer extensive free plans, as well as a few paid plans for teams and organizations. However, Asana’s paid plans are overall more expensive than Notion’s.

Notion offers 4 plans in total:

*billed annually

You can also get the Notion AI add-on with any paid plan for $8/user/month (billed annually) or $10/user/month (free plans and monthly billing).

Asana, on the other hand, has 5 plans:

*billed annually

From what I could gather, Notion’s Business and Asana’s Advanced plans are comparable and mostly geared toward companies. The thing is — Asana’s plan is almost double what you’d have to pay for Notion’s equivalent.

Choosing between these 2 tools will, of course, depend on the exact features you’re looking for. But it’s certain Notion’s pricing is far more realistic for anyone on a tight budget.

Asana has a better free plan than Notion

Even though it’s more expensive, I’d say that Asana has a higher-value free plan than Notion.

Looking at its free plan only, Notion offers:

• Unlimited pages and blocks for individuals, and a limited block trial for 2+ users (up to 1,000 blocks),
• 7-day page history,
• Up to 10 guest collaborators, and more.

However, Asana’s free plan seems more generous to me, as it’s meant for teams of up to 10 people and provides users with:

• Unlimited tasks and projects,
• Unlimited comments, messages, and activity logs,
• 100+ free integrations, and more.

Another difference is that both tools offer unlimited storage — but Asana has a 100 MB file limit across all plans.

In comparison, Notion limits you to file uploads of up to 5 MB on the free plan. If you upgrade, though, you can upload files up to 5 GB in size.

Asana is easier to use, but Notion is more customizable

Notion is a highly customizable tool that allows you to organize your workspace to fit your needs. However, this means it has a bit of a steep learning curve in comparison to Asana.

Notion consists of building blocks. Everything you add to a page — text, video, picture, board, table, etc. — is a content block. You can arrange and rearrange these blocks across the page and make Notion feel and look exactly as you want.

The troublesome part is the Markdown formatting if you’ve never used it before (like I haven’t). But all it takes is a bit of practice.

Asana is a more traditional project management tool that doesn’t insist on users customizing each aspect of their workspace. Whether you want to make a project, portfolio, goal, or dashboard, the tool provides you with options — which makes it more user- and beginner-friendly overall.

Notion has more advanced task organization, but Asana helps you build a better workflow

I didn’t feel like these tools lacked any crucial task management features. But since Notion is all about customization, I’ve noticed it has more — and better — task organization features overall.

To build a project board in Notion, it’s best to use a database page and add various properties (columns) to structure task information.

Depending on which properties you add, you can then:

• Assign tasks,
• Set task priority and status,
• Add task descriptions,
• Set due dates, and more.

One of the more interesting properties in Notion is the formula property. This property allows you to make calculations based on the other properties you’ve added.

To compare, Asana has almost the same type of column (called fields), but there are noticeably fewer options to choose from.

That said, Asana has some columns that Notion lacks, like a native time-tracking field that’s available with its Advanced and Enterprise plans.

Another advantage of using Notion for task management is that it has more detailed task cards that come in the form of Notion pages. They function like Google Docs and can be as detailed as you want.

In Asana, each task card has a pre-set form — though you can customize it slightly by adding different fields.

To help you visualize your tasks, Asana has 4 free and 3 paid views:

• Overview,
• List,
• Board,
• Calendar,
• Timeline (paid),
• Gantt (paid), and
• Dashboard (paid).

To compare, Notion has 6 views available across all plans:

• Timeline,
• Table,
• Board,
• List,
• Calendar, and
• Gallery.

In terms of workflow enhancement, both tools offer templates and automations that make task management more effortless for you and your team.

But only Asana has a workflow builder, allowing you to automate your team’s processes in just a few clicks.

Notion’s AI features are better than Asana’s AI capabilities

Though both Notion and Asana have AI capabilities, Notion offers more extensive AI-powered features overall.

Notion AI can be a useful tool in your everyday work. Some of its functions include:

• Checking grammar and spelling,
• Translating texts,
• Writing summaries,
• Editing voice and tone of your texts, and more.

Most recently, Notion added the Q&A functionality to its AI tool, allowing users to quickly get information about their docs, projects, and wikis.

Asana also has its own AI functionality called Asana Intelligence, whose most notable features include:

• Project, team, and task recommendations,
• Inbox prioritization, and
• Smart editor, summaries, fields, statuses, and answers.

Unlike in Notion, though, there are no built-in AI writing or translation features in Asana — and that’s precisely why Notion stands out in terms of AI implementation.

That said, the Notion AI add-on doesn’t come cheap, so I’d recommend getting it only if you will be using it constantly.

Asana has better team collaboration features than Notion

Both Notion and Asana allow for seamless team collaboration in real time. However, Asana has direct messages and lets you see all the messages shared across projects and teams.

In Notion, team members can edit the same page simultaneously.

There are also several ways to comment in Notion.

For example, let’s say you’re reviewing a project proposal. In this case, you can:

• Add a comment at the top of the page and start a discussion, or
• Leave comments on specific blocks on a page or specific parts of the text.

Asana is similar in this regard, offering almost the same commenting features as Notion.

But, with Notion’s comments, you can @mention a person, group, date, or page, while in Asana, you can @mention:

• A teammate, team, or message, and
• A task, goal, project, or portfolio.

Despite the differences, Asana is a better option for team and project collaboration — mostly because it lets you send DMs to people, teams, or everyone working on a project directly from your Inbox.

Asana has more advanced progress-tracking features than Notion

Although both Notion and Asana let you track the progress of your tasks and projects in various ways, Asana has additional advanced capabilities, like goal-tracking, that could help you manage your projects better.

Both tools also have great filtering and sorting capabilities, but I prefer Asana’s because you can sort and filter your tasks based on multiple different criteria.

In Notion, you can also add a Last edited time and Last edited by properties to keep track of all the changes made to your tasks.

Additionally, there’s the Updates tab that acts as an activity log and shows you the latest changes and your workspace’s history (similar to that of Google Docs).

Still, Asana’s goal-tracking features help it stand out here.

To have a clear overview of your project’s progress in Asana, you can create company, team, and personal goals, and keep track of them by setting reminders to update their statuses.

To be fair, you could track goals in Notion as well, but there isn’t a separate feature for that. Instead, you’d have to use a template or build the page from scratch to be able to track your long- and short-term goals.

Another way of keeping track of your progress in Asana is to create project milestones.

A milestone represents a checkpoint in a project’s timeline — what needs to be accomplished for the project to be successful. In Asana, any task can be marked as a milestone with just a few clicks.

Notion allows up to 10 guests, but Asana is free to use up to 10 people

One of the biggest differences I noticed when comparing these 2 tools is that Asana’s free plan can be used by smaller project teams, while Notion’s free plan is more geared toward individuals.

For example, if you want to add more members to your workspace in Notion, you have to upgrade to the Plus plan at least.

To compare, Asana is free to use up to 10 people — so realistically, you only need to upgrade if you want to use the more advanced paid features.

That said, both tools offer guest access — albeit to varying degrees.

Notion’s free plan allows up to 10 guests, while the Enterprise plan gives you 250 guest collaborators. Meanwhile, Asana offers unlimited free guests, but only on its paid plans.

Another difference is that Notion lets you upgrade guests to members in case you want them to play a larger role in the workspace. Asana forbids you from doing that because members need to have an email address under your organization’s domain.

Asana has more granular object-based permissions and an admin console

Both Notion and Asana have advanced permissions settings that ensure worry-free usage. However, unlike Notion, Asana focuses on more granular, object-based permissions.

Notion offers different levels of permissions when sharing a page, so you can decide each time whether you want someone to have full access or only edit, comment, or view the page.

The platform also has teamspaces, which can be open, closed, or private.

In contrast, Asana’s object-based permissions designate different types of access (public, private, and similar) to different elements of the workspace, such as:

• Tasks,
• Projects,
• Project and team messages, and
• Teams, organizations, and workspaces.

Most notably, Asana has an admin console where you can manage people in your organization, get insights about your work, manage billing, etc. Notion doesn’t have that — though I’d say its Settings & members tab works pretty much in the same way.

As for guest permissions, Notion lets you set the level of permissions for each guest you want to add, but those can always be changed later on.

Enterprise-level users can also enable guest requests to control who other members invite to the workspace.

Similarly, Asana also allows for guest invite control on its Enterprise and Enterprise+ plans.

Asana offers more integrations than Notion

Both Notion and Asana can be connected to other apps and platforms you use on a daily basis. Still, Asana integrates with a lot more apps than Notion, making it a more attractive option for the average user.

Notion integrates with 80 tools in total, including favorites like:

• Canva,
• Calendly,
• Figma,
• Miro, and more.

In comparison, Asana integrates with 200+ different apps and tools, including the likes of:

• Adobe Creative Cloud,
• Microsoft Teams,
• YouTube,
• GitHub, and more.

In other aspects, these 2 tools are rather similar.

Notion allows you to sync your data from other tools, like Jira, GitHub, and even Asana to Notion databases.

You can also import data to Notion from other platforms, such as Evernote, Confluence, Trello, etc. The same can be done in Asana with the CSV Importer for tools like monday.com, Airtable, and Smartsheet, to name a few.

If you’re interested in building your own integrations, both tools also have an API and detailed guides on how to use it.

Unlike Asana, Notion has made it easier for users to contact the company. However, if you’re after customer success benefits, Asana is the better choice.

Notion’s help center provides users with reference docs, guides, and courses. In case they have additional questions, users can also:

• Email customer support,
• Join the Notion community, or
• Hire a certified consultant.

You can also message support via chat directly from your Notion workspace.

Asana’s help center offers similar resources to Notion’s, allowing you to access various articles, tutorials, courses, and webinars on how to use Asana successfully. You can also get more information in the community forum.

However, you cannot access the support chat from your workspace. Instead, a link takes you to the help center, where you can find the Support chatbot.

Other than that, the tools differ in their customer success options.

In Notion, only Enterprise users can get a dedicated success manager, while Asana offers customer success options on all paid plans (conditions apply).

That said, both tools have priority support on paid plans, with Asana also offering 24/7 support to Enterprise and Enterprise+ customers.

Asana has more certifications than Notion and offers data encryption keys

It’s evident from their websites that Notion and Asana care about their users’ security. However, Asana has acquired more certifications overall and can also offer you your own encryption key for your data.

For example, both Notion and Asana are compliant with:

• SOC 2 Type 2,
• ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 27017, ISO 27018,
• GDPR, and
• HIPAA.

But Asana takes this a step further with additional certifications, like SOC 3.

Both tools offer data encryption in transit and at rest, but Asana also offers Enterprise Key Management (EKM) on its Enterprise+ plan.

Notion and Asana provide Single Sign-On (SSO) on their paid accounts too. However, Asana has Google SSO on all paid accounts, whereas Notion offers SAML SSO only on Business and Enterprise plans.

Notion vs Asana: Which should you go for?

All things considered, both Notion and Asana are solid project and task management tools — so the choice depends on your preferences and what you would use the tools for.

I’d recommend choosing Notion if you:

• Crave customization and want to tailor-make your workspace,
• Want a tool with superb AI capabilities, and
• Have a lower budget.

On the other hand, I’d suggest going for Asana if you:

• Want a tool that’s easy to set up and navigate,
• Need advanced team collaboration features, and
• Require a free plan for your small team (<10 people).

Looking for a Notion or Asana alternative? Try Plaky

If neither Notion nor Asana has what you are looking for, you should check out Plaky. While both tools can accommodate a diverse set of business needs, from something as simple as note-taking to planning a product launch, Plaky offers similar features while also being budget-friendly.

As a both beginner- and user-friendly task management tool, Plaky is a great Notion alternative that enables:

• Simple and effective project planning,
• Real-time team collaboration, and
• Easy progress tracking — no matter if you’re using the web version or the mobile apps.

Plaky is an excellent free Asana alternative too since its free plan is fully operational and can be used by an unlimited number of users.

And the best part? Unlike with Notion and Asana, all Plaky users get 24/7 customer support — no matter their plan.

Depending on your plan, Plaky gives you access to some incredible task and project management features, including:

• Custom fields (including the newest Timeline field),
• Kanban boards,
• User and team @mentions,
• Custom task statuses,
• Activity log,
• File and document sharing, and so much more.

In Plaky, you can also build boards from scratch or use one of Plaky’s templates.

With a robust free plan, Plaky is the ideal option for growing teams and organizations looking to improve their workflows and manage projects of all sizes.

But if that’s not enough, Plaky’s paid plans come with additional features that’ll help you further optimize and enhance your project management processes and team collaboration.

While Notion and Asana both have merit, they may ultimately be too expensive or too complicated to use. Plaky stands out as a user-friendly, affordable alternative for both small and large teams that can be used across various industries and departments.