ClickUp vs Trello: Which Is Better for Your Agency?

Trello has long been the go-to for basic task management and no-frills Kanban boards. Most of us who’ve used it are also more than familiar with its limitations.

At ZenPilot, ClickUp’s #1 rated Solutions Partner, we’ve helped dozens of agencies, professional services firms, and marketing teams migrate their project management from Trello to ClickUp. Here’s how the two compare, including where Trello is the better pick.

Key Takeaways

Table of Contents

• What is ClickUp?
• What is Trello?
• ClickUp vs Trello: Feature Comparison
• Features
• Views
• Team Communication
• Ease of Use
• ClickUp vs Trello Pricing
• ClickUp Pricing
• Trello Pricing
• ClickUp vs Trello: AI Features
• ClickUp vs Trello: Pros and Cons
• Trello vs ClickUp: Which One Should You Pick?
• How to Migrate from Trello to ClickUp
• Frequently Asked Questions

What is ClickUp?

ClickUp is a full-suite collaboration platform where teams share documents, create reports, manage tasks, and edit files together in real time. It also has team chat and whiteboards.

What is Trello?

Trello is a Kanban board web app and a subsidiary of Atlassian. You create task cards, automate simple workflows, and attach files from Dropbox or Google Drive.

ClickUp vs Trello: Feature Comparison

Features: full platform vs Kanban boards

Top ClickUp features:

• Task management
• Recurring tasks
• Time tracking
• Dependencies
• Whiteboards
• Real-time team chat
• Custom views
• Custom fields
• Chrome extension
• Reporting and workload management
• Mobile apps (iOS and Android)
• Integrations and automations

Top Trello features:

• Kanban task boards
• Checklists
• Custom fields
• Unlimited storage (5 MB to 250 MB per file, varies by plan)
• Trello Views (Premium plan or higher)
• Mobile apps (iOS and Android)
• Integrations and automations

Winner: ClickUp. It’s a full-suite platform, whereas Trello mostly centers on task management with Kanban boards.

Views: Trello charges for anything beyond Kanban

ClickUp has quite a few views across its five subscription tiers: Kanban, Gantt, forms, timelines, and custom views. That makes it extremely flexible, if a bit tricky to get the hang of at the start.

You can also set default views for specific areas of your Workspace. Your content team could run their tasks as Kanban boards while operations uses Gantt charts to see the overarching schedules.

Trello was initially known for its Kanban boards, but it has added other views over the years. You can now view projects as a timeline, table, calendar, dashboard, or even a map.

The downside is that Trello Views is only available on the Premium tier or higher. You’ll pay a minimum of $10/month per user to use anything other than Kanban boards.

Winner: ClickUp. Both platforms have a diverse selection of views, but ClickUp has more options on its Free and Core plans.

Team Communication: native chat in ClickUp, none in Trello

ClickUp’s chat view lets you message team members in real time, and it feels rather similar to Slack. Don’t get us wrong, ClickUp won’t be competing with Slack on team chat anytime soon. But there are a few benefits to using it for projects:

• You don’t have to sign your whole team up for another platform just to send real-time messages.
• You can coordinate on projects without switching tabs.
• You can @mention any user in your Workspace and they’ll get the message in their main notifications feed.
• Slash commands (reminiscent of Notion) help you format messages quicker.

Trello falls quite short here. You can integrate Trello with team chat tools such as Slack, but it doesn’t have any native real-time communication.

Most of your communication inside Trello itself will be commenting on task cards and tagging colleagues so they see it.

Winner: ClickUp, for having native team communication.

Ease of Use: Trello is faster to learn

Trello is clearly the easier product to use if you want a platform that’s up and running in minutes. Sign up for an account, create your workspace, add a couple of team members, and start assigning task cards.

ClickUp’s flexibility and breadth of features can make for a steep learning curve. To be fair, it has extensive documentation in its knowledge base and the UI is rather intuitive. Still, a full-suite platform is going to be harder for most new users than a single-purpose product.

Teams that want a structured rollout (agencies, professional services firms, or operations-focused organizations) can work with a ClickUp implementation partner to flatten the learning curve.

If you’re an agency, be sure to see this webinar on ClickUp for agencies.

Winner: Trello. Its simplicity gets it a decisive win on ease of use.

ClickUp vs Trello Pricing

ClickUp Pricing

ClickUp’s free plan is rather feature-dense compared to some of its competitors. You can add an unlimited number of team members, share files with 60 MB of cloud storage, and use most of the core features that bring people to the platform.

The Core plan will likely be the most appealing to SMBs, growing agencies, and small professional services teams. It grants unlimited storage, unlimited integrations, and reporting for $9/month per user (billed annually).

The Business plan is $25/month per user, or $17/month if you bill annually. It includes features that matter more to bigger companies: advanced automations, workload management, advanced time tracking, and Google SSO are just a few.

The Business Plus and Enterprise tiers will likely be overkill for most people. That said, power users may want custom permissions, custom roles, higher API limits, white labeling, and priority support.

ClickUp Plans	Free	Core	Business	Business Plus	Enterprise
ClickUp Pricing	Free	$9/month/user	$17/month/user	$28/month/user	Custom pricing
Customer Support	24/7 Support	24/7 Support	24/7 Support	24/7 Support	Priority Support
Storage Capacity	60 MB	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Top Features	Unlimited Tasks	Custom Fields	Workload & Timesheets	Custom Permissions	Microsoft, Okta & SAML SSO

ClickUp pricing updated November 2026, billed annually. For the full plan breakdown, see our guide to choosing a ClickUp pricing plan.

Trello Pricing

Trello has a free tier and three paid plans. The free tier gives you up to 10 boards in your workspace, unlimited task cards, and as many users as you want.

Where ClickUp offers 60 MB of cloud storage on its free plan, Trello’s free plan offers unlimited storage for files smaller than 10 MB.

The Standard plan ($6/month per user) raises the individual file size limit to 250 MB. It also adds custom fields, board guests, saved searches, advanced checklists, and unlimited boards.

The Premium plan costs $12.50/month per user or $10/month. It adds Trello’s other views, plus workspace templates, collections, observers, priority support, Google Apps sign-on, and more.

Trello’s Enterprise tier, at $17.50/month per user (billed annually), lets you add multi-board guests, set custom attachment permissions, create unlimited workspaces, and enable SSO through Atlassian Access.

Trello Plans	Free	Standard	Premium	Enterprise
Trello Pricing	Free	$6/month/user	$12.50/month/user	$17.50/month/user (billed annually)
Customer Support	Email support	Email support	Priority support	Priority support
Storage Capacity	Unlimited (10 MB per file)	Unlimited (250 MB per file)	Unlimited (250 MB per file)	Unlimited (250 MB per file)
Top Features	Mobile Apps	Unlimited Boards	Trello Views	Unlimited Workspaces

ClickUp vs Trello: AI Features

AI is one area where the gap between these two tools is enormous.

Trello’s AI is limited to basic writing assistance (brainstorm, summarize, fix grammar) in card descriptions and comments, plus enhanced Butler automation where you describe rules in plain English. There’s also a Board Builder that generates a board structure from a prompt, but it’s more of a novelty than a workflow tool.

Trello has no workspace-wide knowledge retrieval, no project summarization, no risk prediction, and no AI agents. AI writing features are included with Premium and up.

ClickUp Brain includes:

• Workspace-wide knowledge retrieval (ask questions about your tasks, docs, and comments in plain language)
• Automated standup reports
• AI writing
• Super Agents (AI coworkers you @mention and assign tasks to, with 500+ skills)
• Multi-model access (GPT-5, Claude, o3)
• MCP integration
• AI-powered meeting notes

AI is included in every ClickUp plan as of October 2026, with a monthly pool of AI credits.

If AI matters to your team’s productivity, Trello doesn’t compete at this level. ClickUp, Asana, Notion, and Jira all have more developed AI platforms.

That said, if your team uses Trello for simple Kanban boards and doesn’t need AI-powered project management, that’s perfectly fine. Don’t pay for capabilities you won’t use. But if you’re evaluating tools for the next 2-3 years, the AI gap between Trello and the rest of the market is only going to widen.

For a full breakdown of what ClickUp’s AI can do (and where it falls short), see our ClickUp AI guide.

ClickUp vs Trello: Pros and Cons

ClickUp Pros and Cons

ClickUp Pros	ClickUp Cons
Most powerful and flexible project management software	Longer learning curve
Frequently releases new features	A few bugs on newly-released features
1,000+ integrations	Not as many pre-built integrations

Trello Pros and Cons

Trello Pros	Trello Cons
Unlimited task cards on free plan	Most features are Kanban-centric
Mobile apps with 2FA	No real-time team chat
Easy to use	Not as flexible

Trello vs ClickUp: Which One Should You Pick?

These are two products built with very different use cases in mind, so the choice comes down to three questions:

• How much are you ready to pay?
• How tech-savvy is your team?
• How flexible do you need your project management software to be?

There’s power in simplicity, and Trello definitely has a place in the tool stack of smaller teams and organizations. If you’re managing more of your workflow than task cards, that’s where ClickUp fits.

Related: Evaluating other options too? See our comparisons of ClickUp vs Asana, ClickUp vs Monday, ClickUp vs Notion, and our full guide to choosing the best project management tool.

How to Migrate from Trello to ClickUp

ClickUp has a built-in Trello importer, so moving the data is the quick part. Here’s the full process:

1. Run ClickUp’s native Trello import. The importer pulls in your boards, lists, and cards automatically. Go to your ClickUp workspace settings, select “Import/Export,” choose Trello, and authorize the connection. This handles the bulk of your data migration in minutes.
2. Map your Trello boards to ClickUp’s hierarchy. Trello’s flat structure (Boards > Lists > Cards) maps to ClickUp’s deeper hierarchy. Each Trello board typically becomes a List or Folder in ClickUp, each Trello list becomes a status or group, and each card becomes a task. Plan this mapping before you import.
3. Rebuild your workflows with what Trello was missing. Add custom fields, set up dependencies between tasks, configure automations, and create views beyond Kanban (Gantt, Timeline, Workload). Improve on your Trello setup instead of copying it.
4. Set up templates for repeating work. If you had recurring Trello boards or card patterns, build ClickUp templates for them. You can template entire Folders, Lists, or individual tasks with pre-mapped dates, assignees, and custom fields.
5. Replace your Power-Ups. Many Trello Power-Ups (time tracking, calendar views, custom fields) are native features in ClickUp. Audit your Power-Ups and sort out which are now built in and which need a ClickUp integration.
6. Train your team on the new views and features. Trello users are used to simplicity, so start with a familiar Board view in ClickUp and introduce other views gradually. Run a 1-2 week parallel period where the team can reference Trello while getting comfortable with ClickUp.

Need help with the migration? ZenPilot has guided 3,100+ clients through ClickUp implementations - including many Trello migrations. Book a call to talk through your transition plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Trello?

Trello is a Kanban-focused project management tool owned by Atlassian. It’s built around task cards and boards, which makes it one of the simplest ways to visualize and organize work. It’s popular with small teams and individuals who need a lightweight, easy-to-learn system for basic task tracking.

Is ClickUp better than Trello?

For anything beyond simple Kanban workflows, yes. ClickUp has native time tracking, Gantt charts, workload management, automations, custom fields, and a deep hierarchy for organizing work across clients and departments. Trello excels at simplicity, but most teams outgrow it once their project management needs get more complex.

Is Trello or ClickUp cheaper?

Trello’s entry paid plan is cheaper: Standard is $6/user/month, and ClickUp’s Core plan is $9/user/month (billed annually). But most Trello views beyond Kanban require Premium at $10/month per user, and ClickUp’s free plan includes multiple view types and unlimited members.

Is there a Trello ClickUp integration?

For moving over, yes. ClickUp has a built-in Trello importer that pulls in your boards, lists, and cards. In your ClickUp workspace settings, select “Import/Export,” choose Trello, and authorize the connection.

Can Trello handle complex project management?

Not well. Trello has a flat hierarchy (boards, lists, and cards), no native time tracking, no workload views, no Gantt charts, and limited reporting. Teams managing multiple clients, deliverables with dependencies, or cross-department workflows end up relying on workarounds or third-party Power-Ups.

Is Trello free?

Yes, Trello has a free plan with unlimited task cards and up to 10 boards per workspace. It’s limited, though: files are capped at 10 MB and you only get basic Kanban views. ClickUp’s free plan is more generous, with unlimited members, 60 MB of storage, and most core features including multiple view types.

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• ClickUp vs SmartSuite - agency work management vs no-code work platform

Want Help Making the Switch?

Whether you’re moving off Trello or trying to get more out of ClickUp, most teams we talk to aren’t getting full value from what they already pay for: structure, dashboards, automations, time tracking, and now AI on top of it all.

That’s the job at ZenPilot. We look at how your team runs (or plans to run) ClickUp, show you exactly what to fix, and help you roll out the changes in a way your team will adopt instead of ignore.

If you want that kind of look at your setup, book a free 30-minute call. Worst case, you leave with a clearer picture of what to fix first.