Best Asana Alternatives in 2026: Task and Project Tools With Goals, Timelines and Automation

monday.com, ClickUp and OpenProject are the Asana alternatives to look at first. monday.com suits board-first teams that want dashboards and automation, ClickUp puts goals, several views and workload in one hosted app, and OpenProject gives you open-source Gantt charts and time tracking that you can host yourself.

Asana users tend to value three things: seeing work across projects through portfolios, tying tasks to goals, and automating routine steps. This guide checks each pick against those, using the vendors' own pages, and runs from hosted work platforms through client-work tools to open-source options. A table before the decision guide shows where each Asana strength turns up elsewhere.

Why people look for Asana alternatives

Asana is a work management platform for projects, tasks and shared goals, and its vendor now describes it as an operating system for teams that include AI agents. The usual reasons to compare it are straightforward.

• A small free plan. The free Personal plan is meant for very small teams, so a growing group moves to per-user paid plans quickly, with enterprise terms handled through sales.
• Closed source, hosted only. There is no self-hosted edition, which rules it out where data has to stay on your own servers.
• A widening platform. Beyond tasks and projects, the product line includes service management, client management, a developer product called Command and an AI layer with AI Teammates and AI Studio. Teams that want straightforward task tracking may find the surface larger than they need.
• Different shape of work. Software teams, agencies and goal-driven companies each have tools built around their way of working.

How we picked

Every tool here lets a team plan projects, assign tasks and follow progress, which is Asana's core job. Enlisted's data then sorted them by the things Asana users care about, and a feature is only credited to a tool when its listing or its own website names it. Open-source candidates were screened for a visible licence and recent GitHub activity, and any repository that calls itself frozen or unmaintained was left out of the picks. Nothing here is based on first-hand testing; the descriptions rely on catalogue entries and vendor pages. See how Enlisted ranks tools.

1. monday.com: best for board-first teams that want dashboards and automation

monday.com is a hosted work management platform built around customizable boards, which teams use for projects, campaigns, IT tickets, hiring and sales pipelines. The vendor's page names Gantt, Kanban and calendar views, dashboards, automations, forms and docs, plus an agent builder and AI assistant.

Where Asana gives each person a task list and each manager a project view, monday.com starts from the board and builds dashboards on top. There is a free plan for very small teams, paid plans are priced per seat, and Enlisted lists a trial. It is closed source and hosted only.

• Best for: cross-department teams that want flexible boards, dashboards and automations in one place.
• Watch out for: CRM, product development and IT service are separate monday.com products, so confirm which one you are evaluating.

2. ClickUp: best for goals, several views and workload in one app

ClickUp pairs task management with docs, chat, whiteboards and goals in one workspace. For Asana users the relevant parts are its goals area, its automations and a long list of views (List, Board, Calendar, Gantt, Timeline, Workload and Table) on the vendor's views page.

The free plan includes unlimited tasks and members, paid plans are per user, and enterprise is quoted through sales. There is no self-hosted edition. If it feels like too much, the ClickUp alternatives guide covers simpler tools.

• Best for: teams that want goals, timeline views and workload in a single hosted workspace.
• Watch out for: it bundles docs, chat and whiteboards too, so it may be broader than Asana rather than lighter.

3. Wrike: best for larger organizations that need Gantt charts and request forms

Wrike is an enterprise work management platform with interactive Gantt charts, resource management, dynamic request forms with conditional logic, custom automation rules and dashboards. It covers project and portfolio management, campaign management and creative production, so it is the nearest peer to Asana at the enterprise end.

There is a free plan and a trial, paid plans are charged per seat, and the top tiers are quoted. It is closed source and hosted only. See the Wrike alternatives guide for the same comparison from Wrike's side.

• Best for: mid-size and enterprise teams that need portfolio oversight, request intake and resource planning.
• Watch out for: it is pitched at large multi-team organizations, so small teams may find it more than they need.

4. Notion: best for teams that want tasks inside a documentation workspace

Notion is a hosted workspace in which tasks are one kind of page among documents and wikis. Its project pages describe timeline views, progress bars, a "My tasks" section for personal work, and GitHub and Jira integrations that bring pull requests and issues in next to plans.

Asana keeps tasks at the center, and Notion keeps writing at the center. The free plan is for individuals, paid plans are per member, and there is no self-hosted edition. The Notion alternatives guide has the other side of this choice.

• Best for: small teams whose work is mostly specs, notes and plans with a task list attached.
• Watch out for: you design the structure yourself, and portfolio-style roll-ups take more building than in a dedicated project tool.

5. Teamwork: best for agencies that need project delivery and profitability together

Teamwork is a hosted platform for agencies and consultancies that treats the money side of a project as seriously as the task side: time tracking, budgets, rates, quotes and profitability reports sit beside intake forms, resource planning and capacity forecasting. A helpdesk product, Desk, turns support tickets into tasks.

That speaks to Asana users who run client work and want margins visible while projects run. A free plan covers small teams, paid tiers are per user, and there is a trial.

• Best for: agencies and consultancies that bill by the hour and watch project margins.
• Watch out for: the product is organized around client delivery, so teams with purely internal projects may prefer a general-purpose tool.

6. OpenProject: best open-source suite with Gantt charts and time tracking

OpenProject is a GPL-3.0 project management suite whose free Community edition handles the planning side: work packages, Gantt charts, agile boards and time tracking, according to its pricing page.

For Asana users who lean on cross-project roll-ups, note that the same page puts portfolio management, resource management, advanced boards and automations in the paid Enterprise edition, which OpenProject hosts or you can run on your own server, with a trial.

• Best for: organizations that want classic planning with Gantt charts and the option to host it themselves.
• Watch out for: portfolios, resource planning and automations are Enterprise-only, and self-hosting means you handle upgrades and backups.

7. Leantime: best open-source tool that combines tasks with goal tracking

Leantime joins strategy, planning and execution in one open-source tool aimed at non-specialists. Alongside Kanban, Gantt, table, list and calendar views, sprints and timesheets, it offers goal and metrics tracking, idea boards, retrospectives and strategy canvases.

You can self-host the AGPL-3.0 Community Edition at no cost or pay per user for hosted Pro, which has a trial. For teams that use Asana mainly to connect tasks to goals, it is one of the few open-source tools that lists goal tracking.

• Best for: small teams that want goals, planning and tasks in one self-hosted tool.
• Watch out for: it does not list portfolio or resource management, so larger organizations may outgrow it.

8. Operately: best open-source tool built around goals and check-ins

Operately is an open-source company operating system for goals, projects, team spaces, documents and regular check-ins. Unlike flexible tools such as Notion or ClickUp, it is opinionated: goals and OKRs link to projects with task boards and milestones, and built-in check-ins and progress updates set a cadence.

A CLI and API let AI agents create goals, update projects and post check-ins. Enlisted lists a free tier, hosted plans priced as flat monthly tiers rather than per seat, and free self-hosting. The licence is listed as Other, so read the repository's terms.

• Best for: growing companies that want goal reviews and project check-ins as a routine.
• Watch out for: it prescribes a way of working, which suits companies that want that structure and annoys those who want a blank canvas.

9. Plane: best open-source tracker for product and software teams

Plane is an open-source tracker for issues, cycles, roadmaps and docs, built on a React and TypeScript front end with a Django back end, PostgreSQL and Redis, and packaged for Docker. It is released under AGPL-3.0, with Plane Cloud as the hosted route.

Kanban boards, a triage flow for incoming work and built-in docs and wikis come with it. A free plan covers small teams, and paid plans are per seat with a trial.

• Best for: product and engineering teams leaving Asana for something closer to a developer tracker.
• Watch out for: it is aimed at issue and sprint work, so marketing and operations teams will find it less natural.

10. Linear: best focused hosted tracker for software teams

Linear is a closed-source tracker for engineering and product teams, built around issues, projects and initiatives that span the whole company, with AI agents that can be assigned work. Its initiatives echo Asana's goals and portfolios, for software teams only.

Free use comes with limits on teams and issues, and anything paid is billed per user. There is no self-hosted edition. For other developer-focused options, the Jira alternatives guide has more.

• Best for: engineering and product teams that want a narrow, focused tool with initiatives and projects.
• Watch out for: it does not suit non-software teams, and there is no self-hosted edition.

Other options worth a look

• Open-source suites: Worklenz adds time tracking and resource planning, Taiga is listed as the Python backend of the Taiga agile platform, and Vikunja is a self-hostable task manager with an API.
• Simple boards: Trello and Planka suit teams that only need boards, covered in the Trello alternatives guide.
• Spreadsheet-style and portfolio tools: Smartsheet is a hosted grid-based platform with forms and portfolio views, and Nifty groups projects into portfolios by team or client.
• Hosted trackers for software teams: Shortcut offers kanban boards, sprints and roadmaps.

Where do Asana's best-known strengths show up elsewhere?

Here, "lists" means the feature is named in Enlisted's listing or on the vendor's site.

Which Asana alternative should you choose?

Enlisted's Asana alternatives page lists more, including pages for monday.com and Wrike, and the project management category shows the rest of the field. If your goal is to avoid a subscription, see the free project management software guide.

Before you leave Asana

List the Asana features your teams use every week: rules, portfolios, goals, forms, custom fields and integrations. Each alternative maps some of them and drops others, so the move is easiest when you can name the two or three that matter most. Start with one team rather than the whole company, compare each vendor's import tools, and if you choose open source, decide who maintains it before anyone depends on it.