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Asana and Jira are two of the most famous names in project management software, but which one stands out in 2024? The choice between Asana vs Jira largely depends on the types of projects, tasks, and integrations your team needs to meet objectives. While Asana is excellent for a user-friendly interface and general project management needs, Jira’s design specifically aids software development and IT services teams. Jira might offer better pricing and more integrations, but it remains more complicated for non-technical users looking for ease of implementation and use.
Read on to compare Asana vs Jira in greater detail on various features for different organizations.
Asana vs Jira: At a Glance
Price
Core Features
Ease
of
Implementation
Integrations
Automation
Apps
When you compare Jira vs Asana, there is plenty of overlap in project management functionality. The two platforms vary across several solution areas, including pricing, core features, ease of implementation, and integration.
Our review found Asana edges out Jira for ease of implementation, while Jira stands out for its pricing, integrations, and automation capabilities. Asana and Jira offer cloud-based applications for desktop and mobile devices to ensure access regardless of location or devices used.
Asana Overview
In 2008, two Facebook employees, Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, left the social media giant to launch the work management platform Asana. Today, the San Francisco–based software developer serves over 150,000 customers across 200+ countries and territories. Available as a web, desktop, or mobile application, Asana includes various features to aid in project management, including goals, reporting, workflow automation, resource management, and application security. These are features ideal for nearly every type of team and task, from employee onboarding for HR and campaign management for marketing to resource planning for operations.
Read our complete Asana software review.
Key Features
- Multiple project views (list, board, calendar) for visualizing projects and tasks
- Ability to create, assign, and track tasks from planning to execution and audits
- Real-time collaboration and communication, including file attachments
- Integrations with critical third-party apps from Google, Microsoft, and more
- Built-in templates and reporting tools to automate project planning and reviews
From any project view, users can create tasks with all the necessary information for a team. This task data can include the task name, assigned owner, deadline, dependencies, description, and any attachments. Additional fields include setting the priority (e.g., Low, Medium, High) or task status (e.g., On track, At risk, Off track), with the option to add or adjust options to match team jargon.
Another valuable feature set in Asana is its automation capabilities. Whether it’s specific to Asana or involves a third-party application, Asana has a long list of built-in rules for automation. Alternatively, teams can create custom rules with Asana’s rule engine. By creating a new rule or deploying an existing one, teams can pinpoint actions that trigger additional steps, like moving a task, adding additional tasks, or changing task field data.
Read more: Best Asana Alternatives and Competitors
Asana offers over 300 potential integrations, including popular apps for productivity, operations, and cybersecurity and big-name tools from Microsoft, Google, Dropbox, Adobe, and ServiceNow.
Asana Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Read more: Top Asana Pros and Cons
Jira Overview
In 2002, two Australian students from the University of New South Wales, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, launched Jira as an issue-tracking and project management solution. Two decades later, Jira remains a top pick among teams in software development, product management, and IT services — with over 300,000 customers. All the while, Atlassian continues to grow as a solutions provider for team collaboration, service management, cybersecurity, and more. Although Jira prides itself on being an agile project management tool, the platform caters to any team and methodology, providing space for collaboration on different types of projects and workflows.
Read our complete Jira software review.
Key Features
- Comprehensive support for Agile methodologies (e.g., Kanban and Scrum tools)
- Extensive integration options, including a plethora of DevOps tools
- Robust issue-tracking capabilities for monitoring features, tasks, and bugs
- Built-in dashboards, reporting, and time-tracking features for project management
- Ability to customize and automate workflows for specific projects and tasks
Jira offers multiple views including timelines, backlogs, Kanban boards, calendars, lists, and more. From any view, users can create a task, also known as an “issue” in Jira, with any accompanying information. This task data includes issue type (e.g., task, bug, story, epic), status, summary, detailed description, assigned owner, parent tasks, and estimated story points. If Jira’s love of agile methodology needed to be clarified, the language it uses for standard project management terms confirms it.
Read more: Best Task Management Software and Tools
Another easy way to get started with Jira is to utilize one of the platform’s built-in project templates for different teams. Whether it’s software development, finance, HR, or legal, Jira has templates and bundled templates to kickstart planning for specific project types.
For integration needs, Jira users have access to the sizable Atlassian Marketplace of applications. Teams can explore over 1,000 applications, searching by functionality categories, such as time tracking and reports, or other filters, such as cloud-fortified apps, partner-supported apps, beta versions, and free tools.
Also read:: Top Jira Alternatives for Project Management
Emphasizing the strong connection between Jira and software development teams, GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket integrations allow users to reduce context switching and quickly access development workflows.
Jira Pros and Cons
Pros
Cons
Read more: 6 Best Project Portfolio Management Software in 2024
Best for Pricing: Jira
Jira and Asana offer free plans for individual users and small teams and both have monthly and annual subscriptions, but when comparing premium plans, Jira stands out for its affordability and cost savings for enterprise organizations.
Jira offers three paid plans: Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. While larger organizations will need to call Atlassian for an Enterprise plan quote, the vendor provides various pricing points for Standard and Premium plans that purchasing agents can configure from teams of 10 up to 50,000 users. Each additional user tier offers cost savings for monthly and annual plans.
After its free plan, Asana offers four paid monthly or annual subscriptions: Starter, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise+. Unlike Jira, where larger teams can expect cost savings for higher user tiers, Asana’s doesn’t take team size as a factor for its pricing. Organizations can expect to pay as much per user with 500 employees as they would with a team of 10 employees.
When compared, Asana and Jira each offer free up to enterprise plans that require a quote. As of mid-2024, Asana’s second- and third-highest tiers cost almost twice as much as Jira’s similar tiers. For a monthly subscription, Asana’s plans start at $13.49 per user for Starter and $30.49 for Advanced. By comparison, monthly subscriptions for Jira begin at $8.15 per user for Standard and $16.00 per user for Premium.
Best for Core Features: Tie
A deep dive into Asana and Jira’s long list of features for different plans shows they share more similarities than differences. Both platforms share the ability to create, customize, and execute project tasks across different project views. Each solution offers multiple ways for team members to collaborate and communicate about tasks, their dependencies, reporting, and progress status. As organizations grow, both vendors offer scalability to ensure new team members onboard effectively, automation rules enhance efficiency, and no task is left behind.
For organizations prioritizing their cybersecurity posture, both Asana and Jira offer several ways to protect application data. Starting with the free plans, users can expect encryption for data at rest and in motion, multi-factor authentication, and backups to ensure business continuity in the case of a disaster. With upgraded plans, administrators can enable and utilize single sign-on (SSO), IP allowlisting, user activity audit logs, and integrations with popular data loss prevention (DLP), security information and event management (SIEM), and eDiscovery applications.
The newest feature vendors are adding to PM software is platform-based artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance team workflows. Like ChatGPT and other popular large language models (LLM), Asana AI and Jira’s Atlassian Intelligence offer additional ways to communicate effectively, enhance quality of work, and generate insights. Like with most new technology, time will tell just how valuable or risky incorporating cognitive computing into workflows is.
Also read: Creating Project Timelines: Step-by-Step Guide for 2024
Best for Ease of Implementation: Asana
Upon opening your Asana or Jira account, both platforms offer in-app tutorials for exploring the software and its features. Additional guidance between vendor and community resources is plentiful for familiarizing users with each platform.
For team members looking to skip these tutorials and jump into work, Asana is easier to implement than Jira. Even with minimal training, Asana is an intuitive platform that most users should be able to pick up fast. Asana offers a quick and easy onboarding process.
By comparison, Jira can be a complex setup that requires additional customization and training depending on integrations, automation, and team size. If integrated into a sensitive infrastructure, training is essential to effectively using and protecting data on Jira.
Best for Integration and Automation: Jira
Today, it is essential for any project management platform to be capable of integrating and automating workflows with existing tools in a team’s technology stack. Luckily, Jira and Asana offer plenty of integrations for connecting critical apps and automation functionality to streamline tasks to project completion. Though Asana can connect team platforms to several reputable applications, its 300+ integrations are only a third of the over 1,000 integrations available on Jira. Beyond integrations, Asana and Jira offer similar automation capabilities, allowing users to create rules that execute specific workflows when triggered by an action like completing a task or approving project changes.
Who Shouldn’t Use Asana or Jira?
Because every team is different, choosing between Asana and Jira is largely subjective, and most teams would be fine with either solution.
Less complex work and small teams often don’t require a project management solution when a spreadsheet (e.g., Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets) or word-processing application (e.g., Microsoft Word, Google Docs) can do the trick. Conversely, enterprises and organizations managing sensitive data (e.g., classified, intellectual property, and other protected information) must consider how using Asana or Jira impacts their security posture.
Who shouldn’t use Asana
- Teams focused on agile project management methodology
- Technical teams like software developers and DevOps engineers
- Teams relying on complex issue and bug tracking
Who shouldn’t use Jira
- Teams looking for general project management capabilities
- Non-technical teams like sales, marketing, and HR
- Teams with less technically advanced team members
Best Alternatives to Asana and Jira
Not sure if Asana or Jira is right for your team? You’re in luck. There’s a long list of alternatives that vary in price, features, and specifications for unique teams and industries.
If you’re interested in learning more about the best project management solutions on the market, check out our 10 Best Project Management Software 2024 Buyers’ Guide.
Since 2017, ClickUp has become one of the top PM solutions, offering a collaboration and productivity platform for managing projects, products, knowledge, resources, and workflows. With four plans, including free and enterprise subscriptions, ClickUp offers plenty of features at a price point similar to Asana and Jira. It has one of the most user-friendly environments for teams, and its workflow capabilities include access to over 1,000 potential integrations.
Established in 2012, monday.com is a leading project management software for teams of all sizes, serving over 225,000 customers across 200 industries. While monday.com is known for its flagship solution, monday work management, it continues to expand its services with products like monday CRM for customer relationship management, monday dev for software development teams, and monday service for IT services teams. Interested customers will find monday.com offers many of the same features as Asana and Jira, with prices similar to Jira.
Wrike is one of the oldest and most popular project management platforms available. Founded in 2006, Wrike is a general project management tool with functionality for various industries and team types. Wrike’s resource library is one of the most extensive and ensures users have confidence in utilizing the software-as-a-service solution. The platform offers features similar to Asana and Jira and is a familiar price point for small- and medium-sized teams.
Methodology
To choose a champion, we considered every aspect of Asana and Jira. This breakdown could be an article of its own; however, most variables fall into one of the following buckets.
Features – 45%
Features offered for each solution were top of mind when comparing Asana and Jira. Like many project management solutions, there is plenty of overlap in functionality between the two, but there are also still important distinctions for different teams.
Pricing – 35%
Asana and Jira share similarities in pricing. Both offer monthly and annual subscriptions with free and premium plans for various teams. While Asana might offer more well-rounded features for general teams, Jira is the more affordable option.
Integration and automation – 20%
Both vendors offer integration and automation features to enable the streamlining of workflows. Though Asana provides plenty of household name integrations, competing with the over 1,000 integrations available for Jira teams is hard.
FAQs
Bottom Line: Asana vs Jira
Choosing between Jira and Asana largely depends on your team size, project types, and cost preference. While Jira is the lower-cost solution, it is also geared towards IT and DevOps teams that are more technically advanced. By comparison, Asana offers a friendly user interface and is ideal for teams of all sizes and functions. Asana is an attractive general project management solution for larger organizations with many department needs. That said, Atlassian’s expanding product offerings for collaboration, service management, and security mean companies could bundle other products with Jira to meet multiple internal teams’ needs.
