The short version
Every tool here is good at what it does. The differences that matter:
- What the free tier actually gives you. Asana's free plan caps at 2 users. Monday's caps at 2 seats and 3 boards. Trello's caps at 10 boards per workspace. Comuna's free tier is the whole product with no user or project limit.
- Whether team chat is in the box. In Trello, Asana, Notion and Monday, chat is somewhere else — usually Slack. In Comuna, channels and DMs sit next to the boards.
- What AI costs you. Everywhere else, AI is a paid tier or a credit meter on top of your seat. In Comuna you connect the Claude or ChatGPT subscription you already pay for, and we take no cut.
Side by side
Prices are list price per user (or seat) per month, verified 24 July 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page. Vendors change pricing often — check the links at the bottom before quoting these.
| Comuna | Trello | Asana | Notion | Monday | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0, forever | $0 → $5–$17.50 | $0 → $10.99–$24.99 | $0 → $10–$20 | $0 → $9–$19 |
| Users on the free plan | Unlimited | Up to 10 per workspace | 2 | Limited features with 2+ members | 2 seats |
| Projects on the free plan | Unlimited | 10 boards per workspace | Unlimited | Unlimited pages | 3 boards |
| Kanban | ✓ free | ✓ free | ✓ free | Build it yourself | ✓ free |
| Table / Calendar / Gantt | ✓ all free | Calendar & Timeline are paid | Timeline & Gantt are paid | Build it yourself | Gantt is paid |
| Team chat & DMs | ✓ built in | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Notes / wiki | ✓ built in | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ (this is its strength) | Docs |
| Works offline | ✓ | Partially | ✗ | Partially | ✗ |
| AI on the free plan | ✓ your own | ✗ | ✗ | Trial only | ✗ |
| What AI costs | Your existing Claude/ChatGPT plan | Premium and up | Paid plans, credit-metered | Trial, then credits ($10 / 1,000) | Paid plans, credit-metered |
| AI as an attributed teammate | ✓ identity, history, approvals | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Where the AI difference actually lands
Everywhere else, "AI" means a feature inside the tool: summarize this, write that, autofill a field. You pay the vendor per seat or per credit, and the vendor pays the model provider.
Comuna does the opposite. You connect the AI you already pay for through MCP, and it works your boards the way a colleague would: it reads your project instructions, picks up tasks you left it, moves real cards, and comes back with questions when something needs your judgment. Its actions are signed with its own identity in the card history, so you can always see what the AI did versus what a person did.
That means two things worth being blunt about:
- The upside: no AI markup, no credit meter, no "premium AI tier". Your Claude or ChatGPT subscription does the work.
- The catch: it only runs when you invoke it from Claude or ChatGPT. Comuna can queue work and show you results, but it cannot start your AI on its own. If someone sells you a "fully autonomous 24/7 agent", ask them exactly what triggers it.
Where the others are a better fit
We would rather you pick the right tool than churn in a month.
- Notion — if your core need is documents, wikis and databases you shape yourself. Its editor and data model are better than ours, and it is not close.
- Monday / Asana — if you need heavy workflow automation, resource and capacity planning, portfolio roll-ups, or enterprise procurement (SSO/SCIM, DPAs at scale, an account manager). We do not have that depth.
- Trello — if you want the simplest possible board and nothing else, and your team is under 10 people. It is very good at exactly that.
- Comuna — if you want a complete project tool your team can use for free, with chat in the same place, and your AI subscription doing real work as an attributed teammate.
What Comuna does not have (yet)
Being straight about this, because you will find out in week two anyway:
- No native mobile app. The web app is responsive and installable, but it is not a native app.
- No automation builder ("when X, then Y"). Your AI coworker covers a lot of this, but it is not a rules engine.
- No SSO/SCIM, no enterprise procurement track.
- Small team, young product. Fewer integrations than any tool on this list.
Sources
Verified 24 July 2026 on each vendor's own pricing page: Trello · Asana · Notion · Monday
If you spot something out of date here, tell us and we will fix it — an inaccurate comparison helps nobody.
Start your workspace — free forever, no card.