Notion vs Asana: What’s the difference?

Imagine you plan to run a marathon and you’re choosing your running shoes. How do you make the choice? 

Do you just buy the most expensive and the most popular ones? 

Of course not — you buy the ones that fit you best and feel the most comfortable. 

The same goes for choosing a task management tool for your business. 

Projects are the equivalent of a marathon in this example (they sure feel like marathons sometimes, don’t they?). And a task management tool is what helps you reach your goals every step of the way, just like a good pair of running shoes helps you reach the end of the marathon. 

So, make sure you choose a tool that fits your business needs.

In this article, we are putting Notion and Asana under the microscope and comparing their:

• Pricing,
• User interface,
• Task management, 
• Team collaboration,
• Progress tracking, 
• Administration, 
• Integration, 
• Support, and 
• Security. 

Read on and find out who will win this duel. 

Notion vs Asana overview

Let’s start with a general overview of both apps before we dive into the features. 

Notion is a project management tool that puts emphasis on note-taking and collaboration on docs. It can be used on the web, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS. 

Notion is available in 5 languages: English, German, French, Korean, and Japanese.

Asana is a robust task management tool that helps you organize your work and collaborate with your teammates. It has web, Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS versions available.

Asana is available in 13 languages.

Here’s an overview of Notion’s and Asana’s features:

Feature	Notion	Asana
Pricing	Free planPaid plans start from $8 per user per month	Free planPaid plans start from $10.99 per user per month
User interface	Customizable, clear	User-friendly, clear
Task management	Well-organized	Well-organized
Team collaboration	Editing pages in real timeComments@mentions	Direct messagesComments@mentions
Progress tracking	Status property FilterSort	GoalsMilestonesFilterSort
Administration	Audit logGuest access	Admin consoleGuest access
Integration	48	200+
Support	Notion AcademyNotion Community Guides Webinars	Asana HelpAsana GuideAsana Developer’s GuideAsana Community ForumAsana AcademyAsana WebinarAsana Use Cases
Security	Data encryptionCertification	Data encryptionCertification Encryption key

Notion vs Asana pricing 1:1

One of the questions we always ask ourselves when buying a new product is what we will get for the price we pay. 

Notion upgraded its pricing plans in December 2022 and now offers a free plan and 3 paid plans to its customers. Its free plan is free forever for individuals and includes:

• Unlimited blocks,
• 7-day page history,
• Up to 10 guests,
• File uploads up to 5MB and more. 

The free plan is also available for teams, but the number of blocks is limited to 1,000. 

The paid plans are:

• Plus — $8 per user per month,
• Business — $15 per user per month, and
• Enterprise — contact sales. 

Notion also offers one interesting add-on — Notion AI for $8 per user per month. 

Students and educators can get the Plus plan for free but for 1 member only, while nonprofits are eligible for a 50% discount on the Plus plan. 

Notion offers a full refund if you change your mind within 72 hours after signing up for monthly billing or 30 days after signing up for annual billing.

You can pay for your Notion subscription with a credit or debit card.

If you are looking for a project management tool with unlimited users and teams in the free plan, you should consider a Notion alternative. 

Asana offers a generous free plan which enables you to collaborate with up to 15 people. It includes:

• Unlimited projects, tasks, messages, file storage, and activity log, 
• 100+ integrations, 
• Board, list, and calendar view, 
• Project overview, and more. 

If you need additional features, Asana has 3 paid plans:

• Premium — $10.99,
• Business — $24.99, and 
• Enterprise — contact sales. 

Nonprofit organizations are eligible for a discount on Asana Premium and Business annual plans.

You can pay your subscription with a credit card. And if you have an annual subscription for more than 20 people, you can pay using invoices payable by a bank transfer or a check. 

Unfortunately, Asana doesn’t offer a refund if you decide to cancel your subscription. 

Notion vs Asana pricing verdict 

Both tools have appealing pricing plans. 

If you’re a small team looking for a free version, Asana might be the right choice for you. However, Notion offers a good free plan for individuals, and its paid plans are cheaper than Asana’s. 

So, both Asana and Notion win a point in the first round. 

Feature	Notion	Asana
Free version	✔️	✔️
Starting price	$8 per user per month	$10.99 per user per month
Paying method	Credit and debit cards	Credit cardInvoices
Refund	Full refund within:-72 hours for monthly billing-30 days for annual billing	❌
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notion vs Asana user interface 1:1

The user interface is one of the most important features of a project management tool. It has to be simple enough for everyone in the organization to be able to master it, and yet complex enough to take on all your business tasks.

Notion is a highly customizable tool that allows you to organize your workspace to fit your needs. This, of course, means it has a bit of a learning curve.

Notion consists of building blocks. Everything you add to a page — text, video, picture, board, table, etc. — is a block. You can arrange and rearrange these blocks across the page as you see fit. 

Since the Notion 2.22 release, you can automate manual processes. A recent addition to Notion’s features is a button that can automatically create tasks and docs with information already filled in, or report bugs.

Asana’s interface is colorful, clean, and easy to get accustomed to. It has a dark and light theme to choose from. There is even a colorblind-friendly mode that makes it easier for people with red-green blindness to navigate Asana. 

You can automate repetitive tasks in Asana to make your work simpler and faster. You can even create your own rules for automation so it can really fit your organization’s needs. 

For example, you can create an automation rule that whenever the priority of the task changes, followers are added automatically. 

Notion vs Asana user interface verdict 

Notion is highly customizable but is still rather straightforward. Once you get used to it, you can organize your work however you like. 

Asana is similar to Notion when it comes to the interface’s ease of use. It has a clean layout that is simple to navigate. 

So, once again, we have a tie, where both tools get a well-deserved point! 

Notion vs Asana task management 1:0

Task management is naturally at the heart of all project management tools. So, how do these 2 tools help you manage your tasks?

Notion offers several views:

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

Creating different views for your projects is simple, and you can easily organize information in different ways to help you see your work. 

You can view and manage all your tasks within a personal dashboard. Your personal dashboard can be just a basic block (like a to-do list) or a database that allows you to filter, sort, and customize all your tasks.  

What sets Notion apart from other task management tools is Notion AI. It 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. 

Notion offers a variety of templates that can help you work faster. Some of these templates were created by Notion users. 

So, not only can you use templates, you can also create them and submit them to Notion for review, and they may become part of Notion’s template gallery. 

Asana offers various views to help you organize tasks, such as:

• Board view, 
• List view, 
• Calendar view, and 
• Timeline. 

Asana has a large number of templates to help you get started with your work. They are organized by use case, so you have templates for software development, strategic planning, resource management, etc. But you can also create your own templates for your organization.

You can group tasks into sections to keep your work organized. If you want to rearrange tasks, you can just drag and drop tasks into different sections. 

Notion vs Asana task management verdict

Both tools have good task management features, but Notion AI snatches the win for Notion in this round.

Notion vs Asana team collaboration 1:0

Good communication and effective collaboration with team members make working on a project easier and less stressful. 

Notion allows you to collaborate with your teammates in real time. You and your team members can edit the same page simultaneously, and all the changes are updated in real time. If someone else is editing the page you are looking at, their profile picture will indicate where they are on the page. 

There are also several ways to leave comments in Notion. You can add one at the top of any page and start a discussion. You can also leave comments on specific blocks on a page. 

So, for example, if you are reviewing a project proposal and you think that the direction in which your team is going is wrong, you can leave a comment at the top of the page about what needs revising and share your opinion on the whole proposal. You can also mark specific parts of the text, and leave comments on how they may be improved. 

You can also @mention colleagues if you want to direct your comments to a specific person, and they will receive a notification. 

Aside from people, you can also @mention groups, dates, and pages in Notion. 

In Asana you can communicate with teammates in several ways. You can:

• Send direct messages to a person, team, or everyone working on a project, 
• Leave comments directly in the task, and
• @mention people in comments

If you want someone to be notified of all task updates, you can add them as a follower to a task. 

Notion vs Asana team collaboration verdict 

Notion wins this category by a landslide thanks to its simple, but effective collaboration features. 

Notion vs Asana progress tracking 0:1

In Notion, you can easily see your project and task progress by checking their statuses. The status property in Notion has 3 categories:

• To do, 
• In progress, and
• Complete. 

Still, you can create sub-categories (such as review, editing, up next, etc.) within these 3 categories to make progress tracking even more organized.

You can also filter and sort information in just a few clicks — all you have to do is choose the criteria among the task properties (columns in tasks). 

For example, you can use the filter option to see only tasks with the status “In progress”, and sort according to their priority. This way, you can see which ongoing tasks need your immediate attention. 

To have a clear overview of your project’s progress in Asana, you can create goals and project milestones. 

There are 3 types of goals in Asana:

• Company goals,
• Team goals, and 
• My goals. 

This hierarchical structure of goals helps you see how you and your team are contributing to the progress of the entire company’s goals. You can always see the progress of all goals, to see if they’re on track.  

For example, let’s say you are part of a marketing team at a company that just launched a new product:

• The company’s goal is to sell 10,000 copies of the new product in the next quarter.
• The marketing team’s goal is to launch a marketing campaign for the new product.
• Your goal is to write the script for a TV commercial that’s part of the campaign. 

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

You can also filter and sort your tasks to have a better overview of your work. Asana even supports multiple filter and sort options. 

Notion vs Asana progress tracking verdict

Asana outshines Notion in progress tracking thanks to its multiple filter and sort options, as well as the hierarchical structure of goals.

Notion vs Asana administration 0:1

There are 3 types of teamspaces in Notion:

• Open — spaces anyone can join,
• Closed — spaces anyone can see but can’t join unless invited, and
• Private — only members and owners can see that these spaces exist, and you have to be invited to join.

You can invite guests to work with you on individual pages in Notion — the Plus plan allows for 100 guests, while the Business plan allows for up to 250. 

You can see the activity in your workspace by accessing the audit log. In it, you have a clear display of which user did what and when. Not only does this help you have an overview of how your team members are using Notion, but it also allows you to spot any suspicious activity.

In Asana, you can choose the level of privacy of your projects. They can be:

• Public — all team members can access it,
• Private — only project members can access it, and you have to be invited to see it, 
• Private to you — only you can access it, and
• Comment only — users can view the project and leave comments, but they don’t have permission to edit anything. 

You can add an unlimited number of guests in all paid plans in Asana. 

Admins can use Admin Console to manage the organization’s workspace. They can, for example:

• Add or deactivate a member, 
• Create a new team,
• Export member or team data to CSV,
• Manage security settings, etc.

Notion vs Asana administration verdict 

The robust admin console and the unlimited number of guests secured a win for Asana in this category.

Notion vs Asana integration 0:1

Notion has a public API that allows you to build integrations and connect Notion with the tools you use. 

In Notion, you can:

• Import data from apps such as Confluence, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Trello, Evernote, and more,
• Sync Jira, Asana, and GitHub as a database, and 
• Integrate with Slack, Zoom, Figma, Zapier, and many other apps. 

Asana has 200+ integrations including Dropbox, GitHub, Figma, and Google Drive. 

More than 100 of these integrations are available in the free plan. 

Notion vs Asana integration verdict

Asana offers significantly more integrations, so it wins this round.

Feature	Notion	Asana
Number of integrations	48	200+
Build your own integrations	✔️	✔️
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notion vs Asana support 1:1

If you want to learn more about how to get the best out of Notion, you can check out:

• Notion Academy — courses containing video lessons, 
• Notion Community — a place for all users to join forums, events, or webinars,
• Guides — texts to help you better navigate Notion, and 
• Webinars — live webinars every week.

And if you need help from the support team, you can:

• Send an email, 
• Message them,
• Click on “contact support” on the homepage and send a ticket, or
• Hire a certified consultant. 

Priority support is available to all Notion users on any of the paid plans. Also, if you have an Enterprise account and 100+ users, you will get a dedicated success manager to help you best utilize Notion. 

Asana, same as Notion, has many sources of information if you are looking for answers to questions about the platform.

You can learn how to better use Asana in:

• Asana Help — texts with instructions on using Asana,
• Asana Guide — articles that help with pictures and GIFs to help you master Asana, 
• Asana Developer’s Guide — articles with tips on Asana API and customization, 
• Asana Community Forum — forums with customers and the Asana team in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Japanese,
• Asana Academy — Asana online courses, 
• Asana Webinar — live training in English, Japanese, and German, and
• Asana Use Cases — articles on how other customers use Asana.

If you want to contact the support team, you can go to their support page and submit an email ticket describing the problem you’ve encountered. 

Asana offers premium support on all of its paid plans and 24/7 support on the Enterprise plan.

Notion vs Asana support verdict  

With Notion’s priority support and Asana’s premium support on paid plans, as well as rich knowledge bases for their customers to explore —both apps deserve to get a point in this category. 

Notion vs Asana security

When running a business, data security is at the top of your list of priorities. So, naturally, the security levels of the tool you choose for managing your work are critical. 

Notion is GDPR and SOC 2 Type 1 & 2 compliant.

Your data in Notion is encrypted in transit and at rest. It is backed up in a cloud, but if you want, you can also export it. You can download pages as HTML, CSV, and Markdown files. If you pay for a Business or an Enterprise account, you can export your workspace as a PDF.  

Asana has many security attestations and certifications:

• GDPR, 
• ISO,
• SOC 2 & 3,
• HIPAA,
• CCPA,
• CSA STAR Level 1,
• FERPA, 
• GLBA, and 
• APPI. 

All user data is managed with Amazon’s relational database service and stored in data centers in Europe, Japan, and Australia. You also have the option to export and delete your data on the organizational level. 

User data is encrypted in transit and at rest. If you have an Enterprise subscription, you can have your own encryption key for your data. 

Notion vs Asana security verdict

Both apps take security seriously, but Asana has more certifications and offers an encryption key for your data. So, it snatches the point from Notion is our last category.

Feature	Notion	Asana
Data encryption at rest and in transit	✔️	✔️
Relevant certification	✔️	✔️(10+ certifications)
Overall impression	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Notion vs Asana verdict

Now, we have reached the end of our journey and the winner is — Asana!

Feature	Notion	Asana
Pricing	1	1
User interface	1	1
Task management	1	0
Team collaboration	1	0
Progress tracking	0	1
Administration	0	1
Integration	0	1
Support	1	1
Security	0	1
Total score	5	7

But this still doesn’t mean that Notion isn’t a well-made project management tool. Notion is best for note-taking and collaborating on docs, so if this is your main requirement, you might enjoy it more than Asana. 

In the end, it all comes down to you — what do you want? 

Hopefully, this article has given you enough information to make an informed decision when choosing a project management tool. 

Looking for a Notion or Asana alternative? Try Plaky

If neither Notion nor Asana has what you are looking for — you should try Plaky. 

Plaky is a user-friendly task management tool with a strong free plan. It is an excellent Asana alternative since it provides you with:

• An unlimited number of users, and
• Unlimited workspaces for free.  

Plaky also offers:

• Unlimited tasks and boards, 
• Private workspaces,
• Table and Kanban views,
• Custom columns, 
• Filter and sort options, and
• 24/7 support system with an average response time of 1 hour. 

And the best part is that all these features and more are available for free.

✉️ Do you have any experience using Notion or Asana? How did you like them? Contact us at blogfeedback@plaky.com and let us know, and we may include your answers in this or some future post. If you found this post useful, share it with someone you think will be interested in it.