Jira vs Asana: Pricing, Features, and Which Fits Your Team

Most teams pick between Jira and Asana by gut feel. The bill and the setup work show up later.

Jira vs Asana comes down to who does the work. Jira suits software teams that run sprints, backlogs, and bug tracking, while Asana suits mixed teams that plan tasks and timelines. On price, Jira is free for up to 10 users, but Asana’s free plan stops at 2.

You’ve probably read the vendor pages already. Each one says it wins.

So we checked both pricing pages, both help centers, and the top pages that rank for this question. You’ll get the real 10-user cost, the trade-offs, and a quick way to pick.

Key Points

• Jira wins on price for small teams: its Free plan covers 10 users, and Standard costs $8.48 per user a month. Asana Starter costs $10.99 per user a month on a yearly plan, and its free plan allows only 2 users.
• Jira is built for agile software work, with Scrum and Kanban boards, backlogs, and sprint fields. Asana is built for cross-team task management, with timelines, forms, and goals.
• For 10 users on a yearly plan, we calculated about $1,018 for Jira Standard and $1,319 for Asana Starter.
• You don’t have to pick one. Asana’s Jira Cloud integration links tasks to issues, and two-way sync needs Asana Advanced or higher.

What Is the Difference Between Jira and Asana?

Jira is an issue tracker from Atlassian, made for agile software teams. Asana is a work management tool for teams of any kind. Both handle tasks, boards, and automation. But they start from different places, and it shows in setup, pricing, and daily use. Each tool’s pros and cons follow the table.

The Best for labels are our own read of each tool. Prices come from each vendor’s pricing page, so check them before you buy.

What Is Jira Best At?

Jira tracks work items through a workflow you define. Each issue moves from To Do to Done, with fields for priority, assignee, sprint, and fix version. Dev teams plan sprints from a backlog. Then they watch progress on a Scrum or Kanban board.

The Free plan is generous. It covers 10 users, 2 GB of storage, and 150 automation steps a month. Standard adds user roles, permissions, and 250 GB of storage. Premium adds cross-team planning, dependency tracking, and unlimited storage.

Say your five developers run two-week sprints and log bugs from support. That setup works out of the box. Your sales lead, though, may find the issue screens a lot to take in.

Pricing: Free for up to 10 users. Standard costs $8.48 and Premium costs $15.56 per user a month, per Atlassian’s pricing page. Enterprise is quoted by sales.

Best For

• Software and IT teams that run Scrum or Kanban.
• Teams of up to 10 that want a free agile tool.

Pros

• Free plan covers 10 users with every core project view.
• Deep agile tools: backlog, sprints, boards, and agile reports.
• Over 3,000 apps, plus close ties to Confluence and Bitbucket.
• Fine-grained permissions on paid plans.

Cons

• Setup takes admin time, with workflows, fields, and schemes.
• The interface feels technical to non-dev teams.
• Free automation stops at 150 steps a month for the whole site.

What Is Asana Best At?

Asana organizes work as tasks inside projects. You can view the same project as a list, a board, a calendar, or a timeline. Forms, rules, and templates keep repeat work moving. Goals and portfolios sit above projects on the Advanced plan.

Asana’s strength is plain setup. A marketing lead can build a launch plan in an afternoon without an admin. Tasks, due dates, and comments read like a to-do list, not a ticket queue.

Say your team runs a product launch across design, content, and sales. Asana’s timeline shows who waits on whom. And free guests let your agency partners comment without a paid seat.

Pricing: Personal is free for 2 users. Starter costs $10.99 per user a month yearly, or $13.49 monthly. Advanced costs $24.99 yearly, or $30.49 monthly. Enterprise is quoted by sales.

Best For

• Marketing, ops, and project teams that plan across departments.
• Teams that want a tool people can learn in a day.

Pros

• Clean interface that non-technical staff pick up fast.
• Timeline, Gantt, forms, and unlimited automations from Starter.
• Unlimited free guests on paid plans.
• Goals, portfolios, and resource management on Advanced.

Cons

• Free plan stops at 2 users.
• No native sprint backlog or story points.
• Two-way Jira sync needs Advanced, at $24.99 per user a month.

How Much Do Jira and Asana Cost for 10 Users?

Jira costs less on every plan pair we checked. For 10 users, Jira Free costs nothing. Jira Standard runs about $1,018 a year, while Asana Starter runs about $1,319 a year on a yearly plan.

Example: 10 users x $10.99 x 12 months = $1,318.80 a year for Asana Starter. The same team on Jira Standard pays 10 x $8.48 x 12 = $1,017.60. That’s about $300 a year apart.

The per-user price on Atlassian’s side can shift with team size, so run your own count through Atlassian’s calculator. Asana bills every paid member, so count guests separately, since guests stay free.

Top Tip: If your team has 10 people or fewer and works in sprints, start on Jira Free. Move to Standard only when you need roles, more storage, or more automation.

Sources: Jira pricing, Asana pricing, Asana for Jira Cloud help, Atlassian’s Jira vs Asana page.

Which Is Better for Software Development, Jira or Asana?

Jira is the better pick for software development teams. It was built around the agile loop: plan a sprint, work the backlog, ship, and review. Asana can run a sprint board, but it lacks the native backlog and agile reports.

Here’s what that looks like in daily use. A developer opens the board, drags an issue to In Progress, and links the branch. The sprint report then shows what slipped. Dev tools like Bitbucket connect through apps.

In Asana, you’d build the same thing with sections, custom fields, and rules. It works for light sprint planning. But story points, velocity, and burndown charts aren’t built in.

Asana fits better around the dev team, where the work is project management rather than code. Product marketing, support, and leadership track launches there, while engineers stay in Jira. Some teams run both for that reason.

The deciding question is simple. Does your team estimate work and run fixed sprints? If yes, Jira saves setup time. If your work is campaigns, content, or client projects, Asana fits with less effort.

One caveat: both vendors claim to serve every team. Atlassian pitches Jira to marketing and ops. Asana’s own page pitches it as the simpler choice for any team. Neither claim is wrong, but neither is where each tool is strongest.

Which Is Easier to Set Up, Jira or Asana?

Asana wins on ease of use and setup. A new user can create a project, add tasks, and assign them in minutes. Jira asks more up front, since someone has to choose a template, a workflow, and issue types.

That gap matters most in your first month. In Asana, nobody needs admin rights to start a project. In Jira, an admin usually shapes the workflow so it matches how your team ships.

Templates help, since the Scrum template sets up the board, backlog, and statuses for you. But custom fields, screens, and permission schemes still take time. For a team without an admin, that’s the real cost (not the seat price).

Asana’s simplicity has a ceiling. Large teams with strict rules may want the fine control Jira gives. Asana adds admin controls on Enterprise, at a price you get from sales.

Both tools import from each other. Atlassian says Asana projects can move into Jira in a few minutes. Asana lists Jira among its import sources. Test a small project first, since fields don’t always map one to one.

Top Tip: Give one person two hours to build a sample project in each tool. The one they finish first is often the one your team will keep using.

How Do Jira and Asana Handle Automation and Integrations?

Both tools automate routine steps, but they meter them in different ways. Jira counts automation steps per month, while Asana lists unlimited automations from Starter. On integrations, Jira’s marketplace is larger, and Asana covers the common business apps.

The Free plan includes 150 automation steps a month for the whole site. Standard raises that to 400 steps per user a month, and Premium to 750. For a busy team, the Free cap goes fast, so plan for Standard if rules matter.

Asana’s rules move tasks, set fields, and assign owners when something changes. Starter and up list unlimited automations. That makes Asana easier to budget if your team leans on rules.

For integrations, Atlassian lists over 3,000 apps for Jira. Asana cites 400+ native integrations, and you can browse them all in its app directory at https://asana.com/apps.

The bigger point is fit. Jira links deeply with Confluence, Bitbucket, and dev tools. Asana links well with sales, marketing, and reporting tools like Salesforce and Power BI on Advanced.

So start from your stack, not the app count. List the five tools your team opens every day. Then check that each one connects to the tool you’re leaning toward. A missing link costs more in copy and paste than any seat price.

How Do You Connect Jira and Asana?

Use Asana’s Jira Cloud integration. It links Asana tasks to Jira issues, so business teams and engineers can work in their own tool. On Starter, rules can create Jira issues and link existing ones. Two-way field sync needs Asana Advanced, Enterprise, or Enterprise+.

With two-way sync on, these fields can move between the tools: task name, description, status, priority, assignee, due date, fix version, and sprint. Comments can sync too, if you switch that on.

There are limits worth knowing. The integration works with Jira Cloud only, not Data Center, and story points, labels, components, and time tracking don’t sync. Imports pull the newest 150 issues. Users match by email, so a missing account leaves the assignee blank.

Say your product team plans a launch in Asana. Each feature task links to a Jira epic. When engineers move the issue to Done, the Asana task updates. Marketing never has to open Jira.

If you need more than the native link, third-party sync tools exist on the Atlassian Marketplace. Check their pricing, since they add a cost on top of both seats.

One setup note: the person who connects the two needs edit access to the Jira project. Guests can’t set it up. And issues only get created in Jira when the user has permission to create them there.

Which Should You Choose: Jira or Asana?

Choose Jira if your team writes code and runs sprints. Choose Asana if your team plans work across departments and wants a tool people learn fast. Use both, linked, when engineers and business teams share the same projects.

If neither fits, one of the lighter alternatives may be enough. Onethread is free for your first 10 users. Its paid plans cost $3 or $5 per user a month on a yearly plan, with projects, tasks, and dashboards. It lacks Jira’s agile depth and Asana’s app list, so weigh that first.

For more head-to-heads, see our Jira vs Smartsheet comparison and Asana vs Smartsheet comparison. And our Asana pricing breakdown walks through every Asana plan.

What Is Your First Step With Jira or Asana?

You started with two tools that both claim to fit every team. Now you have a yearly cost for 10 users, a clear split on agile work, and a simple rule you can repeat to your team. Jira for sprints, Asana for cross-team plans, both when the work crosses over.

This week, count your seats and list three things your team does every day. Then build one sample project in each tool’s free plan and invite two teammates. Whichever tool they keep opening on their own is your answer, whatever the comparison tables say. You can find more on this in our post about project efficiency software.

Related reading: Clickup vs jira, Jira vs monday and Jira vs trello.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Asana the Same as Jira?

No. Asana and Jira are separate products from different companies. Jira comes from Atlassian and centers on issues, sprints, and agile boards. Asana is a work management tool built around tasks, projects, and timelines. They overlap on boards and automation, so the Jira vs Asana choice depends on how your team works.

Is Jira Free for Small Teams?

Yes. Jira’s Free plan covers up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage and 150 automation steps a month. It includes the core project views, so a small dev team can run sprints without paying. An 11th user means a move to a paid plan.

Can You Import Asana Projects Into Jira?

Yes. Atlassian says Asana projects can be imported into Jira in a few minutes with its built-in importer. Asana also imports from Jira. In both cases, test one small project first, since custom fields, comments, and attachments may not map one to one between Jira and Asana.

Does Jira Work for Non-Technical Teams?

Yes, though it takes more setup than Asana. Atlassian pitches Jira to marketing and operations teams, with list and board views. Non-technical teams can use it well once an admin trims the fields and workflow. Teams without that admin often find Asana easier to adopt.