Basecamp vs Trello Comparison 2026
Both cover project management. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Flat pricing that stops caring how big you get
Boards and cards for people who hate project plans
At a glance
- Trello starts cheaper, at $6.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Basecamp | Trello | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $15 | From $6 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 30 days | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | None |
| Runs on |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Basecamp
Flat pricing that stops caring how big you get
Basecamp organises work as projects containing message boards, to-do lists, files and a chat room, and it has stayed close to that shape for twenty years. The reason to choose it is the pricing rather than the features: above a certain team size it is one flat monthly fee for everybody, and clients and guests are never billed at all. That makes it unusually easy to reason about for a studio that grows and shrinks. The free package runs a single project, which is a real way to test it rather than a demo.
Only on this side
- Covers hiring & freelancers
Trello
Boards and cards for people who hate project plans
Trello is a wall of cards dragged between columns, which is enough structure to run an editorial calendar and not enough to put anybody off using it. The free plan covers ten collaborators, so a creator with two contractors never pays. Anything needing dependencies, a timeline or real reporting hits the ceiling inside a quarter.
Our note
Stay free until a view you do not have is costing real time. Most creator workflows never leave that plan, and the ones that do usually want Notion rather than the next Trello tier.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.