Slack vs Trello Comparison 2026
Both cover project management. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Channels for a community that outgrew a group chat
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
Slack | Trello | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $8.75 | 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 | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | None |
| Runs on | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux |
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.
Slack
Channels for a community that outgrew a group chat
Slack organises a community into channels, threads and searchable history, which is what a paid membership community usually needs once a Discord server stops being enough. The free plan keeps ninety days of messages and ten app connections, and that history limit is what pushes most groups onto a paid plan rather than any feature. Guests from outside the workspace can be given a single channel. Paying by seat means a large free community costs more here than on software priced per workspace.
Our note
Count the seats before comparing this to community software priced per workspace, because a hundred-member community is around $875 a month here and a flat fee elsewhere. Slack wins where the members are few, paying and already living in it, and loses badly where they are many and free.
Only on this side
- Covers community platforms
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.
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.