Asana is powerful, sometimes more than a team needs, at a price to match. Taskly gives you the structure teams actually use (lists, boards, subtasks, recurrence, a real team model) plus Otto, an AI that drafts and edits real tasks and shows you every change before it happens. Free while in early access.
No credit card · Free while in early access
Asana’s AI can summarize a project, draft copy and trigger rules, mostly on its paid tiers. Otto is pointed at the busywork instead: ask in plain English and it drafts the real tasks, subtasks, dates and owners, or reprioritizes a messy list and tells you why. Then it waits. Every change, one task or fifty, arrives as a before and after you approve or discard, and it costs nothing.
More on how it works on the AI task manager page, or meet Otto directly.
Powerful, but the feature surface gets overwhelming fast.
The jump from the free plan to paid is a big price step.
The AI features people actually want sit on the paid tiers.
Simple teams end up paying for project-management depth they don’t use.
Rolling it out to a whole team takes real onboarding time.
Taskly is the lighter, AI-native alternative to Asana: the structure most teams actually use (lists, boards, subtasks, recurrence and a real team model), with Otto turning plain English into tasks you approve, and free while in early access. Less to learn, less to pay, and the AI does the busywork.
| Taskly | Asana | |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | Focused on the essentials | Broad and deep, can feel heavy |
| Setup & learning | Minutes | Moderate: many features to learn |
| AI assistant | Otto drafts & edits real tasks from plain English, approve every change | Asana AI / “AI teammates” assist; capable, on higher tiers |
| Best fit | Teams wanting simple + AI-organized work | Cross-functional PM with timelines, portfolios and goals |
| What the AI costs | Otto is included: no add-on, no per-seat AI charge | The useful AI sits on Starter and above, not the free plan |
| Privacy | Teammate emails are never sent to the AI model | Standard SaaS data handling |
| Free plan limits | The whole product, Otto included, while in early access | Personal plan for up to 10 teammates, without timelines, rules or portfolios |
| Entry price | Free during early access | Free Personal plan (small teams); Starter $10.99, Advanced $24.99/user/mo billed annually (2026) |
Taskly is free for the whole product while in early access. As of 2026 Asana has a free Personal plan for a small team, then $10.99/user/mo on Starter and $24.99/user/mo on Advanced billed annually (about $13.49 and $30.49 billed monthly), with Enterprise plans above that. Check Asana’s pricing page for current rates.
We’d rather be honest than oversell: it’s your team’s call.
Start a Taskly workspace and bring over only your live work: recreate it in minutes, or tell Otto what each project needs and approve the tasks it drafts. No need to migrate archives of completed Asana projects.
Taskly is built around its AI rather than adding it on top. Otto creates, edits, reprioritizes and assigns real tasks from a plain-English request, and shows every change as a before/after diff you approve before anything is applied. It’s included at no extra cost, where Asana’s AI features are concentrated on its paid tiers. Teammate emails are never sent to the AI model.
Taskly offers the structure most teams use (lists, boards, subtasks, recurrence and a real team model) without Asana’s broader feature surface, plus an AI assistant (Otto). It’s free while in early access.
Taskly has an AI assistant, Otto, that goes further than a suggestion layer. Otto creates, edits, reprioritises and assigns the real tasks from a plain-English request and shows every change as a before/after diff you approve before it applies. Asana concentrates its AI features on its paid tiers. In Taskly, teammate email addresses are never sent to the AI model.
Taskly is currently free for the entire product, including Otto, during early access. Asana is free for small teams and charges per seat above that, so for most paying teams Taskly is less expensive today.
Asana is the better choice when you need timelines, portfolios, goals and advanced workflow automation for large cross-functional programs, where its maturity is genuine. Taskly is for teams that want lighter, AI-organized task management and would rather not run a configuration project before they start.
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