Notion vs Trello in 2026 One holds your pages. The other moves your cards.

Both can run a project. Notion is a workspace of pages with databases inside. Trello is a board of lists with cards that move across. The choice comes down to how much structure you want to build, and whether your notes live next to your tasks.

Jacky Fakkeldij Building Driftto, on his own · Updated 23 October 2026

I build Driftto, an iPhone app for getting a thought into the right place without first finding the app, waiting for it to open and picking a project. Notion and Trello are both places it writes to, so I wanted to see how the two compare for someone choosing where a small team, or one person, plans work.

In October 2026 I went through Notion's help center and pricing page, Trello's pricing page and Atlassian's Trello help, and both US App Store listings. Where a help page says nothing about a feature, I say so instead of guessing.

The short answer

Pick Notion if your notes, documents and tasks should live in one place and you don't mind building the structure yourself. Pick Trello if your work moves through stages and you want cards on a board you can read at a glance. Trello is simpler and cheaper per person. Notion holds more, and has a board view too.

Pages and databases versus boards and cards

In Notion, a database is a collection of pages. Each item is a full page with properties at the top, such as a date, a status or a link, and free page space underneath for anything you want to write. Drag a bullet or a to-do into a database and it turns into a page. So a task can carry its own notes, a checklist or an image.

Trello is built from three things. A board is a place to keep track of information. Lists sit on the board and hold cards in their stages, and you can add as many lists as you like. A card is the smallest, most detailed unit: one task or idea. Moving a card to another list shows where it stands. Trello's help doesn't describe a page under a card for long documents, but a card can hold a checklist, a due date, files and comments.

Notion's help center says it can turn a database into a Kanban board. Trello's help doesn't describe turning a board into a document or a wiki. If you want both in one tool, Notion is the one that does both.

Seeing the work: views

Notion's help center lists seven database layouts: table, board, timeline, calendar, list, gallery and chart. You can filter, sort and group each one, and advanced filters combine AND and OR logic nested up to three layers deep. The same set of tasks can be a board on Monday and a calendar on Friday. Notion's help doesn't say which plans include which layouts.

Trello's main view is the board. Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard and Map show the cards from a single board, and the pricing page puts them on the Premium plan. Free and Standard list none of them. Custom fields, which add your own data to a card, are on Standard and up.

Automation and calendars

Notion's database automations pair a trigger with an action. Triggers are a page added, a property edited, or a repeat on a schedule. Actions include editing a property, adding a page to another database, sending a notification, sending an email from Gmail and sending a webhook. Notion says automations are on paid plans. Its pricing page shows the Free plan with buttons only.

Trello's pricing page counts automation in Workspace runs a month: 250 on Free, 1,000 on Standard, unlimited on Premium. I couldn't load Trello's automation help page, so I can't tell you what a rule or a button can do beyond that.

For calendars, Trello has Planner, a view next to your boards. Cards with a due date appear in it when they are on your personal board or assigned to you. You can drag a card into a free slot to plan focus time without changing its due date. It connects to Google Calendar and Outlook, up to ten accounts, and focus time shows in the connected calendar. Smart Schedule, its AI suggestion, is on Standard and up, on the web or desktop and not on mobile. Notion's calendar layout shows items by their date property.

Sharing with other people

Notion shares pages at four levels: full access, can edit, can comment and can view. Database pages also get a fifth level, can create, on Business and Enterprise. Guests are people outside your workspace, and they need their own Notion account. The Free plan allows ten guests, and Plus and up allow unlimited guests. Teamspaces give each team its own members and permissions.

In Trello, permissions are managed from the board menu. The pricing page says Free is for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace. Standard adds guests on a single board, Premium adds Observers, and Enterprise adds guests across several boards. Trello's help pages I read don't spell out the limits for each role.

Price and where each one runs

Trello's Free plan has up to 10 boards per Workspace, 250 automation runs a month and 10MB per file. Standard is $5 per user a month on annual billing and $6 on monthly, with unlimited boards, 1,000 runs, 250MB files and custom fields. Premium is $10 on annual and $12.50 on monthly, and adds the views and unlimited runs. The iPhone app is free in the US App Store with no in-app purchases listed. The listing mentions paid subscriptions that unlock AI features.

Notion's Free plan keeps 7 days of page history, limits files to 5 MB and allows one chart per database. Notion's pricing page showed euro prices when I checked: €9.50 per member for Plus and €19.50 for Business, with up to 20% off for yearly. It shows no dollar figure. In the US App Store, Notion is free with in-app purchases: Plus is $11.99 a month or $119.99 a year. Plus raises page history to 30 days and allows unlimited guests and charts. The full Notion Agent and AI Meeting Notes are on Business. Free and Plus get a limited trial.

Both run on iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision, and the App Store listings don't list a Mac or Watch app for either. Notion's listing also says it syncs with browser, Mac and Windows apps. Trello's pricing page lists iOS and Android apps. Offline works differently. Notion's pricing page says Free lets you choose pages to download, and Plus downloads your Recents and Favorites on its own. Trello's listing says you can capture notes and update boards without internet, and changes sync when you reconnect.

Everything else, side by side

The rest, checked against Notion's and Trello's help pages, pricing pages and App Store listings in October 2026.

Which one I'd pick

If the work has stages and a few people look at the same board every day, use Trello. The board is the whole idea, and Free covers ten boards. Pay for Standard when you hit the file or automation limits, and for Premium only if you want the calendar or timeline.

If you want tasks, notes, documents and a wiki in one place, and you're happy to spend an afternoon setting it up, use Notion. Use its board layout first. Add the calendar or the timeline later, and don't build a system you won't keep up. Watch for the limits on the Free plan if a team shares it.

I wrote about the other side of Notion in the best Notion integrations. Whichever you choose, it only works if things actually get into it.

Capture into the one you picked, in one step

Into Trello: on your iPhone, use Quick add on the home screen, or the Inbox in the navigation bar. Say "Add [card name] to Trello" to Siri. Forward an email to your Inbox address, from the email address on your Trello account. Cards in the Inbox sit apart from your boards until you drag them to a list.

Into Notion: the help page I read about the iPhone app describes the Notion AI widget, which opens AI chat, the camera or voice, and says Siri, Spotlight and the Action button can open Notion AI. It doesn't describe a quick-add control for a new database page.

With Driftto, you open it to a capture field with the keyboard already up, type or speak the thought, and tap where it goes: Notion into the database you picked, or Trello into the board and list you chose at setup. One capture can go to both. In Notion the whole note becomes the page title, a photo goes in as an image on the page, and no text goes into the body. In Trello a one-line note becomes the card title, and a longer note keeps its first line as the title and lands whole in the description. A due date is date only. Driftto only writes new items. It never reads, edits or moves what is already there. You can also say "Hey Siri, new capture in Driftto" and it goes to the destination you picked for Siri.

Questions

Driftto is in the App Store now.