Motion vs Asana: Which Project Management Tool Fits Your Team in 2026?
Motion schedules your team’s tasks into their calendars with AI and bundles AI credits into every seat; Asana is a structured work manager with a free plan and a lower entry price. Here is what each costs as your team grows.
By Bill Belcamino · Last updated September 27, 2026 · Our methodologyResearched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team
Pro AI $19/seat/mo annual ($28 monthly); Business AI $29/seat/mo annual ($47 monthly)
Bottom line up front: Is Motion's AI scheduling worth paying more than Asana for an 8-person team?
For most 8-person teams, no: Asana Starter costs $87.92 a month on annual billing, while Motion bills 8 people as 10 seats, $190 a month on Pro AI.
Motion sells seats in counts of 1, 3, 5, then multiples of 5, and has no free plan, while Asana bills exact seats and is free for 2 users. What you pay Motion for is auto-scheduling, and a scheduler is only as good as what it's fed. Every task needs a realistic duration and every calendar has to show real availability, because the plan gets built around whatever people tell it. A team that doesn't estimate work today ends up with a confident-looking calendar built on guesses. Use the trial on one real project and watch what people do by the end of the week: if they trust the day Motion builds, it fits, and if they keep dragging blocks around by hand, Asana at the lower price is the better fit.
Heads up: Motion’s team plans are $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat a month on annual billing, or $28 and $47 on monthly billing; its solo plans are priced separately ($33 and $45 a month on annual billing).
Pro AI $19/seat/mo annual ($28 monthly); Business AI $29/seat/mo annual ($47 monthly)
Free (2 users), from $10.99/seat/mo
Free plan
No free plan; free trial (“Try for free”)
Yes — Personal plan, up to 2 users
Is Motion cheaper than Asana?
Asana. 8 people on Asana Starter cost $87.92 a month on annual billing. On Motion, 8 people are billed as 10 seats: $190 a month on Pro AI or $290 on Business AI on annual billing. Motion’s team plans are $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat a month on annual billing, or $28 and $47 on monthly billing; its solo plans are priced separately ($33 and $45 a month on annual billing).
7,500 credits/seat/mo (Pro AI), 15,000 (Business AI); extra 25¢ or 19¢ per 100 credits
AI Studio: 50K credits per billing account/mo (Starter), 75K (Advanced)
Core idea
AI auto-scheduling of tasks into calendars
Tasks, projects, timelines and rules
Import
No importer documented; Zapier and a public API
CSV importer on all plans
Export
No export feature documented; public API list endpoints
Projects to CSV or JSON on all plans
Security listed
SOC 2 Type II, SSO, 2FA; data stored in Iowa, US, not the EU
See Asana’s trust pages
Refunds
Purchases are non-refundable, per Motion’s help center
See Asana’s terms
Verified September 27, 2026Prices recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page. See sources
Prices in USD from usemotion.com/pricing, Motion’s help center and asana.com/pricing, checked September 27, 2026. Motion’s team plans are $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat a month on annual billing, or $28 and $47 on monthly billing; its solo plans are priced separately ($33 and $45 a month on annual billing).
Both track tasks and projects. Motion’s core feature is auto-scheduling: it places each task on a person’s calendar around meetings and deadlines. Asana is a structured tracker where people plan the work themselves in lists, boards and timelines.
Price and seat steps
Asana bills per seat: $10.99 on Starter and $24.99 on Advanced, billed annually. Motion charges $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat on annual billing, and its help center says seats come in counts of 1, 3, 5, then multiples of 5, so a 12-person team pays for 15. Motion’s team plans are $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat a month on annual billing, or $28 and $47 on monthly billing; its solo plans are priced separately ($33 and $45 a month on annual billing).
AI credits
Every Motion seat includes AI credits: 7,500 a month on Pro AI and 15,000 on Business AI, shared across the account and reset each billing cycle without carrying over. Extra credits cost 25¢ per 100 on Pro AI and 19¢ per 100 on Business AI. Asana includes AI Studio credits per billing account: 50K a month on Starter and 75K on Advanced.
What sits in the higher tier
Motion keeps timeline and Gantt charts, time tracking, team capacity planning, advanced dashboards and permissions for Business AI. Asana includes timeline and Gantt views from Starter.
Moving between them
Asana exports projects to CSV or JSON and imports CSV files, with columns mapped by name. We found no documented Asana importer or export feature in Motion’s help center; the documented paths are Zapier and Motion’s public API, which can list and create tasks and projects.
Cost calculator: what does your team actually pay?
Motion
$0/mo
Asana
$0/mo
List prices checked September 27, 2026. Motion seats are billed in counts of 1, 3, 5, then multiples of 5. Motion’s team plans are $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat a month on annual billing, or $28 and $47 on monthly billing; its solo plans are priced separately ($33 and $45 a month on annual billing). Asana prices are annual billing. Extra AI credits and taxes are not included.
Choose Motion if…
You want AI to plan each person’s day around their meetings and deadlines, and value included AI credits enough to pay more per seat.
Choose Asana if…
You want a free plan, the lower per-seat price, or clean CSV import and export, and your team plans its own work.
Total cost over time
Uses your selections above. Estimate excludes add-ons, overages, and negotiated discounts.
Ready to pick your project management tool?
Count seats first: Motion rounds up to 1, 3, 5 or a multiple of 5. Then try Motion’s trial with one real project before moving a whole team.
How Motion and Asana compare on compliance reports, sign-in controls, offline access and the setup details that matter for remote, hybrid and in-office teams. Every value links to the vendor page it came from.
PartialThe iOS app works offline for checking notifications, commenting, changing due dates or assignees, completing tasks and adding tasks; pending actions sync when you are back online.source
YesEnterpriseSAML session timeout (1 hour to 30 days) plus an optional mobile session timeout; mobile app controls (limit downloads, screenshots, copy/paste) are sold as a Permissions Management add-on.source
Audit reports: both publish a SOC 2 report, and Asana also holds ISO/IEC 27001. Ask each vendor for the report under NDA before you sign; security reviews usually want the latest one.
Single sign-on: Motion includes it; Asana includes it on Enterprise. If your team signs in through Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or Google, price the plan that includes SSO, not the entry plan.
Health data: Asana will sign a HIPAA business associate agreement (Asana: Enterprise+). We found no BAA offer for Motion, so keep protected health information out of it.
Working offline: Asana works offline only in part; Motion doesn’t document an offline mode. Details are in the Offline mode row above.
Office-only access: Asana can restrict sign-ins to approved IP ranges on Enterprise+. That suits an office network or a company VPN; fully remote teams need a VPN for it to work.
Where your data lives: Asana lets you choose US, EU, Japan, Australia on Enterprise (add-on); included in Enterprise+. This matters for teams hiring across the EU, UK or Australia.
Motion: worth knowing
RemoteMotion states customer data is not stored in the European Union. source
RemoteMotion says it does not train AI models on customer data. source
Asana: worth knowing
RemoteAsana's IP allowlist can be applied to all users, only organization members, or only guests, and optionally to API traffic. source
SecurityMandatory 2FA on Enterprise tiers can be enforced for guests as well as domain members, useful for outside collaborators not on your SSO. source
RemoteWith data residency, all of an organization's Asana data must sit in one region (US, Frankfurt, Tokyo or Sydney). source
SecurityMobile app controls that limit downloads, screenshots and copy/paste are listed on the pricing page as a Permissions Management add-on. source
Checked September 27, 2026 against each vendor’s own trust center, help docs and app pages. Hover or tap “source” to see the exact wording we relied on. “Not published” means we could not find the vendor saying it on its own site; it doesn’t mean the feature is missing. Plan names are the lowest plan the vendor says includes the feature. Security · Offline · Remote vs office · Download the data
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Motion cheaper than Asana?
No. Asana Starter is $10.99 a seat a month on annual billing and Asana has a free plan for 2 users. Motion charges $19 (Pro AI) and $29 (Business AI) a seat a month on annual billing and has no free plan. Prices checked September 27, 2026.
Is Motion’s $19 price monthly or annual?
Annual. On the Teams tab of Motion’s pricing page, Pro AI is $19 a seat a month billed annually or $28 billed monthly, and Business AI is $29 annual or $47 monthly.
How are Motion seats sold?
In counts of 1, 3 or 5 seats, then in multiples of 5 (10, 15, 20 and so on), per Motion’s help center.
What are Motion AI credits?
Credits used by AI Chat and the AI Meeting Notetaker: 7,500 per seat a month on Pro AI and 15,000 on Business AI. They are shared across the account and do not carry over.
Can Motion import from Asana?
We found no documented Asana importer in Motion’s help center. Export your Asana projects to CSV or JSON, then recreate them in Motion by hand, through Zapier, or with Motion’s API.
Does Motion have a free plan?
No. It offers a free trial; Asana has a free Personal plan for 2 users.
Migration Guides
Already decided? Here’s how to actually switch.
Step-by-step migration guides covering what transfers automatically, what doesn’t, and how to handle the gap — in both directions.
Every “best project management tool” listicle tells you why to buy. Here’s the other half: the specific conditions under which Motion or Asana is the wrong purchase for your team.
Motion
✓
Buy Motion if:
You want AI to schedule tasks into calendars
Your team is 1, 3, 5 or a multiple of 5
You will use the AI chat and meeting notetaker
✕
Do NOT buy Motion if:
You need a free plan
You want the lowest price per seat
You need a documented import or export path
Asana
✓
Buy Asana if:
You want a free plan for 2 users
You want per-seat pricing with no rounding
You want CSV import and CSV or JSON export
✕
Do NOT buy Asana if:
You want tasks auto-scheduled into calendars
You need AI credits per seat rather than per account
You want list prices for enterprise features
Canonical data for the tools on this page
Every pricing fact, rating, AI billing model and switching guide we hold on each tool, on one page, with the date each figure was last verified.
Prices on this page were recorded from each vendor’s own pricing page on the date shown at the top of the page. Vendors change pricing often — check the live source before you buy.
Every figure is also in our open dataset (JSON and CSV, CC BY 4.0), with its source page and verification date. See how we research pricing.
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Turn this into a one-page decision brief
Verified prices costed for your team size, a check against your must-have requirements, the questions to settle before you sign, and a source for every figure. Print it, or paste it into an email to whoever approves the spend.
Built for the leader who owns the selection, answers for the spend, drives the rollout, and lives with the results. HelpCompare covers the whole decision, not just the first step.
Engineer by training, operator by experience, marketer by choice. Bill spent nine years as an engineer at HP, was COO of Auctiva (the number one third-party selling platform on eBay, past 200,000 users) and ran Google’s $70M/year search syndication partnership at Alot.com. Then he spent 13 years building his own web properties with his own money at stake. He has bought, trialled, integrated and cancelled more SaaS tools than he can count, and started HelpCompare because the real cost of switching tools is the part nobody covers.
“I’ve sat on both sides of the table: the agency recommending the tool and the client paying for it.”
Researched and fact-checked by the HelpCompare team. Pricing on this page was last verified on September 27, 2026. No paid sponsorships, no affiliate commissions.
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