Trello
The most recommended of 3 kanban boards
People recommend Trello for simple kanban boards that most teams can pick up quickly, with fewer features than Jira. Critics say it grew heavier and worse after Atlassian bought it.
People recommend Trello for simple kanban boards that most teams can pick up quickly, with fewer features than Jira. Critics say it grew heavier and worse after Atlassian bought it.
40 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 21
- criticize it
- 19
- approval share
- 53%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 21 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.1 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simpler than Jira with fewer features
“Trello was a successful product despite having way less than 20% of jira's features”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: I spent 4 years building a UI design tool with only the features I use” “Trello uses simplicity as a constraint, so users can't make quite as big a mess”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Jira Is Turing-Complete” “other task trackers like Trello are simpler and have less config options”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “Docker Agent” - Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Jira Is Turing-Complete”
Good enough for most teams
“Most any firm I've worked for could replace it with Trello or any Kanban style tool in a heartbeat.”
Comment from 11 Mar 2026 in “Atlassian to cut roughly 1,600 jobs in pivot to AI” “at least 60% companies that use Jira could do better with just Trello”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Jira Is Turing-Complete” Works well for personal use
“we use Trello to track everything in our house”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Micasa – track your house from the terminal” “Trello is still my goto for everything.”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “How's Linear so fast? A technical breakdown”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavier and damaged after Atlassian
“Used Trello a lot before it got sold to, and damaged by contact with, Atlassian.”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Gloomberb” “Trello was great but got heavier too with all those fancy stuffs and colors.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “I spent 6 years building my Kanban as I hated how managers run the boards” Missing features and customisation limits
“jira/trello: ergonomics. to set them up correctly exactly the way i want would take me 20 hours”
Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “A16Z partner says that the theory that we'll vibe code everything is ' wrong'” “there are some features Trello should just pay off the devs to get”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Visual Studio Code Private Marketplace” “frustrated with limitations: wanted rows and decent performance”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “The 512KB Club” - Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “The 512KB Club”
Outages and slow performance
“Trello just had a major multi-day outage that prevented commenting on or moving cards”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Jira Is Turing-Complete” “frustrated with limitations: wanted rows and decent performance”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “The 512KB Club” Not open source or self-hostable
“Trello does not work in Russia. You cannot install it on your server in the company's closed loop.”
Comment from 26 Apr 2026 in “I spent 6 years building my Kanban as I hated how managers run the boards” “But, Trello is not open source, so its not an option for me anymore.”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use”
Other kanban boards people recommend
The two most recommended other kanban boards, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TrelloThis page | 21 | 19 | 53% | 11 | — | — |
| Kanban CLI | 9 | 1 | 90% | 3 | — | — |
| Fizzy by 37signals | 8 | 4 | 67% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
35 of the 41 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Dumped Trello for lists in plain text mails.”
“other task trackers like Trello are simpler and have less config options”
“The biggest win for me is they can have state.”
“I cannot count all the Trello boards they have abandoned.”
“My own team of AI employees has already started working and collaborating in this way.”
“Used Trello a lot before it got sold to, and damaged by contact with, Atlassian.”
“these tools were kept lagging behind as coding was moving faster”
“Trello is still my goto for everything.”
“Early days' Trello was the best project tracking experience by far.”
“Trello just had a major multi-day outage that prevented commenting on or moving cards”
“Trello uses simplicity as a constraint, so users can't make quite as big a mess”
“at least 60% companies that use Jira could do better with just Trello”
“Trello does not work in Russia. You cannot install it on your server in the company's closed loop.”
“Trello was great but got heavier too with all those fancy stuffs and colors.”
“I used to use Trello which was ok”
“I found it worse than Jira.”
“Most any firm I've worked for could replace it with Trello or any Kanban style tool in a heartbeat.”
“tbh Trello is also slower”
“i had claude knock out a trello clone for me in 30 minutes because i was irritated at atlassian”
“yet another system-collapse trying to manage everything in kanban”
“jira/trello: ergonomics. to set them up correctly exactly the way i want would take me 20 hours”
“Those tools are reliable and cheap”
“this is what i am not buying (and vibecoding)”
“we use Trello to track everything in our house”
“Trello was a successful product despite having way less than 20% of jira's features”
“before the focus went all in on enterprise”
“It works precisely because it is digital.”
“is a better UX than Google Calendar/Trello”
“why a solo founder should use Tinyfocus over a simple Trello board”
“Trello (or one of the many clones of it) can be used for similar purposes.”
“there are some features Trello should just pay off the devs to get”
“So much of my work as a software engineer is done in shitty web UIs”
“frustrated with Trello's limitations”
“frustrated with limitations: wanted rows and decent performance”
“But, Trello is not open source, so its not an option for me anymore.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.