Verified Free / Business & Marketing Tools

Is Trello actually free?

Free Forever
How free82/100
Value7/10
How these scores work
Free Score (0–100) follows a fixed rubric: cards up front, auto-billing, hard time cutoffs, withheld core features, and paying with your data or attention all deduct points. 90–100 truly free · 70–89 free forever · 45–69 squeezed · 15–44 trial mechanics · under 15 fake or gone. Value (0–10) is editorial: real-world worth of the free offering measured against its paid equivalent. Full rubric on the methodology page.

Yes — Trello's free plan is a real permanent tier: unlimited cards and members, ten boards per workspace, and the drag-and-drop kanban that made the product famous, no card anywhere.

What it’s worth

Comparable project tools charge $5–10 per user per month for what most small teams do here free.

What you get free

  • Unlimited cards, lists, and members
  • 10 boards per workspace
  • Checklists, due dates, labels, and attachments
  • Automation in modest monthly doses

In practice: a household, a small team, or a couple of projects run comfortably free forever. It's one of the fairest freemium fences in software.

Drawbacks

  • 10-board cap forces consolidation or workspaces gymnastics
  • Advanced views locked
  • Owned by Atlassian — expect steady nudges toward its paid family

Also paywalled

  • More than 10 boards per workspace
  • Large file attachments
  • Admin controls and advanced views (timeline, calendar, dashboard)

Free facts

VerdictFree Forever
Card requiredNo
Auto-bills
AccountRequired
Limits10 boards per workspace on free
The real costAn account. Ten boards covers most small teams indefinitely.

The catch

The ten-board ceiling is the fence, and it's generously placed — many teams live inside it for years. The squeeze arrives with scale: more boards, bigger file attachments, and admin controls are the paid tier's territory.

The smart play

  • One board per project, not per week — the 10-board cap rewards tidy structure
  • Archive finished boards instead of deleting; archived boards don't count against you
  • The free automation allowance covers recurring-task busywork — set it up once

More info — tap to expand

Where the fence actually sits
Unlimited cards and people mean the free tier scales with team size, not usage — unusual and generous. The fence is board count and file size. If you're bumping the board cap, merging projects into one board with labeled lists usually buys another year of free.
The Atlassian context
Trello sits inside Atlassian's suite, and the free tier partly exists to feed Jira and friends. Nothing sinister — just know the product's job is to be your gateway, and enjoy the gateway.

Last checked: July 2026 · Verdict: Free Forever — a real permanent free plan. signup and fair limits — but no clock and no card.

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