The best Kanban apps in 2025: the complete guide to optimizing your team's performance

Imagine: you're buried under a mountain of sticky notes, your team is sending emails back and forth to share the latest project info, and deadlines are fast approaching. Sound familiar? If so, you're not alone. Kanban works for everything, and choosing the right Kanban app can be the lifeline that helps your team escape chaos and regain clarity.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll take an in-depth look at the best Kanban apps available in 2025 to help you find the perfect tool for visualizing your workflow, boosting productivity, and finally getting everyone on the same page. Whether you're managing a content calendar, tracking sales campaigns, or organizing a complex project, there's a Kanban solution that will make your life easier.

Kanban is an agile project management method that originated in the 1940s at Toyota thanks to engineer Taiichi Ohno. The term “Kanban,” which means “signboard” in Japanese, refers to a visual tool that organizes work using boards, lists, and cards. These digital boards provide a clear overview of tasks: what is planned, in progress, or completed, allowing you to limit the number of tasks in progress and optimize workflow.

Why should you care?

Kanban boosts productivity by making processes transparent and fluid. It helps teams prioritize, reduce bottlenecks, and collaborate effectively, whether you're a small business, a content creator, or a large organization. By adopting the best Kanban apps, you can transform your project management into an intuitive visual system, saving time and increasing efficiency.

So I spent several weeks testing all the best Kanban tools available to me to find the Kanban apps best suited to different needs. Here is my selection, based on my experience.

• Ease of use: the best free Kanban board is one that is extremely intuitive and allows your team to get up and running immediately, without extensive training.

• Feature richness: does it offer everything you need without being overly complex?

• Integration capabilities: does it integrate well with your existing tools?

• Price: value for money for different team sizes

• Mobile accessibility: can you manage your workflow on the go?

Best for: beginners, small teams, and those who like simplicity

Trello is our favorite Kanban app thanks to its user-friendly design and exceptional free offering. While all of the tools on this list of Kanban project management tools are excellent, our expert opinion is that Trello remains the best, thanks to its exceptional features and free pricing.

• Ultra-fast setup: Trello's learning curve is so minimal that it's also an excellent Kanban tool for beginners. This is mainly due to its ease of setup, intuitive use, and speed.

• Generous free plan: perfect for small teams just getting started

• A multitude of Power-Ups: extend functionality with hundreds of integrations

• Mobile-first design: manage your boards seamlessly across all your devices

• Free: up to 10 boards per workspace with 10 users

• Standard: $5/month/user (billed annually)

• Premium: $10/month/user (billed annually)

• Enterprise: $17.50/month/user (billed annually)

Best for Emelia.io users: If you run cold email campaigns, you can create boards to track your prospect research, email sequences, and follow-up tasks. Create cards for each prospect and move them through different stages such as “Research,” “First Contact,” “Follow Up,” and “Converted.”

Best for: teams that need robust task management beyond basic Kanban

Asana is a visual task management tool that makes it easy to collaborate on projects. Asana lets you create a basic Kanban board to visualize a project's tasks.

While not a pure Kanban tool, its project management features make it incredibly powerful for teams that need more than just boards.

Key features

• Multiple project views (Kanban, timeline, calendar, list)

• Advanced task dependencies

• Custom fields and forms

• Robust reporting and dashboard features

• Team workload management

Pricing

• Basic: Free for up to 15 team members

• Premium: $10.99/month/user (billed annually)

• Business: $24.99/month/user (billed annually)

B2B integration: Asana's automation features can streamline your prospecting workflows. Set rules to automatically move leads through your sales funnel based on their level of engagement or response rate.

Best for: Teams looking for maximum flexibility and customization

ClickUp is incredibly versatile. Kanban boards are one of ClickUp's standard views.

If you like having options (and lots of them), ClickUp could become your new best friend.

• Over 15 project views: from Kanban boards to Gantt charts to mind maps

• Extensive customization: create custom fields, statuses, and workflows

• All-in-one workspace: documents, goals, time tracking, and more

• Generous free plan: feature-rich without breaking the bank

• Free: robust features for small teams

• Unlimited: $7/month/user

• Business: $12/month/user

• Enterprise: contact us for pricing

Best for: teams that prioritize visual project management and collaboration

With its colorful and attractive interface, Monday.com is easy for teams to get started with. You can create Kanban boards using a drag-and-drop builder and switch between other project views such as calendars and lists.

• Stunning visual design: everything is color-coded for clarity

• Automation recipes: pre-built automations for common workflows

• Advanced reporting: Dashboards and attractive analytics

• Integration hub: Connect with over 40 popular tools

• Individual: Free for up to 2 users

• Basic: $8/month/user

• Standard: $10/month/user

• Pro: $16/month/user

Best for: Software development teams and agile practitioners

Jira was designed for software developers, with agile-specific features such as epics, user stories, and sprints.

While it may be overkill for simple project management, it's unbeatable for development teams.

• Advanced agile features: Scrum boards, sprint planning, burndown charts

• Issue tracking: comprehensive bug and feature tracking

• Code integration: connection with GitHub, Bitbucket, and more

• Detailed reports: velocity charts, cumulative flow diagrams

• Free: up to 10 users

• Standard: $7/month/user

• Premium: $14/month/user

• Enterprise: contact us for pricing

Best for: teams looking for a focused, distraction-free Kanban

KanbanFlow is the most streamlined Kanban tool I discovered during my testing. Although basic, this tool covers all the essential features of a Kanban application, and it does so well.

• Built-in Pomodoro timer: time estimation is linked to one of KanbanFlow's most interesting features: a built-in Pomodoro timer

• Swimlanes: organize your board into different sections

• Time tracking: built-in reports on time spent

• Minimalist design: no distractions, maximum focus

• Free: basic features for an unlimited number of users

• Premium: $5/month/user

Best for: Medium to large teams that need robust project management

Wrike is a simple Kanban board with an exceptional suite of project management tools and a clean design.

It offers an excellent balance between simplicity and power.

• Advanced permissions: granular access control

• Custom workflows: design processes tailored to your business

• Review and approval: built-in review processes

• Resource management: workload balancing and capacity planning

• Free: up to 5 users

• Professional: $9.80/month/user

• Enterprise: $24.80/month/user

• Enterprise: Contact us for a quote

Best for: Teams that need advanced visual workflow management

Teamhood is a truly powerful Kanban board tool that can help optimize processes, regardless of industry or company size. Although users of the tool are not required to use the framework, the tool is designed with the Kanban board in mind.

• Sub-workflows: track the progress of sub-tasks in cards

• Customizable rows and columns: ultimate board customization

• Portfolio management: oversee multiple projects

• Gantt integration: chronological view alongside the Kanban

• Free: up to 10 users

• Professional: starting at $5/month/user

Best for: teams that want to integrate Kanban into a comprehensive workspace

Although not a traditional Kanban app, Notion's database views make it incredibly powerful for teams that want to have everything in one place.

• Rich content: add documents, wikis, and databases to your workflow

• Relationship properties: connect cards to other databases

• Templates: pre-built configurations for common use cases

• Formula fields: automatically calculate progress and metrics

• Personal: free for individual use

• Personal Pro: $4/month

• Team: $8/month/user

• Enterprise: $15/month/user

Best for: Data-rich projects that require spreadsheet functionality

Much like Smartsheet, Airtable focuses primarily on spreadsheets, but with a more colorful user interface. Airtable's filtering, sorting, and grouping features help users sift through data that might otherwise be difficult to manage in a kanban table format.

• Multiple view types: Switch between grid, kanban, calendar, and gallery views

• Rich field types: Attachments, links, calculations, and more

• Powerful filtering: Sort and group data in multiple ways

• API access: Build custom integrations

• Free: robust features for small teams

• Plus: $10/month/user

• Pro: $20/month/user

• Enterprise: contact us for pricing

Individual or small teams (1-10 people): Trello, KanbanFlow, or Notion offer simplicity without excessive features.

Medium teams (10 to 50 people): Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com offer a good balance of features and scalability.

Large teams (50+ people): Jira, Azure DevOps, or Wrike offer enterprise-grade features and security.

Simple task management: Trello or KanbanFlow Content planning: Notion or Airtable Software development: Jira or Azure DevOps Marketing campaigns: Monday.com or ClickUp B2B sales process: Asana or Smartsheet

If you use tools such as Emelia.io for your prospecting campaigns, evaluate the level of integration of your Kanban application with your existing stack. Most tools offer Zapier integration, which allows you to automatically create cards when new leads are added to your CRM or when email sequences are completed.

Work-in-progress (WIP) limits — WIP limits are the maximum number of cards that can be in a column at any given time. A column with a WIP limit of three cannot hold more than three cards.

This prevents your team from taking on too much work at once.

Pro tip: Start with a WIP limit of 2-3 cards per person in your “In Progress” column and adjust it based on your team's capacity.

Use lanes to separate different types of work on the same board. For example, if you manage both product development and marketing campaigns, create separate lanes for each area while keeping the same workflow steps.

If a task takes less than two minutes, do it immediately rather than creating a card. This prevents your board from becoming cluttered with small tasks.

Campaign planning board:

• Backlog: campaign ideas and requests

• Planning: campaigns in the definition and design phase

• In progress: active campaign execution

• Review: campaigns awaiting approval

• Live: ongoing campaigns

• Completed: completed campaigns with results

For marketing teams that use prospecting tools, you can create boards specifically for email campaign management to track all stages, from list creation to follow-up sequences.

Pipeline management board:

• Prospects: new prospects to be qualified

• Contacted: initial contact made

• Interested: positive responses requiring follow-up

• Negotiating: sales discussions in progress

• Closed won: successful conversions

• Closed lost: prospects not converted (with notes for future reference)

Feature development board:

• Backlog: Priority feature requests

• Analysis: Requirements gathering and planning

• Development: Active coding and implementation

• Testing: Quality assurance and bug fixing

• Review: Code review and approval

• Deployed: Features live

Recruitment process board:

• Open positions: Available positions

• Sourcing: Active search for candidates

• Pre-selection: Initial evaluation of candidates

• Interviews: In-person or video interviews

• Reference checks: Final verification stage

• Offer made: Awaiting candidate's response

• Hired: Successful recruitment

Keep it simple, especially at first. In their simplest form, Kanban lists can be titled “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” However, they are most effective when they reflect the actual steps in your production process.

Without work-in-progress limits, your team can become overwhelmed with too many tasks at once, leading to decreased productivity and quality.

An outdated Kanban board is worse than no board at all. Establish a routine for updating card statuses and encourage team members to move cards as work progresses.

While it's tempting to create a column for every possible step, too many columns can make your board cluttered and confusing. Aim for a maximum of 3 to 7 columns.

Don't let completed tasks pile up indefinitely in your “Done” column column. Regularly archive completed cards to keep your board clean and clear.

If you use email prospecting tools for your B2B campaigns, integrate your Kanban app to automatically create cards for:

• New leads added to your CRM

• Email sequences requiring follow-up

• Leads who have interacted with your content

• Meetings scheduled as a result of prospecting efforts

Connect your Kanban app to time tracking tools to automatically record hours spent on specific cards, giving you valuable insight into how your team is actually using their time.

Connect your board to Slack, Microsoft Teams, or other communication tools to:

• Receive notifications when cards are moved from one column to another

• Create new cards directly from chat messages

• Share board updates in team channels

The next generation of Kanban apps will likely integrate AI to:

• Predict project completion dates based on historical data

• Suggest optimal task assignments based on team member skills and availability

• Automatically identify bottlenecks and suggest improvements

• Generate reports and insights without manual data entry

With the rise of remote work, Kanban applications should offer:

• Offline functionality for working in areas with poor connectivity

• Voice-activated card creation for mobile users

• Augmented reality views for visualizing workflows in physical spaces

• Better touch interfaces optimized for tablets and smartphones

Future Kanban tools will offer:

• Native CRM integration for sales pipeline management

• Advanced automation that responds to external triggers

• Cross-platform synchronization with other project management methodologies

• Real-time collaboration features that rival dedicated communication tools

Total time between a card being created and its completion. This metric helps you understand the actual duration of your processes.

Time elapsed between the start of work on a card and its completion. This metric focuses specifically on active work time, excluding waiting periods.

Number of cards completed in a given period. This indicator measures your team's overall productivity and capacity.

Number of cards you are currently working on. Tracking this indicator helps you ensure that you are not overloading your team.

Time spent by cards on hold due to dependencies or obstacles. High blocked time indicates inefficiencies in the process that need to be corrected.

Before changing Kanban applications:

1. Export your current data (if possible)

2. Map your existing workflow to the structure of the new tool

3. Set up your new board with the appropriate columns and cards

4. Test with a small project before migrating completely

5. Train your team on the new tool's features

Communicate early: Let your team know about the change well in advance and explain the benefits.

Offer training: Organize hands-on training sessions and create quick reference guides.

Start small: begin with one project or team before rolling out the tool across the entire company.

Gather feedback: regularly ask team members what they think of the new tool.

Be patient: give the tool time to be adopted and be prepared to make adjustments based on user feedback.

Choosing the right Kanban app isn't just about features and price. It's about finding a tool that fits your team's work style and grows with your needs. Whether you're running email awareness campaigns, managing content creation, or coordinating complex projects, the right Kanban app can transform your team's productivity.

For beginners, start with Trello: its simplicity and generous free offering make it the ideal tool for getting started. Growing teams should consider ClickUp or Asana for their scalability and rich feature set. Enterprise teams will find the security and advanced features they need in Jira or Wrike.

Remember, the best Kanban app is the one your team actually uses. Start simple, focus on adoption, and gradually add complexity as your processes mature. The visual clarity and improved collaboration you'll gain are well worth the initial investment in setup and training.

Kanban applications focus specifically on visualizing workflow using boards, lists, and cards. They emphasize continuity of flow and limiting work in progress. Project management tools often include Kanban views, but also offer features such as Gantt charts, resource management, budget tracking, and comprehensive reporting. Choose Kanban apps for simplicity and workflow visualization, and project management tools for complete project control.

Absolutely! I even recently created a Kanban board for a bachelor party I was planning. Kanban works for everything.

Personal Kanban can help you manage household chores, plan your vacation, track your fitness goals, or organize any multi-step process in your life.

Start with the classic three: “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” As your process matures, you can add columns that reflect the actual steps in your workflow. The most effective boards have between 3 and 7 columns. Any more than that can create confusion and slow down your process.

Kanban works for teams of all sizes, from freelancers to large corporations. However, individual boards work best with 3 to 12 people. Larger teams should consider using multiple boards or lanes to maintain clarity and accountability.

Create a “Hot” or “Urgent” column at the top of your board for critical items that require immediate attention. You can also use color coding or labels to mark urgent cards and establish agreements within the team on how to handle them without disrupting the normal flow.

Yes, integration is essential for optimizing productivity. Connect your Kanban app to:

• Communication tools (Slack, Teams) for notifications

• Time tracking software for accurate project measurement

• CRM systems for sales pipeline management

• Email tools for tracking awareness campaigns

• Calendar apps for deadline management

Daily updates are ideal for most teams. Encourage team members to move cards as work progresses throughout the day. Hold brief daily meetings where team members update card statuses and discuss any obstacles or issues.

Kanban is perfect for remote teams! Digital Kanban boards offer transparency and visibility that are especially valuable when team members aren't physically together. The visual nature of Kanban helps remote workers stay aligned and informed about project progress without having to constantly meet.

Scrum sprints have start and end dates, while Kanban is a continuous process. Roles within the team are clearly defined in Scrum (product owner, development team, and Scrum master), while Kanban does not have formal roles

Kanban emphasizes continuous flow and limiting work in progress, while scrum uses fixed-length sprints and defined ceremonies.

Start with these strategies:

• Launch a pilot project with volunteer participants

• Show, don't tell: demonstrate the benefits using a concrete example

• Address concerns about additional costs or complexity

• Highlight benefits such as improved visibility and reduced chaos

• Make it optional at first to reduce resistance

• Celebrate early wins to build momentum