monday.com vs Asana: Automation Caps, Seats and AI Requests
By Joris van Huët
Enterprise Interim CMO & Marketing Leader · 15+ years · 50+ orgs
Published
2026-10-26
The short answer: for a 12-person marketing team that automates intake and handovers, Asana Starter costs $164.85 a month billed annually for the 15 seats it sells at that size, with unlimited automations, while monday.com Standard costs $180 for its 15-seat step and stops at 250 automation actions a month (checked on 26 October 2026 on the Asana and monday.com pricing pages). Choose Asana when rules, forms and outside guests carry the work. Choose monday.com when marketing will share one platform with a CRM, a service desk or a dev team.
Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.
Settle the seat count first:
- Seats as each vendor sells them. monday.com starts paid plans at 3 users and offers team sizes of 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 and up (pricing). Asana adds seats one at a time from 2 to 5 users, then in fives up to 30 and in tens up to 100 (pricing FAQ). For example, 12 people pay for 15 on both: 15 x $12 = $180 on monday.com Standard and 15 x $10.99 = $164.85 on Asana Starter, billed yearly.
- The rules you run today. Count the "when a request arrives, tell that person" steps in your current process and how often each fires. On monday.com Standard every run spends actions from 250 a month (actions article); on Asana Starter the count does not matter.
- The outsiders in the work. Agencies, freelancers and clients who review assets. Asana Starter lists unlimited free guests; monday.com lists guest access from Standard.
- The turnaround you are trying to cut. Working days from request to first reply, last month, as the number to beat.
What the seat steps cost
| Team size | Seats on monday.com | monday.com Standard, a month billed yearly | Seats on Asana | Asana Starter, a month billed yearly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 5 | $60 | 4 | $43.96 |
| 8 | 10 | $120 | 10 | $109.90 |
| 12 | 15 | $180 | 15 | $164.85 |
| 22 | 25 | $300 | 25 | $274.75 |
Seat prices from the monday.com and Asana pricing pages, multiplied out: $12 and $10.99 per seat a month billed yearly, or $14 and $13.49 billed monthly. monday.com's prices exclude tax and depend on the billing country.
Standard against Starter
| Item | monday.com Standard | Asana Starter |
|---|---|---|
| Automations | 250 actions a month, plus 250 for integrations | Unlimited (pricing) |
| Timeline and Gantt | Included | Included |
| Outside collaborators | Guest access | Unlimited free guests |
| AI included | 2,000 credits a month for the account (pricing) | 5 AI Teammate or Dash requests per user a month, 50 per account at most, and 50K AI Studio credits |
| Products on the same login | CRM, service and dev, each with its own price list | Client management and service management, with their own pricing |
What separates them
How much room the rules get
On monday.com Standard, 250 actions is the month, and some rules spend several per run: creating an item with mapped columns, or notifying a team, counts once per mapping or per person; when the quota is spent, a 72-hour grace period ends with automations paused, and only Enterprise can buy more (actions article). Asana Starter lists unlimited automations. For an intake-heavy team, that line alone moves the decision.
A platform, or a project tool with add-ons
monday.com describes itself as an AI workspace for people and agents, and prices monday CRM, monday service and monday dev on the same pricing page, so a deal won on a CRM board can become a delivery item on a project board. Asana's centre is the project plan: Advanced adds portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, and branching forms (pricing). A team that plans with sales on one platform leans one way; a team that runs a portfolio of launches leans the other.
How AI is metered
monday.com pools AI credits per account by plan, and its agents spend them according to the complexity of each task (AI agents article). Asana counts AI requests: one successful unit of work by an AI Teammate or Asana Dash, with failed or cancelled tasks not counted, at $0.50 each prepaid or $0.60 on demand once the included allowance is gone (pricing FAQ).
One agent job: triage the morning's requests
Asana's AI Teammates page lists a Work Intake Specialist whose example tasks include triaging the day's intake requests, assigning them to the right teams and flagging requests close to breaching their service level. Grant it access to the intake project only, using the permissions you already have. The human check: it writes its proposed assignee and priority into the request, and the intake owner confirms or changes them before the assigned team is notified. On monday.com the same job runs through the AI agent builder, with board access granted in its Profile tab (AI agents article).
Asana includes AI Teammates on Starter, but the included allowance stops at 50 requests per account a month however many seats you buy, and each request after that is billed on top of the seats. For example, if the intake Teammate handles 30 requests a working day and each counts as one AI request, 21 working days use 630; 630 - 50 = 580 billed at $0.50 = $290 a month on prepaid packs, more than the 15 seats cost (pricing). Price the agent's volume before the team builds its morning around it.
Choose monday.com if your job is
- Planning campaigns on boards that sales, service or a dev team will also run on monday.com products.
- Keeping automation light: a few rules notifying named owners fit inside 250 actions on Standard at $12 a seat (pricing).
- Building agents scoped to specific boards, with a log of each run's actions and reasoning.
Choose Asana if your job is
- Running request intake, approvals and handovers on rules, without counting actions.
- Working with agencies and freelancers as free guests on Starter at $10.99 a seat billed yearly (pricing).
- Tracking several launches as a portfolio with goals and capacity, on Advanced.
monday.com's glossary entry covers its plans and agents in more depth, and how to use monday.com builds a campaign calendar on it.
Free first
Both start free for two people: monday.com's free plan holds 3 boards and 3 docs, and Asana's Personal plan holds unlimited tasks and projects with list, board and calendar views (monday.com, Asana). Two people can run two weeks of real intake in each before anyone else is invited, and the rules they needed to write will show which side of 250 actions the team lives on.
FAQ
Can I get money back after paying yearly?
monday.com's pricing FAQ says a yearly subscription cancelled within 30 days of payment is refunded the remaining balance automatically (pricing). Asana's FAQ says you can cancel at any time and keep paid features until the end of the current period (pricing).
What happens when monday.com's actions run out?
On Standard, after the first warning cycle, a 72-hour grace period follows and then automations pause until the quota renews; actions cannot be bought outside Enterprise (actions article).
Do Asana guests need paid seats?
Not on Starter and above, which list unlimited free guests, so clients and contractors can collaborate without adding to the licence count (pricing).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I am Joris van Huët, an enterprise interim CMO. 15+ years, 50+ organizations, including ING, P&G, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, WeTransfer and Vinted. I take on innovation projects (venture building, design sprints), agentic marketing (setting up and running AI agents) and hands-on multi-channel work. See the track record.
I wrote and published this with AI assistance, and I answer for it. Claims about my own experience are limited to the track record above, and a statistic links to its source or is labelled as an example. I sell interim and fractional CMO work, which is why this site exists. How this site is written.
A senior operator doing the work: campaigns, channels, CRM and AI agents, live from day one.