Asana vs Plane
Asana and Plane are both project-management platforms with official MCP servers, and they pit a polished SaaS incumbent against an open-source challenger. Asana's cloud-hosted server lets an agent operate your Asana work graph in real time: search across tasks, projects, portfolios, goals, teams, users, tags, and custom fields, read full task and project details, pull status overviews and portfolio rollups, and create and update tasks in batches, create projects with sections, post comments and status updates, and delete tasks — all constrained to what the authenticated user can do, with interactive preview tools for human-in-the-loop review. Plane's server, from the open-source project-management tool, exposes Plane's full API across 20+ modules: manage projects, create and search work items, run cycles (sprints) and modules, group work under epics, milestones, and initiatives, triage an intake queue, define custom work-item types, manage states and labels, log time, and read or write wiki pages. So the contrast is managed and portfolio-oriented versus open-source and sprint-oriented. Here is how they compare.
How they compare
| Dimension | Asana | Plane |
|---|---|---|
| Platform model | Managed SaaS: a work graph of tasks, projects, portfolios, and goals, with portfolio rollups and status overviews for higher-level tracking. | Open-source and MIT-licensed: a developer-leaning model with work items, cycles (sprints), modules, epics, milestones, initiatives, and an intake queue. |
| Planning primitives | Tasks, projects with sections, portfolios, and goals — strong for cross-project rollups and status reporting. | Cycles and modules for sprint-style execution, plus custom work-item types and properties, states, labels, and time logging. |
| Extras | Interactive preview tools let a client draft and review a task, project, or search before committing — built for human-in-the-loop workflows. | Built-in wiki pages, intake triage, comments, links, relations, and activity history so the agent participates like a teammate. |
| Deployment and auth | Remote V2 endpoint at mcp.asana.com/v2/mcp over OAuth; tokens issued for the MCP app only work against the MCP server, limiting blast radius (the V1 beta endpoint is shut down). | Hosted endpoint at mcp.plane.so over Streamable HTTP with OAuth for Plane Cloud and an API-key path, or local stdio via uvx with a Plane API key and workspace slug. |
| Best-fit task | Teams on Asana that want an agent to manage work across projects and portfolios with safe, preview-first edits. | Teams that want an open-source, self-hostable tool and sprint-style execution with custom item types and a built-in wiki. |
Verdict
Decide on openness and planning style. Choose Asana if your team is on its managed platform and you value portfolio rollups, goal tracking, and preview-first edits that keep a human in the loop — its scoped MCP tokens also limit blast radius. Choose Plane if open-source and self-hosting matter and you run sprint-style work: cycles and modules, custom work-item types, intake triage, time logging, and a built-in wiki, with both hosted and local stdio options. Asana is the polished, portfolio-oriented incumbent; Plane is the open, developer-leaning challenger. Pick by which platform your team already uses and whether self-hosting is a requirement.
FAQ
- Is Plane self-hostable?
- Yes. Plane is the open-source, MIT-licensed project-management tool, and its server can run locally over stdio via uvx against your workspace (with a Plane API key and workspace slug), or connect to the hosted endpoint at mcp.plane.so. Asana is a managed SaaS with a cloud-hosted server.
- Which is safer for letting an agent make changes?
- Both constrain actions to the authenticated user. Asana adds interactive preview tools so a client can draft and review a task or project before committing, which suits human-in-the-loop workflows; Plane relies on its OAuth/API-key scoping.