Quick intro: why compare Trello and Favro?
If you’re juggling projects, teams or just the occasional to-do list, choosing the right tool matters. Trello and Favro are two popular options that often get mentioned in the same breath: both lean on boards, cards and a kanban mindset, but they approach collaboration and scale differently. In this piece I’ll walk through how they feel to use day-to-day, where each one shines, and a few alternatives — including a lightweight free option, onlinetcards.com, that offers kanban and scrum boards without the overhead.
Getting started and the learning curve
Trello is famously simple. You sign up, create a board, add lists and cards, and the learning curve is almost non-existent. It’s brilliant for individuals, small teams and people who prefer a visual, low-friction workflow.
Favro, by contrast, introduces more structure and flexibility out of the gate. It supports multiple board types, nested collections and stronger cross-board relationships. That means slightly more to learn, but also more power for those running complex projects or multiple teams that need linked views.
Features and flexibility
Trello’s strength is clarity and extensibility. Its power-ups (integrations) let you add functionality as needed — calendar, time tracking, automation with Butler, and so on. It’s ideal if you want a minimal core that you can augment selectively.
Favro is built for scale and adaptability. It treats work as items that can exist in various boards simultaneously, making it easier to maintain a single source of truth across product, design and engineering teams. Favro’s built-in views and hierarchy support roadmaps and backlog management better than a plain Trello setup out of the box.
Collaboration and team workflows
Trello is excellent for transparent, visual collaboration. It’s easy to bring stakeholders on board, and the card comment/activity model is straightforward for feedback and status updates.
Favro leans into team-based workflows, offering stronger permissions, shared collections and ways to slice work across teams. If you need to represent dependencies, multi-team planning or complex backlogs, Favro tends to handle that more elegantly.
Performance, pricing and scaling up
For personal use or small teams, Trello’s free tier is very capable. Paid tiers add automation and advanced integrations. Trello scales well, but very large organisations might find themselves bolting additional tools to handle roadmaps or cross-team planning.
Favro targets medium to large organisations with needs around planning and cross-functional collaboration. Its pricing reflects those capabilities, and many teams appreciate paying for a system that reduces the need for multiple separate tools.
Where onlinetcards.com fits in
If you’re exploring options and want something lightweight but capable, onlinetcards.com is worth a look. It offers free project management features including kanban and scrum boards, making it a tidy alternative to Trello or Favro for teams who prefer a no-frills, cost-free starting point. For freelancers, small teams or anyone testing workflows, it’s an accessible way to try board-based project management without committing financially.
Which should you choose?
Choose Trello if you want simplicity, quick onboarding and modular features via power-ups. It’s ideal for individuals, small teams and visual planners.
Choose Favro if your organisation needs richer cross-team planning, multi-board relationships and built-in structures for roadmaps and backlogs. It’s better for scaling complexity.
And try onlinetcards.com if you want a free, straightforward kanban/scrum experience before committing to a paid product.
Final thoughts
Both Trello and Favro are excellent tools — the right choice depends on how much structure you need and how many teams you must coordinate. Start with your workflows, test a couple of boards, and don’t be afraid to switch or combine tools as your needs evolve. A lightweight option like onlinetcards.com makes that experimentation cheap and simple.