Can you make a Gantt chart in Trello for free?

Which plans include Timeline?

Premium and Enterprise include Timeline view; Free and Standard do not. No plan includes a Gantt chart with task dependencies. Trello's pricing page does not mention Gantt anywhere. Its plan comparison lists Timeline view as unavailable on Free and Standard and included on Premium and Enterprise, and Trello's Timeline help confirms that limit for both boards and Workspaces.

Before upgrading, note three limits:

• Legacy Premium: Premium Workspaces subscribed to a legacy plan are not eligible for Timeline.
• Mobile access: Timeline works in the browser and the desktop app, and Trello says it is no longer accessible on mobile devices.
• Free plan: Asked whether Timeline will ever come to free Workspaces, Trello answers that there are no current plans to do so.

What does Trello Timeline show?

Trello's Timeline view shows cards as bars between their start and end dates, grouped by your chosen field. It shows when work is scheduled but does not reschedule dependent work when a card slips.

Going by Trello's own description, Timeline gives you:

• Bars from card dates. Add a start date next to the due date, or stretch a card's edge on the timeline to cover several days.
• Five zoom levels. Day, week, month, quarter and year.
• Grouping. By list, by member, by label, or none.
• A tray for undated cards. The "Not scheduled" list, where you give a card its first date.

What the help article does not describe is just as useful to know. It says nothing about dependencies between cards, a critical path, milestones, or exporting or printing the timeline. In practice that means if the design card runs three days late, the build card after it stays where it is until somebody drags it. On a board of eight cards that is fine. On a board of forty, with a launch date at the end, it is the reason teams go looking for a Gantt chart in the first place.

There is also a sharing limit. Trello says only members of the board can see the Timeline view. A client or a manager outside the board sees nothing unless you add them to it. On a paid Workspace a guest on a single board costs nothing; anyone on two or more boards is billed as a seat.

Are Gantt Power-Ups free?

The Gantt Power-Ups checked here offer free access only through a trial. A search for "gantt" in Trello's directory returns 13 results, and every Trello plan, including Free, allows unlimited Power-Ups. But Trello's pricing page notes that some partner Power-Ups require an additional subscription fee, and the Gantt ones that add real dependencies are among them.

Placker is the clearest on price. Its pricing page puts Gantt charts in the Basic plan at $7.49 per user per month, after a 15-day trial with no card required. Planyway's Trello pricing puts Gantt and Timeline in its Team plan, above a Free and an Individual plan, so the Gantt view is never on its free tier. TeamGantt's Power-Up is a bridge rather than a chart: the cards sync into a TeamGantt project, and you pay for TeamGantt as well. See TeamGantt subscription costs for its prices.

GoodGantt deserves a separate note. On its directory listing, Trello itself displays a warning that the app does not follow Atlassian's privacy guidelines and that authorising it may put your personal data at risk. Read that before giving any Power-Up access to a client board.

These Gantt options are free during a trial, for about two weeks, rather than permanently free.

What do five people pay?

For a team of five on one board, a Gantt-style view inside Trello costs between roughly $450 and $750 a year. Keeping Trello on Free and building the timeline in a free Gantt tool costs nothing, at the price of a second place to keep up to date.

The middle rows depend on who needs the chart. Placker charges per active user, so if only the project lead plans the timeline and the others just move cards, the real figure may be one seat rather than five. Check that with Placker before you count on it. Trello Premium works the other way: Trello's billing help says every Workspace member and every multi-board guest is billable. Upgrading the whole team so that one person can use a view is the expensive way to get a timeline.

How do you export cards?

Export the Trello cards, select the ones that need scheduling, then add durations and dependencies in a Gantt tool.

Trello's export help says every board member can export a board as JSON, and boards in Premium Workspaces can also export to CSV, which opens in a spreadsheet. The menu path is the board menu, then Print, Export, and Share. JSON is not meant for reading by eye, so on Free or Standard the practical routes are a free JSON converter or copying the card names by hand. Breeze has a walkthrough for working with exported cards.

Before you retype anything, look at what your lists are. On most Trello boards the lists are statuses: To do, Doing, Done. A Gantt chart wants something else in that slot. Its groups should be phases, the stretches of work that end in a handover or a decision, such as Plan, Create, Review and Launch. A card in "Doing" tells you its state today; a bar under "Create" tells you when it happens and what waits for it.

Then go card by card:

1. Select schedule items. Ideas, notes and recurring chores stay on the board.
2. Set working-day durations. A Trello due date tells you when something was due, not how long it takes.
3. Identify dependencies. This is the information Trello never held, and it is what makes the chart useful when a date moves.
4. Mark the decisions. Sign-offs and approvals become one-day milestones rather than bars.

Turn cards into scheduled tasks

Rebuild the schedule by turning Trello cards into tasks, grouping them into phases and linking dependent work. In Ganttile, a free online Gantt chart maker, projects contain lists and lists contain tasks. New projects start with To-do, Doing and Done; rename those lists to your phases.

The sample below is a four-week spring email campaign with ten tasks. It was built in Ganttile from a board with the same cards.

1. Create the project. Click New project and name it after the board.
2. Turn lists into phases. Rename To-do, Doing and Done to Plan, Create and Review, and add a fourth list, Launch.
3. Add the cards as tasks. Use the plus sign on each list row, then set start and end dates in the task window.
4. Link what waits. Drag from the end of one bar to the start of the next for a finish-to-start link. Ganttile also accepts start-to-start, finish-to-finish and start-to-finish links, depending on which ends you join.
5. Mark the decisions. Ganttile draws a milestone as a one-day marker rather than a diamond, so make "Brief signed off", "Client approval" and "Launch day" one-day tasks and give them their own colour in the task window.
6. Switch on what you need. In the chart settings, Hide weekends makes durations count working days, and Show list dates draws a bar for each phase that spans its tasks. Critical path and Auto schedule are off until you turn them on; with Auto schedule on, linked tasks move when the task before them moves.

The sample campaign spans 20 working days, from the brief on 1 March to launch on 26 March. "Build landing page" waits for the email copy, so with Auto schedule on, if copy runs two days long, the landing page, legal review, client approval and launch all move two days with it, and the chart shows the new launch date the moment you drag the bar. On a Trello board, the same delay changes one card.

Ganttile's limits matter when moving from a board: a task holds a name, dates, its list and a colour, not the comments and attachments a Trello card collects, and Ganttile does not import a Trello board, so the task names go in by hand. Entering a few dozen cards is a short job for one project. When someone outside the team asks to see the plan, export it as a PDF or an image, or send the Excel task list. Teams that want the board and the timeline in one tool can look at Breeze, which imports Trello boards and has a Gantt view, at $9 per user per month billed yearly, or $10 billed monthly, with every feature included.

For more browser-based options, compare online chart makers and their free tiers. Use milestones and links to decide which tasks to connect.

When should you keep Trello?

Choose Trello's Timeline when you already pay for Premium and nothing on the board waits for anything else. A content calendar, a hiring pipeline, a list of independent client requests: these are dates, not dependencies, and Timeline shows them well enough without a second tool.

Choose a Power-Up when the team lives in Trello, the plan changes weekly and you want the chart and the cards to stay in sync without anyone retyping. Paying $7.49 a seat for that is reasonable if the alternative is a weekly hour of updating a separate chart.

Choose a separate free Gantt tool when the project lead maintains the schedule: drawn at kickoff, adjusted at weekly reviews, exported for a client. The cards stay in Trello for daily work, and the chart holds the dates and the order. Agree which one is the source of truth for dates, or the two will drift apart within a fortnight.

Trello Gantt chart questions

Does Trello have a Gantt chart?

No. Trello's only built-in timeline is Timeline view, which shows cards as bars between a start and end date. Trello's help for it describes no dependencies or critical path. Gantt charts in Trello come from third-party Power-Ups such as Placker or Planyway.

Is Trello's Timeline view free?

No. Trello says Timeline is only available for boards and Workspaces subscribed to Premium or Enterprise. Premium costs $10 per user per month billed annually, or $12.50 monthly. Free and Standard boards have no Timeline view.

Can you export a Trello board to a Gantt chart?

Not directly. Every board member can export a board as JSON, and Premium boards can export CSV. You then add durations and dependencies in a Gantt tool, because a Trello board does not record which card waits for which.

Which route fits your board?

If you already pay for Premium and nothing waits on anything else, use Timeline. If the team lives in Trello and the plan has real dependencies, budget for a Power-Up after its trial. If you want dependencies without a subscription, keep the cards in Trello and put the plan in a free Gantt chart, with phases instead of status lists.