Migrating from Asana to Taiga is a strategic move for teams looking to break free from proprietary software pricing and embrace open-source flexibility. While Asana excels at flexible list views and cross-functional task tracking for business operations, its per-user costs scale rapidly and its feature set can feel restrictive for strict agile workflows. Taiga, on the other hand, offers a robust, free and open-source alternative built specifically for agile and scrum teams who demand deep customizability, integrated issue tracking, and full data ownership.
Organizations typically make this switch when their software engineering or product development teams outgrow Asana's generic project templates and require native kanban boards, sprint backlogs, and burn-down charts without paying enterprise tier add-on fees. Transitioning to Taiga also appeals to organizations with strict data residency requirements, as Taiga can be self-hosted on internal servers rather than relying entirely on Asana's cloud infrastructure.
Successful migration requires understanding the structural differences between Asana's workspace-and-project hierarchy and Taiga's project-and-module architecture. Because Asana relies heavily on multi-homing tasks across different projects, a direct mapping is not always automatic. By following a structured migration path, you can preserve your historical project data while setting your team up for success in an agile-native environment.
For a 50-person team that's a significant annual saving.
🗺️ Migration Steps
Before exporting, review your Asana projects, custom fields, and tags to eliminate obsolete tasks and archived workflows. Standardize naming conventions so that Asana sections translate cleanly into Taiga user story statuses or kanban columns.
Use Asana's native export feature to download your project data in CSV or JSON format. Ensure you capture task names, descriptions, assignees, due dates, and comments, as these will form the basis of your data transfer into Taiga.
Set up your target environment in Taiga by creating new projects and configuring them for Scrum or Kanban based on your team's methodology. Establish your custom attributes, user roles, and issue types in Taiga to mirror your previous Asana setup before importing data.
Utilize Taiga's import tools or community-maintained migration scripts to ingest your Asana CSV exports. Carefully map Asana fields like assignees and priorities to corresponding Taiga user stories, epics, and tasks to ensure data integrity.
Introduce your team to Taiga's interface by running a single pilot project before a full company-wide cutover. Train developers and project managers on Taiga-specific features like sprint planning, backlogs, and wiki modules to ease the transition from Asana's UI.
Lock your Asana workspaces to read-only mode to prevent data drift, perform a final delta import of any last-minute tasks, and officially switch your team's daily operations over to Taiga.
⚠️ Common Challenges & How to Avoid Them
Identify all multi-homed tasks in Asana and convert them into either parent epics with child user stories in Taiga, or assign them to a primary project and use Taiga's tagging system to cross-reference them.
Manually inspect complex tasks post-import and use Taiga's markdown editor to clean up formatting, ensuring that checklists and attachments are properly re-linked.
Schedule dedicated training sessions highlighting Taiga's customizable views and emphasize how the tool's agile structure will ultimately streamline their development sprints.
🔗 Get Started
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Native CSV exports from Asana do not include file attachments or nested comment histories. You will need to manually re-upload critical files to Taiga user stories or use custom API scripts to transfer comment logs.
Yes, Taiga is open-source software that you can self-host entirely for free without user limits. Taiga also offers a cloud-hosted version with free tiers and low-cost plans, making it significantly cheaper than Asana's per-user pricing.
Taiga supports custom attributes that allow you to replicate Asana's custom drop-downs, text fields, and numeric values. You will need to recreate these attributes in your Taiga project settings before executing your data import.
Want a full feature and pricing comparison before you switch?
Read the Full Asana vs Taiga Comparison →