Smartsheet
Taiga
| Feature | Taiga | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $9/mo | Free / from $5/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.3 / 5 | 4.2 / 5 |
| Best For | enterprise, project-managers, operations-teams, it-teams | agile-teams, open-source-advocates, startups, scrum-teams |
| Founded | 2005 | 2014 |
| Sheets | ✓ | ✗ |
| Gantt Charts | ✓ | ✗ |
| Automation | ✓ | ✗ |
| Dashboards | ✓ | ✗ |
| Forms | ✓ | ✗ |
| Resource Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Scrum Boards | ✗ | ✓ |
| Kanban | ✗ | ✓ |
| Epics | ✗ | ✓ |
| User Stories | ✗ | ✓ |
| Sprint Planning | ✗ | ✓ |
| Wiki | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Smartsheet Pros
- Familiar spreadsheet interface
- Powerful automation
- Enterprise-grade
- Good dashboards
✗ Smartsheet Cons
- Can be confusing
- Expensive for small teams
- Learning curve
✓ Taiga Pros
- Fully open-source and self-hostable
- Beautiful modern interface
- Both Scrum and Kanban support
- Very affordable premium tier
✗ Taiga Cons
- Smaller community than Jira
- Fewer integrations
- Limited reporting features
The Verdict
Smartsheet is built for enterprise and project managers, with a focus on sheets and gantt-charts. Taiga targets agile teams and open source advocates and leads with scrum-boards and kanban.
Pricing is close: Taiga starts at $5/mo versus $9/mo for Smartsheet — not a deciding factor on its own.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.