In 2025, Notion features an integrated AI toolkit, including meeting notes transcription, enterprise search, and research mode, as well as new native apps for forms, email, and calendars, alongside its flexible documents and databases. monday.com’s Work OS has expanded with AI Blocks for workflow automation, specialized products for CRM, service management, development and forms, plus 200+ built-in integrations and advanced board automations. So, which one is the best tool for you?
Table of contents
Notion vs. Monday: Quick look
| Feature | Notion | monday.com |
|---|---|---|
| Core functionality | Docs, databases, wikis, tasks, email, forms, calendar. | Boards, timelines, forms, CRM, dev, service apps. |
| Customization | Block-based pages and templates. | Guided board templates and apps. |
| Project management | Timeline (Gantt-style), calendar and board views. | Kanban, Gantt, timeline, calendar and workload views. |
| Collaboration | Real-time edits, comments and mentions. | Comments, file attachments and update streams. |
| Knowledge base | Full wiki with linked pages. | No native wiki. |
| Ease of use | Steep at first. Very flexible. | Fast setup. Guided workflows. |
| AI support | AI meeting notes, research mode and enterprise search. | AI Blocks for summaries, classification and automations. |
| Customer service | Email support and community forum. | Email, live chat and priority phone on Enterprise. |
| Best suited for | Flexible teams, knowledge workers and docs-centric workflows. | Structured project teams and cross-departmental work. |
| Unique strengths | All-in-one workspace and deep AI toolkit. | Visual workflows with rich native automations. |
| Unique weaknesses | Requires external tools for complex automations. | Lacks built-in document/wiki capabilities. |
| Price | Free; Plus $10/seat/mo; Business $20/seat/mo; Enterprise upon request (billed annually) | Free; Basic $9/seat/mo; Standard $12/seat/mo; Pro $19/seat/mo; Enterprise upon request (billed annually |
Reasons to choose Notion
- Built-in AI toolkit with meeting notes, enterprise search and research mode.
- Native forms, mail and calendar apps centralize work in one place.
- All-in-one workspace combines docs, databases, tasks and wikis.
- Vast template gallery accelerates setup for any workflow.
- Flexible block-based customization tailors your workspace.
- Generous free plan and affordable paid tiers.
- Robust knowledge management with linked pages and wikis.
- Real-time collaboration with comments, mentions and live editing.
Reasons to choose monday.com
- AI Blocks automate tasks, summaries and text classification.
- Work OS offers specialized apps for CRM, dev and service management.
- Over 200 native integrations for seamless workflow connectivity.
- Visual boards, timelines and Gantt views make status clear.
- Guided board templates speed setup for any project type.
- Built-in automations reduce manual follow-ups and errors.
- Scales from small teams to enterprise, with robust support.
- Unified notifications via email, in-app and Slack/Teams.
Notion vs. Monday: What are the differences?
Let’s dive into the world of Notion and monday.com to explore their unique features. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to make a well-informed choice that suits your needs.
Ease of use
Notion opens to a clean, distraction-free canvas, making note-taking and simple lists feel immediate.
Its flexibility means you can start typing or drop in a table with no setup, but that same blank slate can feel daunting without prebuilt guides.
Building complex systems in Notion—like linked databases, formulas, or custom templates—often requires diving into community tutorials or trial-and-error, since there’s no step-by-step walkthrough for advanced setups.
While the template gallery offers ready-made options, users still spend extra time stitching together relations and rollups for robust workflows.
monday.com welcomes you with colorful boards, drag-and-drop templates, and a point-and-click automation builder that most teams configure in minutes, backed by in-app tips and a detailed “Get started” guide on its support site.
Its opinionated defaults steer new users through common setups—task tracking, timelines, or simple workflows—without overwhelming them with empty canvases.
Both platforms handle powerful automations—Notion via third-party connectors, monday.com natively—but monday.com’s ready-made recipes and growing AI Blocks library reduce setup friction for common tasks, even as deeper automations and AI features could benefit from more in-app, context-sensitive guidance.
Despite these strengths, users on both sides mention a need for richer built-in tutorials or AI-powered walkthroughs to master advanced features faster.
Customization
Notion’s customization relies on a block-based architecture, where text, images, databases, and more are treated as movable, styleable blocks that you can arrange freely to fit any workflow.
You can embed virtually any online content—videos, forms, maps or entire Miro boards—directly within pages for richer layouts. Its relations and rollups let you link data across databases, creating dynamic dashboards and aggregated reports from connected information.
You can tailor each database via the Customize menu, choosing from settings, suggested enhancements, and advanced connections to make your tables more powerful.
Notion’s layout builder lets you design page templates that show only key properties and organize details for a clear visual flow.
Custom database templates—including repeating templates—enable predefined workflows with default values and nested structures for recurring tasks.
monday.com offers a library of prebuilt board templates for industries and workflows that you can use out of the box or fully customize at creation.
Boards can be tailored by adding or configuring custom columns—status, date, text, or person fields—and reusable custom fields let you standardize these settings across multiple boards.
Dashboards combine multiple board views and widgets via drag-and-drop, though color themes and overall styling follow workspace-wide settings rather than individual page design.
Automation and AI blocks empower deeper customization by adding logic directly to boards—everything from AI-driven summaries to text translation—without writing code.
However, complex conditional notifications or field-validation rules can still be tricky to set up natively, driving some teams to seek third-party workarounds.
Project management
Notion lets you manage projects right inside any page by turning databases into tables, boards, calendars and timelines so you can switch between big-picture roadmaps and detailed task lists instantly.
Its timeline view even resolves dependencies by showing how tasks link together and when each phase must start to hit your deadlines.
Recent updates added a native forms app that feeds submissions straight into your project tables and an integrated calendar so you can schedule milestones without a separate tool.
AI meeting notes can now be attached to project pages, automatically summarizing action items and follow-ups so nothing falls through the cracks.
monday.com centers on visual boards that you can configure in Kanban, Gantt, timeline, calendar or workload views, making it easy to track progress at a glance.
Its hierarchy board feature lets you nest sub-projects under a master board, giving teams a clear structure for complex initiatives without losing context.
Built-in automations move projects between stages, send alerts when deadlines approach, and even create new items for upcoming work based on your rules.
Advanced resource allocation controls let managers balance team workloads, and dashboards pull in multiple boards and metrics so you see every project’s health in one place.
👉 Learn more: 14 Best Productivity Apps
Collaboration
Notion and monday.com both excel at enabling teams to work together in real time, combining live co-editing, comments, mentions and in-doc notifications to keep everyone on the same page.
Each platform provides granular permission settings—so you control who can view, comment on or edit specific pages, databases or boards—to ensure the right people have the right level of access.
They also integrate update streams and inbox notifications across web and mobile, so team members never miss important changes or @-mentions, even when they’re on the go.
AI support
Notion AI for Work bundles meeting notes transcription, enterprise search, and Research Mode into a single toolkit at no extra cost on Business and Enterprise plans.
monday.com’s AI Blocks inject generative and analytical actions—like summarization, categorization and sentiment detection—directly into your boards and automations.
Notion focuses on content creation and knowledge retrieval, whereas monday.com emphasizes operational workflow automation, and both platforms are rapidly expanding their AI libraries and integrations to minimize manual effort.
AI meeting notes in Notion appear as a new /meeting block that transcribes live discussions and auto-generates concise summaries with action items once calls end.
Enterprise Search performs natural-language queries across Notion and connected apps—Slack, Google Drive, Teams, GitHub—and returns context-rich results without leaving your workspace.
On monday.com, AI Blocks live in the Column Center and Automation center, offering no-code actions to categorize text, improve copy, translate content, extract information, or detect sentiment—all configurable via a dedicated AI tab.
Each AI action consumes a credit, and you can embed these blocks in any board column or automation recipe to enrich workflows without writing a single line of code.
👉 Learn more: Notion AI vs. ChatGPT: Comparison & Real Examples [2025]
Pricing
Notion’s pricing is based on a per-user model, with four distinct plans:
- Free: $0 per member/month for individuals to organize personal projects and life.
- Plus: $10 per member/month (billed annually) or $12 per member/month (billed monthly), for small teams and professionals.
- Business: $20 per member/month, with advanced permissions, SAML SSO, analytics and 90-day page history.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for large organizations, including SCIM, audit logs, advanced security controls, and a dedicated customer success manager.
Monday’s pricing also follows a per-user model, with five different plans:
- Free: $0 per seat/month (up to 2 seats), includes unlimited docs, 3 boards and 200+ templates.
- Basic: $9 per seat/month, adds unlimited viewers, unlimited items, 5 GB file storage, and 500 AI credits.
- Standard: $12 per seat/month, adds timeline & Gantt views, calendar view, guest access, 250 automations and 250 integrations.
- Pro: $19 per seat/month, adds private boards, chart view, time tracking, formula columns, 25 000 automations and integrations.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for enterprise-scale automations & integrations, multi-level permissions, advanced governance, analytics, and 24/7 priority support.
Conclusion
In conclusion, both platforms offer unique advantages:
👉 Choose Notion if you need a workspace that blends docs, databases, wikis, and tasks with integrated AI Meeting Notes, Enterprise Search, and Research Mode, plus native Forms, Mail, and Calendar apps for end-to-end work management.
👉 Choose monday.com if you prefer a structured Work OS with visual Kanban boards, timeline and Gantt views, powerful automations, over 200 native integrations and AI Blocks, alongside specialized modules for work management, sales CRM, dev and service teams.
As you integrate Notion into your daily workflow, consider enhancing its functionality with 2sync, a powerful tool designed to synchronize Notion with your favorite apps and external tools.
This allows Notion to not only manage tasks within its ecosystem but also interact dynamically with other services, enhancing both productivity and efficiency.
