Trello, Notion or Kanban Pesquisa: which one to use for your thesis

First: who wrote this guide

This guide is by Kanban Pesquisa, one of the three tools it compares. So the rule was to write it the way we would want others to write about us: describe each tool by what it does today, say where the others are better and say who Kanban Pesquisa is not for.

The free plan limits of Trello and Notion were checked on their official pricing pages on November 3, 2026. Plans change: check before you decide.

The short answer

• Pick Trello if you want a simple board, already know the tool and keep your references somewhere else.
• Pick Notion if you like building your own system and want notes, drafts and tasks on the same pages.
• Pick Kanban Pesquisa if you want to start with the thesis stages ready, keep references, citations, meetings and your supervisor in the same project and, if your thesis is a review, screen and take notes on papers right there.

All three have a free plan that can handle a thesis. The difference is how much you have to set up and what stays outside the tool.

What a thesis needs from a tool

A thesis takes one or two semesters and goes through similar stages in almost every program: topic, proposal, literature review, data collection or development, writing, revision and defense. To keep track of it, a tool needs to handle five things:

• Stages and deadlines in plain sight, so you know what to do this week.
• A place for references, with citations in the style your program asks for.
• A way for your supervisor to follow along without you sending reports.
• A record of supervision meetings: what was agreed and by when.
• No cost, or close to it, for the whole project.

If your thesis is a literature review, add two more: selecting the papers from your searches (screening) and taking notes on each one that stays (reading notes). The section on reviews, further down, compares the three tools on that.

Use this list as you read the sections below. A tool that handles three of the five can be enough, if you already have a way to cover the other two.

Trello: the simplest board to start with

Trello is a general-purpose Kanban board: columns, cards and little else on the first screen. That is its strength. In five minutes you can create To do, Doing and Done columns, one card per stage and the deadlines.

Where it is better. It is very well known, so your supervisor may already have an account. It has apps for Android and iPhone, unlimited cards on the free plan and a large catalog of add-ons (Power-Ups) and automations, with 250 automation runs a month for free.

Where it falls short for a thesis. It has no place for references and does not create citations: you will need Zotero or a spreadsheet next to it. Calendar and timeline views are only on paid plans. On the free plan, attachments go up to 10 MB per file, and the plan covers up to 10 collaborators and 10 boards per Workspace.

Notion: a notebook that becomes whatever you build

Notion is a space of pages and databases. There, a Kanban board is one way of viewing a database you build yourself, with the columns and fields you want. You can keep the timeline, your reading notes and a chapter draft in the same place.

Where it is better. It is the most flexible of the three and the best for writing and taking notes. There are plenty of thesis templates made by users. For one person on their own, the free plan has no page or block limit. And anyone with a higher education email address can use the Plus plan for free, for one person, with up to 100 guests and 30 days of history.

Where it falls short for a thesis. Flexibility means setup: you design and maintain the system yourself. There is no citation generator; references become a table you fill in by hand, or they stay in Zotero. On the free plan, files go up to 5 MB, page history covers 7 days, a space with two or more members has a block limit and your supervisor joins as a guest, up to 10.

Kanban Pesquisa: built for academic work

Kanban Pesquisa is a Kanban board made in Brazil only for research: undergraduate theses, undergraduate research, master's, PhD and research groups. When you create a project, you choose the type of work, and the board starts with its stages.

Where it is better. It brings into one project what the others leave to separate tools:

• References by DOI, with the paper's details filled in and the citation copied in APA, ABNT, AMA, Vancouver or Chicago. It also imports references exported from Zotero.
• Your supervisor follows along with Viewer access, which does not count toward the free plan's limit of 5 editors per project.
• Minutes and decisions from meetings live in Documents, in the same project as the tasks.
• Paper PDFs stored in the project: up to 50 MB each and 100 MB in total on the free plan.
• Paper screening and reading notes, if your thesis is a review: screening with PRISMA on every plan, reading notes on paid plans. The next section covers both.
• Juno, the AI assistant, drafts the first tasks of each project, on the free plan too, with a usage limit.

Where it falls short. As frankly as in the other sections:

• The free plan has 2 active projects. That is enough for a thesis, but Trello and Notion let you organize much more without paying.
• Reading notes are on paid plans. The free plan has full screening, but not the notes for each paper.
• There is no app store app. It works in your phone's browser, without the app Trello and Notion offer.
• It is not a place to write the text. Your thesis stays in Word, Google Docs or Overleaf; the project keeps the links to those files.
• It is newer and smaller. It has fewer integrations and fewer user-made templates.
• It is only for research. To organize your whole life in one place, Notion is better.

If your thesis is a review: screening and reading notes

Many theses are literature reviews, or include one. That brings in two stages an ordinary task board does not cover: screening, where you decide which papers from your searches get in, and reading notes, where you take notes on each paper that stays.

In Trello, each paper becomes a card, with labels to include or exclude and the abstract in the description. It works for a few dozen papers; with hundreds, the board gets hard to read, and the counts for the PRISMA flow diagram are done by hand.

In Notion, papers become a database with a decision field, and each one gets a notes page. It is the better of the two for notes, because a page takes any structure. But screening in pairs without seeing each other's decisions, duplicates and the PRISMA numbers are up to you, and you build citations with page numbers by hand.

In Kanban Pesquisa, both stages are part of the project:

• Screening on every plan, the free one included. Import references from databases or Zotero (up to 200 per import on the free plan) and decide in two phases, title and abstract and then full text, with Include, Maybe or Exclude and a reason for every exclusion.
• Screening in pairs. Each person decides without seeing the other's decision (blind mode), and disagreements show up as conflicts to resolve. Useful, for example, for your supervisor to check your selection.
• Duplicates and PRISMA. Papers repeated across databases show up for you to merge, and the PRISMA 2020 flow diagram comes out ready, with the screening numbers.
• Reading notes on paid plans. Each reference has notes with aim, method, main findings and how you use the paper, plus direct quotes with page numbers, copied in APA, ABNT or Chicago. Notes export to a project document or a Markdown file.
• Juno on paid plans. It gives an opinion on a paper during screening, sorts the list by the most likely ones and drafts the notes from the PDF, never deciding or saving anything for you.

Side-by-side comparison

Tables like this simplify: each tool names things its own way, and a “yes” does not always tell the whole story. Use the table to find the difference that matters to you, then read that tool's section.

You can use more than one

It does not have to be just one. A few combinations that work well:

• Trello and Zotero: the board handles deadlines, and Zotero handles references and citations in Word.
• Notion and Zotero: Notion keeps your notes and drafts, and Zotero creates the citations.
• Kanban Pesquisa and Google Docs: the project keeps tasks, references and meetings, and the text lives in Docs, linked from the task.

What does not work is keeping the same timeline in two places. Pick one tool for deadlines and leave the rest to the others.

How to decide in 15 minutes

Comparisons help, but a test with your own work decides better. Set aside 15 minutes and follow the same script in each tool:

1. Create the thesis project and your next five tasks, with deadlines.
2. Add a paper you will cite and try to copy its citation in your program's style.
3. Invite your supervisor, or see what the invitation would look like.
4. Record your last supervision meeting: what was agreed and by when.
5. Open it on your phone and look for this week's task.

Stay with the tool where you finished the script with the least effort. To see Kanban Pesquisa before creating an account, the example project opens without signing in, with a board already filled in.