Trello Custom Fields & Amazing Fields Comparison

On the surface, it can appear as if Trello’s Custom Fields and Amazing Fields do the same thing - data fields on Trello cards. So, we wrote this guide to explain the difference between them and why you might use both together.

The biggest difference is that Amazing Fields gives you a wide range of field types to work with and can be used for free for simple use cases. So, it’s a very common way to add structured data to Trello cards. Trello’s native Custom Fields are great too, but they are only available on Trello’s paid plans.

Price Comparison

Amazing Fields has paid plans that unlock more features. However, the key difference is that Amazing Fields only bills per administrator (the person that configures the fields that others use). Where Trello paid plans bill per user. This means that the cost of Trello increases with every team member while Amazing Fields’ cost stays the same.

Trello Custom Fields: Available only on paid Trello plans. Pricing is per user, so the total scales linearly with the number of board members in your workspace.

Amazing Fields: Core usage is free on unlimited boards. A paid subscription (billed per administrator) unlocks advanced capabilities and more fields and members per board.

Feature Comparison

Amazing Fields was designed to accommodate many different use cases for businesses and personal productivity. Accommodating these valuable use cases is exactly why the power-up now has a rich and robust feature set.

This table compares Trello Custom Fields and Amazing Fields (AMF) side-by-side:

Nuances and key differences

When you just need simple, native fields: Trello Custom Fields are built-in, filterable, and can be used with Trello’s Automation feature. Great for straightforward text, numbers, dates, and single-select dropdowns.

When you need “database-like” cards or math: Amazing Fields adds several more field types that Trello doesn’t provide natively. Including advanced capabilities like progress bars, using formulas for calculations,referencing cards between each other, and multi-select dropdowns.

Mobile behavior: The Trello iOS and Android apps show and let you edit Custom Fields. Power-ups, including Amazing Fields, don’t run in the mobile apps. To get around this, you either use Trello in a mobile web browser or configure Amazing Fields to sync with Trello Custom Fields. We call this syncing ‘wrapping’ fields (more on this below).

Field Limits: Trello enforces hard limits for Custom Fields per board (50). Amazing Fields is only constrained by Trello’s storage quotas and will warn if you exceed them. We don’t know what this limit is exactly, but we have seen use cases using Amazing Fields with more than 50 fields.

Using both together: Wrapping Custom Fields

What “wrapping” means: Amazing Fields can create or link a Trello Custom Field to an Amazing Field so the values sync both ways. You change one, and the other will change too. That gives you the rich display and logic of Amazing Fields, while Trello sees the same data in a native Custom Field.

What cannot be wrapped: Trello only supports single-select dropdowns. So, Amazing Fields multi-select dropdowns cannot be wrapped to a Trello Custom Field.

Which should I use?

• Custom Fields only if you need light, native structured data with maximum Trello compatibility.
• Amazing Fields only if you want powerful formatting, formulas, progress bars, and relationships between cards and fields without upgrading your Trello plan.
• Both together if you want advanced logic and presentation from Amazing Fields plus Trello’s native filtering, exports, automation, and mobile editing via wrapping.