Copy Labels From One Trello Board to Another: 4 Ways That Actually Work

First, the bad news, officially

Trello has no "copy labels" button. When exactly this was asked in the Atlassian Community — a thread that's collected over 10,000 views since 2018 — the answer was blunt: labels are board-specific and "unfortunately cannot be replicated to another board."

The good news: a Trello quirk makes copying possible anyway, and for keeping boards matched over time there's a proper tool. Four ways, easiest-first.

Way 1: The card-with-all-labels trick (2 minutes, any board)

Trello auto-creates missing labels when a card carrying them arrives on a new board. That quirk is your copy button:

1. On the board with the labels you want, create a new card — call it "label carrier".
2. Open it and apply every label on the board to it.
3. Use the card's menu → Copy (or Move) → pick the target board and any list.
4. Open the target board: all missing labels now exist there, names and colors intact.
5. Delete the carrier card on both boards.

Way 2: A template board (for boards you haven't created yet)

Keep one board holding your canonical label set and create new boards as copies of it — either via Trello's board templates or a plain "Copy board". Every newborn board starts life with the right labels.

Limits: does nothing for the boards you already have, and the template link is one-way and one-time — improving the template later doesn't touch boards made from it earlier.

Way 3: Copy the whole board (when you wanted a clone anyway)

Copying a board brings its label set along. If the actual goal is "new client board, same structure as the last one", this is the natural move and the labels are a free rider. As a pure label-copy method it's overkill — you get lists, cards and settings you may not want.

Way 4: Sync them — so you never copy again

Ways 1–3 share a flaw: they copy a moment. The first rename, recolor or new label after the copy starts the drift all over — which is why the label cleanup ritual keeps coming back. Just Another Label Sync replaces the ritual with a standing link:

1. Add the Power-Up to your main board and open it — that board becomes the source.
2. Tick the target boards (anything you can access, across workspaces too).
3. Review the preview of what will be created, confirm, done.
4. From now on every new label, rename and recolor on the source lands on all targets automatically, within seconds — webhooks, not scheduled jobs.

It's additive-only by default (it never deletes a label unless you explicitly opt in, and even then shows a preview first), so nothing your teammates set up locally gets nuked. The full method comparison — including why Butler can't do this — is in our complete label-sync guide.

Which way should you use?

• One-off copy to a board or two → the card trick. It's genuinely fine.
• Standard labels for future boards → template board.
• Cloning a whole workflow → board copy.
• A team on 5+ boards where labels must stay matched → sync. The card trick as a recurring chore is exactly the trap — teams report doing label cleanup monthly across client boards.

Frequently asked questions