How to Add Time Estimates to Trello Cards (and Total Them)

Does Trello have a time estimate field?

No. A Trello card has a start date and a due date, but nowhere to say how long the work should take. You can add an estimate with a Number Custom Field (Standard plan or higher), with a Power-Up (any plan), or by writing it into the card title. Trello doesn't add up Custom Field values anywhere on the board, so list and board totals come from a Power-Up or a spreadsheet.

As of September 2026, Trello Standard costs $5 per user per month billed annually ($6 monthly) and Premium costs $10 ($12.50 monthly). The Free plan allows up to 10 collaborators per Workspace (Trello pricing).

Method 1: a Custom Field for estimated hours

Custom Fields are built into the board menu on Standard, Premium and Enterprise Workspaces (Atlassian support). Older forum answers call it a Power-Up, but Atlassian says that Power-Up is no longer available. On Free, skip to Method 2.

1. Open the board menu (…), choose Custom Fields, then New field.
2. Name the field with its unit, such as Estimate Hours (up to 25 characters).
3. Choose Number as the type. The type can't be changed later.
4. Leave it shown on the front of the card, which is the default, so the estimate is visible on the board.
5. Select Create. The field appears on every card on the board.

Type estimates as decimals: a Number field accepts 1.5 but not 1h 30m. Use the same field name on every board, because a card moved to another board copies its value into a field with the same name and type, or creates a new field if there isn't one. A Custom Field shows one number per card and no list total; the totals section covers that.

Method 2: estimates on the Free plan

Free Workspaces get unlimited Power-Ups per board but no Custom Fields. Three options work there.

Put the estimate in the card title

Start each title with the estimate, as in [3h] Rewrite pricing page. It is visible on the board, and typing [3h] into the board filter finds the matching cards. Over a few weeks the weak points show: titles get rewritten, people write 3h, (3) and 3 hrs for the same thing, and a list total means counting by hand.

Use size labels

Labels such as S: up to 2h, M: half a day and L: 1 to 2 days are coarse, which can help, because people argue less about S versus M than about 3 hours versus 4. If several boards use the same sizes, keep the label names identical on all of them, as our guide to label conventions for teams explains.

Use SumUp

SumUp by Blue Anvil Software keeps its own number on each card instead of a Custom Field, so it doesn't need a paid Trello plan. It is free for one summed value, which is enough for one estimate. Setup is in the next section.

Adding up estimates per list or per board

Totals are what the forum threads keep asking for. In a 2019 thread the poster wanted "an overview over the total amount of hours" per board and settled on Plus for Trello, an old browser extension. A 2022 thread asked to "sum or other arithmetic with custom fields in specific lists". These options work in 2026.

SumUp: a total at the top of each list

1. Add SumUp to the board.
2. Rename the value. In the Power-Up settings (board menu), change "Value" to "Estimate hours" and pick a symbol.
3. Fill in a card. Open it, change the value at the top of the card back and close it. A badge appears on the card front.
4. Fill in more cards in the same list. Their sum shows on the first card of the list.

SumUp Pro adds more sums and simple calculated values for $19.95 USD per board per year as of September 2026 (SumUp Pro). All board members see the values, observers included (SumUp how-to). The totals are per list, and Trello's automation can't read SumUp's values the way it reads Custom Fields.

Dashcards: sum a Custom Field across lists or boards

Dashcards is Trello's own Power-Up. A Dashcard tracks every card matching your filters (a list, a label, a member, or several boards in the Workspace). It counts cards by default, and in the 2022 thread an Atlassian team member confirmed it also "can sum a custom field". The sum reads a Custom Field, so it needs Standard or higher. Steps from Atlassian's Dashcards article:

1. Add Dashcards. A Track button appears in the board header (if not, switch it on in the header's Power-Ups menu).
2. Click Track, choose Customize, name the Dashcard and set its filters.
3. Click Start tracking.
4. Open the Dashcard and select Explore and Edit. Under Metrics, in Numeric Fields, pick your estimate field and choose sum.

Automation: arithmetic on one card at a time

Trello's automation (formerly Butler) can use +, -, *, / and parentheses when it sets a Number Custom Field, reading other fields through case-sensitive {{%Field Name}} variables (Atlassian docs). With Number fields called Estimate Hours, Spent Hours and Remaining Hours, this rule keeps the remainder current:

when custom field "Spent Hours" is set by anyone, set custom field "Remaining Hours" to "{{%Estimate Hours}} - {{%Spent Hours}}"

Add a second rule with "Estimate Hours" as the trigger so a changed estimate updates it too. Build both from the Automation button at the top of the board: choose Rule, then Create automation, add the trigger and action, and Save.

Automation can't total a list: its variables reference has nothing that sums across cards. Each run also uses the Workspace's pooled quota of 1,000 runs a month on Standard (quotas).

Premium: a CSV export and a spreadsheet

Premium's Dashboard view charts card counts, and Atlassian's FAQ for it says it doesn't calculate Custom Fields (Dashboard view). The Premium CSV export, under Print, Export, and Share in the board menu, includes Custom Field data (exporting data), so a pivot table can total the estimates. It is a snapshot that goes stale with the next edit.

Hours or story points: choosing a unit your team will keep up

Pick the unit before anyone fills in a card, put it in the field or label name, and keep it for the whole board. A field that half the team reads as hours and half as days is worse than none.

Use hours if you bill by the hour, plan people's days, or want to compare estimates with logged time. Use story points if the team runs sprints and tracks velocity. Points measure relative size, so a senior and a junior developer can agree on a card they would finish at different speeds, but points can't be compared with tracked hours without a conversion rate.

• Use a short scale, such as 0.5, 1, 2, 4 and 8 hours or 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 13 points, and split anything bigger.
• Keep the original estimate and track what is left in a Remaining field, so you can see how far off the first guess was.
• Review every few weeks. If 4-hour cards keep taking 7 hours, that tells the team more than any single card.

Estimate vs actual: the part native Trello can't do

An estimate is most useful next to the time the card really took, and Trello doesn't record that time. An Atlassian team member said so in a May 2025 thread: "Trello itself doesn't have any native time-tracking features".

The native workaround is a hand-typed Spent Hours field with the Remaining rule above. People fill it in from memory, often days later, and one number doesn't record who worked or when. Power-Ups such as Time in List measure something else: a card that waited three days in "Doing" shows three days whether anyone worked on it or not. Our guide to the ways to log hours in Trello covers the tracking options.

Power-Ups that compare estimated and tracked time

The first three Power-Ups below handle estimates without tracking time. The other four put estimates next to tracked time. Prices are as listed by each vendor in September 2026.

For planning totals only, you don't need a time tracker: SumUp works on the Free plan, Dashcards totals a Custom Field on Standard, and Card Size adds totals per assignee.

For separate estimates per person on one card, pick EstiMate, Limita or Activity Timer. Everhour's Power-Up and ours keep one estimate per card. Activity Timer is in maintenance mode, and it stores data in Trello's Power-Up storage, which is limited to 4,096 characters per scope and visibility pair (developer docs).

For estimate against actual per list on the board itself, Everhour's Power-Up fits better: its quick summary shows time against estimate for any list, member or label in one click (Everhour support). Our board Summary button shows tracked time only.

How estimates work in our Power-Up

Time Tracking for Trello is listed in the Trello directory as "just another Time Tracker". Each card has one estimate, typed as a duration such as 1h 30m, and any board member can set it.

• A ring around the estimate on the card back fills as time is logged, including a running timer. Once the estimate is passed, the ring turns red and shows the overrun. The board badge reads like 1h 30m / 2h and turns red too.
• The cross-board report shows estimate totals and group subtotals (by list, member, label and more) next to tracked time. The dashboard shows the week's estimate total and marks cards over estimate in red.
• Setting an estimate doesn't need a paid plan, and after the 5-day trial only new time is blocked.

One limit matters for planning: report and dashboard estimate totals only count cards with time logged on the chosen boards and period, so unstarted cards add nothing. For a total before work starts, use SumUp or Dashcards. See the estimate ring on our product page, or our comparison of time tracking Power-Ups.

Frequently asked questions