Project-management Comparisons

monday.com is free up to 2 seats and then $9, $12 and $19 per seat a month billed annually, with boards, items, dashboards and bundled AI credits. Smartsheet has no permanent free plan: Pro is $9 per member a month billed yearly for 1 to 10 members, Business is $19 yearly for 3 or more members, and Enterprise is quoted for 10 or more. Same headline numbers, different machines: monday.com is an app built around boards, Smartsheet is a grid built around rows and reports.

Trello is a board: Free for up to 10 collaborators, Standard at $5, Premium at $10 and Enterprise at $17.50 per user a month billed annually. Wrike is a delivery system: Free for essential task management, Team at $10 for 2 to 15 users, Business at $25 for 5 to 200 users, and Pinnacle and Apex by quote, all billed annually per user. Trello costs less and asks less; Wrike answers questions about capacity, dates and proofing that Trello never tries to ask.

Smartsheet sells a grid with superpowers: Pro is $9 per member a month billed yearly ($12 monthly) for 1 to 10 members, Business is $19 yearly ($24 monthly) for 3 or more, and Enterprise is quoted for 10 or more. Wrike sells a work management system: Free at $0, Team at $10 for 2 to 15 users, Business at $25 for 5 to 200 users, and Pinnacle and Apex by quote. Smartsheet wins when your data is fundamentally a table; Wrike wins when your data is tasks with owners, dates and load.

Asana runs Personal free for up to 2 users, Starter at $10.99 and Advanced at $24.99 per user a month billed annually, with monthly billing at $13.49 and $30.49. monday.com runs Free up to 2 seats, Basic at $9, Standard at $12 and Pro at $19 per seat a month billed annually. Asana puts portfolios, goals and capacity planning in its $24.99 middle-upper tier; monday.com reaches $19 before Enterprise and bundles AI credits instead of metering it.

monday.com charges per seat: Free up to 2 seats, then Basic $9, Standard $12 and Pro $19 per seat a month billed annually, with boards, items, dashboards and bundled AI credits. Trello charges per user: Free up to 10 collaborators, then Standard $5, Premium $10 and Enterprise $17.50 per user a month billed annually, built around boards, lists and cards. Trello is the cheaper and simpler instrument; monday.com is the one that grows into a department-wide system.

ClickUp's classic price list is Free, Unlimited at $7 and Business at $12 per user a month billed yearly, with AI sold separately at $9 or $28 per user. A second lineup that folds AI into the plan, Core at $9, Business at $17 and Max at $100, is shown to some workspaces. monday.com work management is Free up to 2 seats, then Basic at $9, Standard at $12 and Pro at $19 per seat a month billed annually, with AI credits bundled. ClickUp is cheaper at the low end and noisier; monday.com is pricier per seat and more rigid about what a board is.

Notion bills per member: Free at $0, Plus at $10 and Business at $20 per member a month when billed yearly, on top of docs, wikis and databases you assemble into your own workflow. Wrike bills per user: Free at $0, Team at $10 and Business at $25 per user a month billed annually, and it arrives with Gantt charts, request forms, resource management and dashboards already built in. Choose Notion when writing and knowledge work dominate the week; choose Wrike when schedules, load and hand-offs do.

Basecamp charges one flat price with no per-user fees: Pro is $99 a month billed annually for 25 active projects and unlimited users, Unlimited is $299 a month for unlimited projects. Wrike charges per user: Team is $10 per user a month for 2 to 15 users and Business is $25 for 5 to 200. Basecamp wins decisively for wide teams with straightforward project tracking; Wrike wins for organisations that need Gantt, workload, budgets and time tracking built in.

Monday.com prices per seat with a tool count and an AI credit allowance attached to each tier: Basic $9, Standard $12 and Pro $19 per seat a month billed annually, with a free plan for up to two seats. Wrike prices per user at $10 for Team and $25 for Business, with AI Essentials on the lower tier and AI Elite actions on the higher one. Monday is the more flexible board-and-app platform with metered AI; Wrike is the more structured work-management platform with resource and budget tooling.

ClickUp sells breadth at a low seat price: Unlimited is $7 per user a month billed annually and Business is $12, with storage, Gantt charts, integrations and chat all in the plan. Smartsheet sells a familiar grid with enterprise controls: Pro is $9 per member a month billed yearly and Business is $19, with unlimited free contributors and guests. If the team wants one tool to absorb docs, chat, goals and sprints, ClickUp is the cheaper answer; if the organisation already thinks in rows and needs governed portfolios, Smartsheet is the safer one.

Jira is issue tracking first: a free tier for up to 10 users, Standard at $8.48 per user a month and Premium at $15.56 on Atlassian's published offers, with an Enterprise edition for 801 users and up. Wrike is work management first: Team at $10 per user a month for 2 to 15 users and Business at $25 for 5 to 200. Software teams that live in sprints, commits and service desks should read the Jira column first; teams running marketing, IT and professional services on the same platform should read the Wrike one.

Asana and Wrike land almost on top of each other on price: Starter at $10.99 per user a month against Wrike Team at $10, and Advanced at $24.99 against Wrike Business at $25, all on annual billing. Asana is the more polished, list-and-goal-shaped tool with unlimited free guests and AI bundled per seat; Wrike is the heavier operational tool with resource management, time tracking and budgets that do not need an add-on. The deciding factor is usually whether you want goals and portfolios above the work, or capacity and billing inside it.

Airtable is a relational database with spreadsheet ergonomics that you shape into apps, dashboards and workflows; its paid tiers start at $20 per user a month on annual billing and $45 for Business. Wrike is work management built around Gantt charts, resource loading and budgets, starting at $10 per user a month with Business at $25. If your work is records, formulas and custom interfaces, Airtable is the cheaper long-term answer; if it is schedules, dependencies and capacity across departments, Wrike costs half as much per seat and does more of that out of the box.

ClickUp packs tasks, docs, chat, whiteboards and goals into tiers priced at $7 and $12 per user a month billed yearly, with a genuinely usable free plan. Wrike charges $10 and $25 per user a month, also billed annually, and spends the difference on resource management, budgeting with billable rates and reporting built for larger operations. ClickUp is the cheaper way to centralise; Wrike is the more deliberate tool for running projects as a business.

Asana is a task and project manager with a free tier for one or two people, then paid seats at $10.99 and $24.99 a month billed annually. Smartsheet is a spreadsheet that grew into a work platform: $9 and $19 a member a month billed yearly, with unlimited free contributors and guests on the paid tiers. Choose Asana for how work feels day to day; choose Smartsheet when the data model, automations and portfolio reporting matter more than the interface.

Basecamp sells a finished project tool at one flat price: free for one project, then Freelancer at $25, Studio at $59, Pro at $99 and Unlimited at $299 per month when billed annually, with no per-user fees on any tier. Notion sells a workspace you shape yourself: free for one person, Plus at $10 per member per month, Business at $20, and Enterprise by quote. Basecamp fits teams that want the structure already decided. Notion fits teams that would rather build the structure than accept one.

Basecamp is a flat-rate project tool: Free for one project, Freelancer at $25 a month for 3 active projects, Studio at $59 for 10, Pro at $99 for 25, and Unlimited at $299 a month billed annually with unlimited projects and unlimited users. Jira is per-user: free forever for up to 10 users, Standard at $7.91 per user a month, Premium at $14.54, and Enterprise by quote. Jira is issue tracking with sprints, backlogs, workflows and dependencies; Basecamp is client-facing project collaboration with message boards, to-dos and schedules. Software teams that live in a backlog pick Jira; agencies and client work pick Basecamp.

Basecamp bills by the plan, not by the person: Free covers one project, Freelancer is $25 a month for up to 3 active projects, Studio is $59 for up to 10, Pro is $99 for up to 25, and the Unlimited Edition is $299 a month billed annually with unlimited projects, 1 TB of storage and unlimited users at no per-user charge. Monday.com bills by the seat: Free holds up to 2 seats and 3 boards, Basic is $9 per seat a month billed annually, Standard is $12, Pro is $19, and Enterprise is a quote. The cost curves cross at roughly 33 seats, which is why Basecamp wins for large or client-facing teams and Monday wins for teams that want boards, dashboards and automation by role.

Jira charges per user and grows with process depth: Free forever for up to 10 users with 150 automation actions a month, Standard at $7.91 per user a month billed yearly with Rovo AI features and 400 automation actions, Premium at $14.54 with cross-team planning and a 99.9% uptime SLA, and Enterprise by quote with multiple sites. monday.com charges per seat and grows with modules: Free up to 2 seats with 3 boards, Basic at $9 per seat a month billed annually, Standard at $12 with timeline, Gantt and calendar views, Pro at $19 with time tracking and 10,000 API calls a day, and Enterprise by quote. Jira suits teams whose work is tracked as issues with dependencies and approvals; monday.com suits teams that want a configurable board per department with AI credits bundled in.

Basecamp sells flat project packages with no per-user fees: Free with 1 project and 5 users, Freelancer at $25 a month for 3 active projects and 20 users, Studio at $59 a month billed annually for 10 active projects, Pro at $99 a month billed annually for 25 active projects, and Unlimited at $299 a month billed annually with unlimited projects and 1TB of storage. Trello sells seats on a board: Free for up to 10 collaborators with 10 boards per Workspace, Standard at $5 per user a month billed yearly, Premium at $10, and Enterprise at $17.50 per user billed annually. Basecamp wins when the whole company needs one tool and headcount grows; Trello wins when a small team wants a visible board for a few dollars a seat.

Linear sells seats on an issue tracker: Free at $0 with unlimited members but 2 teams and 250 issues, Basic at $10 per user a month billed yearly with 5 teams, Business at $16 with unlimited teams plus Triage Intelligence, Code Intelligence and Linear Insights, and an Enterprise tier sold only on annual billing. Notion sells seats on a workspace: Free at $0 per member with databases but blocks limited once two or more members share it, Plus at $10 per member a month, Business at $20 with SAML SSO and Notion Agent, and Enterprise by quote. Pick Linear when the work is a queue of issues that move through cycles; pick Notion when the work is a document or a structured record that people read as well as edit.

Airtable is a database with an interface builder: a free plan, Team at $20 per user per month billed annually, Business at $45, and Enterprise Scale quoted, with people paying per seat. n8n is an automation engine: Starter at 20 euro per month billed annually for 2,500 workflow executions, Pro at 50 euro for 10,000, Business at 667 euro for 40,000, with unlimited users on every plan and a self-hosted option. Buy Airtable when people work in the data; buy n8n when software works around it.

Basecamp sells one flat account: free for a single project, Freelancer at $25 per month, Studio at $59, Pro at $99 and Unlimited at $299 per month billed annually, with no per-user fees from Studio upward. Linear sells issue tracking: a free plan with unlimited members, two teams and 250 issues, Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly, Business at $16, and Enterprise quoted with SAML and SCIM. Basecamp fits client-facing project work; Linear fits engineering teams that live in cycles and triage.

ClickUp is a general-purpose workspace: lists, boards, Gantt, docs, whiteboards, chat, dashboards, time tracking and AI, free forever with unlimited tasks and members, then Unlimited at $10 per user per month monthly or $7 yearly and Business at $19 monthly or $12 yearly. Linear is an issue tracker first: Free for up to 250 issues across two teams, Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly, Business at $16, and Enterprise by quote with SAML and SCIM. Pick ClickUp when one tool has to serve every function; pick Linear when engineering wants a fast, opinionated tracker and nothing else.

Basecamp charges one flat price per account: free for one project, Freelancer $25 per month, Studio $59, Pro $99 and Unlimited $299 per month billed annually, with unlimited users from Studio up. ClickUp charges per user: a free plan with unlimited tasks and free members, Unlimited at $10 per user billed monthly or $7 billed yearly, Business at $19 monthly or $12 yearly, and Enterprise by quote. Basecamp wins on predictability and calm; ClickUp wins on views, automation and depth per dollar for larger teams.

Asana sells seats: a free Personal plan for one or two people, Starter at $10.99 per user per month billed annually ($13.49 billed monthly), Advanced at $24.99 ($30.49 monthly), and Enterprise quoted by sales. Basecamp sells the account: one free project, then Freelancer at $25 per month, Studio at $59, Pro at $99 and Unlimited at $299 per month billed annually, with no per-user charges once you reach Studio. Choose Asana when work spans projects and needs dependencies, portfolios and goals; choose Basecamp when you want one bill that does not move as headcount does.

Jira tracks work as issues inside projects; Smartsheet tracks it as rows in a spreadsheet that grew up. Jira's Free plan covers 10 users with 2 GB of storage and 150 automation steps a month, and Standard bills $8.60 per user for seats 1 to 100 on monthly billing. Smartsheet's Pro plan is $12 per member per month billed monthly or $9 billed yearly, capped at 1 to 10 members with unlimited free contributors, and Business is $24 or $19 for 3 or more members with unlimited guests. Pick Jira for engineering delivery, pick Smartsheet for portfolio and program reporting where the grid is the interface everyone already knows.

Jira is issue tracking with sprints, dependencies and automation budgets; Notion is a documents-and-databases workspace that also holds projects. Jira's Free plan covers 10 users with 2 GB of storage and 150 automation steps a month, and Cloud Standard bills progressively at $8.60 per user for seats 1 to 100; Notion's Free plan has no seat cap for individuals, Plus lists at $10 per member per month and Business at $20, with guests free. Buy Jira when work is tracked as issues with owners and releases, buy Notion when the deliverable is a page that a project happens to live inside.

Jira is a configurable tracking system with four tiers, a free plan for up to 10 users and per-user rates that move with seat count: $7.91 for Standard and $14.54 for Premium on the calculator's example. Linear is a fixed opinionated tool with a free plan for unlimited members, Basic at $10 per user per month billed yearly and Business at $16. Buy Jira when the workflow has to be shaped to the organization; buy Linear when speed and a default workflow matter more than options.

GitHub charges for the place where code lives: Free at $0 with unlimited public and private repositories, Team at $4 per user per month, Enterprise at $21, with Codespaces at $0.18 an hour of compute. Jira charges for the system that plans the work: Free for up to 10 users, Standard at $7.91 per user on the page's example and Premium at $14.54. Buy GitHub when the pull request is the unit of collaboration; buy Jira when planning has to span teams, releases and dependencies.

ClickUp is one workspace that absorbs docs, dashboards, goals, chat and tasks, starting free with unlimited tasks and charging $7 per user monthly billed yearly for Unlimited and $12 for Business. Jira is a work-tracking system with deep planning, charging per user with rates that move by seat count: $7.91 for Standard and $14.54 for Premium on the calculator's default example. Buy ClickUp when the tool has to hold every kind of work; buy Jira when the work is software delivery and the process has to survive an audit.

monday.com sells boards: work management with columns, automations, dashboards and AI agents, priced per seat at $9, $12 and $19 monthly billed annually for Basic, Standard and Pro. Notion sells documents: pages, databases and wikis at $10 and $20 per member monthly for Plus and Business. Buy monday.com when the work itself is a board with owners and statuses; buy Notion when the work is described in prose and only occasionally counted.

Asana is a project tool with a writing layer attached; Notion is a docs and database tool with a project layer attached. Asana charges $10.99 per user per month billed annually for Starter and $24.99 for Advanced, and meters AI requests at $0.50 each prepaid or $0.60 on demand. Notion charges $10 per member per month for Plus and $20 for Business, and meters AI at $10 per 1,000 credits. Buy Asana when dates, owners and dependencies are the deliverable; buy Notion when the written record is.

Both belong to Atlassian, but Jira is issue tracking for software and IT work: Free for up to 10 users, Standard at $7.91 per user a month, Premium at $14.54, Enterprise quoted annually. Trello is a board: Free for up to 10 collaborators with unlimited cards, Standard at $5 per user a month billed yearly, Premium at $10, Enterprise at $17.50. Pick Jira when work needs workflows, automation steps and releases; pick Trello when work needs a card in a column that anyone can read at a glance.

Asana sells cross-functional work management: Personal free for two users, Starter at $10.99 per user a month billed yearly ($13.49 monthly), Advanced at $24.99 yearly ($30.49 monthly), Enterprise and Enterprise+ by quote, plus AI requests at $0.50 prepaid or $0.60 on demand. Jira sells software and IT issue tracking: Free for up to 10 users, Standard at $7.91 per user a month, Premium at $14.54, Enterprise by quote. Pick Asana when the work crosses marketing, ops and product; pick Jira when the work is tickets moving through a software workflow.

Confluence sells a managed wiki: Free for up to 10 users with 2 GB of storage, Standard at $5.42 per user a month with 250 GB, Premium at $10.44 with unlimited storage and a 99.9% uptime SLA, Enterprise by quote. Notion sells a workspace where documents and databases are the same object: Free at $0, Plus at $10, Business at $20 per member a month. Pick Confluence when documentation has to sit next to Jira and hold enterprise permissions; pick Notion when the wiki is one surface among several.

Notion is a hosted workspace priced per member: Free at $0, Plus at $10, Business at $20 a member a month, with AI metered at $10 per 1,000 credits. Obsidian gives the application away and charges for optional services: Sync at $4 per user a month billed yearly, Publish at $8 per site a month, a $25 Catalyst one-time license and a $50 per user per year commercial license. Pick Notion when notes have to be shared and edited by a team; pick Obsidian when the files are yours and the tools are plugins.

Notion is a document workspace with databases attached to every page: Free at $0, Plus at $10, Business at $20 per member a month, Enterprise by quote. Trello is a board: Free for up to 10 collaborators with unlimited cards, Standard at $5 per user a month billed yearly, Premium at $10, Enterprise at $17.50. Pick Notion when the deliverable is a page or a structured record; pick Trello when the deliverable is a card that moves across a column.

ClickUp sells one subscription that bundles tasks, sprints, whiteboards, chat, calendar and docs: Unlimited at $7 per user a month billed yearly ($10 monthly), Business at $12 yearly ($19 monthly), with AI sold separately at $9 or $28 per user. Notion sells a document and database workspace: Free at $0 per member, Plus at $10, Business at $20 per member a month, with AI metered at $10 per 1,000 credits. Pick ClickUp when work is tracked as tasks with owners, dates and statuses; pick Notion when work lives in pages, wikis and relational records.

Airtable Team is $20 per collaborator per month billed annually ($24 monthly) and gives a relational database with views, interfaces and automations. Jira lists Standard at $7.91 per user per month and Premium at $14.54, keeps a free plan for up to 10 users, and is built around issues, sprints and boards. Airtable wins when work items are heterogeneous records; Jira wins when the work is delivery tracked through a backlog.

Airtable charges $20 per collaborator per month billed annually for Team and $45 for Business, and sells a relational database with views, interfaces and automations. HubSpot lists Starter at $20 per seat per month (currently $7 per seat for new customers paying yearly up front), Marketing Hub Professional at $800 per month and Enterprise at $3,600 per month, prices its Sales Hub seats separately at $90 and $150 per seat, and sells a CRM where contacts, deals, tickets and campaigns share one record system. Choose the database when the thing you track is not a customer; choose the CRM when it is.

Airtable and Salesforce both hold business records, but they are priced and shaped differently. Airtable is a database and app builder: Free, Team at $20 per seat/month billed annually, Business at $45, Enterprise Scale on request. Salesforce Sales is a CRM stack: Starter Suite at $25 per user/month, Pro Suite at $100, Sales Cloud Core at $195, Advanced at $395 and Max at $550, all billed annually. Start at $25 if you need a CRM; start at $20 a seat if you need a flexible base and will build the process yourself.

Airtable and Zapier are priced on opposite axes. Airtable is a database and app builder charged per seat: Free, Team at $20 per seat/month billed annually ($24 monthly), Business at $45 ($54 monthly), Enterprise Scale on request. Zapier is an automation engine charged by task volume: Free at 100 tasks/month, Professional from $19.99/month, Team from $69/month for 25 users. Airtable already includes its own automations, so only buy Zapier if the work crosses into outside apps.

Smartsheet is the cheaper seat and the more conventional project tool: Pro is $12 per member a month billed monthly or $9 billed yearly, Business is $24 monthly or $19 yearly, and Enterprise plus Advanced Work Management are custom-quoted from 10 members. Airtable trades the lower price for a database: Free covers small teams, Team is $20 per user a month billed annually and Business is $45, with read-only collaborators, form submissions and share links free. Smartsheet is built for Gantt charts, dependencies, resource planning and portfolio reporting across teams that already think in sheets. Airtable is built for records you reshape into apps, interfaces and automations. Buy Smartsheet when the deliverable is a plan; buy Airtable when the deliverable is a system.

Both products sell seats but meter different work. Airtable bills editing seats on top of a Free plan: Team is $20 per user a month billed annually, Business is $45 per user a month billed annually, and Enterprise Scale is custom, while read-only collaborators, form submissions and share links are not charged. Asana prices a work graph instead: Personal is free for up to two people, Starter is $10.99 per user a month billed annually ($13.49 billed monthly), Advanced is $24.99 ($30.49 billed monthly) and Enterprise is quoted, with Enterprise+ adding SIEM integration, data residency and audit logs. Airtable is strongest when the unit of work is a record that feeds apps, automations and agents; Asana is strongest when the unit of work is a task, a project and a deadline.

Airtable publishes two paid steps, Team at $20 per user per month and Business at $45 per user per month billed annually, plus Enterprise Scale at custom pricing, and bills every user who can edit a base. monday.com publishes three paid steps on an 18% annual discount: Basic at $9 per seat per month, Standard at $12 and Pro at $19, with Enterprise quoted, and it bundles AI credits into the plan rather than charging per seat for them, showing 1,000 credits on Basic, 2,000 on Standard and 3,000 on Pro in its own worked examples. On entry price monday.com is less than half Airtable's Team tier; on the middle tier it is roughly a quarter of Airtable Business.

Airtable sells two published paid steps, Team at $20 per user per month and Business at $45 per user per month, both billed annually, and bills every user who can edit a base. Trello publishes three: Standard at $5 per user per month billed annually ($6 monthly), Premium at $10 billed annually ($12.50 monthly) and Enterprise at $17.50 billed annually, which works out at $210 per user per year. Trello is between one quarter and one half of Airtable's price per seat at every step, plus a separate Atlassian Guard subscription from $4 per user per month for its own security add-ons, and the fair reading is that you are comparing a card board with a database: Trello's money buys boards and command runs, Airtable's buys typed records, linked tables and views.

Airtable's paid ladder is Team at $20 per user per month and Business at $45 per user per month, both billed annually, with Enterprise Scale quoted. Notion's ladder is Plus at $10 per member per month and Business at $20, both published as flat per-member rates. So on entry price Airtable is twice Notion, and on the second step Airtable is more than twice. The difference is what you are buying: Airtable bills every user who can edit a base and sells structured records, linked tables and pipelines as the product, while Notion bills per member for documents, databases and wikis, and meters AI separately at $10 per 1,000 Notion credits rather than bundling it into a seat.

Airtable prices two steps above free, at $20 per user per month for Team and $45 per user per month for Business on annual billing, and positions itself as a database that teams, workflows and agents share. ClickUp prices a longer ladder: Free Forever, then Unlimited at $7 per user per month billed yearly ($10 monthly), Business at $12 yearly ($19 monthly) and Enterprise at custom pricing, with AI sold separately as Brain AI at $9 per user per month or Everything AI at $28, and AI Super Credits at $0.001 each or $10 per 10,000. ClickUp is markedly cheaper per seat and puts AI on a separate line; Airtable charges more per seat and folds agents into the platform rather than selling them as an upgrade.