monday.com's work management ladder is short on purpose. Free at $0 covers up to 2 seats with up to 3 boards and 3 docs. Basic is $9 per seat a month billed annually with unlimited items and unlimited free viewers. Standard is $12 with more bundled tools and 2,000 AI credits a month. Pro is $19 with 3,000 credits, 1,000 API calls a day and the charts and integrations that come with the top published tier. Enterprise is quoted, with a 99.9% uptime SLA, portfolio management and up to 250,000 automation and integration actions a month. Annual billing saves 18% against monthly, extra credits cost $10 per 1,000, and monday CRM and monday dev are separate ladders.
TL;DR
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.
Smartsheet prices a grid. Pro is $9 per member a month billed yearly, or $12 billed monthly, for 1 to 10 members with unlimited free contributors, and it includes Gantt, table, board and calendar views, rich formulas, unlimited sheets, forms and reports, conversational AI and 250 automations a month. Business is $19 yearly or $24 monthly for 3 or more members, adding unlimited free guests, timeline view, workload tracking, admin capabilities, unlimited automations, connections to external AI tools and 1 TB of attachments. Enterprise is custom for 10 or more members with scenario planning, portfolios, SAML SSO and directory integrations, and Dynamic View and Data Shuttle add-ons start at $125 and $100 a month. A free trial is offered instead of a free tier.
The two ladders rhyme at the bottom, $9 for both first paid plans on annual billing, and then they diverge in what a unit of work is. On monday.com it is an item on a board, typed by column, aggregated into dashboards, moved by automations and watched by free viewers. In Smartsheet it is a row in a sheet, computed with formulas, rolled up by reports that pull cells across sheets, and edited by contributors who cost nothing. Buying the wrong one is expensive in migration terms, because the data model is what you are actually choosing.
| Feature | Monday.com | Smartsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0: up to 2 seats, up to 3 boards, up to 3 docs | No permanent free plan; a free trial is offered instead |
| First paid tier | Basic, $9 per seat a month billed annually | Pro, $9 per member a month billed yearly, $12 monthly, 1 to 10 members |
| Middle tier | Standard, $12 per seat a month billed annually | Business, $19 yearly, $24 monthly, 3 or more members |
| Upper tier | Pro, $19 per seat a month billed annually | Enterprise, custom pricing, 10 or more members |
| Who pays | Editors hold seats; unlimited free viewers on paid plans | Members pay; contributors on Pro and guests on Business are free |
| Work unit | Item on a board, typed by column, aggregated into dashboards | Row in a sheet, computed with formulas, rolled up by reports |
| AI | 1,000 to 3,000 credits a month bundled, extras at $10 per 1,000 | Conversational AI on Pro, external AI tool connections from Business |
| Automation | Enterprise lists up to 250,000 automation and integration actions a month | 250 automations a month on Pro, unlimited on Business |
| Add-ons | Extra AI credits at $10 per 1,000; CRM and dev products priced separately | Dynamic View from $125 a month, Data Shuttle from $100 a month |
Pick Monday.com if
monday.com suits processes where items pass through hands: requests come in, owners change, status is reported, stakeholders watch. At $9 per seat a month billed annually you get unlimited items, free viewers and 1,000 AI credits, and the free plan covers two people while you test the model. It also keeps a shorter path to the quoted Enterprise tier if you need an SLA and portfolio management later. Choose it when collaboration, not calculation, is the centre of the work.
Pick Smartsheet if
Smartsheet suits trackers: portfolios, programs, status reports and any process where a formula decides the value of a cell. Pro at $9 per member a month billed yearly is the same price as monday.com's Basic but brings formulas, reports and unlimited free contributors with it, and Business at $19 adds workload and unlimited automation. You accept no free tier, member floors, and add-ons with their own price tags.
No independent reviews, ratings or user quotes were collected for this pair. Both cards are claims each vendor makes about itself on its own pricing page.
At the first paid tier on annual billing, yes: monday.com Basic and Smartsheet Pro are both $9 per person a month. Above that monday.com Standard is $12 and Pro $19 per seat, while Smartsheet Business is $19 yearly or $24 monthly per member. The bigger difference is who counts as a paying person: monday.com charges editors, Smartsheet charges members and leaves contributors free.
Not on its pricing page, which lists Pro, Business, Enterprise and a custom tier with a free trial to start. monday.com keeps a $0 plan for up to 2 seats with up to 3 boards. If staying on free for a while matters, monday.com is the only one of the two that supports it.
Depends on the shape of the data. Smartsheet reports pull cells from many sheets and combine them with formulas, which suits portfolio rollups. monday.com builds dashboards that summarise boards and items, which suits operational status. Both publish the feature on their pricing pages; the deciding factor is whether your numbers are cell-based or item-based.
monday.com bundles credits into every paid plan, 1,000 a month on Basic, 2,000 on Standard and 3,000 on Pro, and sells more at $10 per 1,000. Smartsheet includes conversational AI features on Pro and, from Business, connections to external AI tools, without publishing a credit price. Neither charges a per-request AI fee on these pages.
For monday.com: whether your team will prepay annually to reach the published rates, and how many seats you will need past the 2-seat free limit. For Smartsheet: whether you can live with member floors and caps of 1 to 10, 3 or more and 10 or more, and whether your SSO and portfolio needs land in the quoted Enterprise tier rather than in a published price.
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