If you manage a team whose tasks are scattered across spreadsheets, chat threads and personal to-do apps, these four tools are the usual shortlist for bringing it all into one place. They look similar per user — the real differences are minimum seats, AI charges and the limits hiding under the free plans. This guide compares all four on the bill you would actually pay.
Unlimited plan, billed annually. Monthly billing is $10. AI is a separate add-on — see below.
Standard plan, billed annually — the tier most teams land on. Paid plans start at 3 seats minimum.
Starter plan, billed annually. Monthly billing is $13.49. Advanced is $24.99 billed annually.
Deliver plan, billed annually. Monthly billing is $13.99. Built around billable client projects.
| ClickUp | monday.com | Asana | Teamwork | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Teams consolidating tasks, docs and chat into one workspace | Teams that think in boards and want a visual overview | Cross-functional teams that need clear ownership and reporting | Agencies and consultancies delivering billable client work |
| Free plan — the real cap | $0, unlimited tasks & members, but 60MB total storage, 5 Spaces, 100 automation actions/mo, and advanced views limited to one-time "uses" that do not reset | $0 for up to 2 seats and 3 boards only | $0 (Personal) for up to 2 users; tasks and projects are not the cap — headcount is | $0 for up to 5 users and 2 projects |
| Main paid plans (annual billing) | Unlimited $7/user/mo · Business $12/user/mo · Enterprise custom | Basic $9/seat/mo · Standard $12/seat/mo · Pro $19/seat/mo · Enterprise custom | Starter $10.99/user/mo · Advanced $24.99/user/mo · Enterprise custom | Deliver $10.99/user/mo · Grow $19.99/user/mo · Scale $54.99/user/mo |
| Monthly billing | $10 / $19 per user | $12 / $14 / $24 per seat | $13.49 / $30.49 per user | $13.99 / $25.99 / $69.99 per user |
| Minimum seats you must buy | No seat minimum — you pay for your actual members (whole workspace upgrades together) | 3 seats minimum on every paid plan, then seats are sold in buckets of 5 — a 4-person team pays for 5 | No published seat minimum on Starter / Advanced; you pay per user | Deliver starts at 3 users; higher tiers start higher |
| 10-user annual total (calculated) | Unlimited $840/yr · Business $1,440/yr · Business + Brain AI $2,520/yr | Standard $1,440/yr · Pro $2,280/yr | Starter $1,318.80/yr · Advanced $2,998.80/yr | Deliver $1,318.80/yr · Grow $2,398.80/yr |
| How AI is charged | Not included. Brain AI add-on $9/user/mo (annual) or Everything AI $28/user/mo — charged for every paid seat in the workspace, not just AI users | AI features tied to plan tier; newer contracts may include a monthly AI-credit allowance by plan — check at checkout | Included in paid plans but metered: AI requests are pooled (5 per paid user/month, capped per organization); extra requests are pay-as-you-go | AI features are rolling out by plan; confirm what your tier includes at signup |
| Automation allowance | Free 100 actions/mo · Unlimited 1,000/mo · Business 5,000/mo | Standard 250 actions/mo · Pro 25,000 actions/mo — a 100× jump between tiers | Unlimited automations advertised from Starter | Automations included from Deliver; allowances vary by tier |
| Guests & clients | Permission-controlled guest seats scale with your member count on paid plans; beyond the allowance, guests can become paid seats | Guest access from Standard | Unlimited free guests on paid plans | Unlimited free client collaborators on Deliver and above |
| Trade-off to know | The headline price excludes AI, and the feature depth that attracts teams is also what makes setup heavy | The per-seat price is not your floor: seat minimums and buckets decide the real bill for small teams | The features managers ask for — goals, portfolios, workload — require Advanced at more than double Starter's price | The jump to Scale ($54.99) is steep; check whether Grow covers you before budgeting for it |
Prices checked November 2026. All prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors. Annual totals are our calculation: per-user price × 10 users × 12 months on annual billing (monday.com's 10 seats fall exactly on a billing bucket, so no minimum-seat uplift applies at that size). Plans, limits and AI packaging change — always confirm the current price and what's included on the vendor's site before you buy.
ClickUp's pitch is consolidation: tasks, docs, whiteboards, chat, goals and dashboards in a single workspace, so a team can retire several point tools at once. The entry price supports that pitch — Unlimited is $7/user/mo billed annually ($10 monthly) with unlimited storage and integrations, and Business is $12/user/mo billed annually ($19 monthly), adding advanced dashboards, Google SSO and 5,000 automation actions a month. The catch is AI. ClickUp's AI layer is not included in any of these plans: Brain AI costs $9/user/mo and Everything AI $28/user/mo on top, and the add-on is charged for every paid seat in the workspace — you cannot buy it for two enthusiasts and skip the rest of the team. A 10-person team on Business with Brain AI pays $2,520 a year, not the $1,440 the headline suggests. The free plan is the other place to read carefully: members and tasks are unlimited, but the workspace gets 60MB of storage in total, 5 Spaces, 100 automation actions a month, and the views people evaluate ClickUp for (Gantt, dashboards, custom fields) are metered in one-time "uses" that never reset.
monday.com (Work Management) organizes work as colorful boards with timeline, calendar and Gantt views layered on top, and it is the tool non-technical teams most often describe as easy to read at a glance. Basic is $9/seat/mo billed annually, Standard is $12 and Pro is $19 (monthly billing: $12 / $14 / $24). Standard is the tier most teams actually need, because it unlocks automations, integrations and guest access; Pro adds time tracking, private boards and a much larger automation allowance — 25,000 actions a month against Standard's 250, a 100× step that is the most common reason teams upgrade. The pricing detail that matters most is the seat floor: every paid plan requires a minimum of 3 seats, and beyond that seats are sold in buckets of five. A two-person team on Standard pays $432 a year (3 seats), and a four-person team pays for five seats — $720 a year instead of the $576 the per-seat math suggests. At 10 seats the buckets stop distorting the bill, and Standard totals $1,440 a year. The free plan, for reference, covers just 2 seats and 3 boards.
Asana is the most conventionally structured tool here: projects with list, board, timeline and calendar views, dashboards for reporting, and a reputation for being the easiest of the four for a mixed team to adopt without a long setup project. Starter is $10.99/user/mo billed annually ($13.49 monthly) and covers timeline and Gantt views, dashboards, forms, custom fields, unlimited automations and unlimited free guests. The step up is where the management features live: Advanced, at $24.99/user/mo billed annually ($30.49 monthly), adds goals, unlimited portfolios, portfolio workload, approvals and proofing, and native time tracking. That makes Asana's real decision a binary one — if you need to manage capacity or report across projects, budget Advanced from day one; a 10-user team pays $2,998.80 a year there, versus $1,318.80 on Starter. AI is included in paid plans rather than sold as an add-on, but it is metered: AI requests pool at 5 per paid user per month with an organization-level cap, and heavy AI use beyond that is billed per request. The free Personal plan is limited to 2 users, so it is a trial for a pair, not a team plan.
Teamwork (Teamwork.com) is designed around a use case the other three treat as secondary: delivering client projects profitably. Time tracking, project budgets and billing workflows are native parts of the product rather than integrations, and Deliver — $10.99/user/mo billed annually ($13.99 monthly), starting at 3 users — already includes the client-work essentials plus unlimited free client collaborators, so the people you deliver work to do not consume paid seats. Grow is $19.99/user/mo billed annually ($25.99 monthly) and adds the resource-management and profitability layer most agencies end up wanting; Scale is $54.99/user/mo billed annually, a steep jump that should be a deliberate purchase, not a default. A 10-user agency pays $1,318.80 a year on Deliver or $2,398.80 on Grow — competitive totals for this group, precisely because client seats are free. The free plan covers up to 5 users and 2 projects, enough to run one real client project as a pilot. If your work is purely internal, some of Teamwork's billing machinery is weight you won't use; if clients log in to review work, it is the only tool here priced with that assumption built in.
Consolidating docs, chat and tasks into one app → ClickUp. A board the whole team can read in a meeting → monday.com. Clear ownership and reporting across departments → Asana. Billable client projects with clients logging in → Teamwork. Each tool's pricing quirks matter less than this fit.
monday.com bills a 3-seat minimum and then buckets of five; Teamwork's Deliver starts at 3 users; ClickUp upgrades the whole workspace at once. Write down the seats you will actually be charged for before comparing any per-user price.
ClickUp's AI is $9–$28 per user per month on top, for every seat. monday.com's automation allowance jumps 100× between Standard and Pro. Asana includes AI but pools and caps requests. Decide which of these you will actually consume, then compare annual totals — not headline seat prices.
All four have free tiers, but their walls differ: storage and one-time "uses" (ClickUp), 2 seats / 3 boards (monday.com), 2 users (Asana), 5 users / 2 projects (Teamwork). Run one live project in your top two choices and see which wall — and which workflow — you hit first.
On published annual pricing, ClickUp Unlimited totals $840 a year for 10 users — the lowest figure in this comparison — followed by Asana Starter and Teamwork Deliver at $1,318.80, and ClickUp Business / monday.com Standard at $1,440. But the ranking flips with add-ons: ClickUp Business with Brain AI for everyone totals $2,520, above monday.com Pro at $2,280. Compare the configuration you will actually run.
Because of how its paid plans are sold: a 3-seat minimum on every paid plan, and seat counts that increase in buckets of five after that. A 4-person team therefore buys 5 seats. It is published policy rather than a billing error — factor the billed seat count, not your headcount, into any per-user price comparison.
That depends on what "too complex" means for your team. If the issue is setup depth and feature sprawl, Asana's two-tier structure is the most constrained alternative, and monday.com's board-first layout is the most visual one. If the issue is actually the bill — especially the per-seat AI add-on charged on every seat — price Asana Starter or Teamwork Deliver for your real headcount before switching tools; the workflow you have may be fine once AI is only bought where it is used, though note ClickUp does not offer that option.
Each free plan has a different wall. Teamwork's free plan (5 users, 2 projects) fits one real client project. ClickUp's free plan allows unlimited members but caps total storage at 60MB and meters advanced views in one-time uses that never reset, so it suits evaluation better than long-term use. Asana's Personal plan and monday.com's free plan both stop at 2 users — fine for a pair, not a team. None of the four free plans is a permanent home for an active team of five or more.
It varies, and for agencies it can decide the total. Asana includes unlimited free guests on paid plans, and Teamwork includes unlimited free client collaborators from Deliver. ClickUp includes a pool of permission-controlled guest seats that scales with your members; guests beyond the pool can become billable. monday.com includes guest access from Standard. If outsiders regularly view your boards, count them before you compare seat prices.
Because this guide is compiled from publicly available vendor information, not hands-on testing — we do not present experience we don't have. Every judgment above is either a published specification or arithmetic on published prices (for example, the 10-user annual totals), shown next to its inputs so you can verify it on the vendor's pricing page.