Project management software for small teams: ClickUp, monday.com, Asana and Trello compared

Your team has grown past the point where a shared spreadsheet and a busy chat thread can show who is doing what. For most teams of 3 to 10 people, the choice of project management software for small teams comes down to one question: how much structure do you want? Pick Trello for simple boards, ClickUp if you want docs and tasks in one place, monday.com for automations and free viewers, and Asana if your work runs as planned projects with dates.

All prices and limits below come from each vendor’s official pricing page, checked on 6 October 2026. They are documentation facts, not test results. Prices are in US dollars as shown on those pages, and none of the five vendors pays us anything.

What should project management software for small teams include?

A small team needs four things: a shared list of tasks with owners and due dates, at least one view that shows the week ahead, a way to bring in a client or freelancer, and enough storage for the files you attach. Timeline views, time tracking and automation are useful, but they often sit on a higher plan than the headline price.

That last point is where many “best of” lists fall short: they quote a “from” price for a plan that does not include the feature you came for. This table shows the first plan that lists each feature, as listed on the pricing pages.

Feature	Trello	ClickUp	monday.com	Asana
Board view	Free	Free	Free	Free
Calendar view	Premium	Free	Standard	Free
Timeline or Gantt	Premium (Timeline)	Unlimited (Gantt)	Standard	Starter
Time tracking	Not listed	Unlimited	Pro	Advanced
Guests or viewers	Single-board guests from Standard	Guests on all plans; permissions from Unlimited	Free viewers from Basic; guest access from Standard	Unlimited free guests from Starter
Automation	250 command runs a month on Free; 1,000 on Standard	100 executions on Free; 1,000 on Unlimited	250 actions a month from Standard	“Unlimited automations” from Starter

Read the automation row with care. Each vendor counts differently (command runs, executions, actions), so the numbers are not directly comparable. What they tell you is where each tool sets its first limit.

Which project management tools for small teams are free?

Two of the four tools in this article work as free tools for a whole team of five: Trello Free (up to 10 collaborators and 10 boards per Workspace) and ClickUp Free Forever (unlimited members, 60MB storage). monday.com Free and Asana Personal stop at 2 seats or users, so they only suit pairs.

The limit that runs out first is different for each tool. That matters more than the headline “free”.

Tool	Free plan	Who it fits	What runs out first
Trello	Free	Up to 10 collaborators per Workspace	10 boards per Workspace; 10MB per file; 250 command runs a month
ClickUp	Free Forever	Unlimited members	60MB of storage; 5 Spaces; 1 Form
monday.com	Free	Up to 2 seats	3 boards and 3 Docs
Asana	Personal	2 users	The third person on the team
Notion	Free	Unlimited for solo use	Block limit once 2+ members join; 5MB uploads; 7-day page history

A practical rule: if your team attaches files to tasks, ClickUp’s 60MB fills up quickly. If you run one board per client, Trello’s 10-board limit is the one to watch.

What does project management software cost for a 5-person team?

At annual billing, the entry paid plan for a hypothetical 5-person team costs between $25 and $54.95 a month across the four picks. Trello Standard is the lowest at $25, and Asana Starter the highest at $54.95. Monthly billing costs more for every tool that lists both.

This is an example built only from the per-user prices on each pricing page. It excludes taxes, add-ons and AI plans.

Tool and plan	Price per user/seat	Billing	5 people per month	Seat rules
Trello Standard	$5 / $6	Annual / monthly	$25 / $30	Per user
ClickUp Unlimited	$7 / $10	Yearly / monthly	$35 / $50	Per user; no minimum stated
monday.com Basic	$9	Annual	$45	Min. 3 seats, then multiples of 5
monday.com Standard	$12	Annual	$60	Min. 3 seats, then multiples of 5
Asana Starter	$10.99 / $13.49	Annual / monthly	$54.95 / $67.45	Per user; no minimum stated
Notion Plus	$10 displayed	Selection unconfirmed	Confirm quote	Per member

Two notes on this table. First, monday.com’s help centre says yearly billing is an 18% discount over monthly, but we could not read its monthly per-seat price in the page text, so check it in the calculator. Notion’s retrieved prices do not establish which billing selection was active, so its row is excluded from matched monthly totals.

Second, watch what happens when you hire. Five people fit monday.com’s 5-seat bucket exactly. A sixth person moves you to the 10-seat option, which at Basic’s annual price is $90 a month. On a per-user tool, the same hire adds one seat.

AI is priced separately on some tools. ClickUp lists AI as per-user add-ons ($9 for Brain AI, $28 for Everything AI), while monday.com and Asana include monthly AI credits on paid plans. Leave AI out of your first comparison unless your team already knows how it would use it.

Worked example: a 6-person agency that needs timelines and time tracking

This is an illustrative example built from the listed prices, not a result from testing.

A design agency has six people and four client projects running at once. The owner wants a timeline for each project, wants staff to log time against tasks, and wants clients to see progress without paying for a seat. Here is the cheapest plan on each tool that lists both a timeline view and time tracking, at annual prices.

Tool	Plan needed	Seats billed	Per month (annual billing)	Client access
ClickUp	Unlimited	6	$42	Guests with permissions
Asana	Advanced	6	$149.94	Unlimited free guests
monday.com	Pro	10	$190	Free viewers and guests
Trello	Premium for timeline	6	$60	Board guests

Three things stand out. ClickUp is the cheapest route to both features because they sit on its entry paid plan. monday.com costs the most here because time tracking sits on Pro and six people fall into the 10-seat bucket. Trello’s pricing page does not list built-in time tracking, so the agency would need to check its Power-Ups directory first.

If the agency dropped time tracking, the picture changes. Asana Starter (timeline included) would cost $65.94 a month and monday.com Standard $120 for 10 seats. So decide which features are must-haves before you compare prices.

Which is easiest for a team without a project manager?

On structure alone, Trello asks the least of a new team: its free plan is boards, lists and cards, and Calendar, Timeline and Dashboard views wait until Premium. We have not tested ease of use, so treat this as a starting point and let your own trial decide.

Use these rules to judge setup effort:

• Nobody owns the tool: start with Trello or Asana Personal, which give you fixed views to work in.
• One person will spend a few hours on setup: ClickUp and monday.com reward that time with more views, fields and automations.
• The team already writes everything in docs: consider Notion, but only if someone will build and maintain the task database.

ClickUp vs monday.com: which suits a small team?

ClickUp suits a small team that wants docs, forms and tasks in one workspace and wants to start free with everyone on it. monday.com suits a team that is ready to pay for built-in automations and wants clients or managers to view boards without a paid seat.

On price, ClickUp Unlimited is $7 per user a month billed yearly, against $9 per seat for monday.com Basic. The bigger difference is seat rules: ClickUp charges per user, while monday.com sells seats in buckets. A team of 4 pays for 5 seats on monday.com.

Features also land on different plans. ClickUp Unlimited lists Gantt charts, native time tracking and 1,000 automation executions a month. On monday.com, timeline and Gantt views and 250 automation actions start on Standard, and time tracking starts on Pro at $19 per seat.

monday.com vs Asana: which should you pick?

Pick monday.com if you want free viewers from the Basic plan and automations from Standard. Pick Asana if your team plans projects with dates and wants List, Board and Calendar views on every plan, including the free one for 2 users.

For five people at annual prices, monday.com Basic comes to $45 a month and Asana Starter to $54.95. Asana’s pricing page says Starter has no user seat limits and does not mention a seat minimum, which makes it simpler to price as the team grows by one or two people. Starter also lists timeline and Gantt views and unlimited free guests, which monday.com puts on Standard.

ClickUp vs Asana: which is better for small teams?

ClickUp is the better fit if you want the lowest per-user cost and docs inside the same tool. Asana is the better fit if you want a project tool with fewer moving parts and you are happy to pay $10.99 per user a month (billed annually) for Starter.

The free plans point the same way. ClickUp Free Forever lets the whole team in but caps storage at 60MB. Asana Personal gives unlimited tasks and projects with 100MB per file, but only for 2 users.

ClickUp vs Trello: which should a small team use?

Use Trello if your team wants simple boards and cards that people understand on the first day. Use ClickUp if you need more than boards: docs, forms, calendar and Gantt views, and time tracking on the first paid plan.

Trello Standard is $5 per user a month billed annually, the lowest entry price here. Note what you give up: Trello’s Calendar, Timeline, Table and Dashboard views need Premium at $10 per user billed annually. If you know you need a timeline, compare Trello Premium with ClickUp Unlimited, not Trello Standard.

ClickUp vs Notion: which is better for project management?

ClickUp is the better choice if you want a project tool that works out of the box with task views and automation. Notion is the better choice if your team lives in docs and wikis and someone is willing to build and maintain a task database.

Notion’s Plus plan lists custom properties, subtasks and dependencies for databases, so the building blocks are there. Free lists basic buttons only, whereas Plus lists custom database automations, and Free limits blocks once a workspace has two or more members, caps uploads at 5MB and keeps 7 days of page history. The retrieved Plus card showed $10 per member/month, but we did not establish its selected billing period; get a matched quote before calculating the team bill.

Who should skip all four

• Solo freelancers. A to-do app or Notion’s Free plan, which is unlimited for one person, may be enough.
• Teams that need client billing or time-based invoicing in the same tool. Check our invoicing software guide first.
• Teams whose real problem is sales follow-up. A CRM is the better tool; see how to choose a CRM for a small sales team.
• Teams that mostly want to move data between apps. Start with an automation tool such as Make or Zapier.

How to start: a one-week trial checklist

1. Pick one live project, not a demo. Something with 10 to 30 tasks and at least three people.
2. Shortlist two tools from the labels above. Do not trial four at once.
3. Set up the same project in both: the same tasks, owners and due dates.
4. Check the limit that runs out first on the free plan (storage, boards or seats) after one week of real use.
5. Price the paid plan at your real headcount and billing period. On monday.com, round up to the next seat bucket.
6. Ask the team which one they opened without being reminded. Adoption matters more than features.

If you need to move existing tasks across, export them from your spreadsheet as CSV first. Then confirm on the vendor’s help pages that the tool you chose can import that format before you rebuild anything by hand.

What to do next

Use our software buying checklist to record each tool’s limits, price and trial result in one place, and the workflow trial worksheet to score the one-week trial. For how we read vendor documentation, see our methodology. Links to ClickUp, monday.com, Asana, Trello and Notion on this page are ordinary links: we have no affiliate relationship with any of these vendors.