Best Project Management Software for Small Teams: Seat Rules, Free Plans and the Bill for 10 People

Small teams buy project management software for one reason: to stop losing work between email threads, chat and somebody's notebook. The tools in this guide all do that. Where they differ is in how they charge a team of 3 to 25 people, what the free plans actually allow and which features sit behind the second tier. This guide compares seven of them on those points, with every price taken from the vendor's own pricing page in US dollars.

If you only need a shared to-do list, a lighter tool may do; our task management software guide covers those. If the budget is zero, start with free project management software.

The seven tools at a glance

Asana: best for a team that wants structure and reporting

Asana is the most complete of the per-seat tools at its first paid tier. Starter costs $10.99 a user a month billed annually, or $13.49 billed monthly, and Asana describes it as having no user seat limit. It adds timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards, unlimited automations, forms, custom templates and custom fields to the free plan, plus unlimited free guests, so clients and contractors can work in a project without taking a paid seat.

Advanced, at $24.99 a user a month billed annually ($30.49 monthly), is for teams that plan across several projects at once: portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, and time tracking with estimates versus actuals.

The free Personal plan is now small: 2 users, with unlimited tasks and projects, list, board and calendar views and 100 MB per file. It is a good trial for two partners, not a plan for a team.

What to watch:

• Seats come in steps past five. Asana adds seats one at a time up to 5 users, then in increments of 5 up to 30. A team of 7 pays for 10 seats: about $1,319 a year on Starter instead of $923.
• AI is metered. Starter includes 5 AI requests a user a month, capped at 50 for the account, and 50,000 AI Studio credits.
• Time tracking needs Advanced if you want it inside Asana; on Starter it comes through integrations or the paid Timesheets and Budgets add-on. Our time tracking software guide covers the separate tools.

Choose it if your team runs several projects with dependencies and deadlines and you want the timeline, rules and dashboards in the first paid tier.

ClickUp: best for the most features on a free plan

ClickUp packs more into its free plan than anyone else here. Free Forever allows unlimited members and guests, unlimited tasks and subtasks, docs, Kanban boards, a calendar view and sprints. The catches are 60 MB of total storage, 5 Spaces, 100 automation actions a month and only a trial of Gantt charts, custom fields and time tracking.

Core costs $9 a user a month billed yearly and removes the storage and Space limits, adds unlimited Gantt charts and forms, custom fields and 1,000 automations a month. Business, at $17 a user billed yearly, adds advanced dashboards, resource management, timesheets, time-in-status reports, private views and 10,000 automations. ClickUp says yearly billing saves up to 33%; we quote only the yearly prices, which are the ones its pricing page lists.

What to watch:

• You upgrade everyone or no one. ClickUp's FAQ says an upgrade covers the whole workspace, so every member becomes a paid user.
• People inside your company are not guests. ClickUp bills internal people added as guests as paid users.
• The interface is dense. ClickUp does a lot; a team that only needs a board will move faster in Trello.

Choose it if you want docs, tasks, sprints and dashboards in one tool and are willing to spend an afternoon setting it up.

Trello: best for simple boards at the lowest price

Trello is a set of boards with cards, and that is its strength. The free plan covers up to 10 collaborators per workspace and 10 boards, with unlimited cards and unlimited Power-Ups (Trello's add-ons) on every board. For a team of five working through one or two pipelines, that may be all you need.

Standard costs $5 a user a month billed annually, or $6 monthly, and unlocks unlimited boards, custom fields, advanced checklists and single-board guests. Premium, at $10 a user billed annually ($12.50 monthly), adds the views that make Trello look like project management: calendar, timeline, table, dashboard and map.

What to watch:

• Timeline view is a Premium feature. If you need to see a schedule, budget $10 a user, not $5.
• The free plan stops at 10 people. An eleventh collaborator means paying for everyone.
• Boards are not portfolios. Trello has no goals or resource management, so it shows the work, not who is overloaded.

Choose it if your work moves through clear stages (to do, doing, done, or lead, quote, job) and you want the cheapest per-seat price.

Wrike: best for a growing team that needs Gantt charts and approvals

Wrike sells to agencies and operations teams that outgrow a board. Team costs $10 a user a month for 2 to 15 users and includes interactive Gantt charts, shareable dashboards and Wrike's AI Essentials. Business is $25 a user a month for 5 to 200 users, with workspace templates and standard integrations. Both are billed annually, and Business and above are annual only.

The free plan is described only as "essential task management", with board and table views. Wrike's pricing page does not list its user or storage limits, so check them in the app before you count on it.

What to watch:

• Seats come in groups of five. Up to 30 seats, Wrike sells them in fives, so a team of 7 pays for 10.
• Team stops at 15 users. A 16th person means moving to Business at two and a half times the price per seat.
• The higher tiers are quote-only. Resource and capacity planning and budgeting start on Pinnacle, which has no published price. See our Wrike pricing guide for the full plan list.

Choose it if you manage projects with dates and dependencies for clients and want Gantt charts at the entry tier.

Smartsheet: best for teams that already plan in spreadsheets

Smartsheet looks like a spreadsheet and behaves like a project tool, which makes it an easy move for an office manager who runs everything in Excel. There is no free plan, only a 30-day trial with no credit card.

Pro costs $9 a member a month billed yearly ($12 monthly) for 1 to 10 members, with Gantt, table, board and calendar views, formulas, unlimited sheets, forms and reports, 250 automations a month and 20 GB of storage. Business costs $19 a member billed yearly ($24 monthly), needs at least 3 members and adds a timeline view, workload tracking, admin controls, unlimited automations and 1 TB of storage.

What to watch:

• Pro caps at 10 members. An eleventh member moves the whole team to Business, more than doubling the price per seat.
• Attachments are small on Pro. The maximum is 30 MB a file, against 250 MB on Business.

Choose it if your projects already live in spreadsheets and you want formulas, Gantt views and forms without changing how people think. Our Smartsheet pricing guide covers every plan, and Gantt chart software compares the schedule views across tools.

Basecamp: best for client work with a fixed monthly bill

Basecamp is the odd one out: no paid plan charges per user. Each plan has a flat monthly price, a cap on users and a cap on active projects:

For a team of 10, Pro works out at $948 a year, cheaper than ten seats on any per-user tool here except Trello Standard. For 25 people, Pro Unlimited at $199 a month billed annually is $2,388 a year, still below Asana Starter for the same team. Paid plans have a 30-day free trial.

What to watch:

• Projects run out before people do. Pro allows 8 active projects at once. An agency with a dozen live clients needs Pro Plus or Pro Unlimited.
• The feature list is shorter. Basecamp's plan details do not list Gantt charts, custom fields or dashboards, so check the trial for the views your team relies on.
• You cannot downgrade to Free once you are on a paid plan.

Choose it if you run client projects, want clients in the same place as your team and prefer a bill that does not change when you hire.

monday.com work management: worth a look, priced by country

monday.com's work management product is a strong choice for teams that like colorful boards with automations and dashboards. Its free plan covers up to 2 seats, 3 boards and 3 docs, and the FAQ says paid plans start from 3 users, so even a team of two buys three seats.

We do not quote its paid prices here. monday.com sets prices by the buyer's billing country, and its pricing page did not show US dollar prices when we checked, so any figure we printed could be wrong for a US buyer. Open the page from the US to see yours. monday CRM is a separate product with its own plans: see monday CRM pricing.

What a small team gets at the first paid tier

Basecamp's FAQ says every person you add is counted, so on Pro, clients you invite and your staff share the 10 places.

Four questions to settle before the trial

How many people will log in, and how many will only look? Asana's free guests, Smartsheet's contributors and Trello's single-board guests all let outsiders take part without a full seat, but the rules differ. Count the people who create and assign work separately from those who only comment or approve.

Where is the next price step? Every tool here has one: Trello Free at 11 people, Smartsheet Pro at 11 members, Wrike Team at 16 users, Basecamp at its user and project caps. A team of 9 that plans to hire should price the plan it will be on next year, not this one.

Do you need a schedule view on day one? Timelines and Gantt charts are in the first paid tier of Asana, ClickUp, Wrike and Smartsheet, but only in Trello Premium. If the answer is "not yet", a board is cheaper and easier to adopt.

Monthly or annual? Annual billing saves money everywhere it is offered (Asana's $10.99 against $13.49, Trello's $5 against $6), but it commits you for a year. Run the free plan or trial on monthly terms until the team has settled.

How to choose

1. Two or three people, no budget? Trello Free (up to 10 collaborators) or ClickUp Free Forever. Asana and monday.com's free plans stop at 2.
2. A team of 5 to 10 that works in stages? Trello Standard at $5 a user, or Premium at $10 if you need a timeline.
3. Deadlines, dependencies and reports? Asana Starter or ClickUp Core. Asana is simpler to roll out; ClickUp is cheaper and does more.
4. Client work with lots of outside people? Basecamp's flat plans, as long as the active project cap fits.
5. Spreadsheet people? Smartsheet Pro, up to 10 members.
6. Software team running sprints? Look at Jira pricing before any of these.
7. Planning big schedules with resource leveling? That is Microsoft Project territory, not a small-team tool.

Whichever you pick, run the trial on a real project with the whole team for two weeks. The tool people actually open every morning is the right one, whatever the chart says.