Free Project Management Software: What Each Free Plan Really Allows

Almost every project management app has a free plan, and almost every free plan is built to be outgrown. The limits differ a lot: some cap the number of people, some cap boards or projects, some cap storage, and most lock the timeline or Gantt view that project planning depends on. This guide compares the free plans themselves: who they fit, where each one stops, and what the first paid plan costs. Every price is in US dollars from the vendor's own pricing page.

If you are ready to pay and want the full field, see the best project management software instead.

The free plans at a glance

How to read a free plan

Four limits decide whether a free plan works for you, in this order:

1. The people cap. Asana and monday.com stop at 2, Zoho Projects at 5, Trello and Jira at 10. ClickUp and Wrike have no member cap, which is why their other limits are tighter.
2. The container cap. Trello limits boards, monday.com limits boards, Zoho Projects limits projects. Asana and Jira let you create as many projects as you like.
3. Storage. It runs from 60 MB in total on ClickUp to unlimited storage with a 100 MB file cap on Asana.
4. The planning views. A timeline or Gantt chart is the feature most often held back. Only Jira includes a timeline on its free plan among the hosted tools here.

The fifth limit is softer: features that are free only "on trial", meaning a fixed number of uses before they lock. ClickUp uses this model more than anyone.

Trello: best for a simple board shared by up to 10 people

Trello's free plan is free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, with up to 10 boards per Workspace. Cards are unlimited, Power-Ups are unlimited per board (some partner Power-Ups charge their own fees), files are capped at 10 MB each, and you get 250 automation command runs a month. That is enough for a small team running a handful of boards: a sales pipeline, a content calendar, a hiring board.

What the free plan leaves out is every view except the board. Calendar, timeline, table and dashboard views start on Premium at $10 a user a month billed yearly ($12.50 monthly). Standard sits between them at $5 a user a month billed yearly ($6 monthly) and lifts the board cap to unlimited, raises files to 250 MB and automation to 1,000 runs a month, but it still does not add those views.

What to watch:

• The 11th person or the 11th board. Either one forces Standard for the whole team.
• Planning on a timeline costs Premium. If dates matter more than columns, price Trello at $10 a user, not $5.

Choose it if your work fits on cards moving left to right and your team is 10 people or fewer.

ClickUp: best when you need more than 10 members for free

ClickUp's Free Forever plan has unlimited members and unlimited free guests, unlimited tasks, Kanban boards, calendar view, docs and sprint management. The catch is in the comparison table. Storage is 60 MB in total, the plan allows 5 Spaces, and Gantt charts, timeline view, custom fields and dashboards are all marked Trial, meaning a limited number of uses before they lock. Time tracking is limited too: ClickUp's help center gives the Free Forever plan 100 uses of time tracking.

So ClickUp is free for a large group, but you will hit a trial wall on the planning tools within weeks of real use.

The first paid plan is Core at $9 a user a month billed yearly (ClickUp shows a regular price of $12). It removes the storage cap and includes Gantt charts and custom fields; ClickUp's table still lists timeline view as a trial on Core. Business is $17 a user a month billed yearly (regular price $25) and adds timeline and workload views, timesheets and advanced dashboards.

What to watch:

• 60 MB goes fast. File attachments count against it, so a team that shares PDFs and images will run out first.
• Trials are counted, not timed. Once you have used up the Gantt or custom-field trial, that feature is gone until you pay.

Choose it if you need many people in one workspace for free and mostly use lists, boards and docs.

Jira: best free plan with a timeline view

Jira's free plan is free forever for up to 10 users and is the most complete free plan here for planning work over time. It includes unlimited goals, projects, tasks and forms and backlog, list, board, timeline, calendar and summary views. Limits sit elsewhere: 2 GB of storage, 150 automation steps per subscription per month and support only from the Atlassian Community.

Jira grew up in software teams, so it uses words like backlog, sprint and issue, but the board and timeline work just as well for a marketing calendar or a client project.

Standard adds user roles and permissions, 250 GB of storage, 400 automation steps per user per month and room for up to 100,000 users. Atlassian prices it per user, and the rate depends on how many users you have and whether you pay monthly or yearly. Our Jira pricing guide works through what a small team actually pays.

What to watch:

• No user roles or permissions on Free. They start on Standard, which matters if you need to keep clients or teams apart.
• The jump at 11 users. Standard is priced per user, so an 11th person means paying for all 11, not just the newcomer.

Choose it if you want a timeline for free and your team is 10 people or fewer. For Gantt charts with dependencies, see Gantt chart software.

Zoho Projects: best for the cheapest step up from free

Zoho Projects is free for up to 5 users, with 3 projects, 5 GB of storage, subtasks, a whiteboard, mobile apps and 50 workflow action runs a month. One inconsistency: the plan table says 3 projects, while Zoho's FAQ says an account that downgrades to Free keeps access to two. Time logs and timesheets are not on Free.

The step up is the cheapest in this guide. Premium costs $4 a user a month billed yearly, or $5 billed monthly, and adds unlimited projects, 100 GB of storage, custom views, project budgets, time logs and timesheets with multi-level approvals and 5,000 workflow runs a month. Enterprise is $9 a user billed yearly ($10 monthly) with 120 GB and 10 read-only users. Zoho's US prices come from the price data behind its pricing page.

What to watch:

• Three projects is a small number. If every client is a project, the free plan suits a freelancer or a two-person shop, not an agency.
• Time tracking is a paid feature. If you bill hours, you need Premium from day one.

Choose it if you expect to pay soon and want the lowest per-user price when you do: five users on Premium cost $240 a year.

Asana: best for one or two people who want a polished app

Asana's free plan is called Personal, and the name is the point: it is "for one or two people", capped at 2 users. Inside that cap it is generous, with unlimited tasks and projects, list, board and calendar views, unlimited storage with a 100 MB per-file limit, status updates and more than 100 free integrations. It also allows time tracking through integrations with outside timers.

Timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards, unlimited automations, forms and unlimited free guests start on Starter at $10.99 a user a month billed annually, or $13.49 monthly. Asana's own time tracking, which compares estimated and actual time, starts on Advanced at $24.99 a user a month billed annually ($30.49 monthly).

What to watch:

• A third user means paying. There is no middle step: three people on Starter cost $395.64 a year on annual billing.
• Seats come in blocks as you grow. Asana sells seats one at a time from 2 to 5 users, then in steps of 5 up to 30 users.

Choose it if you are a solo owner or a pair and want the cleanest task app, with room to grow into Starter later.

Wrike: best for unlimited users on boards and tables

Wrike's comparison table lists unlimited users on Free, with 2 GB of storage per account, custom work views such as table and Kanban, and an open REST API. Gantt charts, time tracking and the productivity-app integrations are not included.

Paid plans start with Team at $10 a user a month billed annually for 2 to 15 users, with 2 GB of storage per user and Gantt charts. Wrike says its prices are in US dollars. Business is $25 a user a month billed annually for 5 to 200 users. Note that Wrike's table does not include time tracking on Team either. Our Wrike pricing guide covers each plan.

What to watch:

• 2 GB for the whole account. On Free the storage is shared, not per person.
• Team stops at 15 users. The 16th person moves everyone to Business.

Choose it if you need a free table or board view for a group larger than 10 and do not need Gantt charts yet.

Notion: best for docs and light project tracking

Notion's Free plan is for individuals. You can invite others, but a workspace with 2 or more members gets a limited number of blocks (Notion's word for each paragraph, checkbox or other piece of content) before it has to upgrade. Uploads are capped at 5 MB per file, and page history lasts 7 days. You get a trial of Notion AI.

Plus costs $10 a member a month billed yearly and removes the block limit for teams, raises uploads to 5 GB and keeps 30 days of page history. Business is $20 a member a month billed yearly.

What to watch:

• Free is not really a team plan. The block limit for multi-member workspaces makes it a trial for teams, not a permanent home.

Choose it if your projects live mostly in documents, briefs and checklists, and you are one person or ready to pay for Plus.

monday.com: free for two, briefly

monday.com's work management Free plan is free forever for up to 2 seats and up to 3 boards. Timeline, Gantt and calendar views start on Standard, as do automations. Paid plans start from 3 users.

monday.com shows prices by the visitor's billing country, and we could not confirm its US dollar prices for this guide, so we do not quote them. Note that monday.com work management is a different product from monday CRM, whose US prices are in our monday CRM pricing guide.

Choose it if two people want to try monday.com's boards before deciding; it is not a long-term free plan.

OpenProject: free if you host it yourself

OpenProject is open-source project management software. Its Community edition can be downloaded and installed for free and run on your own server, and its user guide treats the Gantt chart as a standard module: only exporting a Gantt chart to PDF is marked as an Enterprise add-on. OpenProject does not state a user cap for Community. The paid editions are hosted or supported versions with minimums from 25 users (Basic and Professional 25, Premium 100, Corporate 250), aimed at larger organizations.

What to watch:

• Free software is not free to run. You pay for the server, the updates and the time to keep it secure.

Choose it if someone on your team already runs servers and you want full Gantt planning without a per-user bill.

What forces the upgrade

Free plans and time tracking

None of these free plans is a good home for billable hours. ClickUp gives 100 uses of its timer, Asana and Trello rely on outside apps, and Zoho Projects and Wrike keep time tracking for paid plans. If you bill clients by the hour, pair a free project tool with a dedicated timer: our guide to time tracking software for small business compares Toggl Track, Harvest, Clockify and others, including their free plans. For a plain to-do list without projects, see task management software.

Running the rest of the business on free plans too? Compare free CRM for small business and free accounting software.

How to choose

1. Two people, want something pleasant? Asana Personal.
2. Up to 10 people on boards? Trello Free.
3. Up to 10 people who need a timeline? Jira Free.
4. More than 10 people, no budget? ClickUp Free Forever or Wrike Free, accepting their storage limits.
5. Expect to pay within a few months? Start on Zoho Projects Free; Premium is $4 a user billed yearly.
6. Someone can run a server? OpenProject Community.