The best project management software of 2026

Asana is the tool we would hand to a team that has outgrown a shared spreadsheet and wants something people will use without a training session. Every task has an owner and a due date, and you can look at a project as a list, a board or a calendar. Starter adds timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards, forms, custom fields and unlimited automations, which covers what most marketing, operations and product teams need from week to week.

The free Personal plan is for up to 2 users, with unlimited tasks and projects and files up to 100 MB each. That makes it a good trial for a pair rather than a free plan for a team. Starter is $10.99 a user a month billed yearly, or $13.49 billed monthly, and it has no seat limit and lets you invite guests for free. Advanced is $24.99 a user a month billed yearly, or $30.49 monthly, and adds portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, and time tracking.

AI requests cost extra. Asana sells prepaid packs at $0.50 a request, or charges $0.60 a request on pay as you go, so estimate your team's use before you compare totals with other tools.

Choose Asana if you want one task tool that grows from a single team to a department. Skip it if you need resource planning on a small budget, because that only arrives on Advanced.

monday.com feels like a spreadsheet that grew into a project tool. Each board is a table of items, and you choose the columns, such as status, owner, date or number, so the board follows your process instead of the other way round. Teams that like to set up their own way of working tend to settle in quickly, and managers like that the same boards feed charts and timelines.

Paid plans are priced per seat and start at 3 seats. Basic is $9 a seat a month billed yearly, or $12 monthly, and adds unlimited items and free viewers. Standard, at $12 billed yearly or $14 monthly, is the plan most teams need: it adds timeline, Gantt and calendar views, guest access, and 250 automation actions and 250 integration actions a month. Pro, at $19 billed yearly or $24 monthly, adds time tracking, private boards and docs, and 25,000 automation actions a month. The free plan covers 2 seats and 3 boards, and you can try Pro for 14 days.

The 3-seat minimum means a two-person business pays for a seat it does not use. monday.com also sells monday CRM, monday dev and monday service at separate prices, so check that a quote is for work management.

Choose monday.com if you want boards you can shape to any process. Skip it if Gantt views and automations are must-haves on the cheapest plan, because they start at Standard.

ClickUp sets out to replace several apps at once. Tasks, docs, whiteboards, forms, goals, time tracking and video calls all live in one workspace. For a team that pays for four separate tools, that is the attraction. The price of that range is a busier screen and a longer setup, because nearly everything can be configured and someone has to decide how your spaces, folders and lists fit together.

The Free Forever plan allows unlimited members and tasks but caps storage at 60 MB, automations at 100 actions a month and spaces at 5, so treat it as a place to test. Core is $9 a user a month billed yearly. It removes the storage and space limits and adds custom fields, unlimited Gantt charts and forms, guest permissions and 1,000 automations a month. Business is $17 a user a month billed yearly and adds advanced dashboards, resource management, timesheets and private views. The pricing page says yearly billing saves up to 33%, but it did not show us the monthly rates.

Each paid plan includes a pool of AI credits, starting at 1,000 a user a month on Core, and extra credits cost $10 per 10,000. ClickUp also offers a 100% money-back guarantee, according to its pricing page.

Choose ClickUp if you want one tool for tasks, docs and time at a low price per person. Skip it if your team needs something it can learn in an afternoon.

Jira is where most software teams end up. Work sits in a backlog, moves across a board as the sprint runs, and shows on a timeline for anyone who needs the bigger picture. Issues follow workflows you can change to match how your team ships, and the reports and dashboards are built around that flow. Atlassian's Rovo AI tools for search, chat and agents come with the paid plans.

The free plan is generous for a small team: up to 10 users, unlimited projects and tasks, backlog, board, list, timeline and calendar views, 2 GB of storage and 150 automation steps a month, with community support. Atlassian's pricing data lists Standard at $8.48 a user a month and Premium at $15.56. Standard adds user roles and permissions, external collaboration, 250 GB of storage, 400 automation steps a user a month and support during business hours. Premium adds planning and dependencies across teams, approval steps, unlimited storage, 24/7 support for critical issues and a 99.9% uptime promise. Standard comes with a 14-day trial and Premium with a 30-day trial.

Jira has a reputation for being heavy for teams outside engineering, and its screens and settings are dense. A marketing or operations team will usually be happier in Asana or monday.com.

Choose Jira if you run sprints and track bugs. Skip it if your team does not write software and wants a simple task list.

Basecamp keeps each project on one page with the tools you switch on: to-dos, a message board, chat, a calendar, card tables for Kanban-style work, and docs and files. Client mode lets you choose, project by project, what a client can see, so you can invite them in without showing unfinished work. It suits agencies and small firms that run several client projects at once and want fewer, calmer tools.

You pay per account, not per person. Freelancer is $29 a month for 3 active projects and 5 users, Pro is $79 for 8 projects and 10 users, and Pro Plus is $99 for 12 projects and 15 users. Pro Unlimited is $199 a month billed yearly, or $329 billed monthly, for unlimited projects and users and 1 TB of storage. The free plan runs one project for up to 3 users with 1 GB of storage. Every paid plan has a 30-day trial with no credit card, and Basecamp does not charge you automatically when it ends.

Watch the limits on active projects. A busy agency on Pro can hit 8 projects fast, and the user caps on the lower plans fill up once you invite clients and freelancers.

Choose Basecamp if you bring clients into your projects and want one predictable bill. Skip it if you need Gantt charts or detailed reporting.

Trello is the simplest tool on this list. A board has lists, the lists hold cards, and you drag a card from left to right as the work moves on. Content calendars, hiring pipelines, small client jobs and personal planning all fit it well, and almost anyone understands a Trello board the first time they see one.

The free plan allows up to 10 boards and 10 collaborators per workspace, unlimited cards, files up to 10 MB and 250 automation runs a month. Standard is $5 a user a month billed yearly, or $6 monthly, and removes the board limit, adds custom fields and raises the file limit to 250 MB. Premium, at $10 a user a month billed yearly or $12.50 monthly, is where Trello starts to work as a project tool: it adds calendar, timeline, table, dashboard and map views, unlimited automation runs and admin controls. Enterprise is $17.50 a user a month billed yearly and adds single sign-on through Atlassian Guard. Any workspace can try Premium for free, although Trello does not say for how long.

One point on the free plan: Trello's comparison table says collaborators are unlimited while the plan summary says 10, so expect the 10-person limit.

Choose Trello if your projects are short and visual. Skip it if you need timelines and reporting across many projects on a small budget, because those views start at Premium.

Wrike is built for teams that manage a portfolio of projects and need to see them side by side: a marketing department with dozens of campaigns, or a project office that reports to leadership. The free plan gives you board and table views to try the basics. Team adds interactive Gantt charts, a shareable dashboard and Wrike's basic AI features, including automation rules written from a plain sentence.

Team costs $10 a user a month for 2 to 15 users. Business is $25 a user a month for 5 to 200 users and adds workspace templates and standard integrations, and Wrike sells Business and higher plans only on yearly contracts. Pinnacle and Apex are priced by quote and add advanced resource and capacity planning, budgeting, time tracking and advanced reporting. These prices apply to purchases from January 21, 2026, and Wrike offers a 14-day trial of Team and Business with no credit card.

The features that make Wrike stand out, such as resource and capacity planning, sit on the quoted plans, so a small team pays for a lot it will not use. Above 15 users you also have to move up from Team to Business.

Choose Wrike if you are a department running many projects and you need Gantt charts and shared dashboards. Skip it if you are a small team, where Asana or ClickUp cost less.

Smartsheet looks like a spreadsheet, which is exactly why some teams choose it. Project managers who already plan in Excel can keep their rows, columns and formulas, then switch the same sheet to a Gantt chart, a board or a calendar. It suits teams whose plans are long lists of dated rows, such as operations and event planning.

There is no free plan, but there is a 30-day trial with no credit card. Pro is $9 a member a month billed yearly, or $12 monthly, for 1 to 10 members, and includes unlimited sheets, forms and reports, Gantt, table, board and calendar views, and 250 automations a month. Business is $19 a member a month billed yearly, or $24 monthly, for 3 or more members, and adds a timeline view, workload tracking, unlimited automations, admin tools and 1 TB of attachment storage. Pro includes unlimited free contributors and Business adds unlimited free guests, so outside people can update rows without paying for a seat.

Our server saw the page in Australian dollars by default. The US dollar figures above come from the page's own currency options.

Choose Smartsheet if your team thinks in spreadsheets and wants Gantt charts without learning a new layout. Skip it if you want a free plan or a more visual, card-based tool.

Teamwork.com is project management written for client work. Alongside tasks, boards and Gantt charts, it tracks billable time, sets time budgets and retainers, and turns logged hours into invoices. That makes it a better fit than Asana or monday.com for an agency that needs to know whether a project is making money.

The free plan covers up to 5 users and 5 projects, with 100 MB of storage, list, board, Gantt and table views, and time logging. Basics is $9.99 a user a month billed yearly, with a 3-user minimum, and adds billable time tracking and reporting and unlimited project templates. Accelerate is $24.99 a user a month billed yearly, with a 5-user minimum, and adds intake forms, workload and capacity planning, time budgets and retainers, invoicing from logged time, and HubSpot and QuickBooks connections. The two top plans are priced by quote. Teamwork.com says yearly billing saves about 29%, but it does not list monthly prices. Every paid plan has a 14-day trial with no credit card, and you can host your data in the US or the EU.

For a service firm that also wants quotes, CRM and revenue reports in one system, Scoro goes further, at a higher price and with a 5-user minimum on every plan.

Choose Teamwork.com if your projects are client work and billable hours matter. Skip it if you run internal projects only.

Zoho Projects is the cheapest serious option here. For $4 a user a month billed yearly you get unlimited projects, timesheets with approvals, project budgets, task blueprints that enforce a set process, and 100 GB of storage. If your company already uses Zoho CRM or Zoho Books, it also sits inside the same family of apps.

The free plan covers up to 5 users, 3 projects and 5 GB of storage, with a whiteboard, the mobile apps and 50 workflow runs a month. Premium is $4 a user a month billed yearly, or $5 monthly. Enterprise is $9 billed yearly, or $10 monthly, and adds single sign-on, a portfolio dashboard, critical path and baselines, custom roles and fields, and a Power BI connection. The top plan is $14 a user a month billed yearly, or $15 monthly, and adds timesheets across several users and projects. All paid plans have a 15-day trial with no credit card.

The interface is busier than Asana's, and you will spend some time in settings to get statuses and views the way you want. Zoho's own page is unclear on the free plan: the comparison table says 3 projects and the FAQ says 2 after a downgrade.

Choose Zoho Projects if price matters most or you already work in Zoho. Skip it if ease of use for a non-technical team comes first.