ClickUp vs monday.com
ClickUp and monday.com side by side: what each one is, what it costs to start, and whether you can try it free. Everything below comes from the vendors' own sites and other public sources, not from hands-on testing.
At a glance
| ClickUp | monday.com | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Business & Ops | Business & Ops |
| Starting price | Free; paid plans from $7/mo | Free; paid plans from $9/mo (checked October 2026) |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Profile | Read profile | Read profile |
Prices are in US dollars unless shown otherwise. Confirm the current price on the vendor's site before you buy.
Key differences
Both list a free tier, so you can try each before paying.
ClickUp has the lower starting price ($7/mo against $9/mo for monday.com). The cheapest plan rarely has the same limits or features, so compare plans before choosing on price.
Both are in our Business & Ops category.
About each tool
ClickUp
Work management platform for tasks, docs and chat, with a free plan and per-user paid tiers from $7 a month billed yearly. The Brain AI assistant is a separate per-user add-on.
Who it is for
Teams that manage projects and tasks in one workspace, from individuals on the free plan to larger organisations on Enterprise.
Strengths
- A Free Forever plan with no credit card and unlimited members
- The free plan includes 5 Spaces, 3 Whiteboards, 5 active automation rules and 500 AI credits per Workspace
- Monthly and annual billing are both offered
- The Brain AI add-on lists unlimited fair-use Brain with standard models, AI writing and web search
- Enterprise adds SSO, custom branding and unlimited custom roles
Limitations
- Free caps: 60 MB of storage, 40 Lists per Space, 1 Form, 1 Wiki, 100 API calls a minute and 1 day of activity history
- Paid plans are priced per user, and upgrading applies to the whole Workspace
- Brain AI is a separate per-user add-on ($9 per user a month on the pricing page), not included in plan prices
- Brain excludes AI Notetaker and AI Time-Blocking, and premium-model use has daily, weekly and monthly limits
- The pricing page shows two different plan line-ups with different prices, so what you pay depends on which applies to your Workspace
monday.com
Work management platform with boards, docs, automations and AI credits on paid plans. Free plan has 2 seats; Basic is $9 per seat a month billed annually.
Who it is for
Teams that want to plan and track projects and tasks on shared boards, from small groups on the Free plan to larger organizations on Enterprise. The vendor sells paid plans starting at 3 users, and separate products for CRM, dev and service.
Strengths
- The pricing page lists a Free plan for work management with up to 2 seats, 3 boards, 3 Docs, 200+ templates and iOS and Android apps.
- The pricing page lists monthly AI credits on paid work management plans: 1,000 on Basic, 2,000 on Standard and 3,000 on Pro, with Enterprise on custom allocation. A support article lists higher optional buckets (4,000 or 8,000 on Standard; 4,000, 8,000 or 20,000 on Pro).
- The pricing page lists Standard with 250 automation and 250 integration actions a month and Pro with 25,000 of each; Enterprise is listed with up to 250,000 combined and a 99.9% uptime SLA.
- A support article lists storage of 500 MB on Free, 5 GB on Basic, 20 GB on Standard, 100 GB on Pro and 1,000 GB on Enterprise.
- The vendor's AI Trust Center says it does not use customer input or output to train machine-learning models, and that AI follows the data region of the customer's account. The AI FAQ lists AES-256 encryption at rest, TLS 1.3 in transit, and ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 27701 certifications.
- Admin controls for AI include notices at 80% and 100% of credit use, a credit usage view under AI governance, and an AI permissions tab on Enterprise.
Limitations
- AI actions use credits: AI blocks use 8 credits per action, the AI Notetaker 120 credits per meeting hour, and agents and sidekick roughly 10 to 250+ credits per run or message depending on complexity. The vendor says usage rates are subject to change and some capabilities pause once credits run out; admins can move up to a larger credit bucket.
- The AI credit model article says it applies to customers who joined the work platform on or after May 6, 2026, so older accounts may be on different terms. It also lists credits at $0.01 per credit in USD.
- Features sit in higher tiers: guests, automations, integrations and Timeline/Gantt start at Standard; AI notetaker and AI columns at Standard; the AI workflow builder, private boards and time tracking at Pro; SSO/SAML, audit log and SCIM at Enterprise (per the support article). AI workflows are capped at 3 active on Standard, 20 on Pro and 250 on Enterprise.
- Vendor pages disagree on some figures: the pricing page says the Free plan has up to 3 Docs while the plan-types support article says unlimited workdocs; the same article says Standard integrations are unlimited yet lists 250 actions a month; and it lists the Free item cap as 200 plus 100 per successful referral. Per-seat prices are quoted without a currency code and exclude tax.
