Free plan: 

• Asana: up to 10 users. 

• monday: 2 seats, 3 boards.

Entry paid plan:

• Asana Starter: around $10.99/user/month annually, no seat minimum. 

• monday Basic: around $9–12/seat/month, minimum 3 seats.

Mid tier — Asana Advanced: around $24.99/user/month. monday Standard: around $12–14/seat/month. monday Pro: around $19/seat/month.

For a 5-person team, the two land within about $60 a year of each other. The gap opens up above 20 seats, where monday gets cheaper per person.

Three things the pricing pages don't tell you

monday's Basic plan has no automations at all. You need Standard to get any. If automation is why you're buying project management software, monday's entry price is not the price you'll pay.

monday's automation cap is shared across the whole account. The Standard plan includes 250 automation actions per month for the entire account, not per user. Pro jumps to 25,000 — a hundredfold increase for roughly a 58% price rise. Exceed your limit on Standard and your account is blocked from editing automations until it resets.

monday split into separate products. Work Management, CRM, Dev, and Service are now priced individually, each with its own price-increase schedule. If you want the CRM and the project boards, that's two subscriptions. Asana remains one product.

On Asana's side, the thing to know is that AI is metered. Standard and Pro-tier AI credits are billed per credit, which makes the monthly total less predictable than a flat seat price.

Pick Asana if your team is under 10

The free plan is the whole argument. Ten users, unlimited tasks and projects, no time limit, no card required. For a small agency or a founding team, that's often enough for a year.

When you do upgrade, automations are included on every paid plan, and there's no seat minimum — you pay for exactly the people you have.

The common complaint: no built-in time tracking. If you bill hourly, you'll need a second tool alongside it.

Asana also tends to suit teams juggling many small projects at once. The interface is quieter, which matters when you're switching between a dozen client workstreams.

Pick monday if you need to see the work

monday's advantage is visual. More view types, drag-and-drop boards that mirror a physical planning wall, and dashboards that non-technical stakeholders read without training.

It fits certain work particularly well — construction, field service, manufacturing, anything where the board resembles a job-tracking system someone already uses on paper.

The complaint that comes up most: cost creep. Between the seat minimum, the automation caps, and the split product lines, teams often end up on a higher tier than they planned for.

What we'd do

1–2 people: Asana free. monday's free plan technically fits, but 3 boards runs out fast.

3–10 people: Asana free, then Asana Starter when you outgrow it.

10–20 people: Genuinely close. Pick on interface preference — try both free for a week.

20+ people, visual work: monday. The per-seat maths starts favouring it, and the dashboards earn their keep.

Worried about picking wrong?

Both export your data, and both offer free trials on paid tiers. Moving a small team between them is a day of work, not a disaster. Don't spend three weeks deciding.

A note on these prices

Both platforms changed pricing during 2025 and 2026 — monday raised Service pricing in February 2026, and Asana moved to metered AI credits. Sources disagree on current figures by a few dollars per seat. We re-check quarterly, but confirm on each vendor's own pricing page before you commit budget.