Free Project Management Software 2024: The 10 Best Tools

Project management is crucial, but so is cash flow. Fortunately, there are many free project management tools that can help you plan and manage your tasks and projects without a monthly fee.

We've compiled some of the best free options for you and highlighted what features you might miss out on with free project management software.

Free software always comes with limitations, and project management software is no exception. Since providers earn more from paying customers, they often withhold certain features to entice users to upgrade to premium licenses.

The good news is that the free plans of project management tools are usually much more than just simple “trial versions”. Despite some limitations, they often offer a robust set of features that can be more than sufficient for small teams or individual projects.

Still, you'll have to put up with certain restrictions, such as:

Free software is always a compromise, but project management tools tend to offer non-paying subscribers quite a bit. For individuals (e.g., freelancers) or small organizations with simple projects, the free options may be sufficient for the time being; you can always upgrade later.

The only question is: which platform should you choose?

Every provider handles their free plans differently. We’ve compiled the ten best project management tools with free options, detailing the advantages and limitations of each.

ClickUp* offers an impressive level of flexibility, allowing nearly every feature, setting, and view to be configured and tailored to the specific needs and requirements of different teams.

This flexibility secured ClickUp the second place in our ranking of the best project management tools. It's a bit more complex than other solutions, especially for beginners, and the interface occasionally lags or freezes. Still, ClickUp is a great choice — with a generous free plan.

ClickUp’s Free Forever plan is described by the provider as best suited for “personal use.” However, its feature set and reasonable limitations also make it appealing for teams and small organizations.

The free version of ClickUp is an excellent choice if you need to manage projects with numerous tasks and visualize them from different perspectives, whether alone or with team members.

Naturally, ClickUp’s free plan has certain restrictions:

If your projects use large amounts of data or need to be organized into multiple Spaces, you might quickly hit the limits of what ClickUp Free Forever can offer.

Looking for something a bit more snappy and intuitive? Then Asana* is worth a look. It boasts a more streamlined and appealing interface, and its process-oriented approach and powerful task management features make can effectively enhance team-wide project management.

However, Asana is less versatile than ClickUp. Customization options, including custom fields for tasks, are a bit limited, and it's lacking dedicated communication and collaboration tools.

The free plan of Asana provides all the basics that individuals or small teams need to manage their tasks from a central dashboard. The benefits include:

The free version of Asana is ideal for freelancers and small organizations with up to ten members who seek a beginner-friendly platform for digital task management.

The free version of Asana primarily restricts customization options:

Asana’s free version offers all the basic features but makes it challenging to customize projects beyond the predefined templates and structures to fit individual needs.

Notion* isn't a pure project management tool like ClickUp or Asana, but a wiki-like database with integrated project and task management features. This hybrid approach makes Notion incredibly versatile: you can use it to plan and manage projects, as well as a variety of other purposes — from taking notes and tracking habits to building an entire knowledge base for your business.

Because Notion is less process-based and project-focused than other tools in this space, setting it up requires a bit more initiative. And while it's not short on features, it does lack a few basics, such as time tracking or (extensive) reporting tools.

Still, Notion is a powerful project management solution that can be fully customized to your team's needs and project specifics, while also serving as a company wiki.

Notion’s free plan provides a full-featured user experience. You have access to all basic features, allowing you to create a comprehensive knowledge database for small teams and organize your projects within it. Here's what you get:

With its generous free plan, Notion is an excellent choice if you want to build a wiki page for yourself and/or your small team and systematically organize and store information, whether project-related or not.

The premium version of Notion is significantly more powerful, especially for teams. Free users face the following limitations:

Teams may find the block and upload limits restrictive in Notion’s free version, but there's still a lot they can achieve within these bounds.

Airtable* isn't your run-of-the-mill project management platform, either. As a hybrid solution combining database, spreadsheet, and project management features, it offers nearly endless possibilities for organizing, filtering, and visualizing project and other data.

If you're looking for a process-oriented platform that can be set up quickly and adapted to standard project workflows, Airtable might not be the best choice. However, if you want to create a central platform as a “Single Source of Truth” for data-oriented projects, Airtable provides an incredibly versatile playground, even for free users.

Airtable's free plan comes with most of the platform's essential features. Key benefits include:

Airtable's free plan is so comprehensive that teams with smaller and simpler projects might never even notice its limitations.

Of course, paying subscribers get even more. Here's some of what's missing in the free plan:

If you can do without extensions, automations, and timeline views, Airtable’s free version is still a powerful tool. However, if you find yourself needing these features in the future, be prepared for a steep price increase.

monday.com* secured first place in our ranking of the best project management tools. That's because it's user-friendly and highly customizable, with a wide range of features, all wrapped in an intuitive dashboard that makes it easy for beginners to get started.

monday.com strikes a great balance between tools like Asana, which is very process-focused, and Airtable, which is more data-driven. It combines the best of both worlds, offering a versatile set of project management features.

The free plan of monday.com is best suited for individuals and (very) small teams who want to store tasks and data centrally.

The free plan of monday.com enables basic task management for one to three people but imposes more restrictions than other tools.

Unfortunately, monday.com isn't as generous with its free plan as other providers in our top 5:

monday.com's free plan is less 'standalone' than other solutions and only suitable for small, simple projects.

Our top 5 is just a small selection; many other project management tools are available for free. In fact, out of the eleven platforms we tested, ten offer a free version. We don’t want to keep the remaining five from you:

Wrike* is most comparable to Asana and monday.com. It boasts an intuitive interface suitable for beginners, versatile task features, and easy-to-set-up automations.

Wrike's free plan includes most of the essential project and task management features, but only allows for 200 active tasks, and many advanced tools (e.g., forms, automations, custom fields) are missing or restricted.

Teamwork.com* is a project management platform designed for teams working on client projects, such as agencies.

The free plan of Teamwork.com supports up to five projects for up to five people. However, the more interesting features for client work — like the ability to invite clients — are reserved for paying customers, and the budget features the platform is known for are limited.

Trello* takes a more focused approach than other tools: it's essentially a Kanban platform for smaller teams, with a deliberately limited feature set.

In Trello's free plan, you can create up to ten boards per workspace and an unlimited number of cards per board. However, file storage is limited to 10 MB per file and advanced views beyond the classic Kanban view are missing.

Similar to Airtable, Smartsheet* is a hybrid solution that's best for data-intensive projects and requires spreadsheet know-how.

Smartsheet Free can be used by one person and up to two editors. Users are limited to two Sheets and 500 MB of storage.

MeisterTask* goes all-in on Kanban — even more so than Trello, because it doesn't support other views at all.

In the free plan, you can create up to three projects, customize boards, and invite unlimited project members.

Project management software doesn't have to break the bank. Many platforms offer free plans that, despite limitations like project or storage limits, are quite comprehensive. The free versions of ClickUp, Asana, Notion, and Airtable are especially generous, enabling small teams and individuals to effectively manage their tasks and projects free of charge.

If you find them useful and want access to additional features, you can always upgrade later. Use our rankings and pricing filters to find the best option for your budget.