Free Project Management Software for Small Business
For a small business that wants to stay on a free plan, GoodDay and Freedcamp stand out. GoodDay allows up to 15 users with unlimited projects and 1 GB of storage, and Freedcamp caps none of users, projects or total storage, then charges $1.49 per user a month if you do upgrade. Two of the best-known names, Asana and monday.com, are the tightest: their free plans stop at 2 users.
The other nine split on which limit comes first. Trello and Jira cap the team at 10 people, and Zoho Projects, Teamwork.com and Airtable at 5. ClickUp, Wrike, Nifty and Plaky let an unlimited number of people in and cap the work instead: five Spaces and 60MB of storage on ClickUp, 200 active tasks on Wrike, two active projects on Nifty, six custom fields per board on Plaky. The seat-capped plans hold up while the team stays small; the work-capped ones hold up while the workload stays small.
Our picks
- A whole small company on the free plan: GoodDay. Up to 15 users, unlimited projects and 1 GB of storage, with dashboards and custom workflows, and $4 to upgrade.
- Most room on the smallest budget: Freedcamp. Unlimited users, projects and total storage for free, and the paid Pro tier is $1.49 per user, the cheapest here.
- Billing hours to clients: Teamwork.com. The only free plan here with both Gantt views and time logging, for 5 users and 5 projects, though storage is 100MB.
- A small software team: Jira. Up to 10 users get unlimited projects, backlogs, boards and a timeline view free, with 2 GB of storage.
At a glance
| Option | Paid Plan From | Free Plan Users | Free Plan Projects | Free Plan Storage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5source | Up to 10source | Up to 10source | Unlimitedsource | |
| $10.99source | Up to 2source | Unlimitedsource | Unlimitedsource | |
| $7source | Unlimitedsource | Up to 5source | Under 1 GBsource | |
| $7.91source | Up to 10source | Unlimitedsource | 2 GB or moresource | |
| $9source | Up to 2source | Up to 3source | Under 1 GBsource | |
| $10source | Unlimitedsource | 2 GB or moresource | ||
| $4source | Up to 5source | Up to 3source | 2 GB or moresource | |
| $9.99source | Up to 5source | Up to 5source | Under 1 GBsource | |
| $1.49source | Unlimitedsource | Unlimitedsource | Unlimitedsource | |
| $3.99source | Unlimitedsource | Unlimitedsource | ||
| $10source | Unlimitedsource | Up to 2source | Under 1 GBsource | |
| $4source | Up to 15source | Unlimitedsource | 1 GBsource | |
| $20source | Up to 5source | 1 GBsource |
Which free plans include a timeline or Gantt view
Two free plans here are stated to include a timeline: Jira's, for up to 10 users, and Teamwork.com's, which pairs Gantt views with time logging. For most of the rest the timeline is a paid feature, and the price of that step varies a lot. GoodDay puts Gantt views in its $4 Professional tier, ClickUp in its $7 Unlimited plan, Wrike in its $10 Team plan and Asana in its $10.99 Starter plan. Trello's timeline is also in its paid tiers, and Zoho Projects leaves Gantt charts and timesheets out of the free plan.
Freedcamp is the one to read closely. Its free plan already includes time tracking, but its $1.49 Pro tier does not add Gantt charts: those start on the $7.49 Business tier. If a timeline is the reason you are upgrading, compare that $7.49, not the $1.49.
Free storage limits that bite first
Storage is where several generous-looking plans pinch. ClickUp lets any number of people in but gives free accounts 60MB of file storage, the limit most teams hit first, and Teamwork.com and Nifty each allow 100MB. At the other end, Zoho Projects includes 5 GB, Jira and Wrike 2 GB each, and GoodDay 1 GB. Trello and Freedcamp set no total, only a limit on each file (10MB on Freedcamp), and Plaky publishes only its 10MB per-file cap. Airtable's 1 GB is per base, but its real ceiling is 1,000 records per base.
What you pay per user once you outgrow free
Paid plans start anywhere from $1.49 to $20 per user per month. Five start at $5 or less: Freedcamp at $1.49, Plaky at $3.99, Zoho Projects and GoodDay at $4, and Trello at $5. Seven sit between $7 and $10.99, from ClickUp to Asana, and Airtable stands alone at $20. For monday.com the upgrade price is the one to judge: two seats and three boards mean almost any real small business starts on its $9 Basic plan.
The options in detail
Trello
Trello is the Kanban board almost everyone tries first: cards in columns, drag them across as work moves, and there is essentially nothing to learn. The free plan is unusually generous on people (10 collaborators per Workspace) but tight on structure, capping you at 10 boards, and Trello counts storage per file rather than in total. It suits a small team running a handful of repeatable workflows more than one juggling many separate client projects. The common complaint is that once you want a timeline, a table across boards, or reporting, you are into the paid tiers.
Asana
Asana has the cleanest task-and-project interface of the mainstream tools, and its free tier gives you unlimited projects with list, board and calendar views. The catch is the one that matters most here: the free Personal plan is capped at two users, so it is really a solo or two-person tool rather than a small-business one. Timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards and automation all sit behind the $10.99 Starter plan. If your team is three or more people, treat Asana's free plan as a trial rather than a home.
ClickUp
ClickUp is the most feature-dense free plan on this list and the only mainstream one that lets an unlimited number of people in without paying. Free accounts get unlimited tasks, docs, Kanban boards and calendar view, but are held to five Spaces and just 60MB of file storage, which is the limit most teams hit first. Gantt charts, native time tracking and unlimited storage start at the $7 Unlimited plan. The trade-off people mention most is that the sheer number of settings and views takes real effort to tame.
Jira
Jira is built for software teams working in sprints, and its free tier is one of the few that includes a timeline view rather than paywalling it. Up to 10 users get unlimited projects, backlogs, boards and reports with 2 GB of storage, which is a lot of capability for a small dev shop at no cost. It is a poor fit for non-technical work: the vocabulary is issues, epics and workflows, and setup assumes someone will invest time in configuration. Small businesses without a developer usually find it heavier than they need.
monday.com
monday.com is the colourful, spreadsheet-like work platform that a lot of small businesses end up on, but its free plan is the most restrictive here: two seats and three boards. That is a demo, not a workspace, and almost any real small business will be on the $9 Basic plan from day one. What you get for that is a genuinely approachable interface, 200+ templates and easy automations. Judge monday on its paid pricing rather than its free tier.
Wrike
Wrike lets an unlimited number of people into its free plan, which is rare, and then caps the work instead: 200 active tasks per account and 2 GB of storage. That shape suits a whole small team dipping in on a modest amount of live work, and it breaks down as soon as your task list grows. Free accounts get board and table views but not the Gantt charts Wrike is known for, which start on the $10 Team plan. It is the most enterprise-flavoured tool here, which shows in both the interface and the price.
Zoho Projects
Zoho Projects is the value pick: the free plan covers five users and three projects with a generous 5 GB of storage, and the first paid tier is the cheapest of the well-known tools. It is a proper project-management tool with subtasks, workflow actions and real reporting rather than a task list with extras. Gantt charts and timesheets are not in the free tier, so time-billing agencies will need to upgrade. It makes most sense if you already use other Zoho apps, since the integrations are where it pulls ahead.
Teamwork.com
Teamwork.com is built around client work, and it is the only tool here whose free plan includes both Gantt views and time logging, the two things agencies and consultancies actually need. Five users and five projects is a real working allowance rather than a demo, though 100MB of storage is the tightest limit on this list and file-heavy teams will hit it fast. Work can be organised by client out of the box, which no other free plan does. If you bill hours to clients, start here.
Freedcamp
Freedcamp has the most generous free plan of anything on this list: unlimited users, unlimited projects and unlimited total storage, subject only to a fair-usage policy and a 10MB cap on any single file. Tasks, milestones, discussions, files, a calendar and time tracking are all included at no cost. The paid Pro tier is $1.49 per user, an order of magnitude below the big names. It is less polished than Asana or monday.com and Gantt charts only appear on the $7.49 Business tier, but for a budget-conscious small business it is hard to beat on raw allowance.
Plaky
Plaky is a monday.com-style board tool from the makers of Clockify, and it does the thing monday.com does not: let an unlimited number of people in for free, with unlimited spaces, boards and items. The free tier trades away depth instead, holding you to six custom fields per board and a seven-day activity log. Files are capped at 10MB each. It is a strong fit for a growing team that wants everyone in one place without counting seats, and a weak one if you need reporting or a timeline view.
Nifty
Nifty bundles tasks, milestones, docs, team chat and time tracking into one workspace, so a small team can drop a couple of other subscriptions. Its free plan is unusual in shape: unlimited team members but only two active projects and 100 MB of storage. That works if you run one or two long-running efforts with everyone involved, and not at all if you juggle many small client jobs. The $10 Pro tier is priced with the mainstream tools rather than the budget ones.
GoodDay
GoodDay is the least famous name here and quietly one of the best-shaped free plans for an actual small business: up to 15 users, unlimited projects and tasks, 1 GB of storage, plus dashboards, custom workflows and basic analytics at no cost. That covers a whole small company rather than a couple of seats or a couple of projects. Gantt views, time tracking and unlimited automations are held back for the $4 Professional tier, which is still among the cheapest on this list. The trade-off is a smaller community and fewer third-party integrations than the household names.
Airtable
Airtable is a spreadsheet-database hybrid rather than a project tracker, and small businesses reach for it when their work is really a structured list: an inventory, a content calendar, a client pipeline. The free plan allows five collaborators with editing rights and 1 GB of attachments per base, but the limit that actually bites is 1,000 records per base. It gives you far more control over fields, views and linked data than any board tool here. It is also the most expensive to upgrade, at $20 per user per month.
How we researched this
The bar here was a free tier a business could actually run on, with published limits on users, projects and storage; 13 of the 19 tools we looked at made the table. Asana and monday.com stay in despite their 2-seat caps because they are among the most common answers to this search, and showing the cap is more useful than hiding it. Notion is left out because its free plan limits blocks rather than users, projects or storage, so three of the four columns would mislead. Bitrix24 prices per organization rather than per user, Basecamp has no free plan, Smartsheet's free plan is 1 user and 2 sheets, OpenProject's free edition is self-hosted with no per-user cloud price, and MeisterTask's pricing page gave us no line to quote for either its paid prices or its storage.
Prices are the cheapest paid tier per user per month, billed annually, in US dollars as of September 3, 2026; skip the annual commitment and Trello rises from $5 to $6 a seat, Freedcamp from $1.49 to $2.49. The empty limit cells are figures the vendor never publishes: Wrike bounds its free plan by active tasks and one shared space rather than a project count, Airtable limits records rather than bases, and Plaky gives no total storage. Free-plan limits in this category change without much notice, and monday.com and Bitrix24 have both tightened theirs, so the seat cap is the number to re-read on the vendor's pricing page before your team settles in.