Asana vs monday.com vs ClickUp: the seat-minimum trap in project-management pricing

Here's something none of these pricing pages lead with: monday.com sells seats in blocks of five with a three-seat minimum, which means a two-person team pays for three seats whether they like it or not. Read the per-seat number in isolation and you'll underestimate the real bill.

ClickUp raised its Unlimited plan from $7 to $10/seat in February 2026 — a lot of comparisons floating around online still quote the old $7 figure, so double-check anything you read that isn't recent. Business sits at $12/seat, and Brain MAX, ClickUp's AI layer, is a separate $9/seat on top of whichever plan you're on. For a 20-person team on Business with AI turned on, that's ($12 + $9) × 20 = $420/month — not the $140 the base Business price alone would suggest.

Asana's Starter plan begins at $10.99/user with a 2-seat minimum of its own, Advanced at $24.99. Its free Personal plan has quietly shrunk to cover only 1–2 users, which used to be a genuinely useful small-team option and now barely qualifies.

| | List price/seat | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| ClickUp Business | $12/mo | +$9 for AI (Brain MAX) |
| monday.com Standard | $12/mo | 3-seat minimum, sold in blocks of 5 |
| Asana Starter | $10.99/mo | 2-seat minimum |

Even with those add-ons, ClickUp usually still comes out cheapest per seat at real team sizes — but "cheapest" and "cheapest for what your team will actually use" aren't the same question. monday.com's visual, spreadsheet-like boards suit ops and marketing teams who think in grids. Asana's structure suits teams that want clear ownership and dependencies on cross-functional work. ClickUp wants to be all of it at once, which is either exactly what you need or one tool trying to do four jobs adequately instead of one job well — decide which team you are before the seat-minimum math decides it for you.