Best Free Project Management Software in 2026
This is the most heavily reviewed software category in existence. The seven tools below carry over 148,000 aggregated reviews between them, which means that for once the ratings are not a rounding error and the comparison can rest on evidence rather than on opinion.
It also means the ratings are close enough to be useless as a ranking, and the interesting information is somewhere else: in what each free plan caps, and in the places where the review platforms flatly disagree with each other about the same product.
The ratings, and where they disagree
Aggregated by Toolradar across G2, Capterra, SourceForge, Trustpilot, TrustRadius and PeerSpot.
| Tool | Aggregated rating | Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Clockify | 4.7 | 9,198 |
| Todoist | 4.6 | 3,451 |
| Asana | 4.5 | 51,834 |
| Trello | 4.5 | 36,971 |
| Jira | 4.4 | 7,600 |
| ClickUp | 4.3 | 19,403 |
| Basecamp | 4.2 | 19,843 |
| Wrike | 4.2 | 7,392 |
Eight tools, half a point of spread, and sample sizes running from 3,451 to 51,834. On a table like this, ranking by score is close to meaningless: the difference between 4.5 and 4.4 across tens of thousands of reviews is not a difference you will feel.
Asana's 4.5 across 51,834 reviews is the single best-evidenced software rating we have ever published. It is built from 13,265 reviews on G2, 12,000 on Capterra and 26,569 on SourceForge, and all three land between 4.4 and 4.5. When three independent platforms agree that precisely, the number is real.
ClickUp is the opposite case, and it is the most instructive row here. Its 4.3 is made of 4.6 on G2 across 13,785 reviews, 4.6 on Capterra across 4,618, and 3.3 on Trustpilot across 287. Two platforms with eighteen thousand reviews say excellent; one platform with under three hundred says mediocre, and it pulls the aggregate down three tenths.
That is not a flaw in the aggregate, it is the aggregate doing its job. Trustpilot is where people go to complain about billing, contracts and support, and G2 and Capterra are where people rate software they use. Both are true. If you are evaluating the product, read the 4.6. If you are about to sign an annual contract, read the 3.3.
What each free plan actually caps
Prices verified against Toolradar's pricing records, checked between 15 and 25 August 2026.
| Tool | Free plan | First paid tier | Price checked |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trello | Free | Standard, $5/user/month | 20 Aug 2026 |
| Clockify | Free | Basic, $3.99/user/month | 17 Aug 2026 |
| Todoist | Beginner, free | Pro, $5/month billed yearly | 20 Aug 2026 |
| ClickUp | Free Forever | Unlimited, $7/user/month | 19 Aug 2026 |
| Teamwork | Free Forever | Starter, $8.99/user/month | 15 Aug 2026 |
| Jira | Free | Standard, $9.05/user/month | 23 Aug 2026 |
| Wrike | Free | Team, $9.80/user/month | 21 Aug 2026 |
| Asana | Personal, free | Starter, $10.99/user/month | 22 Aug 2026 |
| Basecamp | Free | Plus, $15/month | 16 Aug 2026 |
Two observations that a features table will not give you.
The paid entry tiers span $3.99 to $15, and every one of them except Basecamp's is per user. That distinction is the whole cost model. Ten people on Asana Starter is $109.90 a month. Ten people on Basecamp Plus is $15. For a team of thirty the gap is $329 against $15, and no comparison article that prints one price per row will show you that.
Every free plan here is genuinely free forever, not a trial. This is unusual and it is why the category is worth writing about. What varies is which dimension runs out first, and there are only three: people, projects, and features you did not know you needed.
Trello, the free plan most teams should start on
Trello's free plan gives you unlimited cards, unlimited members and ten boards per workspace, and it is the least compromised free tier in this article.
The reason is that Trello's model, a board with lists and cards, is complete at the free tier. You are not being given a hobbled version of a bigger product; you are being given the whole idea, with a cap on how many boards you can run.
Standard is $5 per user per month, checked 20 August 2026, the cheapest per-seat step here, and it mainly buys unlimited boards and advanced checklists.
4.5 across 36,971 reviews, with G2 at 4.4 and Capterra at 4.5. No disagreement between platforms, which is a good sign.
Where Trello runs out is dependencies. It has no real concept of one task blocking another, and no timeline view worth the name on the free plan. A project with a critical path is not a Trello project.
Asana, the best-evidenced product in the category
Asana's free Personal plan covers unlimited tasks and projects for up to 10 collaborators, which is the cap that matters and the one most teams hit.
What you get for free is a genuine project management tool: tasks, subtasks, assignees, due dates, list and board views, and a decent mobile app. What you do not get is timeline view, custom fields, rules, or reporting, and those four are exactly what an organisation notices the absence of six months in.
Starter is $10.99 per user per month, checked 22 August 2026, which is the second-highest entry price here.
The 51,834 reviews behind its 4.5 make this the safest choice in the article in the specific sense that it is the least likely to surprise you. Three platforms, tens of thousands of reviews, no disagreement.
ClickUp, the most features per free dollar
ClickUp's Free Forever plan is the most generous by feature count in this entire category: unlimited tasks, unlimited members, and access to most of the view types, with storage as the main limit.
That generosity is the product strategy and it is also the complaint. ClickUp does everything, which means the surface area is enormous, and the most common criticism in 18,000 positive reviews is that setting it up well takes real effort and setting it up badly is easy.
Unlimited is $7 per user per month, checked 19 August 2026.
On the rating split described above: use the 4.6 from G2 and Capterra when judging whether the software is good, and note the 3.3 from Trustpilot before committing to an annual plan.
Jira, when the work is software
Jira's free plan covers up to 10 users with unlimited projects, and it is the correct answer for exactly one situation: your team ships software and works in sprints.
Everything Jira does badly, the complexity, the configuration, the vocabulary, is the cost of the thing it does better than anything else here, which is issue tracking at scale with a workflow you control.
Standard is $9.05 per user per month, checked 23 August 2026.
4.4 across 7,600 reviews, and G2 alone accounts for 7,557 of them. A single-platform sample that large is reliable, and it is worth knowing that this score comes from one source rather than from agreement across three.
Wrike
Wrike's free plan is unlimited on users, which is rare, and thin on everything else: task management and file sharing, without the Gantt charts, workload views and reporting the product is actually known for.
Team is $9.80 per user per month, checked 21 August 2026.
Its 4.2 is the lowest score in this article alongside Basecamp, on 7,392 reviews split evenly between G2 at 4.2 and Capterra at 4.3. No platform disagreement, so this is a genuine consensus that Wrike is capable and less loved than its competitors.
Basecamp, the only one not priced per user
Basecamp's free plan covers one project with limited storage, and its paid plan is where the interesting thing is: Plus at $15 a month, flat, checked 16 August 2026, with Pro Unlimited at $299 a month for an entire organisation.
For a team of twenty, Basecamp Pro Unlimited at $299 is cheaper than Asana Starter at $219.80 becomes at the point you add a few more people, and dramatically cheaper than most tools at fifty. Flat pricing is a real differentiator and almost nobody else offers it.
4.2 across 19,843 reviews. Basecamp is opinionated software: it deliberately lacks the Gantt charts and dependency management the others have, on the theory that they encourage planning theatre. Teams either love that or leave.
Clockify and Todoist, the two that are not really this
Both score highest in the table and neither is a project management tool.
Clockify is time tracking with a free plan that is unlimited on users and projects, which is genuinely remarkable, at $3.99 for Basic, checked 17 August 2026. Its 4.7 across 9,198 reviews is the highest score here, and 9,000 of those reviews are on Capterra alone.
Todoist is a personal task manager, free for individuals, $5 a month for Pro, checked 20 August 2026, rated 4.6 across 3,451.
They rank at the top of this table for a reason worth naming: narrow tools rate higher than broad ones. A product that does one thing has fewer ways to disappoint you. This is the single most consistent pattern across every category we cover, and it means a rating comparison between a focused tool and a platform is not a fair fight.
The three caps, and which one will get you
Free project management plans end in one of three ways, and knowing which applies to you is worth more than any of the above.
The people cap. Asana and Jira stop at 10 users. This is the cleanest limit: you know exactly when you will hit it, and you hit it by succeeding. If your team is growing past ten, budget for it now rather than discovering it during onboarding.
The project cap. Trello's ten boards, Basecamp's one project. This one arrives unpredictably, because projects multiply faster than people, and it tends to hit mid-quarter when someone needs a board for something small.
The feature cap. ClickUp and Wrike let you in with almost everyone and hold back the thing you need in month four: reporting, dependencies, workload, automation. This is the most expensive cap because you discover it after the whole team has learned the tool, at which point moving is no longer a real option.
That last point is the practical advice for this whole article. Migration is the real cost, not the subscription. Moving thirty people and two years of task history between these tools takes a week of someone's life and loses the comment threads. Choose as though switching is expensive, because it is, and prefer the cap you can see coming.
Which to actually pick
A small team starting today: Trello free. It is complete, it costs nothing, and if you outgrow it, $5 a head is the cheapest upgrade in the category.
A team of ten or fewer that wants a real project tool: Asana free, with the 10-user cap on your calendar.
A team that will not fit the 10-user cap and wants everything: ClickUp Free Forever, and accept that setup is work.
Software with sprints: Jira free, and nothing else here is close.
A large team where per-seat pricing is the problem: Basecamp, and do the arithmetic on Pro Unlimited before dismissing $299.
And on the ratings: with 148,000 reviews on the table, the useful reading is not the ranking. It is that Asana's 4.5 holds steady across three platforms and 51,834 reviews, and that ClickUp's aggregate hides a 4.6 and a 3.3 that are both correct about different things.
Related: free task management apps, free CRM software and free CI/CD tools.
