How to Compare Project Management Pricing for a Small Team

A ten-person team is the size where project management pricing stops looking comparable.

Two of the three best-known tools cap their free plan at two seats, so ten people means paying. monday.com then quotes a per-seat rate against a seat count you choose in a selector, Asana quotes a flat per-user rate with no seat minimum printed, and Trello quotes per user with the currency code attached.

This note reads the three vendors' pricing pages on October 13, 2026, and works the annual bill for ten people on every paid tier.

Price all three at your own head count

monday.com's price card is tied to a seat selector. With the Work Management product and 10 seats selected on October 13, 2026, the page showed Basic at $9 per seat per month billed annually, Standard at $12 and Pro at $19.

Asana prints a flat rate instead. Starter is US$10.99 per user per month billed annually, or US$13.49 billed monthly, and Advanced is US$24.99 billed annually. The Starter card states no user seat limits, and the page shows no seat minimum.

Trello attaches the currency code to every figure: Standard at $5 USD per user per month billed annually, $6 monthly; Premium at $10 USD annually, $12.50 monthly; Enterprise at $17.50 USD annually, stated as $210.00 per user per year.

Packaging first, rate second, is the same reading order that keeps a support bill predictable. The habit is worked through in how to read a help desk pricing page.

Work the annual bill at ten people

Editorial calculation from the list prices above, ten paying users, annual billing, no add-ons:

• Trello Standard: 10 x $5 USD x 12 = $600 a year
• monday.com Basic: $90 a month, the total the page printed for 10 seats, so $1,080 a year
• Trello Premium: 10 x $10 USD x 12 = $1,200 a year
• Asana Starter: 10 x US$10.99 x 12 = US$1,318.80 a year
• monday.com Standard: $120 a month for 10 seats, so $1,440 a year
• Trello Enterprise: 10 x $210.00 USD = $2,100 a year
• monday.com Pro: $190 a month for 10 seats, so $2,280 a year
• Asana Advanced: 10 x US$24.99 x 12 = US$2,998.80 a year

The cheapest and dearest entries differ by five times for the same head count. Most of that gap is tier, not vendor.

Compare entry tier to entry tier instead. For ten people the three cheapest paid options are Trello Standard at $600, monday.com Basic at $1,080 and Asana Starter at US$1,318.80, as of October 13, 2026.

monday.com's price card shows the credit charge

monday.com's price card shows its own arithmetic, and AI credits are a line inside it. The Standard card at 10 seats read: $12 x 10 seats = $120, 2,000 credits = $20, special monthly discount = -$20, total = $120 per month billed annually.

The same card showed $140 struck through beside that $120 total. Read in order, the $140 is the seat charge plus the credit charge, and the current discount removes the credit charge.

Basic showed 1,000 credits at $10 with a matching -$10 discount. Pro showed 3,000 credits at $30 with a -$30 discount. The page labels this a special offer, not a permanent inclusion.

That distinction matters at renewal, and it scales with head count. If the offer lapses, the printed credit price is what a ten-seat Standard account would add: $20 a month, or $240 a year by editorial calculation.

Usage line items hide the same way an unused seat does, as what per-agent pricing means when agents are part-time sets out.

monday.com's page also carries a rounding note of its own: the actual price per seat is one figure and the listed price is rounded up to the nearest whole number. Confirm the per-seat amount at checkout.

Asana prices AI by the request, not the seat

Asana's AI pricing is not a seat uplift. The pricing page states prepaid usage packs at $0.50 per request, valid for the full billing cycle, and pay-as-you-go billing at $0.60 per request, billed monthly in arrears.

A per-request price is easier to forecast than a credit pool once a team knows its volume. One thousand requests a month costs $500 prepaid or $600 on demand, by editorial calculation from those two rates.

It is harder to forecast before launch, which is the argument for starting on prepaid packs and watching the first full month. Anything billed by usage rather than head count needs that check, as what unlimited calling really means in business phone plans shows.

At ten people only one free tier still fits

Two of the three free tiers are unusable at this size. Asana Personal states 2 users, unlimited tasks and projects, and unlimited storage with a 100MB per-file cap. monday.com Free states up to 2 seats, 3 boards, 3 docs and 8 column types.

Trello Free is the outlier: up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, up to 10 boards per Workspace and 250 Workspace command runs a month. For a ten-person team that only needs boards, that is a genuine zero-cost option.

The 250 command runs a month is the ceiling to watch, because automation is what teams reach for once the boards fill up.

A free tier that fits the whole team is worth more than any annual discount. That is also the lesson in how to compare password manager pricing for a small team, where a flat pack beats per-seat rates only when it is full.

The annual saving is measured against the vendor

All three pages advertise an annual saving, and all three measure it against their own monthly rate. monday.com's selector read Yearly, save 18 percent. Asana's read save up to 18 percent. Trello prints both rates side by side instead.

Trello's pair is the clearest to check: $5 annually against $6 monthly is 16.7 percent off, by editorial calculation. Asana's pair, US$10.99 against US$13.49, works out at 18.5 percent.

A discount quoted against a vendor's own monthly price says nothing about whether the annual commitment is good value. It only says monthly billing costs more at that vendor. The same wording trap appears in how to read a help desk pricing page.

Bottom line

For a ten-person team the published annual list prices run from $600 on Trello Standard to US$2,998.80 on Asana Advanced, as of October 13, 2026. Trello Free covers ten collaborators at no cost if boards and 250 monthly command runs are enough.

Read the seat selector before the rate on monday.com, read the AI line items on both monday.com and Asana, and confirm the per-seat figure at checkout where the page says it rounds up.

Then compare entry tier to entry tier rather than headline to headline. That is the same discipline described in how to read a help desk pricing page, and it is what stops a quote and an invoice from disagreeing.

Frequently asked questions

How much does monday.com cost for 10 people?

At 10 seats on the Work Management product the page printed Basic at $9 per seat per month billed annually with a $90 monthly total, Standard at $12 with $120 and Pro at $19 with $190. That is $1,080, $1,440 and $2,280 a year, as of October 13, 2026.

Is Asana cheaper than monday.com for a small team?

Not at the entry tier. Asana Starter is US$10.99 per user per month billed annually, against monday.com Basic at $9 per seat. For ten people that is US$1,318.80 against $1,080 a year, by editorial calculation from the October 13, 2026 pages.

Does Trello have a usable free plan for a team?

Trello Free states up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, up to 10 boards per Workspace and 250 Workspace command runs a month. Asana Personal and monday.com Free both cap at 2 users, so Trello is the only one of the three whose free tier fits a ten-person team.

What do monday.com AI credits cost?

The price card lists credits as a separate line: 1,000 credits at $10 on Basic, 2,000 at $20 on Standard and 3,000 at $30 on Pro, each currently offset by a special monthly discount of the same amount. Those prices are what remains if the offer ends.

How much does Asana AI cost on top of a seat?

Asana's pricing page states two options for additional AI requests: prepaid usage packs at $0.50 per request, valid for the full billing cycle, and pay-as-you-go at $0.60 per request billed monthly in arrears, as of October 13, 2026.

Is annual billing worth it for project management software?

The discount is real but small and measured against the vendor's own monthly rate. Trello's $5 annual against $6 monthly is 16.7 percent, Asana's US$10.99 against US$13.49 is 18.5 percent. Both lock a year, so the question is head count stability, not the percentage.