Best Free Project Management Software of 2023: Best Picks

Free Project Management Software

Project management software helps teams manage tasks and each other to complete projects seamlessly, but there are so many tools to choose from, which do you pick?

It's always a great idea to look around and try free project management software that offers either a free trial or a free downgraded experience of their application. This is so you can choose the right software for you and your team before spending any money.

The Best Free Project Management Software Summarised

Here's our list of five free project management software available for users to try:

  • ClickUp - A popular one for small teams and even solo user project management.
  • Taskade - For a project management experience with AI assistance.
  • monday.com - Well-known with plenty of flexible views for managing projects.
  • Asana - A classic project management tool for automations & workflows.
  • Wrike - Popular with marketing and sales teams, another classic of the field.

Please note, nearly all applications will want you to upgrade and will never truly be free in terms of accessing all features and upgrades. The five chosen in this list offer free trials, packages and limited experiences with their free versions. Let's take a look at our options.

Best Free Project Management Software For All-In-One Experience

ClickUp is an all-in-one project management software with new AI support along with a clean and intuitive interface both teams and individuals can use to manage tasks.

You can find almost everything you need for managing tasks, projects and your team including timelines, goal tracking, and a place to chat, write documents and collaborate. ClickUp offers a free version for single users, meaning you cannot access features which are great for teams and managing larger projects, however, this might be enough for you.

ClickUp for beginners Spaces feature.

Limitations of ClickUp's Free Version

ClickUp offers a range of packages starting with Free Forever for individual use, an unlimited package for small teams, all the way up to a larger enterprise package.

  • Only 100MB of storage instead of the unlimited storage available with upgrades.
  • No AI support for writing and project briefs, only available with other packages.
  • Does not provide unlimited integrations.
  • Cannot use the 20+ range of views and layouts available.
  • No use for teams or guest permissions, only for personal use.
  • No advanced features for teams like automation, mind maps and time tracking.

Price to Upgrade ClickUp: From $10 - $29 per month.

Best Free Project Management Software With AI Assist

Taskade is an AI-powered project management software application that uses artificial intelligence to speed up processes, automate actions, and overall assist team projects.

You can use AI in Taskade to create lists, expand ideas, translate text, summarise text and much more, AI is becoming more popular and Taskade does make it seem easy to use. With Taskade you can create custom workflows for your team using different views and interfaces such as flow charts, calendar integrations, boards and lists to manage progress.

Limitations of Taskade's Free Version

Taskade offers you a wide range of pricing plans depending on what you need to use the project management software for, this is helpful for finding something affordable.

You can create a plan for personal and family use, these are the cheaper options, or for team and business use. You can only use the free plan for personal and family use.

  • Limited AI credits per month, you get 1000 AI credits to use rather than unlimited.
  • Only one workspace you can use, compared to unlimited workspaces.
  • Can only add up to 3 users in the free plan, the plus plan offers 5.
  • Only 250MB of storage in the free plan, plus plan offers 5GB.
  • The free plan gives you 7 days of project history compared to months with other plans.

Price to upgrade Taskade: From $3 - $75 per month.

Best Free Project Management Software For Centralised Workspace

You have probably heard of Monday.com before, it's a well-known project management software that's great for teams, customer services and overall managing people and tasks.

Monday.com provides a centralised place for teams and individuals to access dashboards, collaborate, see work processes and goals, notifications, track time and much more.

You can choose from different tailored Monday.com products depending on the type of business and team you have, for example, CRM teams and product development teams.

Managing Dashboards in monday.com, Project Management Tools

Limitations of Monday.com's Free Version

Monday.com does offer free trials for most of the pricing plans which is great, you can really test out the features to make sure it's what you want to use before paying.

You can also see a full detailed list of price comparisons on their website. However, here are the limitations when it comes to using the free forever version of Monday.com.

  • Can only add up to two team members.
  • Only 1000 items (tasks etc) compared to unlimited.
  • 500MB of storage, you can have up to 1000GB of storage.
  • Only one week of activity log compared to up to five years.
  • No unlimited boards or column types.
  • No unlimited free viewers who can have read-only access.
  • There isn't a Zoom integration for meetings or other integrations.

Price to upgrade Monday.com: From $6 - $18 per month.

Best Free Project Management Software For Automations

Asana is a project management software for cross-functional work, perfect for teams looking for flexible project management software for customised workflows and views.

Great for marketing, product development, IT and sales teams, Asana provides a place for automation, integrations and multiple views to track progress and manage projects.

Asana offers three types of pricing plans, free forever, premium and business. You can try the Asana free version, but you will most likely need to upgrade for automation and more.

Tables Asana, Tasks, Due Dates, Product Launches, App

Limitations of Asana's Free Version

You can choose from three types of plans or start with the free forever version. With the free version of Asana, you can get unlimited projects, activity logs and file storage.

However, you lack a lot of Asana's well-known features using the free version such as automation, collaboration, views, project tracking, progress management and more.

  • No task dependencies for managing team members.
  • No start dates or times for tracking task progress.
  • Cannot use any templates, forms or workflow builder.
  • No custom rules for automation and speeding up processes.
  • No integration actions and automation.
  • You haven't got access to unlimited dashboards, progress views or goals.

Price to upgrade Asana: From $10 - $30 per month.

Free Project Management Software For Multiple Views

Wrike is another all-in-one project management platform for streamlining workflows, perfect for teams to manage job roles, progress, and tasks and automate actions.

Wrike gives you a 360-degree view of the entire project, team and workflow here you can see real-time updates on dashboards, who's doing what and how it's going.

Use all kinds of automation with Wrike such as request forms and blueprints to help team members get started and projects to continue moving along seamlessly.

Limitations of Wrike's Free Version

Wrike offers four different pricing plans to choose from, all of which come with a free trial. However you can just use their free version of Wrike to test the waters, or for personal use.

Take note that whilst Wrike's free version offers a lot of experiences, it doesn't provide most of its automation, collaborations, workflows and more. Here are just a few limitations.

  • No branded workspace for teams.
  • Only 2GB of storage per account, not users.
  • No personal work schedules for own personal management.
  • Cannot use custom fields or workflows.
  • No real-time reports, calendars, or dynamic Gantt chart views.
  • Cannot use automation including the request forms and blueprints.
  • No time tracking management or resource assignment.

Price to upgrade Wrike: From $8 - $25 per month.

Are Free Project Management Software Really Free?

Project management software can offer free trials and free versions of their applications however you will never get the full experience of project management with this.

It's much better to do the free trial of an upgraded pricing plan to test and see if that project management software works for you, rather than struggling with a free version.

This is because most project management software won't offer the experiences of automation, custom workflow builders, real-time tracking and more with the free version.

So, if you are thinking about using a new application for tracking projects and managing your team, have a shop around, compare prices and see which app works for your case.

Because let's be fair there's no such thing as a free project management application in today's world of high technology software and productivity tools with AI inside of them.

When choosing a project management software keep in mind your desired price to upgrade in case you decide you like the free version, the size of your team and also your project priorities; this could be products, customer relations, design, speed and so on.