ClickUp alternatives in 2026.
The two reasons teams leave ClickUp are the opposite of each other: too much product, or too much bill once the AI add-on lands on every seat. Both are fair. Here is the field, and the case for staying if you use what you are paying for.
We make Taskfolk, which is one of the tools on this list. We have tried to write the rest of it the way we would want a competitor to write about us: real prices, real weaknesses, and no pretending our own entry has none.
28 Jul 2026
The short answer
If density is the problem, Taskfolk, Linear, and Shortcut are deliberately smaller products that do tracking well and stop. If the AI add-on is the problem, Taskfolk includes AI credits on every plan including Free, and Monday bundles AI credits into its paid tiers. If you genuinely use whiteboards, docs, goals, and dashboards together, ClickUp's bundle is hard to beat on value and you should stay.
The alternatives worth considering.
1. Taskfolk
That's us- Best for
- Teams who want a calm tracker with AI included rather than sold as a per-seat add-on.
- Price
- $3 per builder / month, viewers free with no cap
- The catch
- No whiteboards, no goal trees, and far fewer views. If you use ClickUp's breadth, this is a downgrade.
2. Linear
- Best for
- Engineering teams who want the fastest, most opinionated tracker available.
- Price
- $10 per user / month (Basic), $16 (Business)
- The catch
- Every user is a paid seat, and it deliberately does far less than ClickUp.
3. Monday
- Best for
- Non-technical teams who want visual boards and approachable automation recipes.
- Price
- $9 (Basic), $12 (Standard), $19 (Pro) per seat / month
- The catch
- A 3-seat minimum, bucketed seats, and no automations on Basic.
4. Notion
- Best for
- Teams whose centre of gravity is docs and wiki, with light project tracking alongside.
- Price
- $10 per member / month (Plus), $20 (Business)
- The catch
- No native sprints, velocity, or burndown. You build and maintain the tracker yourself.
5. Asana
- Best for
- Organisations that need goals, portfolios, and workload planning across departments.
- Price
- $10.99 per user / month (Starter), $24.99 (Advanced)
- The catch
- Materially more expensive, with the useful tier at $24.99.
6. Trello
- Best for
- Teams who realised they wanted a shared board and nothing else.
- Price
- $5 per user / month (Standard), $10 (Premium)
- The catch
- Almost everything ClickUp bundles is a Power-Up, Premium tier, or absent.
Public list prices, standard team tier, as of July 2026. Check each vendor's pricing page for current numbers.
How to actually choose.
Add the AI line before you compare
ClickUp Brain is $9 per user per month on top of every paid seat, and it is billed on every member rather than on the people using AI. Five people on Unlimited plus Brain is $80 a month, not $35. Compare that number.
Count the views you have opened this month
ClickUp's value is its breadth. If your team uses three of fifteen views and has never opened a whiteboard, you are paying for surface area and carrying its complexity for nothing.
Check the MCP limits if agents matter
ClickUp's MCP server is capped at 50 calls a day on Free and 300 on paid plans unless you buy the AI add-on, which an active coding agent can burn through in a single session.
Common questions.
Is there a ClickUp alternative with AI included?
Taskfolk includes a monthly AI credit grant on every plan including Free, with no per-user AI subscription, and agents connected over MCP are not metered behind an add-on. Monday includes AI credits on paid plans, and Wrike includes AI Essentials on all plans.
What is the simplest ClickUp alternative?
Trello for a plain shared board, Linear or Taskfolk if you still need a real tracker but want a smaller surface. All three are deliberately narrower products, which is the point if density is what drove you away.
Is ClickUp's free plan the most generous?
On members and tasks, yes: unlimited both, which nothing else matches. The catches are roughly 100 MB of storage and 100-use caps on features like Gantt and custom fields that never reset. Taskfolk's Free plan trades unlimited tasks for no issue cap and five projects with every feature unlocked.
If the AI bill is the problem.
Taskfolk includes AI credits on every plan, Free included, and agents never occupy a paid seat. $3 a builder, viewers free, 14 days of Pro with no card.