The Best ClickUp Alternatives for 2026
ClickUp is a strong project-management tool, and that is where it starts and stops. Its CRM and HR are templates on generic lists, invoicing exists only as a downloadable template, and its AI is a separate seat tier on top of the seat you already pay for. Here are the alternatives worth a look, starting with the one that keeps your projects and adds a real CRM and back office.
Quick answer
If project management is the whole job, ClickUp is strong and cheap, and its Free Forever plan carries unlimited tasks. If you also need a CRM, invoicing, expenses and HR, Growee is the stronger pick: projects, leave, timesheets and a CRM up to 100 leads are free for up to 3 people, invoicing and expenses arrive at €2 per person per month, and an unlimited-lead CRM is €49 a month flat on top. ClickUp charges for AI by the seat, $9 to $28 per user per month billed yearly (as of August 2026); Growee runs AI on pooled credit packs from €10.
4 ClickUp alternatives worth a look in 2026
Ranked for small and mid-size businesses weighing total cost against what you actually get out of the box.
Growee
Best all-in-oneProjects with a real CRM, invoicing and HR beside them.
- Best for
- Small businesses that want tasks, clients and team in one tool instead of a template kit.
- Pricing
- Free up to 3 people, then €2/person/month; CRM free to 100 leads, then €49/month
- A purpose-built CRM with leads, a visual pipeline and client records — free up to 100 leads, campaigns on the €49/month CRM plan
- Invoicing and expense tracking as real modules in the €2 plan, not downloadable templates
- HR: employees, leave planning, timesheets, onboarding templates, goals and evaluations
- Projects, teams and time tracking on every plan, including the free one
- A native MCP server, so Claude or ChatGPT can act on your data in plain language
ClickUp
A deep project-management platform for teams that live in tasks.
- Best for
- Teams whose primary need is project management, with automation depth to match.
- Pricing
- Free Forever; Unlimited $7 and Business $12 per user/month billed yearly ($10 and $19 monthly); Enterprise is quote-only (as of August 2026)
- Genuinely strong project management, and its pricing page puts "25+ products" on every plan
- Automation scales hard: 100 executions a month on Free, 1,000 on Unlimited, 5,000 on Business, 250,000 on Enterprise
- A native MCP server at mcp.clickup.com with published setup docs — credit where it is due
- AI is a separate seat tier: Brain AI $9 or Everything AI $28 per user/month billed yearly, plus AI Super Credits at $0.001 each once the seat allowance runs out
- CRM, HR, invoicing and expenses are List templates on custom fields, not dedicated modules
Pipedrive
A sales-first CRM with a clean, visual deal pipeline.
- Best for
- Sales teams that want a focused, pipeline-centric CRM and nothing more.
- Pricing
- Paid tiers per seat/month, billed annually — check pipedrive.com for current pricing
- Strong visual pipeline and deal management
- Invoicing only via a connected third-party app
- No native HR, and project management is limited
Zoho
A broad app ecosystem with separate CRM, projects, HR and billing tools.
- Best for
- Teams already committed to the wider Zoho suite who want deep customization.
- Pricing
- Paid tiers per user/month — check zoho.com for current pricing
- CRM, Projects, People (HR) and Books (billing) are distinct products
- Getting the full stack means several subscriptions and admin overhead
ClickUp figures come from clickup.com/pricing (as of August 2026): $7 Unlimited and $12 Business are per user per month billed yearly, $10 and $19 billed monthly, and Enterprise carries no published price. Brain AI ($9) and Everything AI ($28) are separate per-user AI tiers, also billed yearly. Pipedrive and Zoho figures were not re-verified for this page, so no prices are stated for them. Growee pricing reflects our live plans.
Growee vs ClickUp
ClickUp wins on project-management depth. The difference is everything a project tool leaves to a template.
ClickUp rows checked against clickup.com/pricing, clickup.com/teams/crm, clickup.com/teams/human-resources and its invoice List template (as of August 2026); the MCP server is documented on developer.clickup.com. The AI seat rates in the table are ClickUp's yearly-billing prices. Two rows, the marketing-campaign gap and the absence of a native holiday and leave module, were last checked as of July 2026. Growee figures reflect our live plans: the CRM is free up to 100 leads, then €49 a month flat, and invoicing and expenses sit in the €2 plan.
Why teams switch to Growee
A CRM that is a product, not a template
ClickUp's CRM is a use case you build from generic Lists, Custom Fields and Views. Its own CRM page makes the point for us: asked how it compares with specialist CRM tools, it grants that those tools have "strong customer management features" and positions itself as a broader category instead (as of August 2026). Growee ships the CRM data model itself: leads, a visual deal pipeline, client and contact records and an inbox, free up to 100 leads, with campaigns and email sending on the €49-a-month CRM plan. See what the CRM covers.
Invoicing and expenses ClickUp only ships as templates
ClickUp's invoicing is a downloadable List template: custom statuses, eight custom fields such as Amount and Payment Type, six views (as of August 2026). Nothing generates, sends, chases or reconciles a payment. Growee has invoicing and a real expense tracker in its €2 plan, next to the client records your pipeline already uses, with e-Factura for Romanian teams and project budgets on the same bill.
HR that goes past hiring and onboarding
ClickUp's HR page covers hiring, onboarding and employee development through templates, and mentions no payroll and no benefits administration anywhere on it (as of August 2026). Growee manages people the way it manages customers: employee profiles, holidays and leave planning, timesheets, onboarding templates, goals and evaluations, all in the plan rather than assembled from custom fields.
ClickUp alternative for small business
The same team of 10, three levels of need, both sides at published list prices.
Project management, and nothing else
$70/mo — Unlimited, billed yearly
Or $100/mo billed monthly. Free Forever covers unlimited tasks if 60MB of storage and 5 Spaces is enough for you.
€20/mo for 10 people
Projects, teams and time tracking sit in every plan. Above 3 people it is €2 per person.
Projects plus a real CRM
$120/mo — Business, billed yearly
Or $190/mo billed monthly, and the CRM is still a List template you assemble from custom fields.
€69/mo for 10 people
€20 for ten Pro seats plus the €49/month CRM add-on: unlimited leads and 500 email credits. Under 100 leads the CRM costs nothing.
Projects, CRM and AI
$400/mo — Business plus Everything AI
$12 + $28 per seat, both billed yearly, so $4,800 a year, before any AI Super Credits at $0.001 each.
€69/mo plus credits
The Ask AI assistant and AI employees come with the €2 plan, and their usage runs on pooled AI credit packs from €10 — not a charge per seat.
Where ClickUp is the better buy
If tasks are the whole job, ClickUp is hard to argue with. Free Forever carries unlimited tasks and unlimited free members at $0. Above it, Unlimited is $7 per user per month billed yearly for a platform its own pricing page calls "25+ products", and the automation ceiling climbs from 1,000 executions a month to 5,000 on Business and 250,000 on Enterprise, which its own pricing card labels "$750 in value". That is deeper workflow automation than a CRM usually ships with. If your team lives in tasks and you have no pipeline, invoice or leave problem to solve, buy ClickUp and ignore the rest of this page.
ClickUp figures are its published plan prices from clickup.com/pricing (as of August 2026), with the tier and billing cycle on each; yearly billing is the cheaper of the two and monthly rates are shown beside it. Dollar and euro amounts appear as each vendor publishes them, with no conversion, so read the columns as a comparison of shape. Growee's CRM is free up to 100 leads, then €49/month for unlimited leads and 500 email credits, and AI usage runs on credit packs from €10 — see the pricing page.
What Growee costs as you grow
€2 per person for the paid plan, plus a flat €49 a month if your CRM goes past 100 leads. No per-seat AI tier either way.
The middle column is the paid plan at €2 per person per month, or €20/person/year billed annually, which covers invoicing and expenses, project budgets, eSignature, REST API access and the Slack and Google Calendar integrations. The right column adds the €49/month CRM add-on; below 100 leads the CRM is free and that column is €0. Hiring, AI credits and the Knowledge Base are separate add-ons you pay for only if you use them.
Free ClickUp alternatives — what free actually covers
ClickUp's Free Forever plan is genuinely generous, and it is not a trial. The question is which wall you hit first, and what getting past it costs.
ClickUp Free Forever
What ClickUp's own pages say (as of August 2026)
- Unlimited tasks and unlimited Free Plan members at $0: the free tier does not cap seats.
- The caps are elsewhere: 60MB of total storage, 5 Spaces, 40 Lists per Space, 1 Form and 2 Teams.
- Automations are capped at 5 active rules and 100 executions a month.
- The Unlimited tier's 500 active rules and 1,000 automation executions — $7 per user per month billed yearly, $10 monthly.
- Brain AI and Everything AI — $9 and $28 per user per month billed yearly. The free AI tier is limited: try AI across chat, tasks and docs, with trial access to advanced features.
- Native invoicing, expenses and payroll, on any tier: invoicing and expenses are List templates, and its HR page mentions no payroll.
Growee free
Free for up to 3 people, no credit card
- Employees, leave tracking and planning, time tracking and timesheet approval.
- Projects and teams, documents and templates, client management, onboarding templates, goals and evaluations.
- CRM up to 100 leads, with 1,000 MCP requests.
- Knowledge Base up to 10 documents, and MCP access so Claude or ChatGPT can work with your data.
- Invoicing and expenses, project budgets, eSignature, REST API access and the Slack and Google Calendar integrations — €2 per person per month.
- A CRM past 100 leads — €49 a month flat for unlimited leads and 500 email credits.
- A fourth employee: the free plan stops at 3 people.
Neither free plan is a trick. They run out in different places. On ClickUp you hit storage, Spaces or automation runs, and the next step is $7 per user per month billed yearly, with AI priced separately again. On Growee you hit the fourth employee or the hundredth lead, and the next step is €2 per person per month, or the flat €49 CRM add-on.
Moving from ClickUp? Bring your data with you.
Export the ClickUp Lists holding your clients and deals to CSV, match your columns to Growee's leads template and import in files of up to 200 rows — company details ride along as fields on each lead, and employees come across through their own sheet import. Your team keeps working while the pipeline, invoices and HR come online, and your CRM reports export back out as CSV on the paid CRM add-on, with REST API access on the Pro plan for everything else.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best ClickUp alternative?
It depends on what you are replacing. If your core need is project management, ClickUp is genuinely strong and hard to beat on that alone. If you need a CRM, invoicing, expenses and HR beside your projects, Growee is the strongest alternative: projects, leave, timesheets and a CRM up to 100 leads are in the free plan for up to 3 people, invoicing and expenses arrive at €2 per person per month, and an unlimited-lead CRM is €49 a month flat on top. Pipedrive suits sales-only teams, and Zoho fits companies already inside its suite.
Is Growee cheaper than ClickUp?
For project management alone, ClickUp is cheap: $7 per user per month on Unlimited billed yearly, $12 on Business (as of August 2026, per clickup.com/pricing). Growee is €2 per person per month, so 10 people is €20. The gap opens on what sits outside the seat. ClickUp prices AI per seat at $9 or $28 per user billed yearly, so 10 people on Business with Everything AI is $400 a month, $4,800 a year. Growee's CRM is free up to 100 leads and €49 a month flat above it, so the same 10 people with an unlimited-lead CRM is €20 + €49 = €69 a month, with AI usage on credit packs from €10 rather than per seat.
What is the best free ClickUp alternative?
Growee's free plan is the closest like-for-like if you need more than tasks: free for up to 3 people with no card, covering employees, leave, time tracking and timesheet approval, projects and teams, documents, client management, onboarding templates, goals and evaluations, a CRM up to 100 leads and MCP access for AI assistants. Invoicing and expenses sit in the €2 plan. ClickUp's own Free Forever plan is worth saying out loud too: unlimited tasks and unlimited free members at $0, capped at 60MB of storage, 5 Spaces and 100 automation executions a month (as of August 2026).
Does ClickUp have a real CRM, invoicing and HR?
Not as dedicated modules. ClickUp markets CRM and HR use cases, but both are built from generic Lists and Custom Fields, with no deal-pipeline object, no payroll and no benefits administration on its HR page. Invoicing exists as a downloadable List template with eight custom fields, not a billing engine (as of August 2026, per clickup.com/teams/crm, clickup.com/teams/human-resources and clickup.com/templates). Growee ships all three as real modules: the CRM free up to 100 leads and €49 a month flat above it, invoicing and expenses in the €2 plan.
How much does ClickUp cost per user?
Free Forever is $0. Unlimited is $7 per user per month billed yearly and $10 billed monthly; Business is $12 yearly and $19 monthly; Enterprise carries no published price and is quote-only (as of August 2026, per clickup.com/pricing). AI is priced on top in three layers: a Brain AI seat at $9 or an Everything AI seat at $28, both yearly-billing rates that monthly billing raises, and AI Super Credits at $0.001 each for usage past the plan allowance. To be fair to ClickUp, its pricing page discloses no onboarding or implementation fee, which is not true of every CRM in this bracket.
Does Growee do project management like ClickUp?
Growee has projects, teams and time tracking on every plan, and they connect to the same clients, invoices and people the rest of the platform uses. ClickUp has the deeper, more configurable project surface, and its automation ceiling is far higher: 1,000 executions a month on Unlimited, 5,000 on Business, 250,000 on Enterprise (as of August 2026). If project-management depth is your top priority, ClickUp wins it. If you want projects living beside a CRM and a back office, Growee is the better fit.
Can AI assistants connect to Growee like they can to ClickUp?
Yes, and both sides are real here. ClickUp runs a native MCP server at mcp.clickup.com with published setup docs for Claude and other assistants (as of August 2026, per developer.clickup.com). Growee ships one too, and it is part of the plan: the free plan includes MCP access, and the CRM add-on carries 1,000 MCP requests. The difference is how the AI features around it are billed. ClickUp sells AI as a seat tier at $9 to $28 per user billed yearly; Growee's Ask AI assistant and AI employees come with the €2 plan and draw on pooled credit packs from €10.
Keep the projects. Add the rest.
Keep your projects. Put a real CRM, invoicing, expenses and HR beside them, in one tool your team and your AI assistants can both use. Start free in minutes.
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