Everyone has a different way of managing projects. Some people like to use their inbox to keep track of tasks. Others prefer to visualize work on a Kanban board or in a calendar view, while some even prefer the old pen and paper system.
That's fine on an individual level, but when you collaborate on projects as a team, you need a flexible and capable project management tool that works for everyone. And with so many teams still working remotely, there's an even more pressing need for a task management app that can help track projects, collaborate, and keep everyone in the loop.
As a freelance writer, I've worked inside tons of different project management setups across my clients—I've seen how each app approaches the standard features, the potential of great, streamlined collaboration, and the consequences of poor project management.
The good news: free project management software can give you the flexibility you need to manage tasks, communicate with stakeholders, and maintain project visibility—without paying a cent. I've been updating this list for several years. This year, I considered more than 65 free project management tools, and after extensive testing, I've settled on my top eight picks.
The 8 best free project management tools
Trello for visually managing projects
Asana for teams
ClickUp for customized task views
Wrike for spreadsheet-like features
ActiveCollab for freelancers and small agency teams
Airtable for building a customized project management app
Jira for developers
Height for AI features
What makes the best free project management tool?
How we evaluate and test apps
Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.
To narrow down the list of the best free project management online tools, I looked for apps that met the following criteria:
Free for unlimited projects. All the project tracking software I chose lets you manage an unlimited number of projects for free.
Hosted. There are a lot of great, free, self-hosted project management applications, but they take longer to set up and manage. I was looking at task management software that's hosted by the companies that provide the tools. If you're interested in free, self-hosted project management software, I'd recommend checking out Taiga, Lavagna, and Redmine.
Collaboration and sharing features. The free project management apps included here make it quick and easy to add team members to your project management setup and control user types and permissions.
Flexibility. The best project managers are flexible enough to handle multiple teams, project types, and organization styles, so I looked for apps that support a number of different views and project management methodologies.
Integrations. A great project tracker should fit seamlessly into the rest of your stack, so I've only included apps that integrate with other popular software like email and Slack, calendars, document storage, and more.
After filtering for those criteria, I ran each remaining contender through a similar testing protocol that included:
Going through the signup process and any onboarding provided
Creating a new project and choosing a primary methodology (Kanban, Scrum, Gantt, etc.) or view (list, table, calendar, etc.) for it
Creating a number of new tasks and adding various details, like due dates, links and attachments, user assignments, and more
Toggling between view options and testing out any additional methodologies offered
Inviting new users and setting permissions
Toggling between team-wide and individual views
Testing out any unique features like time tracking, client views, or AI
After running each app through that workflow, I landed on the top eight free online project manager tools you see below.
Note: I selected tools that offer web apps (though many offer synchronized web, mobile, and desktop apps). If it's not important to you that your project planner is accessible online, you may also want to consider ProjectLibre and GanttProject in addition to the apps listed below. Both of these tools are powerful desktop-only apps that are designed to be alternatives to Microsoft Project.
Need more features and have a bit more flexibility in your budget? Check out our recommendations for the best project management software for small business.
The best free project management software at a glance
Best for | Standout feature | Free plan | |
---|---|---|---|
Visually managing projects | Customizable Kanban boards with unlimited Power-Ups | Unlimited cards and members | |
Teams | Flexible project management methodologies | Unlimited projects and tasks and up to 15 users | |
Customized task views | 11 different task views and 4 page views | Unlimited tasks and users | |
Spreadsheet-like features | Best-in-class project tracking | Unlimited projects and users | |
Freelancers and small agency teams | Built-in time tracking, billing, and expenses | Unlimited projects and tasks and up to 3 members | |
Building a customized app | The most customizable app with lots of templates | Unlimited bases at 1,000 records per base and up to 5 users | |
Agile software development teams | Purpose-built for developers and engineers | Unlimited projects on 1 site and up to 10 users | |
AI features | Use AI to create subtasks, suggest task improvements, auto-detect duplicate tasks, and more | Unlimited tasks and users |
Best free project management software for visually managing projects
Trello (Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android)
Trello pros:
Super customizable boards with unlimited Power-Ups
Most visual UI of any of the apps I tested
Tons of templates to get you started
Trello cons:
Free users are limited to Kanban
User/team management features require an upgrade
Trello is simple project management software that gives you a way to organize your projects with Kanban boards. And with a generous free plan that allows for 10 boards per workspace and unlimited users, it's a tool that anyone can use. Freelancers can use Trello to plan their assignments on a personal board, and teams can use Trello to build a complete project workflow with visibility at every stage.
Start by creating a new board from scratch or choosing a template from dozens of options across marketing, sales, design, team management, and more. Add a handful of lists for your tasks (each list is a column), and customize those lists with the steps in your workflow (e.g., to-do, doing, and done) or as separate parts of your project (e.g., development, design, and distribution). Next, add your tasks as visual cards in each column—with labels, due dates, members, checklists, images, attachments, and comments to keep everything in one place.
As you start completing tasks, simply drag the cards to the appropriate list. You can keep track of all comments and tasks that mention you—or that you're watching—from the activity menu.
For more features, Trello's Power-Up options (now unlimited even on the free plan) let you view tasks on a calendar, add voting options on tasks, fade away old tasks automatically, and much more. And you can make Trello boards for everything—personal and work tasks alike—to get your work done in a way that best fits your needs.
For even more flexibility, use Trello's Zapier integrations to connect Trello with your favorite apps, like Gmail and Slack. Or check out these 6 ways to automate Trello.
Create new Trello cards from new Google Calendar events
Trello price: The free plan includes unlimited cards and members, 10 boards per workspace, unlimited Power-Ups, and 250 automated commands each month; upgrade for $5/user/month (billed annually) to the Standard plan that includes unlimited boards, custom fields, advanced checklists, up to 1,000 automated commands per month, and more.
Want to use Trello as a team? Learn how Trello uses Trello for its own project management needs. Want to use it as a personal to-do list? Here's how to use Trello for GTD.
Best free project management software for teams
Asana (Web, iOS, Android)
Asana pros:
Flexible with project management methodologies between projects and users
Great, focused My Tasks view
To-do list style made better with team features
Asana cons:
Expensive upgrade
Your to-do list isn't bad—you just need a few more features to manage your team projects. Asana offers just that. It's a project management tool that lets you break projects down into sections and sub-lists, along with dashboards to see how much of the project has been completed already. You'll add, rearrange, and complete tasks the same way you would in a to-do list app, but with the collaboration and organization features you need to work as a team.
For your personal tasks—or the things at work that don't fit into a precise project—you can make extra lists in Asana that are only shared with specific people. Your own assigned tasks will also show up in your My Tasks view for a quick way to see the things you need to take care of.
Whether you're working solo or with a team, you can automate Asana with Asana's Zapier integrations, letting you connect project information to other apps. Try one of the workflows below, or get inspiration from these automations from real users.
Create new Asana tasks from new Google Calendar events
Asana price: The free Basic plan includes unlimited projects, tasks, and storage; up to 15 users; and list, board, and calendar views. Upgrade for $10.99/user/month (billed annually) to the Premium plan that adds Gantt and timeline views, extensive reports, and Asana's "coming soon" AI feature.
Learn more about how to use Asana for GTD and how to take advantage of Asana's hidden features. Or see how ClickUp and Asana stack up in our comparison of ClickUp vs. Asana.
Best free project management software for customized task views
ClickUp (Web, iOS, Android)
ClickUp pros:
11 different task views and 4 page views to choose from
Super generous free plan
ClickUp cons:
More involved set-up process
Potential for some lag during testing
Most project management apps let you choose from only a handful of task views, like a list, calendar, or Kanban view. Additional views, especially Gantt charts, are usually a premium feature. ClickUp is different.
It's a simple and free project management app that lets you choose from 11 different task views, including Gantt charts and mind maps. There are also four different page views: Chat (which displays conversations alongside your tasks), Doc (which lets you create docs, wikis, and knowledge bases), and Embed (to add apps and websites next to your tasks).
ClickUp's dashboards are just as customizable, letting you choose from more than 20 different widgets, so you can only highlight the most important project information. Plus, with a newly revamped task details screen, you can view details, create subtasks, and add attachments more easily than you could before—you can even track time right inside the task.
There's a lot to parse when you're first getting started with ClickUp. The onboarding process won't be as simple as Trello, for example, but the extra customization is worth it—especially when it's completely free. Plus, the company has done a great job with guided in-app onboarding to get you started.
With ClickUp's Zapier integrations, you can connect ClickUp with your favorite apps. Try one of the automations below, or read about why ClickUp users love Zapier.
Create Google Calendar events from new ClickUp tasks
Add starred Gmail emails as tasks in ClickUp [Business Gmail Accounts Only]
ClickUp price: The free plan includes unlimited tasks and users, up to 100MB of storage, and up to 60 uses of Gantt charts, mind maps, dashboards, and timeline views. Upgrade to the Unlimited plan for $7/user/month for unlimited list, board, calendar, and Gantt views, unlimited dashboards, and guests and permissions.
Tip: If you're a HubSpot user, you can create new tickets from ClickUp, and then use contact or customer information to launch personalized marketing campaigns.
Best free project management software for spreadsheet-like features
Wrike (Web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)
Wrike pros:
Spreadsheet-esque UI
Best-in-class project tracking features
Wrike cons:
More limited free plan than most
Less customizable
If it were up to you, would you manage your projects in a spreadsheet? If so, you might like Wrike. Wrike offers the same flexibility of a spreadsheet—with columns for every bit of info you want to track about tasks. (If you like spreadsheets but need even more customization, head down to our review of Airtable.)
Wrike lets your team update the status of tasks at various intervals—in-progress, on hold, canceled, or completed. Additionally, you can set the status of projects to green, yellow, red, on hold, or canceled, making it easy to create your weekly project status reports.
While you can do a lot with Wrike's free plan, its best features—including time tracking, Gantt charts, and custom dashboards—do require a premium plan. If you're running a small operation now but planning to scale in the future, Wrike grows alongside you, giving you all of the tools you need to run both a single small project and many concurrent large ones.
If you're interested in the free plan, Wrike's Zapier integrations can help you do more with the project management app, like automatically creating tasks in Wrike from other tools.
Wrike price: The free plan includes unlimited projects for unlimited users; upgrade for $9.80/user/month (billed annually) to the Team plan that includes Gantt charts, shareable dashboards, and more.
Read more: Wrike vs. Asana
Best free project management software for freelancers and small agency teams
ActiveCollab (Web, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android)
ActiveCollab pros:
Built-in features for time tracking, billing, and expenses
Capable user permissions
ActiveCollab cons:
Less flexible for use cases beyond client management
Free plan and Plus plans limited to 3 users
If you're looking to manage client projects and other details like invoicing and time tracking in one place, ActiveCollab is a great option.
Built for agencies and freelancers, the app includes thoughtful details to streamline client management. You can estimate and track time for each task, set the task as billable (or not), and manage expenses right from the task details screen.
Even the free plan includes capable user permissions that make it easy to let clients into your process without exposing anything you don't want to. Simply check the Hidden from clients box to hide any task from client users, or add the Client+ add-on to enable a more collaborative user role for more hands-on clients. Select Workload from the left-hand menu to manage assignments and team bandwidth, and click on Reports to get a pulse on client invoices and payments, projects and tasks across the team, and track time and expenses.
With ActiveCollab, you can quickly create and send professional-looking estimates and invoices and integrate with your payment processing or accounting software to streamline billing. You can also connect ActiveCollab with Zapier to automate task creation, notifications and updates, and more.
Create tasks in Active Collab from new labeled Gmail emails [Business Gmail Accounts Only]
ActiveCollab price: The free plan includes unlimited projects and tasks for up to 3 members, with task dependencies, and list and Kanban views. Upgrade to the Plus plan for $9.50/month (for 3 members) to add Gantt and calendar views, project templates and recurring tasks, and more.
While ActiveCollab has a more generous free plan, Paymo is another great option built for managing a client-centric workflow. I didn't include it here because the free plan is limited to one user and three clients. But if you have a smaller operation, Paymo is a user-friendly alternative with strong client and billing management features, including unlimited time tracking and invoices.
Best free project management software for building a customized app
Airtable (Web, iOS, Android)
Airtable pros:
The most customizable app on this list
Lots of templates to help with initial setup
Airtable cons:
More involved setup process
Less familiar interface than most
Most expensive upgrade on this list
If you've tried other project management software and haven't found the one, Airtable will let you build it. The app is ready out-of-the-box with a default view similar to a spreadsheet, and it suggests a handful of templated projects based on your team within the company. You can start from one of the suggested templates, browse the rest, or build your own project (called a "base") from scratch.
But the real power of Airtable happens when you customize it. It will take some upfront effort to tailor Airtable to be exactly what you need—but if you're willing to spend the time, the sky's the limit. You can customize everything from the methodology and view type to column headers, field types, data validation, and more.
Head over to the Marketplace to choose from over 80 apps that help you integrate, analyze, and enrich your projects, or build your own custom apps. Airtable also integrates with Zapier, so you can do things like automatically track important information in Airtable, get notifications for activity in your Airtable base, and more.
Create detailed events in Google Calendar from new Airtable records in views
Airtable price: The free plan includes unlimited bases, up to 5 users, 1,000 records per base, and 6 view options, including grid, calendar, and Kanban; upgrade for $20/user/month to the Team plan for 50,000 records per base, 20GB of attachments, Gantt and timeline view, and more.
Best free project management software for Agile software development teams
Jira (Web, iOS, Android)
Jira pros:
Purpose-built for developers and engineers
Prominent issue tracker
Over 1,000 integrations
Jira cons:
Limited free plan
Not flexible for use across diverse teams
While the app also offers a Kanban view, Jira is built for Scrum and Agile workflows. When you first sign up, the onboarding flow asks a few questions about your team's projects, level of experience with different methodologies, and deadlines—then it recommends a methodology and project template for you.
For Scrum projects, you'll add epics to the Roadmap page. Then you can add issues to your backlog individually, filling in details and assigning them to sprints. Project tracking happens on a Scrum board, the homepage for each project—you can customize column headers and edit task details and status.
Jira's catering to developers and engineering teams doesn't stop there: the app also integrates with other development tools like GitHub, GitLab, Sentry, and Jenkins to make quick work of updating and tracking your backlog. And while you can't control user access on the free plan, it does include up to 10 users, so it's ideal for self-contained or smaller dev teams.
You can get more out of the free plan by using Jira's Zapier integrations to automatically create new issues in Jira based on Slack messages or GitHub issues. Try these Zaps and check out more ways to automate Jira.
Create Jira Software Cloud issues from new messages posted to a Slack channel
Generate Jira Software issues from new GitHub issues
Jira price: The free plan includes unlimited projects on one site, up to 10 users, and both Scrum and Kanban boards; upgrade to the Standard plan for $7.75/user/month for more granular user permissions, 250 GB of file storage, and more.
See how Trello and Jira stack up in our app comparison, or take a look at Asana vs. Jira.
Best free AI project management software
Height (Web, Mac)
Height pros:
Generous free plan
Genuinely useful AI features
Height cons:
Less flexible Kanban view
Height is a great option if you're looking for genuinely useful AI features. While some of the apps I tested offer AI-powered features, most either require a paid plan or just aren't that intelligent. Height is different.
The app doesn't overpromise on AI, but it definitely delivers. The feature (called Copilot) is still in beta and likely to be revamped in a major way when the company launches Height 2.0 (which I haven't tested). Even still, today's version can already generate a catch-up summary of a task's chat history, create subtasks from chat messages, auto-detect duplicate tasks, suggest task improvements, and more. (You can see auto-generated subtasks in the screenshot I took above.)
By this time next year, many of the other project management apps on this list may well offer these same features, but for now, they're a big stand-out for Height.
And with four clean view options (spreadsheet, calendar, Kanban, and Gantt) all available for free—plus unlimited users, 100 automation runs per month, and full access to Copilot—Height also offers a competitively generous free plan.
You can do even more with Height by connecting it to Zapier to automate task creation, notifications, and more. Here are some examples.
Create detailed Google Calendar events for new Height tasks assigned to users
Create Height tasks for new or updated Airtable records
Height price: The free plan includes unlimited tasks and users, spreadsheet, Kanban, Gantt, and Calendar views, 100 automation runs, and AI task management features. Upgrade to the Team plan for $6.99/user/month to get unlimited lists and custom attributes, full search history, 100 MB file uploads, and more.
What's the best free project planning software?
Honestly, online project management tools are a dime a dozen. And a lot of them will advertise "free" plans that aren't really free—meaning you can't actually manage all your projects without upgrading. The best free task management software will let you do what you need to do without spending a dime. And, as your needs change, they'll support you with more robust features at higher tiers.
The good news: free project planning software is...free. So you can test your options, see what you like (and what you don't), and then decide. Here are more tips on how to choose online project management software.
Related reading:
Originally published in May 2017 by Matthew Guay, this post has had contributions from Jessica Greene, Maria Myre, and Emily Esposito. The most recent update was in October 2023.