Top 10 Project Management Software I Tried and Recommend for 2026

1. monday work management – Best for visual planning & beginners

Rating: 4.91 / 5

• Free plan for two seats
• Starts at $14 per user/month

monday work management was my main project management tool for a time, and it lived up to its reputation for ease of use. Its color-coded, grid-style boards make it simple to distinguish project status and task assignments across different categories. At a glance, I can see what is on track and what needs attention without going through each item on the board.

Even when a board holds a large volume of tasks, the interface still feels manageable for new users. I can drag and drop rows or columns to rearrange items, which makes it easy to group tasks by phase or owner. 

The automation experience follows the same user-friendly approach. The dedicated automation center provides a hub of pre-made rules and workflows to suit users who do not want to spend time configuring complex logic. In a clean workspace, I can set a trigger and define the condition and resulting action in just a few clicks. 

PRO TIP: Depending upon your team size and the complexity of the automations you build, you may run up against count limitations, based on pricing tier. This happened with our team once or twice over the course of a year, but we found that reviewing our lists uncovered numerous instances of automations that were no longer needed, but were still running. So an occasional automations clean-up — quarterly at minimum, more frequently if your team or workflows change frequently — should be part of your PMS data hygiene.

monday keeps each step straightforward, so if you are a visual learner or you are trying project management software for the first time, I recommend it as a starting point.

monday pricing

• Free plan: Up to 2 users and includes boards and 200+ templates
• Standard: $12/user/month — Adds Gantt view, automations, and integrations 
• Pro: $19/user/month — Adds advanced reporting, time tracking, and formula 
• Enterprise: Custom — Adds portfolio reporting and resource management

2. ClickUp – Best for building task hierarchies

 Rating: 4.86 / 5

• Free plan for unlimited users
• Starts at $10 per user/month

I currently rely on ClickUp for my own projects, and it shines when I need detailed, customizable task management. I can design a task board that matches my workflow by adding custom fields and categories, a built-in time tracker, or nested subtasks.

ClickUp also offers one of the largest template libraries I have seen in this space, with more than 1,000 templates that map to standard workflows. I usually start with a layout that matches my use case, then adapt it instead of building from a blank board.

The multi-level task structure is especially helpful for my team. One parent task can contain several layers of subtasks, each assigned to a different role. When a teammate finishes a task, I’ve set up an automation so the next person in the sequence receives the notification that the follow-up work is ready for them immediately, which keeps momentum steady on shared deliverables.

I also view ClickUp as one of the best free project management software options due to its generous free plan. It works well for budget-conscious teams that still want a powerful platform. Many rivals keep advanced capabilities behind higher-priced tiers, while ClickUp provides credits for premium features such as Gantt charts and workload views, along with limited access to portfolio tools. This lets you experiment with advanced functionality before you decide to upgrade to a paid plan.

ClickUp pricing

• Free Forever: Includes unlimited users, Kanban view, and sprint management
• Unlimited: $7/user/month — Adds integrations, forms, Gantt charts, time tracking, portfolios, and resource management
• Business: $12/user/month — Adds timeline view, workload management, and reporting
• Enterprise: Custom — Adds SSO, advanced permission, and custom roles

3. Jira – Best for agile software delivery

Rating: 4.82 / 5

• Free plan for two seats
• Starts at $9.05 per user/month

Jira is the agile planning tool I see most often in engineering and software development teams, and I rely on it whenever I work with IT departments. When I submit form-based tickets to escalate issues, the IT team has a clear view of incoming requests and IT-specific workflows that guide each item through the right steps. This keeps service requests organized and helps teams respond consistently and predictably.

Jira is the best software for project management that supports Scrum teams through native agile features. You get product backlogs, roadmaps, and a release hub for managing versions. Scrum teams can track progress through burndown and velocity charts that highlight work remaining or completed across a sprint. Cumulative flow diagrams show how many items sit in each status, while control charts reveal cycle time for a specific version or sprint.

Jira is designed to support data-driven decision making during sprint planning and retrospectives, all within the context of your backlog view. The Insights tool pulls data from your Jira boards and projects, then presents aggregated views of the team’s historical performance. You can review sprint commitment insights and issue-type breakdowns, and monitor sprint progress and burndown trends to see how consistently the team delivers work across iterations.

Jira pricing

• Free: Up to 10 users — Includes reports and list, timeline, and calendar views
• Standard: $9.05/user/month — Adds AI agents, guest access, and user roles
• Premium: $18.30/user/month — Adds approval processes and dependency management
• Enterprise: Custom — Adds advanced admin controls and cross-product insights

4. Miro – Best for free-flowing project planning

Rating: 4.7 / 5

• Free plan for two seats
• Starts at $8 per user/month

Miro is my best project manager software for free-flowing collaboration because it lets my team participate actively in real-time brainstorming. Most project management platforms confine you to preformatted boards, but Miro gives you a virtually limitless canvas where you can pin documents and prototypes, then layer in diagrams and timelines to move a topic from rough idea to a concrete project plan.

Ideation with a distributed team often stalls when no one knows how to start. Miro facilitates real-time co-creation and asynchronous comments, so people can contribute in the moment or later in their own time zone. Talktrack recordings help you walk teammates through a board without scheduling a live meeting.

You can visualize ideas with sticky notes and freehand sketches, then add simple diagrams or timers. Voting tools and GIFs keep the session engaging while smart alignment features and templates help you clean up the board for follow-through.

If you prefer a head start, Miro’s library of 7,000 pre-made templates covers common workflows such as retrospectives and customer journey maps, so you can avoid starting from a blank canvas. In my own work, I turn to Miro when I want equal participation across the team or when I need a brainstorming session to feel more interactive and energizing, not just another meeting on the calendar.

Miro pricing

• Free: Includes unlimited members, three editable boards, and templates access
• Starter: $8/user/month – Adds unlimited boards, version history, and video calling
• Business: $16/user/month – Adds unlimited guests and diagramming shapes
• Enterprise: Custom – Adds centralized account management and org-wide controls

5. Smartsheet – Best for consolidating portfolio-level reporting

Rating: 4.62 / 5

• 30-day free trial 
• Starts at $12 per user/month

Smartsheet is my top project management software pick for enterprise teams that want to see how multiple projects connect across a wider portfolio. As your project load grows, Smartsheet provides a real-time dashboard that surfaces active projects, highlights items at risk, and lets you monitor overall portfolio health.

For advanced portfolio management, I suggest using the Smartsheet Control Center. This add-on automates project creation, implements change, and aggregates portfolio reporting. You first define and standardize the core assets for a typical project, such as the project plan and executive dashboard, then include supporting elements like the budget or RAID log. This approach helps in recreating project structures, workflows, and rollup metrics every time someone approves a new project.

You can also scale your portfolio through a demand intake process so every new request flows into a central pipeline. Teams capture project details through forms, or they connect Control Center to third-party systems that hold project data. This gives leadership a single, reliable source of truth for both incoming demand and active delivery.

Smartsheet pricing

• Pro: $12/user/month — Includes unlimited users, project views, and sheets
• Business: $24/user/month — Adds free guests, timeline view, and workload tracking
• Enterprise: Custom — Adds AI formulas, work insights, and SSO
• Advanced Work Management: Custom – Adds Control Center and dynamic view

Learn more in our Smartsheet review.

6. Wrike – Best for complex, cross-team enterprise projects

Rating: 4.55 / 5

• Free plan with unlimited seats
• Starts at $10 per user/month (billed annually)

Among the best task project management software I have tested, Wrike stands out for the depth it brings to managing complex projects and coordinating multiple teams. Designed as an enterprise work management platform, Wrike places strong emphasis on governance and data management plus integrated AI capabilities.

The platform runs in secure, compliant data centers that use strict physical and network security measures to protect your data. Admins can configure granular access roles, create user groups with subgroups, and then rely on detailed activity reports for audits. This makes it possible to mirror the organization’s structure and run on-demand audit trails.

Wrike also stands out for its resource management and budgeting capabilities. Workload charts show individual capacity and reveal uneven assignments so you can rebalance workloads quickly. Effort estimates at the task level feed resource forecasts and support more accurate delivery predictions.

Wrike also moved early on work intelligence. It was among the first platforms to adopt generative AI in 2023 for project work. Teams can use Wrike’s Work Intelligence AI for content editing and text summarization,  and they can lean on intelligent search to surface relevant items faster. Many tools treat AI as a small add-on but Wrike positions AI as part of the platform’s core, which fits enterprise and tech-savvy buyers who want AI embedded across their operations rather than as a side feature. This is a big difference maker for me.

Wrike pricing

• Free: Unlimited users and basic task management
• Team: $10/user/month — Adds cross-tagging, Gantt charts, and portfolio management
• Business: $25/user/month — Adds request forms, approvals, and resource planning
• Enterprise: Custom pricing — Adds admin permissions and custom roles
• Pinnacle: Custom pricing — Adds advanced reporting, capacity planning, budgeting, and locked spaces

Learn more in our Wrike review

7. Taskade – Best AI-first all-in-one productivity platform

Rating: 4.52 / 5

• Free plan for two seats
• Starts at $8 per user/month

Compared to most project management software I have tried, Taskade feels more like an AI workspace for my whole team than a simple project tracker. I can manage projects and collaborate with my team, and I can also automate workflows or build apps and websites in the same AI-powered environment.

What sets Taskade apart for me is its use of AI agents. They do not feel like a single generic chatbot, but more like configurable digital teammates. I can create different agents for content work, data analysis, and project management tasks. Taskade  also treats its platform as a real-time backend. Each project behaves like a live database instead of a static list. Tasks, documents, and notes form a shared memory layer.

Taskade leans into the idea that a single prompt can become a working app. With Genesis and the AI App Builder, I can describe a business workflow once and generate a workspace app with logic and an interface ready to use. These capabilities make Taskade a system where AI agents and automations sit at the core of the experience.

Taskade pricing

• Free: Includes one user, basic AI models, and one workspace
• Starter: $8/user/month — Adds three users and unlimited workspaces
• Pro: $20/user/month — Adds AI agents and integrations
• Ultra: $60/user/month — Adds advanced analytics and custom domains

8. Teamwork.com – Best for managing client work

Rating: 4.45/5

• Free plan with unlimited seats
• Starts at $13.99 per user/month

Teamwork.com is the best project management software for small teams that handle end-to-end client operations. Where many PM systems treat clients, vendors, and other stakeholders as restricted guests or charge extra for their access, Teamwork includes unlimited client users on supported plans without additional fees.

The platform provides a dedicated Clients area and a separate Clients view, rather than treating client data as an afterthought within project lists. You can add each client, assign an owner, apply tags and custom fields, then review project volume side by side with completion progress and budget figures for every client in a single grid.

To manage the profitability of client work, Teamwork’s cost management features let you set custom billable and internal cost rates. You can also define profit margin targets and benchmark billable time so your definition of “profitable” reflects real rates and capacity. Time tracking feeds directly into these views, which helps you maximize billable hours, close gaps on timesheets, and see how logged time impacts capacity and margins.

Teamwork’s Client Hub and supporting resources focus on the health of your client portfolio instead of only internal delivery. Within the Clients view and Overview widgets, you can quickly gauge project health for each client, monitor activity trends, review budget usage levels, and compare billable work to non-billable effort across the account.

Teamwork pricing

• Free: Includes five users and core project management features 
• Deliver: $13.99/user/month — Adds intake forms, integrations, and automations 
• Grow: $25.99/user/month — Adds budgeting, reports, and workload resource planner 
• Scale: Custom — Adds profitability reports and resource scheduling

9. Todoist – Best personal productivity tool

Rating: 4.38/5

• Free plan with unlimited seats
• Starts at $5 per user/month

If you do not want to deal with heavy project management features or lots of AI add-ons, Todoist fits that preference very well. With its minimalist interface, using the platform is straightforward: you add a task and a deadline. You complete the task, and then check it off the list. adding tasks and checking them off. I capture tasks the moment they pop into my head using natural language, then I set due dates or recurring dates and break bigger items into subtasks when they feel too large to tackle at once.

My favorite feature is Todoist’s Inbox. Every new task lands there when I am not sure where it belongs yet. This works well for me because I often feel swamped and do not want to decide immediately how each task fits into my calendar or projects. I can return later, complete the quick wins right away, or move important items into dedicated projects once I have more clarity.

The Today and Upcoming views also keep schedules more manageable. Today shows everything due across all my projects in one place, while Upcoming gives me a calendar-style view of the days ahead.

Todoist also acts like a coaching tool for my habits. I earn Karma points when I complete tasks on time or use features such as labels and recurring dates, which nudges me to keep my system tidy. The productivity charts help me see patterns in how I work daily and weekly, so I can adjust my workload and routines based on real data instead of guesswork.

Todoist pricing

• Beginner: Includes five projects and list & boards layouts 
• Pro: $5 user/month — Adds calendar layout and task duration 
• Business: $8 user/month — Adds team workspace, folders, and activity logs

10. Notion – Best for database-style project knowledge bases

Rating: 4.28/5

• Free plan with unlimited seats
• Starts at $12 per user/month

From my previous experience using Notion, it works very well for centralizing docs and wikis in databases, then connecting them across projects and teams. A single page can act like a document, a wiki article, or a database item, so I can use it for taking meeting notes or tracking projects.

Instead of building everything around folders, Notion leans on databases for organizing knowledge bases. You can turn a simple document into a wiki entry, then add it to a docs database that becomes a single source of truth for company information. A database supports multiple views, such as table, list, board, calendar, and timeline formats.

Every database entry is a full page with rich properties, where you can add metadata such as owner, team, status, dates, tags, and cross-database relations. This enables me to keep policies and project specifications in one place, linked directly to related OKRs or active projects, instead of spreading those details across separate tools.

Notion pricing

• Free: Includes basic forms, sites, Notion Calendar & Mail, and databases 
• Plus: $10/user.month — Adds unlimited file updates, custom sites, and integrations 
• Business: $20/user/month — Adds database permissions and conditional forms logic 
• Enterprise: Custom — Adds advanced security and controls