ClickUp Pricing Explained (2026): Free, Core, Business and MAX

ClickUp's pricing page now shows a single price list. When I first read it, on 27 October 2026, it was serving two versions: the new plans on some loads, the older Unlimited and Business plans on others. When I re-read it on 30 October 2026, ten loads in a row showed only the new plans. Here are the US prices, per user per month:

• The plans: Free Forever $0, Core $9 billed yearly or $12 monthly, Business $17 or $25, MAX $100 or $120, and Enterprise on a custom quote.
• The AI: built into the plans as an AI Credit allowance, where ClickUp's older plans sell it as add-ons.

ClickUp's help center says new Workspaces start on these plans. Workspaces still on the older plans keep their current plan and price until ClickUp moves them; for those being moved, price updates begin no earlier than January 2027, and some see no price update. Opening a Workspace today? Budget from this list. Already paying ClickUp? Check your own bill before you trust any article, this one included.

How I read ClickUp's prices

I read ClickUp's pricing page and its help center on 27 October 2026, along with the Asana, monday.com and Trello pricing pages, and re-read ClickUp's page and help articles on 30 October 2026. Every price is in US dollars. The help articles behind the rules on seats, refunds and AI Credits were updated between 16 and 29 October 2026. Three things about ClickUp's page change what you see:

• It no longer shows the older plans. On 27 October the page was serving two versions, and a reload could show either one. By 30 October the older version's block was gone from the page's HTML, and every load showed the new plans.
• It opens on yearly billing. The big number on each card is the yearly rate per month.
• AI sits inside each card as an AI Credit allowance, with extra credits sold separately.

I did not create a Workspace, open checkout or contact Support. For which plans a new Workspace is charged, ClickUp's help center is the only evidence, and I say so where it matters.

ClickUp plans at a glance

Here is every ClickUp plan on the pricing page, as of October 2026. The same five plans showed on every load on 30 October 2026.

ClickUp's pricing page (plan cards and comparison grid), with AI allowances from ClickUp's help center; US prices read 27 October 2026 and re-read 30 October 2026. The yearly totals in brackets are my arithmetic. ClickUp's help center also lists a Business Plus plan that the pricing page does not show or price.

The crossed-out number on each new card is the monthly price, not a sale.

Each card prints its yearly rate large with a second figure struck through beside it: $9 next to $12 on Core, $17 next to $25 on Business, $100 next to $120 on MAX. Click Monthly and the struck figure becomes the price. The page's code labels it "Regular price". The page showed no promotion on 27 or 30 October 2026.

The badge above the cards reads "Save up to 33% with yearly", and "up to" is doing a lot of work. Here is what yearly billing saves per seat over a year, by my arithmetic on the October 2026 prices:

• Core: $36, or 25%.
• Business: $96, or 32%, the only plan near the badge.
• MAX: $240, about 17%, the smallest cut on the page.

If your Workspace is still on an older plan

ClickUp's help center settles the new-Workspace case in one line: "New Workspaces start on the new plans." Open a Workspace today and, by ClickUp's account, you get the plans above with AI built in. I did not open checkout to confirm it. ClickUp's help center began documenting the new plans in mid-October 2026, and ClickUp publishes no launch date.

Existing Workspaces move slowly. ClickUp says "Certain existing Workspaces are gradually being upgraded", and the owner of a Workspace being moved gets an email. Owners and admins can also look for a "See what changes" notice in the Upcoming Bill section, and ClickUp says no notice means "no current change to your plan". If your Workspace is moved, the help center sets these terms:

• "No features are removed from your plan."
• Your price holds until the date in your notice, then updates at your renewal.
• "Price updates begin no earlier than January 2027. Some Workspaces have no price update."
• If you bought Everything AI, you keep your current plan and Everything AI.

Customers who work with a ClickUp account team get "no changes to your current prices or plans". Workspaces that have not been upgraded "keep their current plan, features, and price". So for any Workspace ClickUp has not moved yet, its older plan is still the real bill, even though the pricing page stopped showing those plans by 30 October 2026.

Is ClickUp free? What Free Forever really includes

Yes. Free Forever costs $0 as of October 2026, and the card says "No credit card required". A Workspace gets:

• Tasks and people: unlimited tasks and subtasks, and unlimited free members.
• Storage: 60MB. ClickUp's FAQ says file attachments are the only thing that counts toward it.
• Structure: 5 Spaces.
• Automations: 100 actions per Workspace a month, with 5 active rules.
• AI: 500 AI Credits once per Workspace. "This limit does not reset."
• Guests: free, but with full create and edit rights that ClickUp says "cannot be modified". Fine for a freelancer you trust. Awkward for a client.
• Chat history: 90 days.
• Support: 24/7.

Docs, Kanban boards, calendar view, sprint management and two-factor authentication are on the card too, along with one form. Gantt charts, custom fields, dashboards, goals, timeline and workload views run as trials, and so does time tracking. Sixty megabytes also goes fast once clients start attaching files.

A trial feature on Free stops once its uses run out, and the uses never come back.

This is the clause to read twice. ClickUp's pricing FAQ says "Uses are cumulative throughout a Workspace and they do not reset or count down." Reach the limit and "you won't lose any data, but you won't be able to edit or create new items with that feature."

So once the Gantt uses run out, a chart built in week one keeps its data in month six, but you can no longer edit it or start another. The limits that refill are the monthly ones: ClickUp's help center says "Monthly limits, like AI Credits on paid plans and Automation Actions, are the exception and reset each month." Free's 500 AI Credits are not monthly. Spend them once and they are gone.

Core at $9 or $12 is the new entry plan

Core costs $9 a user a month billed yearly, $108 a year per seat, or $12 billed monthly, as of October 2026. It takes everything in Free Forever and adds:

• Unlimited storage and Spaces, with custom fields and task types of your own.
• Unlimited Gantt charts and forms.
• 1,000 automations a month.
• Guest permissions, so you decide what a client can change.
• Goals, email inside ClickUp and live chat support, plus connections to Google Drive, Dropbox and Box.

AI on Core is thin. Brain runs as "Extended Trial usage", in ClickUp's words, beside 1,000 AI Credits per seat a month pooled across the Workspace. Dashboards, timeline and workload views are still trials, and Google SSO, private views and private docs wait for Business.

ClickUp's help tables put Core and Unlimited, the older entry plan, in one column, so Core sits where Unlimited sat. The clearest difference is the AI allowance. Older paid plans without an add-on get 1,000 AI Credits per user once, a limit ClickUp says "does not reset", while Core refills 1,000 per seat every month.

Business at $17 or $25 is the first plan with Brain included

Business costs $17 a user a month billed yearly, $204 a year per seat, or $25 billed monthly, as of October 2026, under a "Most Popular" badge. It is the first new plan that includes Brain outright: premium models, unlimited standard models "Subject to fair usage" and 1,500 AI Credits per seat a month, pooled. On top of Core it adds:

• Advanced dashboards and time-in-status reports.
• 10,000 automations a month, with webhooks.
• Google SSO and SMS two-factor authentication.
• Private views and private docs, for the work your clients should never see.
• Resource management and timesheets.

Business shares its name with one of ClickUp's older plans, which the pricing page no longer shows. On that older Business, ClickUp's help center says AI stays trial usage unless the Workspace buys an add-on. On this one, Brain is part of the plan. Teams upgrading for sprint reports can read how sprint reporting works in ClickUp.

Enterprise is custom, and MAX lists at $100 a seat

Enterprise has no public price as of October 2026: the card says "Talk to our team". Enterprise adds advanced SSO, SAML and SCIM, audit logs, HIPAA, data residency and white labeling. Automations jump to 1 million a month against Business's 10,000, AI Credits to 3,000 per seat a month, premium model usage to five times Business's, and AI Notetaker becomes unlimited (it costs credits on every plan below Enterprise).

ClickUp's pricing FAQ says Enterprise orders meeting a minimum can also pay by bank transfer.

At $100 a user a month billed yearly, $1,200 a year per seat, or $120 monthly as of October 2026, MAX promises "Everything in Enterprise" plus ClickUp's biggest AI allowance: 10,000 AI Credits per seat a month, 20 times Business's premium model usage and no daily cap on MCP calls. Premium support comes only with MAX, and the card offers Get Started next to Contact sales.

That makes MAX the only card with a public price on Enterprise-grade controls, though it says nothing about what an Enterprise quote would come to. Mind the name, too. MAX the plan is separate from Brain MAX, ClickUp's desktop, mobile and Chrome app, and no page I read prices the app.

What ClickUp's AI costs

AI comes with the plan, so the number to watch is each plan's AI Credit allowance, as of October 2026:

ClickUp help center, "AI Credits availability and limits" and "ClickUp Brain availability and limits", both created 16 October 2026, read 27 October and re-read 30 October 2026. Credits are pooled across the Workspace; premium usage is measured against Business at 1X.

The rules, in ClickUp's words where it counts:

• Credits are "based on your Workspace's billed seats" and "shared across your Workspace".
• They "reset on the first of each month. Unused credits do not roll over."
• When the pool runs dry, "AI credit features are paused" until you buy more, at $10 per 10,000 as of October 2026, or upgrade.
• AI Notetaker uses 180 credits per notetaker hour below Enterprise.

Credits pay for ClickUp's agents, AI Automations, Artifacts and AI Fields, among other things. ClickUp estimates 10 credits for an AI Field, 20 for an AI card and 100 for a generated image, and every agent run consumes credits even when it only answers. The per-run arithmetic is in my guide to what ClickUp's agents can do with those credits. Brain's premium models also carry daily, weekly and monthly limits, and when they run out Brain switches to a standard model.

On the older plans, a Workspace that buys an AI add-on pays for every member.

ClickUp's help center now refers to its older plans, Unlimited and Business among them, as "existing plans". Workspaces still on them get AI as trial usage or through one of two add-ons, each "purchased per Workspace member per month":

• Brain AI: unlimited fair use of Brain with standard models, project summaries and writing help, plus 1,500 AI Credits per user a month. No AI Notetaker.
• Everything AI: Brain plus AI Fields, AI Notetaker and image generation, with two hours of one-to-one onboarding. The allowance rises to 5,000 AI Credits per user a month.

The catch sits in ClickUp's add-on article: "The fee applies to all members of your Workspace." You cannot buy Brain AI for the three people who want it. A 20-person Workspace pays for 20.

The new plans do not sell either add-on. ClickUp says they "are not available to purchase because that usage is included in the plans", though extra AI Credits still are. The pricing page no longer lists what the add-ons cost: on 30 October 2026 it showed only the new plans, and the help articles describe the add-ons without a price. Add-ons a Workspace has bought are itemized in its billing invoice.

Guests, seats and who gets billed

ClickUp bills per Workspace, and the whole Workspace upgrades together. Its pricing FAQ says "each Workspace requires an individual upgrade", and that upgrading means "all members in your Workspace". Half the team on Business and half on Free is off the table.

ClickUp's help center lists five paid roles: owners, admins, members, limited members and permission-controlled guests. Read-only guests are free and unlimited on paid plans. Guests who can edit come in an allowance that grows with the team:

ClickUp help center, "Pricing per user role and plan", updated 17 October 2026, read 27 October and re-read 30 October 2026. The help table also covers the older Unlimited plan; the pricing FAQ still words this with the older plan names.

Paid users added mid-cycle are billed at a prorated price for the time left, and three rules decide when a guest becomes one:

• Invite a permission-controlled guest past your allowance and ClickUp adds "a paid member seat", automatically.
• Put a view-only guest in a Team and they become permission-controlled, which counts against the allowance.
• Guests are for outsiders. Add people from inside your organization and ClickUp says "they will be billed as paid users."

Three ClickUp bills, worked out

Three teams, priced on ClickUp's US prices as of October 2026. Every figure is my arithmetic on the prices read 27 October and re-read 30 October, before any tax.

1. A solo freelancer. Free Forever costs $0 and holds until the 60MB fills or a trial feature locks. Core is $108 a year, or $12 a month on monthly billing, and comes with 5 permission-controlled guest seats for clients plus unlimited read-only guests.
2. A five-person agency. Business is $1,020 a year ($85 a month) or $125 a month on monthly billing. That buys 30 permission-controlled guest seats (10, plus 5 for each of the four members invited) and a pool of 7,500 AI Credits a month.
3. A twenty-person team. Core is $2,160 a year. Business is $4,080 a year ($340 a month) or $500 a month on monthly billing, with 30,000 pooled AI Credits a month. MAX would be $24,000 a year.

Look twice at the billing cycle. Paid monthly, the agency's Business bill comes to $1,500 over a year, $480 more than paying yearly. For the twenty-person team the gap on Business is $1,920 a year.

What the sticker price leaves out

The cards stop at the price. The rest lives in ClickUp's pricing FAQ and help center, as of October 2026:

• Refunds are narrow. Your first paid plan subscription carries a 30-day satisfaction guarantee, add-ons bought with it included. For later upgrades ClickUp says to contact Support to confirm eligibility, and after 30 days it "will not be able to offer a refund".
• Monthly to yearly goes through Support, and the next 12 months are charged when the plan renews.
• Major credit cards, charged in USD. No PayPal and no prepaid debit cards. ClickUp says it adds no conversion fees.
• No public paid-plan trial. "If you'd like to add a paid plan trial to your Workspace, contact Support."
• Downgrades land at the end of the billing cycle unless you choose to downgrade immediately, and your data stays.
• ClickUp Assist has no printed price, though its card offers two hours of one-to-one expert time a month.

Weighing ClickUp's per-seat bill against a tool that charges by usage? Read how per-seat and usage pricing compare.

Students get an academic discount promise with no number attached.

ClickUp's pricing FAQ tells students, educators and administrators to "click the 'Claim your academic discount' button" on its student page. That page showed no discount and no such button on two loads on 27 October 2026, and no discount size is published anywhere I read. A separate help article, updated 28 October 2026, says ClickUp "sometimes" offers discounts to "certain non-profit organizations and educators" and asks you to contact Support for customized pricing.

Nonprofits get an "exclusive discount" with no size attached. ClickUp's startup page offers eligible startups $3,000 in credit as of October 2026, through an application form. The pricing page showed no coupon, lifetime deal or seasonal promotion on 27 or 30 October 2026. Students pricing their tools in general can start with AI tools for students, free tiers first.

What the same money buys at Asana, monday.com and Trello

Searches for ClickUp price comparisons pair it with Asana and monday.com most often, then Trello. I read each one's pricing page on 27 October 2026. Per user or seat a month, in USD:

Each vendor's own pricing page, read 27 October 2026; ClickUp's re-read 30 October 2026. monday.com showed its yearly Standard and Pro prices under a "Special offer" for a 10-seat team, and its plans start from 3 seats; it says "The monthly plan is not discounted".

Asana and monday.com meter AI differently. Asana includes Asana AI on Starter and Advanced and sells pre-paid AI requests at $0.50 each. monday.com builds 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 AI credits a month into Basic, Standard and Pro, and offers a 14-day trial of Pro. Those are October 2026 terms.

Notion is the other name that comes up; I priced it in Notion's plans and AI pricing. For how the AI inside these tools compares, read AI in Asana, monday.com, ClickUp and Notion compared, or go tool by tool with Asana's AI, monday.com's AI and Trello's AI.

Which ClickUp plan should you pick?

If you already pay ClickUp, check whether your Workspace is still on an older plan first; otherwise, match the plan to the job. The prices below are as ClickUp showed them on 30 October 2026.

• Solo, or just trying it: Free Forever.
• A small team that needs custom fields and Gantt charts but little AI: Core, billed yearly at $9 a seat.
• A team that wants Brain and proper dashboards: Business, yearly at $17. Brain comes with the plan, so there is no add-on to buy.
• SAML or SCIM, audit logs or HIPAA: Enterprise. Talk to sales.
• Heavy AI across the whole team: MAX, and rarely. Before paying $100 a seat I would want proof the team empties Business's pooled 1,500 credits a seat every month.
• An existing Workspace: look for a "See what changes" notice under Upcoming Bill before you change anything.

If you're weighing a ClickUp seat against a general AI subscription, this comparison of AI subscriptions covers that choice.

FAQ

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