monday.com and Asana are both project management platforms, both bill per seat, and both have more features than a ten-person team will ever open. They waste your money in different ways, and one of those ways is not on the headline price.
This comparison uses list prices checked on September 29, 2026. Most older comparisons, including an earlier version of this one, got the numbers wrong: the gap between the two is far smaller than it looks, and the real trap is how both sell seats.
What each one costs in 2026
| Plan | monday.com, per seat per month | Asana, per user per month |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Up to 2 seats, 3 boards, 3 docs | Personal: up to 2 users |
| Entry | Basic: $9 billed yearly, $12 monthly | No equivalent |
| Team | Standard: $12 yearly, $14 monthly | Starter: $10.99 yearly, $13.49 monthly |
| Upper | Pro: $19 yearly, $24 monthly | Advanced: $24.99 yearly, $30.49 monthly |
| Top | Enterprise: on request | Enterprise and Enterprise+: on request |
| Seat rules | Minimum 3 seats, then 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200+ | One at a time up to 5 users, then steps of 5 up to 30, steps of 10 up to 100 |
Three years for a ten-person team
| Plan, billed yearly | 36 months |
|---|---|
| monday Basic | $3,240 |
| Asana Starter | $3,956 |
| monday Standard | $4,320 |
| monday Pro | $6,840 |
| Asana Advanced | $8,996 |
Billed monthly, the same ten seats cost $5,040 (monday Standard), $4,856 (Asana Starter), $8,640 (monday Pro) and $10,976 (Asana Advanced). monday says yearly billing saves 18%.
The seat trap
Hire an eleventh person and neither tool sells you one more seat. monday jumps from 10 to 15 seats; Asana adds seats in steps of five above five users. Your eleventh hire costs five seats:
| 11 people, billed yearly | Seats you pay for | 36 months |
|---|---|---|
| Asana Starter | 15 | $5,935 |
| monday Standard | 15 | $6,480 |
| monday Pro | 15 | $10,260 |
| Asana Advanced | 15 | $13,495 |
That is up to $4,500 over three years for one person, before anyone has opened a board.
How they differ in daily use
monday.com
- Fast to start. A board runs in ten minutes, and it feels familiar to anyone who used Trello.
- Visual first. Boards, colors and drag and drop. Good for teams that think in status columns.
- Gets messy with scale. Once automations, dependencies and linked boards pile up, nobody knows what triggers what. More on that in Monday.com: Paying per Seat for a Pretty Interface.
Asana
- More structure. Tasks, dependencies and timelines push you to plan (good and bad).
- Steeper start. Expect a few weeks before the whole team uses it properly.
- Setup becomes a job. Projects, rules and portfolios need someone to maintain them; see Asana's Complexity Burden.
Do you need either?
Before you pick, answer honestly:
- Where do you track projects today? (Spreadsheets, email, chat. Probably all three.)
- Would one shared task list solve 80% of the problem?
- How much of the day will people spend in this tool rather than in email and chat?
- Is $3,000 to $9,000 over three years worth the time it saves?
For many small teams, a shared list or a board they own does the job. Plane is an open-source alternative you can run on your own server. And if your process is specific, a board built for exactly that process is a one-time cost, not a seat count.
The final answer
On price, neither wins by much. Asana is cheaper at the team level ($10.99 against $12), monday at the upper level ($19 against $24.99). Choose by how you work: monday if your team thinks in boards and statuses, Asana if it thinks in timelines and dependencies. Then plan headcount around the seat steps, because that is where the bill jumps.
The SaaSKiller Take
Project management tools do not make a team faster; they move the chaos into a nicer interface. Ten seats cost $3,240 to $8,996 over three years, and the eleventh person costs five. Start on the free plan or a shared list, and pay only when you can show what the tool saves.
Sources
List prices from the vendors' own pricing pages, checked September 29, 2026. Vendors change prices without notice; check before you buy.