What this comparison will tell you
By the end of this page you will know the August 2026 list price of Asana, ClickUp and monday.com, how each one bills its AI features, which is cheapest for a five-person Hong Kong team, and which of the three is the wrong purchase for you. Prices are list prices, converted at HK$7.8 to the US dollar.
The seat price is the number every vendor puts on the pricing page. It is also the number that tells you least about your final bill, because these three companies bill AI in three completely different shapes.
One of them includes AI in the plan. One charges an AI add-on for every paid member of your workspace whether they use it or not. One sells AI by the credit, and the credits expire monthly.
How much do Asana, ClickUp and monday.com cost in 2026?
On annual billing, ClickUp is cheapest at the base tier from US$7 per user per month, Asana Starter is US$10.99, and monday Pro is US$19 per seat with a three-seat minimum. Once AI is added the ranking changes completely, which is the point of this page.
Asana (list prices, annual billing)
--- Personal: free.
--- Starter: US$10.99 per user per month, about HK$86. Monthly billing is US$13.49.
--- Advanced: US$24.99 per user per month, about HK$195. Monthly billing is US$30.49.
--- No seat minimum. One person can subscribe to Starter.
--- AI Studio Basic is included with every paid plan and runs on a shared monthly credit pool per billing account: 50,000 credits on Starter, 75,000 on Advanced, 200,000 on Enterprise and Enterprise+.
--- AI Studio Plus adds 100,000 credits per month for about US$135 per account per month on annual billing, or US$150 month to month.
ClickUp (list prices, annual billing)
--- Free Forever: US$0.
--- Unlimited: US$7 per user per month, about HK$55.
--- Business: US$12 per user per month, about HK$94.
--- Enterprise: custom quote.
--- ClickUp Brain add-on: US$9 per user per month, about HK$70, charged on every paid member in the workspace rather than per AI user.
--- Everything AI tier: US$28 per user per month, about HK$218, adding the agentic suite, an AI notetaker and unlimited AI automations.
--- Heavier features draw down AI Super Credits at roughly US$0.001 each, or US$10 per 10,000.
monday.com (list prices, annual billing)
--- Minimum three seats on every paid plan.
--- Standard: reported at about US$12 per seat per month, roughly HK$94.
--- Pro: US$19 per seat per month, about HK$148.
--- AI credits are sold at US$0.01 per credit with a monthly minimum by tier: 1,000 credits on Basic, 2,000 on Standard, 3,000 on Pro.
--- Larger bundles are available: 2,000, 4,000 or 8,000 on Standard, and 3,000, 4,000, 8,000 or 20,000 on Pro.
--- Credits renew monthly and do not roll over.
Which one is cheapest for a five-person team?
On annual billing with AI switched on, Asana Starter is cheapest for five people at about HK$5,143 a year, and monday Pro with the minimum credit bundle is dearest at about HK$11,700. That is a 2.3 times spread on the same five people doing the same work.
Five seats, twelve months, annual billing, HK$ at 7.8
--- Asana Starter: US$10.99 x 5 x 12 = US$659, about HK$5,143. AI Studio Basic included, 50,000 shared credits a month.
--- ClickUp Unlimited without Brain: US$7 x 5 x 12 = US$420, about HK$3,276. No AI assistant.
--- ClickUp Unlimited with Brain: US$16 x 5 x 12 = US$960, about HK$7,488.
--- ClickUp Business with Brain: US$21 x 5 x 12 = US$1,260, about HK$9,828.
--- monday Standard plus 2,000 credits: US$720 + US$240 = US$960, about HK$7,488.
--- monday Pro plus 3,000 credits: US$1,140 + US$360 = US$1,500, about HK$11,700.
Now look at the ClickUp line again. On the Unlimited plan, the AI add-on costs US$9 while the software it is attached to costs US$7. The AI is more expensive than the product.
That is not a criticism of the feature. It is a warning about how you read a pricing page. If you shortlisted ClickUp because it was the cheapest at US$7 and you intend to use the AI, you were comparing the wrong number.
How does each vendor bill AI, and why does it matter?
Asana bundles a credit pool into the plan at account level. ClickUp charges a per-seat add-on across every paid member. monday sells expiring credits by tier. Each shape fails in a different way, and the failure mode should decide your shortlist more than the headline price does.
Shape one: AI included in the plan (Asana)
--- Best for a team that wants AI without a metering conversation every month.
--- The risk: the pool is shared across the whole billing account, so one enthusiastic user can spend the allowance for everyone, and the next step up is an account-level add-on at about US$135 a month rather than a small increment.
Shape two: per-seat AI add-on (ClickUp)
--- Best for a team where genuinely everyone will use the AI daily.
--- The risk: it is all or nothing. A twelve-person workspace where four people use AI still pays for twelve. At US$9 per seat that is US$864 a year spent on eight people who never open it.
Shape three: metered credits that expire (monday)
--- Best for a business that wants a hard ceiling on AI spending and is willing to think about volume.
--- The risk: credits do not roll over, so a quiet January subsidises nothing and a busy March runs dry mid-month. You budget the busiest month, not the average.
If credits are new to you, the underlying mechanics are worth ten minutes: see our explainer on what AI credits actually are.
The question to put to any sales representative is the same in all three cases: show me this quote at three times my expected AI usage, and put the next tier in writing.
Where does each competitor win?
Asana wins on AI billing fairness and on having no seat minimum. ClickUp wins on price and depth if you skip Brain. monday wins on hard cost control and visual clarity. None of the three wins on Traditional Chinese, and none of them wins where your project updates actually live.
Asana wins if you want AI included rather than metered, or you are one or two people. Asana has no seat minimum, so a solo owner pays US$10.99. monday requires three seats, which means a two-person firm pays for three.
ClickUp wins if you want the most features for the least money and you are honest that your team will not use AI daily. ClickUp Unlimited at US$7 without Brain is the cheapest capable option in this comparison, and its free tier is the most usable of the three for a very small team.
monday wins if you want AI spending capped by design. This is the one row where the metered model is genuinely the buyer-friendly choice: you cannot receive a surprise AI invoice from people who never log in, because you are not paying per seat for AI at all. If your worry is an unpredictable bill, monday answers it better than either competitor.
Nobody wins on Traditional Chinese. All three are English-first products. Their AI summaries, task extraction and status write-ups are tuned on English business language, while Hong Kong project notes routinely code-switch mid-sentence. Run twenty real Chinese task descriptions through a trial before you commit.
Nobody wins where the work is discussed. A large share of Hong Kong SME project coordination happens in WhatsApp groups. An AI summary of a project board reflects what was typed into the board. If half the decisions were made in a chat thread, the summary is confident and incomplete.
What can none of these tools do?
None of them can fix a coordination problem that is really a decision problem, make people update a board they dislike, or summarise information that was never entered. These are limits of the category, not faults of any one vendor, and they cause more failed rollouts than pricing does.
--- It cannot make anyone update it. The most expensive failure in small-company project software is three people keeping their real task list in their own heads and the tool showing a fiction. AI makes that fiction more articulate.
--- It cannot decide priorities. An AI can summarise twelve overdue tasks. It cannot tell you which client will leave if you pick wrong.
--- Per-seat AI billing charges for occasional users. Count the people who will use AI weekly, not your headcount. On ClickUp the two numbers must be the same, because the add-on is workspace-wide.
--- Expiring credits punish your busiest month. On monday, unused credits vanish and a heavy month can exhaust the bundle before it ends. Budget the peak.
--- Tier jumps are not increments. Moving from Asana Starter to AI Studio Plus is roughly US$135 a month at account level. There is no small next step.
Which should you buy?
Under five people with work coordinated in WhatsApp, buy nothing yet. Five to fifteen people who want AI without metering, choose Asana Starter. Maximum features on the tightest budget, choose ClickUp Unlimited without Brain. Strict AI cost control with three or more seats, choose monday Standard with the smallest credit bundle.
Buy nothing yet if you are under five people and every project update currently happens in a chat group. A subscription will not move those conversations. Spend two weeks getting the work written into one shared place, free of charge, then decide. Buying software to solve a habit problem is the most common wasted subscription in this category.
Buy Asana Starter if you are five to fifteen people, you want the AI included, and you do not want to explain credit consumption to your team. At about HK$5,143 a year for five seats it is the cheapest way to get AI that nobody has to ration.
Buy ClickUp Unlimited if your bottleneck is structure rather than intelligence. At about HK$3,276 a year for five seats without Brain, you get the deepest feature set here for the least money. Add Brain later, once you can name three tasks you want it to do.
Buy monday Standard if you have at least three seats, you think visually, and an unpredictable AI bill would genuinely bother you. Start with the smallest credit bundle and increase it only after two months of real usage data.
Wait if your task notes are written mainly in Traditional Chinese. Run twenty real tasks through a trial in all three tools and read the AI summaries yourself. This single test disqualifies more shortlists than any price comparison.
When is UD the wrong thing to buy?
If your problem is that tasks get forgotten, buy one of the three tools above and stop reading. UD's AI Staff Solution is not a project management tool, it is not sold per seat, and it is the wrong purchase for a team that simply needs a shared board.
UD becomes relevant at a different threshold. Not when tasks need tracking, but when the repetitive work around those tasks runs to several hundred items a month: re-keying supplier documents, drafting bilingual quotations from a fixed price list, chasing document collection across three channels, or keeping product information in sync in English and Traditional Chinese.
The honest first step there is not to book a demo. It is to count the tasks. If the count is under a few hundred a month, a HK$86 seat and a written process will serve you better than any deployment. That is the same discipline described in our guide to AI workflow automation, and it applies before any purchase.
If you are comparing tools in a different category, our breakdown of AI CRM pricing follows the same method.
How do you decide by Friday?
--- Monday. Count two numbers: how many people will log in daily, and how many will use AI weekly. If the second number is under half the first, remove ClickUp Brain from consideration.
--- Tuesday. Write down the five things you want the AI to do. If you cannot reach five, you are buying project software, not AI, and the cheapest capable plan wins.
--- Wednesday. Start trials on the two survivors. Enter one real project with real dates and real names, not a sample.
--- Thursday. Run twenty real task descriptions in the language your team actually writes in, and read the AI output critically.
--- Friday. Ask each vendor for a written quote at three times your expected usage, then choose. Pay annually only after one month of real use.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheapest for a five-person team in 2026?
ClickUp Unlimited without the Brain add-on, at about HK$3,276 a year for five seats. With AI included, Asana Starter is cheapest at about HK$5,143 a year. monday Pro with the minimum credit bundle is dearest at about HK$11,700.
Does ClickUp charge extra for AI?
Yes. ClickUp Brain is US$9 per user per month on top of a paid plan, and it is billed on every paid member of the workspace rather than only the people who use it. The Everything AI tier is US$28 per user per month.
Is AI included in Asana?
AI Studio Basic is included with every paid Asana plan, running on a shared monthly credit pool per billing account: 50,000 credits on Starter, 75,000 on Advanced and 200,000 on Enterprise. AI Studio Plus adds 100,000 credits for about US$135 per account per month on annual billing.
How do monday.com AI credits work?
monday sells AI credits at US$0.01 each with a monthly minimum by plan: 1,000 credits on Basic, 2,000 on Standard and 3,000 on Pro. Credits renew monthly and do not roll over, so unused credits are lost at the end of each cycle.
Is there a minimum number of seats?
monday.com requires a minimum of three seats on all paid plans. Asana has no seat minimum, so a single user can subscribe to Starter at US$10.99. ClickUp also allows small paid workspaces.
Do any of them handle Traditional Chinese well?
None of the three treats Traditional Chinese as a first-class language for its AI features. Summaries and task extraction are tuned on English business writing. Test twenty real Chinese task descriptions during a free trial before committing.
Should a three-person business buy any of these?
Often not yet. If project updates currently happen in WhatsApp, a subscription will not move them. Establish the habit of writing work into one shared place using a free tier first, then pay once the habit exists.
What is the single most useful question to ask a vendor?
Ask for a written quote at three times your expected AI usage, including the price of the next tier up. Every one of the three billing shapes described here behaves differently at volume, and the difference only appears in that quote.
The takeaway
The seat prices in this comparison range from US$7 to US$25. The annual bills for the same five people range from about HK$3,276 to about HK$11,700. Almost all of that difference is created by how AI is billed, not by how good the software is.
Decide how many people will genuinely use the AI every week. That single number narrows this field faster than any feature table.
We understand AI. UD stands with you.
Reviewed by the UD AI team, Hong Kong. Prices verified against vendor pricing pages and third-party pricing analyses in August 2026, and are subject to change.
Still not sure which one fits?
If you have counted the tasks and the answer is bigger than a project board can solve, that is a different conversation. We will walk you through it step by step, from counting the real workload to deciding whether software or an AI worker is the right purchase.
