monday.com includes AI credits in every paid plan; ClickUp sells Brain per member. Pricing for 3 to 25 people, free plans, agents and which suits your team.
Both companies sell a work platform rebuilt around AI, and both now talk about agents as teammates. The bigger difference for buyers is how they charge for that AI. monday.com gives each paid account a shared pool of AI credits. ClickUp sells Brain as an add-on that every member of the workspace pays for. Below that sit two different ideas of what work software should feel like.
monday.com is organized around boards: rows of items, columns for status, owners and dates, and automations that move work along. It is designed to be picked up quickly by marketing, sales, operations and IT teams that do not want to configure software, and it extends into CRM, service and development products on the same base.
ClickUp tries to replace several tools at once. Tasks sit in a hierarchy of spaces, folders and lists, and docs, chat, whiteboards, forms, time tracking and dashboards are part of the same product. That breadth is why teams use it to consolidate subscriptions, and why new users often need longer to find their way around.
monday.com's AI runs on credits from one pool per account. Basic includes 1,000 credits a month, Standard 2,000 and Pro 3,000, and Enterprise allocations are set by contract. Running an AI block, sending a Sidekick message, executing an agent or transcribing a meeting spends credits, and extra credits cost about $0.01 each on yearly billing. Because the pool is per account, a three-person team and a 40-person team on Standard start with the same 2,000 credits.
ClickUp charges per member. Brain AI costs $9 per member a month billed yearly or $14 monthly, and Everything AI $28 or $33, on top of the ClickUp plan. ClickUp's help center says the fee applies to every member of the workspace, so a team cannot buy AI for only its heavy users. In return, each member brings 1,500 or 5,000 AI Super Credits to a shared workspace balance, so the AI allowance grows with the team.
The result: monday.com is cheaper for teams that use AI lightly, and ClickUp gives more AI to teams where everyone uses it.
| Setup, billed yearly | 3 people a month | 10 people a month | 25 people a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| monday Basic, 1,000 AI credits | $27 | $90 | $225 |
| monday Standard, 2,000 AI credits | $36 | $120 | $300 |
| monday Pro, 3,000 AI credits | $57 | $190 | $475 |
| ClickUp Unlimited, no AI | $21 | $70 | $175 |
| ClickUp Unlimited + Brain AI | $48 | $160 | $400 |
| ClickUp Business + Brain AI | $63 | $210 | $525 |
US prices billed yearly from monday.com and ClickUp, checked September 29 and October 1, 2026. monday.com requires at least three seats on paid plans and sells larger teams in seat bundles; monthly billing costs more on both.
For a 10-person team that wants AI, monday Standard at $120 a month undercuts ClickUp Unlimited with Brain at $160, as long as 2,000 credits a month cover the team's use. A team that runs agents and AI fields all day will burn through monday's pool and buy more credits, while ClickUp's per-member credits scale with headcount.
ClickUp's Free Forever plan is the more useful free tier for a group: unlimited members and tasks, Kanban, calendar and sprint views, collaborative docs and 60 MB of storage in total. monday.com's Free plan is free forever for up to 2 seats, with 3 boards, 3 docs, more than 200 templates and the mobile apps, but no AI. Both platforms let teams trial their AI before paying.
monday.com's AI is spread across the product: Sidekick, an assistant at the account, board and item level; agents that score leads, flag project risks or summarize meetings; AI columns and blocks that categorize, summarize and extract; an AI meeting notetaker; and monday vibe, a no-code builder that turns a description into an app running on your monday data. Standard and Pro include Sidekick Lite, capped at 5 messages or actions per member a day.
ClickUp rebuilt Brain as Brain² in June 2026, with memory of how each person works, routing between Claude, GPT and Gemini models, background agents, and the ability to produce slide decks, dashboards and pages from a prompt. Everything AI adds an AI notetaker, image generation, AI fields and automations and heavier use of Super Agents, and the free Brain MAX app brings dictation and cross-app search to desktop and mobile.
monday.com's AI is easier to roll out in small doses; ClickUp's is the more ambitious assistant for teams that already keep everything in ClickUp.
| If your team | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Wants the lowest price per seat without AI | ClickUp | Unlimited at $7, no seat minimum |
| Wants AI included for light, occasional use | monday.com | Credit pool comes with every paid plan |
| Wants heavy AI use by every member | ClickUp | Credits scale with each Brain seat |
| Needs a free plan for more than two people | ClickUp | Unlimited members on Free Forever |
| Rolls out to non-technical departments | monday.com | Simpler boards, faster adoption |
| Needs time tracking, Gantt and sprints built in | ClickUp | Native project management depth |
ClickUp takes the verdict for most teams comparing the two, because it offers more per seat, a far more generous free plan and AI that scales with the team. monday.com is the better choice when adoption speed matters more than features, and when AI use is occasional enough that the included credit pool covers it. For a documentation-heavy team, our Notion vs ClickUp comparison is the more relevant read.
ClickUp for teams that want the most features per seat, including docs, chat, time tracking, Gantt charts and dashboards, at a lower base price. monday.com for teams that value fast adoption across non-technical departments, a cleaner visual board model and AI credits included in every paid plan. Both have free plans worth testing with real work.
Without AI, ClickUp: Unlimited costs $7 per member a month billed yearly against $9 for monday Basic, and monday requires at least three seats. With AI, monday is often cheaper for light use, because its plans include a shared pool of AI credits, while ClickUp's Brain AI adds $9 per member for everyone in the workspace.
monday.com includes a monthly AI credit pool shared by the whole account: 1,000 credits on Basic, 2,000 on Standard and 3,000 on Pro, with extra credits at about a cent each. ClickUp sells Brain AI at $9 or Everything AI at $28 per member a month billed yearly, charged for every member, with 1,500 or 5,000 credits per member included.
ClickUp's, for most teams. ClickUp Free Forever allows unlimited members and unlimited tasks with 60 MB of storage, while monday.com's Free plan covers up to 2 seats, 3 boards and 3 docs and has no AI features. Both offer trials of their AI.
Yes. monday.com has Sidekick, an assistant that works across the account, boards and items, plus agents, AI columns and blocks, an AI meeting notetaker and monday vibe for building apps from a prompt. Standard and Pro include Sidekick Lite with up to 5 messages or actions per member a day, and Sidekick Plus comes with Enterprise.
ClickUp has more built-in project tooling: native time tracking, Gantt charts, sprints with points, goals, workload views and dashboards. monday.com is strong for operations, CRM and cross-department workflows thanks to its boards and automations, and it is easier to roll out to teams who do not want to configure software.