Every AI project management tool now charges twice: once for the seat and once, in some unit, for the AI. The seat part compares cleanly. The AI part does not, because the units differ and no vendor publishes a conversion. This post sets out what each vendor's pricing page said on October 30, 2026, works through what a ten-person team would see, and suggests how to forecast the part nobody can compare directly. Gartner names escalating costs first among the reasons it expects over 40% of agentic AI projects to be canceled by the end of 2027, and Anthropic notes that agent autonomy means higher costs, so this is worth doing before you sign.
1. Three Units: Requests, Credits and Actions
Asana counts AI requests, one successful unit of work, with failed or canceled tasks not counted. ClickUp, monday.com and Notion count credits, and say different features spend them at different rates. Wrike counts AI Elite actions. Kavanah counts credits too, priced at what the model that ran costs, at about a cent each. None of these converts into another, so a bigger number on one page is not more AI than a smaller number on another.
2. What Each Page Said
Asana: Starter $10.99 a user a month billed yearly, with 5 AI requests per user a month, capped at 50 per account, or 250 on Enterprise; extra requests $0.50 prepaid or $0.60 pay as you go, with a monthly spend cap. ClickUp: Core $9 and Business $17 a user billed yearly, with 1,000 and 1,500 credits per user a month pooled; extra Super Credits $10 per 10,000. monday.com: Basic $9, Standard $12 and Pro $19 a seat billed yearly, from three seats, with 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 AI credits a month. Wrike: Team $10 a user with AI Essentials; Business $25 with a starter pack of AI Elite actions; extra action packs custom-priced. Notion: Business $20 a member, with 1,500 Standard and 500 Select credits per member a month; custom-agent credits $10 per 1,000 a month. Kavanah: Basic $3 a seat, $2 yearly, with 100 credits per seat pooled; Pro $6, $4 yearly, with 250; pay as you go with no seat fee and packs from $10 per 1,000 credits.
3. A Ten-Person Team, Seat Cost and AI Allowance
At the yearly rates above, ten seats cost about $110 a month on Asana Starter, with 50 AI requests for the account; $90 on ClickUp Core with 10,000 pooled credits, or $170 on Business with 15,000; $120 on monday.com Standard with 2,000 credits; $250 on Wrike Business with its starter pack of AI Elite actions; $200 on Notion Business with 15,000 Standard and 5,000 Select credits; and $20 on Kavanah Basic with 1,000 pooled credits, or $40 on Pro with 2,500. Remember the units do not compare: this tells you the seat bill and the size of each allowance, not which buys more AI work.
4. How to Forecast the AI Part
Measure it instead of guessing. Pick the two or three jobs you will actually give the AI, such as a daily triage, a weekly status per project and meeting notes to tasks, run each for a week on the trial, and read the usage page. Multiply by the frequency you plan. Then ask each vendor two questions: what happens when the allowance runs out, and can unattended spend be capped? Asana offers a monthly spend cap on pay-as-you-go requests. In Kavanah an admin can set one daily token ceiling across every unattended run, and features that run on their own are off until an admin turns them on.
5. The Costs That Are Not on the Pricing Page
Scheduled agents are the biggest driver, because they run whether or not anyone is watching. A daily run on a strong model costs more than a weekly one on a fast model, so model choice is a pricing lever where the tool allows it. Seat minimums and steps matter too: monday.com plans start at three seats, and Asana sells seats in steps of five between five and thirty. And a plan that includes AI only on its higher tier makes the cheapest seat price the wrong one to compare.
Compare seats directly, measure the AI on your own jobs, and insist on a cap for unattended spend. For the full feature comparison behind these prices, see our AI project management software page.
