Asana lists Starter at $10.99 per user a month billed annually ($13.49 monthly) and Advanced at $24.99 ($30.49 monthly). Those numbers are accurate, and they are not what most teams end up paying, for three reasons: Asana sells seats in steps rather than one at a time, the features teams usually move to Asana for are split across two plans, and AI is metered per account on top. This post works through the arithmetic at 5, 12 and 31 people using only what Asana's own pricing page says.
1. Seats Come in Steps
Asana's pricing FAQ says seats are added in increments: one at a time between 2 and 5 users, in fives up to 30, in tens up to 100, in twenty-fives up to 500, and in fifties beyond that. Read literally, a 12-person team is billed for 15 seats and a 31-person team for 40. That is the difference between the price per user and the price per person. At 12 people on Starter billed annually, 15 seats cost about $165 a month, or about $13.74 per person. At 31 people, 40 Starter seats cost about $440 a month, about $14.18 per person. The free Personal plan, meanwhile, is for 2 users.
2. Which Plan You Really Need
Starter brings timeline and Gantt views, reporting dashboards, unlimited automations, forms, custom fields and unlimited free guests. Portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, and time tracking that compares estimated with actual time are on Advanced. SAML authentication and SCIM provisioning are on Enterprise, and Timesheets & Budgets is an add-on to any paid plan. So the realistic bill for a team that wants portfolios and native time tracking is Advanced: about $125 a month at 5 people, about $375 at 12 (15 seats) and about $1,000 at 31 (40 seats), all billed annually.
3. AI Is Capped Per Account
Every paid plan includes AI Teammates and Asana Dash with 5 requests per user a month, but capped at 50 requests per account on Starter and Advanced and 250 on Enterprise. At 12 people that is 50 requests a month for the whole team, not 60; at 31 it is still 50, not 155. Beyond the pool, Asana charges $0.60 per request on demand, billed in arrears, or $0.50 in prepaid packs, which expire at month end for monthly customers. AI Studio, the no-code workflow builder, runs on a separate allowance of 50K, 75K or 200K credits per billing account a month depending on plan. Admins get alerts at 65%, 85% and 100% of the allotment and can set a spending cap on on-demand billing.
4. How the Alternatives Price the Same Team
ClickUp's pricing page showed two price sets when we checked: Unlimited at $7 and Business at $12 per user a month billed yearly, and Core at $9 and Business at $17, with pooled AI credits on every plan in the second set. Its Free Forever plan allows unlimited members with 60MB of storage. monday work management lists Basic at $9, Standard at $12 and Pro at $19 per seat a month billed annually, with plans starting at 3 seats; time tracking starts on Pro. Kavanah bills one seat at a time: Basic is $3 a seat a month ($2 billed yearly) with 100 AI credits per seat pooled across the workspace, and Pro is $6 ($4 yearly) with 250. At 12 people, Kavanah Basic is $36 a month. Pay as you go drops the seat fee entirely: after a first credit pack you pay only for AI credits, in packs from $10 per 1,000. The free Starter plan covers up to 5 members and 10 projects.
5. Price the Team You Will Have
Two habits make the comparison honest. Price the headcount you expect in a year, including the next seat step, not today's. And price AI separately: count how many AI actions your team would really run in a month, then cost them on each tool's own unit, whether that is Asana's per-account requests, ClickUp's or monday's pooled credits, or Kavanah's credits at about a cent each.
Seat steps, plan splits and AI caps are where a per-user price turns into a monthly bill. For the full comparison of Kavanah, Asana, ClickUp and monday work management, including what each imports from Asana, see our Asana alternative page.
