A comparison · checked October 25, 2026
Looking for a monday.com alternative? Here is an honest comparison
The best monday.com alternative depends on what you are paying for and what you are using. monday.com sells seats in buckets: a minimum of 3, then multiples of 5, so a team of 6 buys 10 seats [2], and its Standard plan is listed at $12 a seat a month billed annually [1], which is $120 a month for those 6 people. Kavanah starts from the other end: its Pay as you go plan has no seat fee at all, you pay only for the AI credits you use, and its per-seat plans start at $3 a member with no rounding. This page compares Kavanah, monday.com, ClickUp and Asana on what their own pages said today, says exactly what each one brings across from monday.com and what it leaves behind, and names the cases where you should stay on monday.com.
#Why it is different
Why teams look for a monday.com alternative
The bill is usually the first reason, and it is shaped by more than the per-seat price. monday.com's work management plans are listed at $9 (Basic), $12 (Standard) and $19 (Pro) a seat a month billed annually [1], and the yearly price carries an 18% discount over monthly billing [2]. But monday.com prices groups of seats, not seats: plans start at 3 seats and then go up in multiples of 5, so a team of 4 picks the 5-seat option and a team of 6 needs the 10-seat plan [2]. Outside collaborators add to it. Basic has no guests at all, Standard bills every 4 guests as 1 seat, and an account whose members and guest groups pass its seat count is moved up to the next seat tier automatically [4].
The second reason is what each tier holds back. Automations and integrations start on Standard, with 250 automation actions and 250 integration actions a month, and monday.com's own help centre says 250 actions are typically used up within days by accounts that notify several people or map several columns per automation [5]. The time tracking and formula columns and dependencies are on Pro; SAML single sign-on, SCIM and the audit log are on Enterprise [3]. A board holds up to 10,000 items on every plan but Enterprise [7]. AI is metered in credits: the pricing page lists 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 a month on Basic, Standard and Pro [1], drawn from one account-wide balance, with a single agent run estimated at roughly 10 to 250 or more credits depending on the task [6].
Be fair to monday.com, though, because the reasons to stay are real. It is four products on one platform, for work management, CRM, software teams and service desks [2]. Pro carries 25,000 automation actions a month and Enterprise 250,000 [5], and monday.com cites ISO/IEC 27001 and 27018 certification and annual security audits [1]. Even ClickUp's comparison page, which is selling against it, says monday.com remains a sound choice for a small team that prefers visual boards [11]. Leaving is a good decision when you pay for a seat bucket, a tier and an AI allowance your team does not use. It is a bad one when your process depends on monday.com's CRM, its automation volume or a board layout everyone already knows. The checklist below is how to tell which.
#What to require
What to check in any monday.com alternative before you move
Use this list on every tool you shortlist, including ours. The first three decide what you will really pay, and they rarely appear on a headline price.
01
The price at your real headcount, after rounding
Per-seat prices hide rounding rules. monday.com rounds up to its next seat bucket [2]; Asana sells one seat at a time up to 5 users, then in steps of 5 up to 30 and 10 up to 100 [12]. Price the team you will have in a year at each tool's real step, not the list price times your headcount.
02
Who counts as a seat
Clients, contractors and reviewers can cost more than the team. On monday.com, guests are not available on Basic, every 4 guests are 1 billed seat on Standard, and they are unlimited on Pro [4]. ClickUp gives paid plans a limited number of guest seats plus unlimited read-only guests [10]; Asana lists unlimited free guests on Starter [12]. Count the outsiders you invite today.
03
Automation allowances, not just automations
Ask how many automation runs a month each plan includes and what happens at the limit. On monday.com, Standard's 250 actions a month can be gone within days, and a Gmail or Outlook integration can use a lot of actions on its own [5]. A tool that does not count actions removes that whole question.
04
An import that says what it drops
monday.com exports a board to Excel, up to 100,000 items, with updates on a separate tab, but the updates on subitems are not exported, and board views and the Auto Number column do not come across [8]. Every importer then loses more. ClickUp, for example, says attachments, connected boards, dependencies, formulas, mirrors, tags and timelines are not supported, and sub-items become separate tasks [11]. Ask for that list in writing and test one real board.
05
An archive you keep
Before you cancel, an admin can download the whole account as a zip of boards and files, but archived boards, workdocs and dashboards are not included, so export workdocs as PDF first [9]. Keep that archive whatever you move to.
06
What one AI credit buys, and who can spend it
Credits are not a common unit. monday.com spends its credits per capability, from 8 credits per AI block action to an estimated 250 or more for a complex agent run, from one pool, with alerts at 80% and 100% of the limit [6]. Asana counts AI Studio credits per billing account [12]; ClickUp sells AI Super Credits at $10 per 10,000 [10]. Ask what a typical task costs and what the AI may do without a person approving it.
07
The plan that has the feature you need
Write down the features your team uses and find the plan that carries each. On monday.com, time tracking and dependencies are on Pro and Gantt charts on Standard [3]; on Asana, estimated-versus-actual time tracking is on Advanced [12]. A feature on the comparison grid is only useful on the plan you will buy.
08
Security evidence, and which plan has SSO
Ask for the audit report, not the badge, and check which plan carries SAML single sign-on and SCIM. On monday.com, Asana and ClickUp they sit on Enterprise [3][12][10].
#How Kavanah does it
How Kavanah covers what you use monday.com for
Kavanah is an agentic project management platform: boards, tasks, planning and time tracking, with AI employees that do coordination work inside limits a person sets. Each item below describes the product as it ships today, including where it falls short of monday.com.
Credits first, seats optional
AI is metered in credits, at roughly one cent each against model usage. Pay as you go drops the seat fee entirely: unlimited seats and projects, and you buy credits in packs from $10 per 1,000. If you prefer a subscription, Basic is $3 a member a month ($2 billed yearly) with 100 credits a seat, and Pro is $6 ($4 yearly) with 250, pooled for the workspace. Seats are billed one member at a time, with no buckets. A free Starter plan covers up to 5 members, 10 projects and 100 credits a month.
Learn moreImport of a monday.com board export
Upload a board export from the project's Integrations tab and preview it before anything is written. Kavanah reads each item's name, group, status, people, date and a description column. Each group becomes a board column in a new project, and people are matched to members by email or name. Limits: the file must be CSV or JSON, so save monday.com's Excel export as CSV first; up to 5,000 items; the status value is used only for items with no group; and subitems, updates, files, priority and other columns are not imported. Importing the same export twice is skipped, not duplicated.
A monday.com connector for the pilot
Connect monday.com with a personal API token. The agent can then list boards, groups and items, create an item and update an item's column values. Writes into monday.com wait for your approval by default and are removed entirely in safe mode. A background sync keeps an index of your boards' items; it does not create Kavanah tasks.
Automations without an action allowance
Rules pair a trigger, optional conditions and an action: assign, change status, set a field, tag, comment, move to a project, notify, or hand the task to the AI agent. Kavanah does not count automation runs against a monthly allowance; an action that runs the AI agent spends credits like any other AI use.
Board, list, table, timeline, calendar, gallery and map
Seven views over the same tasks, plus first-class sub-tasks, dependencies, custom statuses per project, custom fields, and time tracking on every plan.
Clients in a portal, not on the seat count
Invite clients to a client portal on every plan to follow and collaborate on their own projects. Portal clients are not workspace members, so they are not billed as seats.
AI employees with controls
AI employees with a role, scoped tools and access only to the projects you choose. Safe mode removes risky actions, action policies make chosen categories wait for approval, every action lands in a ledger, and actions can be undone. Anything that runs on its own or spends AI credits is off until you turn it on.
Learn moreChat and discussions beside the work
Team chat and threaded project discussions live in the same workspace as the tasks they are about, on every plan.
Integrations, API, CLI and MCP
Connectors for the tools teams already run, a REST API with a published OpenAPI spec, API keys that carry the permissions of the person who minted them, the kvn command line, and an MCP server so Claude can use your workspace as a connector.
Learn moreIdentity and security, stated plainly
SAML 2.0 and OIDC single sign-on and SCIM on the Enterprise plan, TOTP and passkey sign-in, per-project and per-task access control, and an audit log. The SOC 2 Type II observation period is underway; there is no report yet.
Learn more#In practice
Migrating from monday.com to Kavanah, step by step
One team lead and a workspace admin
1. Pilot beside monday.com
- In Settings, Integrations, connect monday.com with a personal API token from your monday.com account.
- Ask the agent about the team's boards, for example "items in the Launch board's This Week group". It reads boards, groups and items live and answers in chat.
- Leave the default policy on, so any item the agent creates or updates in monday.com waits for a person to approve it.
- Run one team's work in Kavanah for two sprints while monday.com stays the system of record for everyone else.
monday.com board owner or admin
2. Export one board from monday.com
- On the board, open the three-dot menu, then More actions, then Export board to Excel [8]. Filters you apply first are respected, so you can export one group or one person's items.
- Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets and save the main sheet as CSV. Kavanah skips the title rows above the header and reads monday.com's repeated group headers.
- Check that the item name, status, people, date and any notes column you rely on are in the sheet. Kavanah ignores the rest.
- Ask an admin for the full account export as well [9], and keep it with the Excel file as your archive: updates, subitems, files and every other column stay there.
Workspace admin
3. Import it as a new project
- Open any project's Integrations tab, choose "Migrate a board from Trello or Monday.com", pick Monday.com and select the CSV.
- Read the preview: it lists the columns each group will become and which people matched a member. Then commit; the board lands as a new project.
- You can also attach a small export in chat and ask the agent to import it, or send it to the import API from a script. Chat attachments are cut at 30,000 characters, so use the panel or the API for anything larger.
- People who matched no member are kept on the task as written; invite them, then reassign.
Team lead
4. Rebuild what an export does not carry
- Mark finished items done and set priorities: the import does not read completion or priority.
- Recreate subitems as sub-tasks and add the dependencies that matter.
- Rebuild your automations as Kavanah rules, starting with the ones that notify people or move work between groups.
- Invite clients to the client portal instead of sharing boards with guests.
#Compared
Kavanah, monday.com, ClickUp and Asana compared
Each competitor cell describes only what that vendor's own public page said when we checked on October 25, 2026: monday.com's pricing page and its help-centre articles on plans and pricing, plan types, guests, automations, AI credits and exporting [1][2][3][4][5][6][8], ClickUp's pricing page and its comparison with monday.com [10][11], and Asana's pricing page [12]. ClickUp's pricing page showed two plan line-ups at once; both are given. "Not described" means the page did not say, not that the product lacks it. Kavanah cells describe the product as it ships.
| Criterion | Kavanah | monday.com | ClickUp | Asana |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | Pay as you go: no seat fee, credits in packs from $10 per 1,000; or Basic at $3 a seat a month, $2 billed yearly | Basic $9 a seat a month billed annually [1] | Unlimited $7 or Core $9 a user a month billed yearly; both line-ups shown [10] | Starter $10.99 a user a month billed annually, $13.49 monthly [12] |
| Seat rounding | None: billed per member, one seat at a time | Minimum 3 seats, then multiples of 5; a team of 6 buys 10 [2] | Its comparison page prices a team of 6 at 6 seats [11] | 1 seat at a time up to 5, then steps of 5 up to 30 and 10 up to 100 [12] |
| Free option | Starter: up to 5 members, 10 projects, 100 AI credits a month | Free: up to 2 seats, 3 boards [1] | Free Forever: unlimited members, 60MB storage [10] | Personal: free for up to 2 users [12] |
| Outside collaborators | Client portal on every plan; portal clients are not seats | No guests on Basic; every 4 guests are 1 seat on Standard; unlimited on Pro [4] | Limited guest seats on paid plans, unlimited read-only guests [10] | Unlimited free guests on Starter [12] |
| Automation allowance | No monthly action allowance; actions that run the AI agent spend credits | None on Basic; 250 automation and 250 integration actions a month on Standard, 25,000 on Pro [5] | 100 automation actions a month on Free [10]; 5,000 on Business per its comparison page [11] | Not described |
| How AI is priced | Credits at roughly one cent each; 100 a seat a month on Basic, 250 on Pro, pooled; packs on top | 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 AI credits a month on Basic, Standard and Pro [1], from one account pool [6] | AI Super Credits at $10 per 10,000, with a monthly allowance on every plan [10] | AI Studio credits per billing account: 50K on Starter, 75K on Advanced [12] |
| Time tracking | On every plan | Time Tracking Column on Pro and Enterprise [3] | Included on paid plans; trial on Free [10] | Estimated versus actual time on Advanced; Timesheets add-on [12] |
| Bringing work over from monday.com | Board export as CSV or JSON: name, group, status, people, date, description; up to 5,000 items; no subitems, updates or files | Board export to Excel up to 100,000 items; subitem updates not exported [8] | Imports boards, items, people, dates, statuses, custom fields and time tracking; sub-items become separate tasks; attachments, dependencies and formulas not supported [11] | Not described |
| SSO and SCIM | SAML 2.0 / OIDC SSO and SCIM on Enterprise | SAML SSO and SCIM on Enterprise [3] | SAML SSO and SCIM on Enterprise and Max [10] | SAML and SCIM on Enterprise [12] |
| Security attestations named | SOC 2 Type II observation period underway; no report yet | ISO/IEC 27001 and 27018; annual security audits [1] | SOC 2 and ISO 27001 [10] | SOC 2 Type II with annual third-party audits [12] |
#Questions
Questions buyers ask
- What is the best monday.com alternative?
- It depends on why you are leaving. For a team that wants tasks, wikis and whiteboards in one place, ClickUp is the usual choice, and it has its own monday.com importer. For teams that plan across departments, Asana sells seats one at a time up to five users and includes free guests on Starter. Kavanah fits teams that want AI agents doing coordination work under real controls, and that would rather pay for AI credits than for a bucket of seats. If you run your CRM or service desk on monday.com, staying may be the better call.
- Is Kavanah cheaper than monday.com?
- For most team sizes, yes, before AI. A team of 6 on monday.com Standard buys a 10-seat bucket at $12 a seat a month billed annually, or $120 a month. On Kavanah's Pay as you go plan the same 6 people pay no seat fee at all and buy AI credits from $10 per 1,000; on Basic they pay $3 a member a month, $18, with 100 credits a seat included. Kavanah meters AI in credits, so a team that leans on its AI agents should price the credits too.
- Why does monday.com charge me for 10 seats when we are 6 people?
- Because monday.com prices groups of seats rather than single seats. Its help centre says plans start at a minimum of 3 seats and then go up in multiples of 5, so a team of 4 takes the 5-seat option and a team of 6 needs the 10-seat plan. Guests on the Standard plan count too, at one seat for every 4 guests. Kavanah bills one member at a time, and clients in its portal are not seats.
- Can I import my monday.com boards into Kavanah?
- Yes, from a board export. Export the board to Excel in monday.com, save it as CSV, and upload it from a project's Integrations tab, where a preview shows the columns and member matches before anything is written. Kavanah reads item names, groups, status, people, dates and a description column, up to 5,000 items, and each group becomes a board column. Subitems, updates, files, priority and other columns are not imported, so keep the export as your archive.
- Does Kavanah sync with monday.com both ways?
- Not as an automatic item-for-item sync. The monday.com connector lets Kavanah's agent list boards, groups and items, create items and update an item's column values, with each write waiting for your approval by default. A background sync keeps an index of your boards' items but does not create Kavanah tasks. That is enough to run a pilot team in Kavanah while everyone else stays on monday.com.
- How do monday.com AI credits compare with Kavanah credits?
- They are different units, so compare what a task costs rather than the number of credits. monday.com includes 1,000 to 3,000 credits a month depending on the plan and spends them per capability, with a complex agent run estimated at 150 credits or more. Kavanah credits are metered against model usage at roughly one cent each, with 100 a seat a month on Basic and 250 on Pro, pooled for the workspace. On both, you can buy more when the allowance runs out.
- Do automations have a monthly limit in Kavanah?
- No. Kavanah's automation rules are not counted against a monthly action allowance on any plan. monday.com's Standard plan includes 250 automation actions and 250 integration actions a month and Pro includes 25,000, and Basic has no automations. In Kavanah, an automation that hands work to the AI agent spends AI credits like any other AI use, and anything that runs on its own is off until you turn it on.
- When should a team stay on monday.com?
- When the process lives in what monday.com does best: a CRM, service desk or software workflow on its other products, automations running in the tens of thousands a month on Pro or Enterprise, dashboards everyone reads, or a team that already knows its boards and has no reason to relearn. ClickUp's own comparison page concedes monday.com is a sound choice for a small team that prefers visual boards. If the bill is the only problem, check whether a smaller seat bucket or plan solves it first.
#Go deeper
One question at a time
- monday.com Seat Buckets Explained: What a Team of 6, 12 or 22 Actually Paysmonday.com does not sell seats one at a time. It sells buckets, and guests can push you into the next one. Here is the real monthly bill for three team sizes, from monday.com's own pages, next to Asana and Kavanah.
- How to Move From monday.com: What the Export Carries, What the Import Drops, Step by StepA monday.com board export is an Excel file with your items, and much of what makes a board useful stays behind. Here is what monday.com's export includes, what Kavanah's importer reads from it, and how to keep an archive of the rest.
- monday.com Automation Actions and AI Credits: The Two Monthly Limits, ExplainedOn monday.com, automations and AI each run against a monthly allowance, and neither is the number on the seat price. Here is how actions and credits are counted, what each plan includes, and what to ask any alternative.
- When You Should Stay on monday.comMost monday.com alternative articles are written to make you switch. This one is not. Here are the situations where staying, or changing plan instead of tool, is the right call, and how to tell if you are in one.
Related reading
- Agentic project managementWhat AI employees do in a project, and the controls that keep them inside the lines.
- Jira alternativeThe same honest comparison for engineering teams leaving Jira, with what each import drops.
- Kavanah pricingPay as you go with no seat fee, per-seat plans from $3, and how AI credits work.
- IntegrationsThe tools Kavanah connects to, including the monday.com connector for a pilot.
- Security overviewEncryption, access control, SSO and SCIM, and where the SOC 2 Type II audit stands.
Sources
- [1] Pricing: monday.com plans — monday.com, 2026, updated
- [2] Plans and pricing for monday.com — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [3] Available plan types on monday AI work platform — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [4] Pricing for guests — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [5] Automations and integrations pricing — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [6] AI Credits — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [7] Item and subitem limits per board — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [8] Export from monday to Excel — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [9] How to export your entire account's data — monday.com Support, 2026, updated
- [10] ClickUp Pricing and Plans — ClickUp, 2026, updated
- [11] Monday vs. ClickUp: The #1 Monday Alternative is ClickUp — ClickUp, 2026
- [12] Asana pricing — Asana, 2026, updated
Sources and the comparison were checked on October 25, 2026. Product details change; check each vendor's own pages before you decide.
Run it on your own work.
Free to start, priced per seat from $3 a month with AI usage metered in credits.