timesheet
The per-user price is on the pricing page, so the arithmetic looks like a two-minute job. Multiply the headcount by the monthly figure, multiply by twelve, and take the number to whoever signs off on it. Then the quote comes back higher than the calculation, and the gap has to be explained.
The gap is not a trick. It comes from three things the per-user figure does not contain: the seat count a team is allowed to buy, the features that sit one plan above the one being priced, and the usage limits that are counted per account rather than per person. All three matter more to a team of seven than the headline rate does. What follows is the 2026 pricing as published, and then the parts of the bill that the headline rate does not carry.
Asana lists four plans. Prices below are from the public pricing page as of 26 September 2026, in US dollars, before tax.
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Seat floor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Personal | $0 | $0 | 2 users |
| Starter | $10.99 per user per month | $13.49 per user per month | No seat limit |
| Advanced | $24.99 per user per month | $30.49 per user per month | No seat limit |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Contact sales | Contact sales |
Enterprise+ exists above Enterprise for teams that need SIEM integration, data residency and audit logs. Neither Enterprise tier publishes a rate, which means a small team cannot budget for it without a sales conversation.
The annual and monthly columns are the first decision to get right, because the difference compounds. Starter costs $2.50 more per user per month when billed monthly, which is roughly 23 percent on top. On ten seats that is $300 a year for the privilege of being able to leave in thirty days. The pricing page advertises savings of up to 18 percent on yearly billing, and the refund policy is worth reading alongside it: Asana does not offer refunds, and cancelling keeps paid access only until the end of the period already paid for. An annual commitment made in month one is a full year of spend whether the tool sticks or not.
This is the line most cost calculations miss. Seats cannot be bought one at a time once a team passes five people. The published increments are:
Read that against a real team. Six people cannot buy six seats. The next available block is ten. On Starter billed annually, that is $109.90 a month instead of the $65.94 the headcount suggests, so a team of six pays for four seats nobody logs into, which works out to about $527 a year of empty capacity. A team of seven pays for three empty seats, a team of eleven pays for fifteen and carries four.
| Headcount | Seats billed | Starter annual, per year | Advanced annual, per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 5 | $659.40 | $1,499.40 |
| 6 | 10 | $1,318.80 | $2,998.80 |
| 10 | 10 | $1,318.80 | $2,998.80 |
| 12 | 15 | $1,978.20 | $4,498.20 |
The jump from five to six people doubles the bill. That is the single most useful fact for a team sitting at that size, and it points at a specific decision: if the sixth person is a client, a reviewer or a contractor who only needs to see and comment, they may not need a seat at all. Starter includes unlimited free guests, and guest access is the lever that keeps a five-person team at five seats.
Personal is capped at two users. Not ten, not fifteen. Two. Anyone evaluating Asana on the basis of an older article about its free tier should check that number first, because it changes the calculation completely: for a team of five, Asana's free plan is not an option, and the comparison is between paying and not using the tool.
What Personal does include is generous inside its limit. Unlimited tasks and projects, list, board and calendar views, unlimited storage with a 100MB ceiling per file, status updates, and over 100 integrations. What it does not include is the view most people picture when they think about project planning. Timeline and Gantt views begin at Starter, along with reporting dashboards, unlimited automations, forms, custom templates and custom fields.
So the practical answer to where the free plan stops is: at the third person, or at the first date that has to be plotted against another date. For teams whose work is genuinely a shared list, two seats and no dates can be enough for a long time. For anyone who needs a schedule view or a third contributor, the free plan is a trial rather than a destination. This is worth checking against alternatives before committing, because the point at which a free tier runs out varies widely by tool, and a side by side look at the plan boundaries is faster than reading four pricing pages.
The gap between Starter and Advanced is $14 per user per month on annual billing, which more than doubles the rate. It is worth naming what that money buys, because the two plans are not separated by polish.
Advanced adds unlimited portfolios, goals, resource management, approvals and proofing, form branching, native time tracking, scaled security, and connections to Salesforce, Tableau and Power BI. Read as a list it looks like a grab bag. Read as a job it is coherent: Advanced is the plan for someone whose problem is allocating people across several projects at once, rather than running one project well.
That gives a clean test. If nobody in the team is currently asking who is overloaded next month, or reporting progress against quarterly goals, or approving deliverables formally, Advanced is being bought for features that will not get opened. Native time tracking is the one item that commonly pulls teams up a tier on its own, and it is worth pricing separately before upgrading everyone, because paying $14 extra per person per month for everyone so that three contractors can log hours is an expensive way to solve a narrow problem.
Four items sit outside the seat rate and none of them appear in a headcount calculation.
Tax. Prices are quoted before tax. State and local sales tax is applied based on billing address, and VAT or GST is applied where local law requires it. A VAT registration number entered at checkout can process an exemption where one applies.
AI usage is capped per account, not per person. Starter and Advanced include five AI requests per user per month, up to 50 per account. The per-account ceiling is the part that bites: a team of ten hits the same 50 request cap as a team of thirty. Beyond that, extra requests cost $0.50 each in prepaid packs or $0.60 each on pay as you go billing. AI Studio credits are also per billing account, at 50,000 a month on Starter and 75,000 on Advanced.
Add-ons are Enterprise only. Timesheets and Budgets, compliance management and permissions management are all sold separately and all listed as available on the Enterprise plan. A small team that wants timesheet data alongside its tasks cannot buy that module at the Starter or Advanced price.
Discounts exist but are narrow. Eligible nonprofits get a discount on Starter or Advanced annual plans. Student groups are handled case by case through sales. There is no published small business rate.
The first lever is guests. Anyone who reviews, comments or watches rather than owning work can be a free guest on Starter, and unlimited free guests is the specific line in the plan that makes this work. Auditing who genuinely needs a seat before renewal is usually the largest single saving available, particularly for a team hovering at the five to six boundary.
The second lever is timing the seat blocks. Because seats move in fives between 5 and 30 users, the cost of a new hire is not one twelfth of a seat block. Hiring the sixth and seventh people in the same quarter costs the same as hiring the sixth alone.
The third lever is the billing cycle, used deliberately rather than by default. Monthly billing at 23 percent more is a reasonable price for an exit option during a genuine evaluation. It is a poor deal once the team has decided to stay. Switching to annual at the first renewal, rather than at signup, buys the option first and the discount second.
Per-seat pricing assumes every person in the tool produces roughly the same value from it. That holds for a team of full-time contributors. It holds badly for the shape most small teams actually have, which is three or four people in the tool daily, a couple who open it weekly, and a rotating cast of contractors and clients who need to see one board.
Two specific mismatches are worth naming. The first is the part-time contributor: a designer who works two days a week costs the same seat as someone full time. The second is the tool that charges for capability rather than headcount, where the bill moves when the work gets more complex rather than when the roster grows. Neither model is better in the abstract. The question is which one matches how the team grows, and teams that add collaborators faster than they add output are usually paying the wrong axis.
It is also worth checking what a plan boundary is actually gating. Some tools split plans by feature, so a schedule view or custom fields sit behind an upgrade. Others keep the feature set whole and price on team size and workspace count instead. The second shape is easier to budget for, because the bill only moves when something countable changes.
Count the people who need to create and edit, separately from the people who only need to read, and check that first number against the seat blocks rather than against the per-user rate. If it lands at six or seven, the honest options are to get back under five with guest access, or to accept that ten seats is the real price. Before committing to an annual term, compare that figure against what Pinateca charges for the same headcount, since a free tier that covers five people and ten boards changes which side of the five person line a team needs to stay on.
On Starter billed annually, ten seats work out to $109.90 a month, or $1,318.80 a year before tax. On Advanced the same ten seats are $249.90 a month, or $2,998.80 a year. Billed monthly instead of annually, Starter rises to $13.49 per user and Advanced to $30.49.
Only for one or two people. The Personal plan is capped at two users, so a team of three or more needs a paid plan. Inside that cap it is not restrictive, with unlimited tasks and projects and list, board and calendar views, but Timeline and Gantt views are not included at any headcount on the free tier.
Almost always the seat increments. Above five users, seats are sold in blocks of five up to 30 users, then in blocks of ten up to 100. A team of six is billed for ten seats, and a team of twelve for fifteen. The per-user rate is correct; the seat count in the calculation was not.
A plan can be cancelled at any time, and paid features remain available until the end of the period already paid for. There are no refunds, so an annual commitment is a full year of spend regardless of use. When the subscription expires, access to paid features and the data tied to them is lost.
Not on Starter and above, which include unlimited free guests. Guests do not consume a licensed seat, which makes guest access the cheapest way for a five-person team to involve reviewers and clients without crossing into the next seat block.