Notion pricing explained: which plan a small team actually needs
Notion pricing looks simple until a second person joins the workspace. On a solo account the free plan feels unlimited. Add a colleague and a block limit appears, file uploads cap out at 5 MB, and page history only goes back a week. That is usually the moment someone opens the pricing page and tries to work out what the team will be paying by the end of the quarter.
The per member price is the easy part. What changes the invoice is how seats are counted when people join and leave mid month, whether the people outside the company need seats at all, and how much of the AI feature set is included before credits start being billed. This article works through the plans as listed on Notion's pricing page in September 2026, in US dollars, and then puts real numbers against teams of three, six and twelve.
What each plan costs
Notion lists four plans: Free, Plus, Business and Enterprise. Prices are per member per month, and the annual rate is billed as one payment for the year.
| Plan | Billed annually | Billed monthly | Aimed at |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Individuals and small groups trying it out |
| Plus | $10 per member per month | $12 per member per month | Small teams with shared docs and databases |
| Business | $20 per member per month | $24 per member per month | Companies that need admin controls and AI at work |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | Custom pricing | Organizations with security and compliance review |
The annual rate is advertised as saving up to 20 percent, which matches the gap between $10 and $12 on Plus and between $20 and $24 on Business.
One line worth reading twice: the price is per member, not per person who touches the workspace. Guests are free on every plan, and that single fact is the largest lever a small team has over the bill.
Free: generous for one, limited for a team
The free plan has no time limit and no card required. For a single person it is genuinely open ended: pages and blocks are unlimited when a workspace has one member.
The limits arrive with the second member. On Free, a workspace with two or more members can only add a limited number of content blocks before it has to upgrade. When the limit is reached, existing content can still be read, edited and reorganized, but no new blocks can be added. That is a strange failure mode for a tool people use for notes, because it does not stop work all at once. It stops the next new page.
Three other caps matter in daily use:
- File uploads are capped at 5 MB on Free. Unlimited on every paid plan.
- Page history is 7 days on Free, 30 days on Plus, 90 days on Business, unlimited on Enterprise.
- External guests are capped at 10 on Free. Unlimited on Plus and above.
Free also includes Notion Calendar, databases with subtasks, dependencies and custom properties, basic forms, basic sites, and a trial of the AI features.
For a freelancer, a study group, or two people writing documentation together, Free covers a lot. For a team that is actively building out a workspace, the block limit and the 7 day history are the two things that push the decision.
Plus: where most small teams land
Plus is $10 per member per month billed annually, or $12 billed monthly. Compared with Free it adds unlimited collaborative blocks, unlimited file uploads, custom forms, custom sites, unlimited charts, basic connections, 30 days of page history, and unlimited guests.
Two of those matter more than the rest. Unlimited blocks removes the ceiling that makes Free unworkable for a team, and unlimited guests means clients, contractors and reviewers can be invited to specific pages at no cost. A guest sees only the pages they are invited to, not the teamspaces in the sidebar, which is often exactly the boundary a client project needs.
There is also a detail worth knowing for anyone in education: the Plus plan with a 1 member limit is free for students and educators, which gives more guests, longer version history and larger file uploads than the standard Free plan.
What Plus does not include
Plus is the writing and database plan. It is not the administration plan. SAML single sign on, granular database permissions, private teamspaces, domain verification and advanced page analytics all start at Business. The same goes for the heavier AI features: Notion Agent, AI Meeting Notes and Enterprise Search are Business features, while Plus includes a trial of AI rather than ongoing access.
For a team of five or eight people who trust each other and mostly need shared docs, databases and a client facing page or two, none of that is a daily problem. For a company where a security review is coming, it is the whole conversation.
Business: paid for controls and AI, not for writing
Business is $20 per member per month billed annually, or $24 billed monthly. That is double Plus. What it adds falls into two groups.
Administration: SAML SSO, granular database permissions, private teamspaces, domain verification, verified pages, advanced page analytics showing who edited a page rather than only who viewed it, and premium connections to other tools.
AI at work: Notion Agent, AI Meeting Notes, and Enterprise Search in beta.
Enterprise sits above Business with custom pricing. It adds zero data retention with the language model providers, user provisioning through SCIM, advanced security controls, an audit log, a customer success manager, security and compliance connections such as DLP and SIEM, and unlimited page history.
The test for Business is whether the second group would be used weekly. Doubling the per member price to get meeting notes that nobody reads is the most common way a small team overspends on this tool. Doubling it because the security questionnaire from a client asks about single sign on is a different decision entirely.
How seats are counted
Notion does not sell seats in blocks of five or ten. A paid seat is a license for one member, and the count moves with the workspace.
The mechanics from the pricing FAQ:
- Adding a member uses an available paid seat if one exists. If none is available, the paid seat count increases by 1.
- A member added mid cycle creates a prorated charge based on the time left in the billing period.
- Removing a member opens up a paid seat rather than issuing a refund. That seat can be given to someone else for the rest of the period at no extra cost.
- At each renewal, monthly or annual, the paid seat count is recalculated to match the number of members actually in the workspace.
That combination is friendlier to a small team than a tiered model. A team of seven pays for seven. Swapping a departing contractor for a new one costs nothing until renewal.
There is one consequence of per member billing that catches teams out. Because the seat count is recalculated at renewal to match the number of members present, an annual plan bought for eight people does not stay an eight person bill if the team grows to eleven during the year. Three prorated charges appear during the term, and the renewal invoice is then written for eleven. Nothing about this is hidden, but it does mean the yearly figure quoted at signup is a floor rather than a fixed cost, and a team that hires mid year should budget for the higher number instead of the one on the first invoice.
The refund policy is also more generous than most: a full refund, not prorated, if a subscription is downgraded within three days of signing up monthly or within 30 days of signing up annually. Customers in the European Union and other regions with mandatory refund rules get 14 days on a monthly subscription. Accidental member additions can be refunded as prorated charges if reported within three days of the invoice date.
Worked examples
Using the listed rates, before tax:
| Team size | Plus, annual (per year) | Plus, monthly (per month) | Business, annual (per year) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 members | $360 | $36 | $720 |
| 6 members | $720 | $72 | $1,440 |
| 12 members | $1,440 | $144 | $2,880 |
The line to compare against is not the row above. It is the same team with fewer members and more guests. A team of twelve where four people only review and comment can run as eight members plus four guests on Plus, which is $960 a year instead of $1,440. Guests cannot see teamspaces, so this only works when those four people genuinely live on a handful of shared pages.
AI credits: the line that can move
The AI features are no longer a single flat add on. Custom Agents are free to try and then run on Notion credits, priced at $10 per 1,000 monthly credits. Several parts of the developer platform, including Workers, are listed as requiring credits as well.
This matters for budgeting because credit consumption is driven by usage rather than headcount. Ten people who never open an agent cost nothing extra. One person who wires an agent into a recurring process can move the number on their own. Before committing, it is worth deciding which two or three repetitive jobs are actually worth automating, then watching credit use for a month before assuming the pattern will hold.
Failed payments are retried up to 8 times over the following month. After that the workspace is restricted for a period and then downgraded to Free, which is worth knowing if the card on file belongs to someone who has left.
Choosing a plan
Start from the constraint, not the feature grid.
One person, or two people with a small workspace. Free. The block limit only bites once a workspace with multiple members grows.
Three to fifteen people writing and collaborating daily. Plus. Count who needs to be a member and who can be a guest before entering card details.
Security review, single sign on, or AI meeting notes used weekly. Business. If only one of those three is true and it is the AI, price the alternative of Plus plus a separate tool for that job.
Audit logs, SCIM, data retention commitments. Enterprise, which means a sales conversation.
There is a second question underneath the plan choice, and it is not about price. Notion is a document and database tool that projects can be run inside. Some teams want the opposite: a tool where boards, Gantt charts, calendars and chat are there from the start and the only limits are people and boards. The two models produce different bills at the same headcount, because one charges per member for everything and the other charges only once a team outgrows a fixed free tier. A side by side view is on the comparison page for Notion, and the full list of comparisons covers Trello, Asana, monday.com and Backlog on the same terms.
What to change first
Before upgrading, open the member list and mark every person who only reads and comments. Those people can be guests, which are free on every plan, and that alone often decides whether Plus is affordable. If the workspace is mainly used to run projects rather than to write, it is worth comparing the total against Pinateca, where kanban, Gantt and chat are free for up to five people and ten boards.
Q1. How much does Notion cost per person?
Plus is $10 per member per month billed annually, or $12 billed monthly. Business is $20 billed annually or $24 billed monthly. Free costs nothing but limits a multi member workspace to a set number of content blocks, 5 MB file uploads and 7 days of page history.
Q2. Do guests count as paid seats in Notion?
No. Guests are free of charge on every plan, including Free, which allows up to 10 of them. Guests can only open the individual pages they are invited to and cannot see the teamspaces listed in the sidebar.
Q3. What happens if someone leaves the team mid month?
Removing a member frees up a paid seat rather than producing a refund. That seat can be assigned to someone else for the rest of the billing period at no extra charge, and the seat count is recalculated at the next renewal.
Q4. Is Notion AI included in the paid plans?
Free and Plus include a trial of the AI features. Business adds Notion Agent, AI Meeting Notes and Enterprise Search in beta. Custom Agents are free to try and then run on Notion credits at $10 per 1,000 monthly credits.
Q5. Can a Notion subscription be refunded?
The pricing FAQ states that a full refund is available if a subscription is downgraded within three days of signing up for monthly billing, or within 30 days of signing up for annual billing. Regions with mandatory refund rules, such as the European Union, get 14 days on monthly plans.
