Trello's free plan: what the limits mean for a growing team
Trello's free plan has four limits that matter to a team: up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, up to 10 open boards per Workspace, 250 Workspace command runs for automation each month, and a 10MB cap on each file. Cards, Power-Ups per board, storage overall, and the activity log are unlimited. Those figures come from Trello's pricing page as checked on October 8, 2026.
The limits themselves are easy to read. What surprises teams is how they are counted and what happens on the day a Workspace goes over. Going past 10 collaborators does not just block new invites. According to Atlassian's support article on the collaborator limit, every board in the Workspace becomes view-only and its automations stop. This article explains how each limit is counted, what triggers it, the workarounds that are legitimate and the ones that cause trouble later, and what the first paid step costs.
The free plan at a glance
From Trello's pricing page on October 8, 2026, the Free plan includes:
| Included on Free | Limit |
|---|---|
| Collaborators per Workspace | Up to 10 |
| Open boards per Workspace | Up to 10 |
| Cards | Unlimited |
| Power-Ups per board | Unlimited |
| Storage | Unlimited, 10MB per file |
| Automation | 250 Workspace command runs per month |
| Activity log | Unlimited |
| Assignees and due dates | Included |
| Mobile apps and two-factor authentication | Included |
What Free does not include, and Standard does: unlimited boards, Custom Fields, advanced checklists with assignees and due dates on individual items, card mirroring, list colors, collapsible lists, single-board guests, saved searches, AI features, and 250MB files. Premium adds the Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard, and Map views, plus unlimited command runs.
The table makes Free look generous, and for a solo user or a team of four it is. The limits begin to bite at the point a team starts working with people outside itself.
The 10 collaborator limit, and who counts
Atlassian's support article defines a collaborator as anyone invited to a board in the Workspace or to the Workspace itself. That includes:
- Workspace members
- Workspace guests, meaning board members who are not Workspace members, whether they are on one board or several
- Pending invitations, to a board or to the Workspace
People who do not count are those who are only members of closed boards, deactivated accounts and deactivated Workspace members, and people who have requested to join but have not been approved yet.
Two details trip teams up.
The limit is per Workspace, not per board. A board with four members can still show an over-limit notice if the Workspace as a whole has more than 10 collaborators across its other boards. The article answers this exact question.
Unanswered invitations take a place. An invitation sent to a client who never accepted it still counts. Cleaning up pending invites is often the fastest way back under the limit.
What happens when a Workspace goes over
The support article is specific about the consequences:
- All boards in the Workspace become view-only. Everything can be seen, but no card can be changed.
- No new collaborators can be added while the Workspace has 10 or more. Existing collaborators can still be added to or removed from boards.
- Automations stop running on boards in that Workspace while it is over the limit.
To check the count, open the Workspace's Members page; the number of collaborators is shown in the sidebar. On the free plan every Workspace member is also an admin, so any member can see it. Guests cannot.
The 10 board limit, and the closed board rule
Atlassian's help article on board creation says a free Workspace can have 10 boards open at a time. A closed board is essentially archived. It no longer counts toward the limit, and it can be reopened later as long as there is room under the 10.
This makes the board limit softer than it first appears. A team that runs one board per project can keep finished projects as closed boards and reopen one when a client comes back. The constraint is how many projects are active at once, not how many have ever existed.
The same article mentions a second route: creating another Workspace to hold new boards. That works for personal projects. For a team, it splits the work in two places and doubles the collaborator bookkeeping, because each Workspace has its own 10 collaborator count and people have to be invited to both.
Automation runs
The 250 command runs per month are shared across the Workspace. Every time a rule, button, or scheduled command executes, it uses runs. A board where a rule fires on every card move can use 250 in a few weeks. Standard raises the count to 1,000 runs a month, and Premium removes the limit.
Feature gaps that show up in daily work
Beyond the counted limits, some features are missing from Free, and teams usually notice them a few weeks in rather than on day one. Each description below follows the wording of Trello's plan comparison table.
Custom Fields. Trello describes them as a way to bring process and formality to a workflow by structuring information on cards. Without them, details such as an estimate, a client name, or a budget code go into the card title, a label, or the description. That works for a small board, but it cannot be sorted or filtered as a field.
Advanced checklists. On Standard, individual checklist items can have their own assignee and due date. On Free, a checklist is a list of ticks. When a card holds work for three people, Free forces either one owner for the whole card or separate cards for each person.
File size. Free allows unlimited storage, but each file is capped at 10MB. Design files, recorded calls, and large PDFs often exceed that. Standard raises the cap to 250MB per file. The usual workaround is a link to a cloud drive, which works but separates the file from its card history.
Single-board guests. These appear from Standard upward. On Free, anyone invited to a board is simply a collaborator and counts toward the 10.
Card mirroring. Standard lets a single card appear on multiple boards and be edited from any of them. On Free, a task that belongs to two boards has to be duplicated, and the copies drift apart.
Planner. Free includes Planner in view-only form, showing scheduled cards on a calendar. Dragging cards onto the calendar to block time requires Standard.
None of these is a reason to upgrade on its own. Together, they explain why a team that never hits the 10 person or 10 board limit can still feel that the free plan is getting tight.
Workarounds that hold up, and ones that do not
Most teams can stay on Free longer than they expect by managing the limits deliberately.
Ones that hold up:
- Remove stale invitations and departed guests. The support article links to steps for removing a collaborator from a free Workspace. Doing this monthly keeps a buffer.
- Close finished boards rather than deleting them. They stop counting toward the 10 and can be reopened.
- Share read-only information outside Trello. A client who only needs a weekly status does not need to be a collaborator. A short written update avoids using a place.
- Spend automation runs on handoffs. Rules that assign the next person or move a card when a checklist completes save more time than cosmetic rules.
Ones that cause problems later:
- Sharing one login among several people. It hides who did what in the activity log and conflicts with the idea that each collaborator is a person. If that account is compromised, everyone is affected.
- A separate Workspace for every client. Each one starts with its own limits, but the team then has to switch Workspaces constantly, and nobody has a single view of the week.
- Inviting clients and forgetting them. A client invited to approve one card counts as a collaborator until removed.
When the workarounds start taking more time each week than the cost of a seat, it is time to compare the paid options.
What the paid steps cost
Prices from Trello's pricing page on October 8, 2026, in US dollars:
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing | What changes for a small team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | 10 collaborators, 10 open boards per Workspace |
| Standard | $5 per user per month | $6 per user per month | Unlimited boards and collaborators, Custom Fields, single-board guests, 1,000 command runs |
| Premium | $10 per user per month | $12.50 per user per month | Adds Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard, and Map views, unlimited command runs |
| Enterprise | $17.50 per user per month, billed annually | Listed as annual only | Adds organization-wide controls and multi-board guests |
For a team of eight on Standard billed annually, that is $40 a month, or $480 a year. On Premium, it is $80 a month, or $960 a year. Premium is the plan to price if the team needs a timeline or calendar of its cards, since those views are not on Standard.
Atlassian's article also notes that downgrading from a paid plan to Free reapplies the 10 collaborator limit from the day the subscription ends. A team that upgrades for a busy quarter and plans to drop back should clean up its collaborator list first.
Comparing with tools that count differently
The way a free plan counts people and boards matters as much as the numbers. Trello counts per Workspace and includes guests and pending invites. Other project management tools count in other ways, and the difference changes which one is cheaper for a given team.
One example: a project management tool whose free plan covers up to 5 people and 10 boards, counted as a total across all Workspaces rather than per Workspace, with archived boards excluded. Its free plan includes a Gantt chart, a calendar board, and chat, which on Trello would need Premium for the timeline and calendar views. Its paid plan does not count view-only guests, and it can read a Trello JSON export and bring across boards, lists, cards, labels, checklists, attachments, and comments, which the Trello import page describes. The Trello comparison and the pricing page set the numbers side by side.
For a team of more than five that mainly uses kanban boards and is comfortable with Power-Ups, Trello Standard at $5 per user is a straightforward next step. For a team of five or fewer that needs schedule views, a free plan that includes them is worth checking before paying for Premium.
What to change first
Open the Workspace Members page today, remove pending invitations and guests who no longer need access, and close boards for finished projects. If the team still needs more than the free plan allows, price twelve months of Trello Standard or Premium against a free plan that includes Gantt and calendar views, such as Pinateca, before choosing.
Q1. How many people can use Trello for free?
Up to 10 collaborators per Workspace. Atlassian counts Workspace members, guests on any board, and pending invitations. People who are only on closed boards and deactivated accounts do not count.
Q2. What happens if my free Trello Workspace has more than 10 collaborators?
According to Atlassian's support article, every board in the Workspace becomes view-only, no new collaborators can be added, and automations on those boards stop running. Removing collaborators or upgrading to a paid plan restores editing.
Q3. Do closed boards count toward Trello's 10 board limit?
No. The limit is 10 open boards per free Workspace. A closed board is essentially archived and can be reopened later if there is space under the limit.
Q4. Can I get around the Trello free limits by making another Workspace?
Each Workspace has its own limits, and Atlassian's help article mentions creating a new Workspace as an option for personal projects. For a team, it splits work and collaborators across separate places, which makes it harder to see everything in one view.
Q5. Which Trello plan has the timeline and calendar views?
Premium, at $10 per user per month billed annually or $12.50 billed monthly, according to the pricing page on October 8, 2026. Free includes Planner in view-only form and Standard includes full Planner access, but neither has the board Calendar and Timeline views.