ClickUp is a broad work management platform that combines tasks, project planning, Docs, dashboards, chat, whiteboards, automations, and built-in time tracking in one workspace.
However, an all-in-one platform isn't necessarily the best fit for every team. Some businesses want a simpler project management experience, while others need stronger time tracking, billing, automation, or specialized workflows.
If you're looking for a ClickUp alternative, here are five tools worth considering.
1. TMetric
TMetric is a time tracking and project management platform designed for teams, agencies, freelancers, and businesses that need a clear connection between tracked hours, projects, budgets, and billing.
While ClickUp treats time tracking as one component of a broader work management system, TMetric puts time and project profitability at the center. Users can track time with a timer, add entries manually, work offline, and use idle detection to keep records accurate.
Its project management features include tasks, deadlines, estimates, project budgets, billable rates, and notifications when projects approach or exceed their budgets. Teams can also manage user permissions and monitor workload and availability from a team dashboard.
Reporting is another major part of TMetric. Managers can generate time, project, task, activity, and team reports to understand how work is distributed and where project time is going. For client-facing work, TMetric also supports branded invoices and billing by project, client, or task.
TMetric can also work alongside ClickUp rather than replacing it completely. Its ClickUp integration lets users start a TMetric timer directly from a ClickUp task and then use TMetric for more detailed time entries and reporting.
Best for: Agencies, professional services teams, freelancers, and businesses that need detailed time tracking, project budgets, profitability visibility, and billing.
2. Asana
Asana is a project management platform focused on organizing tasks, projects, goals, and team workflows. It is a strong alternative for teams that want structured project management without necessarily adopting an extensive all-in-one workspace.
Teams can organize work through tasks, subtasks, dependencies, and several project views. Compared with ClickUp, Asana generally emphasizes a more streamlined setup and onboarding experience, which can make it easier for teams to get started with standardized workflows.
Asana is particularly useful when the main challenge is keeping projects organized and making responsibilities visible. Teams can assign work, establish deadlines, connect dependent tasks, and visualize project progress.
The trade-off is that teams looking for extensive customization or native time-tracking capabilities may find ClickUp or a dedicated time tracking platform more suitable. ClickUp's own comparison notes that native time tracking is included in ClickUp while Asana's requires a higher-tier plan.
Best for: Teams that prioritize straightforward project organization, task management, collaboration, and structured workflows.
3. monday.com
monday.com is a visual work management platform built around customizable boards. It can be used for project management, marketing operations, sales processes, product development, and other workflows.
Its board-based approach makes project information highly visual. Teams can organize work around items, subitems, dependencies, statuses, and multiple views, including Gantt, Calendar, Timeline, Workload, and other formats.
Automation is another important part of the platform. Teams can create rules that trigger actions such as status changes, assignments, and notifications, helping reduce repetitive administrative work.
Compared with ClickUp, monday.com tends to emphasize a polished visual interface and customizable workflows. ClickUp offers a broader collection of views and includes features such as Docs, native time tracking, and sprint management in its core platform.
Best for: Marketing, operations, and cross-functional teams that prefer visual boards and customizable workflow automation.
4. Trello
Trello is a simpler alternative to ClickUp built around the familiar Kanban board model. Instead of creating a highly structured project hierarchy, teams organize work using boards, lists, and cards.
Each card can represent a task, deliverable, idea, or project activity. Teams can move cards between lists as work progresses, making Trello particularly easy to understand for teams that want a visual representation of their workflow.
Trello is a good option when a team's requirements are relatively simple. For example, a content team might use columns such as Ideas → In Progress → Review → Published, while a software team could organize work around a development workflow.
The main limitation compared with ClickUp is depth. ClickUp combines tasks with features such as Gantt charts, dashboards, Docs, custom fields, dependencies, automations, and native time tracking. Trello can therefore be a better fit when simplicity matters more than having everything in one platform.
Best for: Individuals and small teams that want simple, visual task management without a complex project management system.
5. Notion
Notion takes a different approach to ClickUp by combining documents, knowledge management, databases, and project management in a flexible workspace.
Teams can create project databases, task lists, documentation, meeting notes, wikis, and internal knowledge bases. This makes Notion particularly useful for teams that want their project information and documentation to live together.
Its flexibility is one of its biggest advantages. A team can build a workspace around its own processes rather than adapting entirely to a predefined project structure. At the same time, that flexibility means teams may need to spend more time designing and maintaining their workspace.
ClickUp similarly combines project management with documentation, but its task system is more explicitly built around structured project workflows, dependencies, multiple project views, time tracking, and dashboards.
Best for: Teams that want project management closely integrated with documentation, knowledge bases, and customizable databases.
ClickUp Alternatives: Which One Should You Choose?
There isn't one universal replacement for ClickUp. The right choice depends on what you need from your project management software.
- TMetric - best when time tracking, project budgets, billable hours, reporting, and profitability are priorities.
- Asana - best for structured project and task management with a relatively streamlined experience.
- monday.com - best for visual workflows and customizable automation.
- Trello - best for straightforward Kanban-style task management.
- Notion - best for combining project management with documentation and knowledge management.
ClickUp remains a broad all-in-one option, combining project management, collaboration, documentation, dashboards, and time tracking. But choosing an alternative can make sense when your team has a more specific priority—whether that's simplicity, visual workflows, documentation, or detailed time and project tracking.
The best approach is to identify the features your team actually uses every day and choose a platform that handles those workflows well, rather than simply looking for another tool with the largest feature list.
