A free task tracker records what work exists, who owns it and whether it is done, at no cost. The catch is never the features, it is the ceiling: almost every free plan caps users, projects or history, and the caps have tightened sharply over the past year.
This guide lists the free task trackers worth using, whether you call it a free task manager or free task tracking software, and states the exact limit on each one, because that limit is what decides whether a tool works for your team or strands you three months in. Every figure below was checked on the vendor’s own pricing page in August 2026.
Free plan limits compared
The single most useful fact about any free task tracker is where its free plan stops. These are the current limits, and several will surprise anyone who last looked a year ago.
| Tool | Free plan limit | Best free for | Paid from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft To Do | No user cap, fully free | Anyone with a Microsoft account | Free |
| Trello | 10 collaborators per Workspace | Small teams wanting a visual board | $5 per user per month, billed annually |
| ClickUp | Free Forever tier, unlimited members | Teams wanting one tool for everything | $7 per user per month, billed yearly |
| Clockify | Up to 5 users | Tasks that need hours attached | $3.99 per user per month, billed annually |
| Todoist | 5 personal projects | One person, fast capture | $5 per month |
| actiTIME | Up to 3 users | Tasks with estimates, hours and cost | $6 per user per month |
| Notion | Free for personal use | Tasks that live beside documents | $10 per user per month |
| Asana | 2 users only | Almost no one, at this cap | $10.99 per user per month, billed annually |
| Basecamp | 1 project, personal use only | A single personal project | $25 per month flat |
The best free task trackers
actiTIME
- Tasks with estimates and deadlines
- Hours logged against each task
- Reports on estimated versus actual
- Free for up to 3 users
actiTIME is a task tracker that records how long tasks actually took. Work is organised by customer, project and task, and because hours attach to those tasks, the same record shows what is outstanding and whether your estimates were realistic.
The free version covers up to 3 users with no time limit, which suits a founder and two colleagues, or one person who wants the estimate data without paying for it. There is no Kanban board, so if you want cards this is the wrong tool.
Free plan: up to 3 users. Paid plans start at $6 per user per month, and a 30 day trial unlocks every feature with no credit card.
Microsoft To Do
- Lists, steps and due dates
- My Day planning view
- Outlook task sync
- List sharing
Microsoft To Do is the only tool here with no cap at all. It is free for anyone with a Microsoft account, syncs with Outlook tasks, and shares lists with other people without asking for an upgrade.
It is deliberately simple: no time tracking, no boards, no reporting. For a lot of people that is the entire appeal, and for anyone already inside Microsoft 365 it is the path of least resistance.
Free plan: completely free, no user limit.
Trello
- Kanban boards and cards
- Checklists and due dates
- Unlimited cards on the free plan
- Templates
Trello is the easiest free task tracker to get a team using, because a board of cards needs no training. The free plan now covers up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, which makes it the most practical no-cost option for a small group.
It runs out of road when tasks need dependencies, or when someone asks how long the work took. Both require Power-Ups, and at that point you are paying anyway.
Free plan: up to 10 collaborators per Workspace. Standard is $5 per user per month billed annually.
ClickUp
- Boards, lists and calendar views
- Docs and whiteboards
- Built in time tracking
- Free Forever tier
ClickUp has the most generous free tier of the full-featured tools, covering unlimited members with limits applied to advanced features rather than headcount. Tasks, docs, goals and time tracking all sit in one product.
The cost is complexity. There are many views and settings to configure before it feels comfortable, and teams wanting something obvious out of the box often bounce off it.
Free plan: Free Forever tier. Unlimited is $7 per user per month billed yearly, or $10 monthly.
Clockify
- Tasks with a timer
- Timesheets and reports
- Pomodoro timer and idle detection
- Free for up to 5 users
Clockify sits between a task tracker and a time tracker, and its free plan covers up to 5 users. That cap is newer than many people realise, since it used to have none at all.
Within the limit it is unusually complete, including unlimited tracking, timesheets, an automatic tracker and reports.
Free plan: up to 5 users. Basic is $3.99 per user per month billed annually.
Todoist
- Natural language task entry
- Projects, labels and priorities
- Recurring tasks
- Free for 5 personal projects
Todoist is the strongest free option for one person. Typing “send the report every Monday at 9am” files the task correctly without touching a date picker, and it stays fast however long the list gets.
Free plan: 5 personal projects. Pro is $5 per month or $60 a year.
Notion
- Task databases and boards
- Notes and documents together
- Custom views and templates
- Free for personal use
Notion is free for personal use and suits people whose tasks are inseparable from their notes. A task can sit in the same workspace as the document that produced it.
You build the system yourself, which is either the appeal or the reason it gets abandoned in week two.
Free plan: free for personal use. Plus is $10 per user per month.
Hitask
- Tasks, projects and shared lists
- Team calendar
- File attachments
- Mobile apps
Hitask is a smaller, simpler team task tracker built around shared task lists and a team calendar. It suits groups who found the larger tools overwhelming and want something closer to a shared checklist.
Free plan: a free tier for small teams is offered. Hitask’s public pricing page was unavailable at the time of writing, so check the current limit and paid rates directly.
We reduced payroll processing to 45 minutes per week
actiTIME is very robust, integrated well into your business process, and most important, helps you focus on your business instead of monkeying around with technology. actiTIME has reduced our payroll processing from 4-6 hours per week to 45 minutes per week.
Free task tracker or free work tracker?
A task tracker records what needs doing. A work tracker records what was actually done, usually including hours. The words get used interchangeably, and picking the wrong one is the most common reason a free tool gets abandoned.
If your problem is that things get forgotten, you need free task tracking: Microsoft To Do, Todoist or Trello will fix it. Anyone searching for a task tracker for work usually means this. If your problem is that nobody can say where last week went, or whether a job was worth doing, you need work tracking, which means hours attached to the tasks. Clockify and actiTIME both do that on their free plans.
Teams that need employee task tracking specifically, meaning visibility across several people rather than one person’s list, hit the free caps fastest. At 3 to 10 users, most of these free plans stop, and that is usually the moment to decide which single tool is worth paying for. Our roundup of free time trackers covers the hours side in more depth, and task management tools compares the paid options.
What you give up on a free plan
Free task management software is genuinely usable, but the limits follow a pattern. Knowing it in advance saves a migration.
- Users, almost always. Asana stops at 2, actiTIME at 3, Clockify at 5, Trello at 10. This is the ceiling most teams hit first.
- Reporting depth. Free plans show what is done. Paid plans show trends, variance against estimates, and cost.
- History. Some free tiers cap how far back you can look, which matters if you want to use last quarter to estimate the next one.
- Automation and integrations. Usually restricted to a monthly allowance or dropped entirely.
- Admin control. Permissions, approvals and audit features are near universally paid.
- Structure, if you start in a spreadsheet. A free task manager beats a shared sheet on notifications and status history; our simple task tracking templates are a reasonable stopgap before you pick one.
None of that matters for one person tracking their own work. All of it matters the moment someone has to report on the team.
How to choose
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Count the people first, not the features.
The user cap decides the shortlist before anything else does. A tool you love that stops at 2 users is not a candidate for a team of six.
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Decide whether you need hours.
If you will ever be asked what something cost, choose a tool that records time from the start. Adding it later means re-entering history or losing it.
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Check what happens at the ceiling.
Look at the first paid tier now. If the jump is unaffordable, the free plan is a trap rather than a saving.
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Try one for two weeks before adding a second.
Free tools are easy to accumulate, and running three half-used trackers is worse than running one properly.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free task tracker?
It depends on the number of people involved. For one person, Todoist or Microsoft To Do. For a small team wanting a visual board, Trello, free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace. For tasks that need hours attached, Clockify covers 5 users free and actiTIME covers 3. For the most features at no cost, ClickUp’s Free Forever tier. Asana is no longer a practical free choice for teams because its free plan caps at 2 users.
Is there genuinely free task management software?
Yes. Microsoft To Do is free with no user cap for anyone with a Microsoft account. ClickUp, Trello, Todoist, Notion, Clockify and actiTIME all run permanent free plans rather than trials, each with a stated ceiling on users, projects or features. What almost never appears on a free plan is reporting depth, approvals and admin control, so free task management software suits doing the work rather than reporting on it.
What is the difference between a task tracker and a work tracker?
A task tracker records what needs doing, who owns it and whether it is finished. A work tracker records what was actually done, usually with the hours it took. Task trackers answer “what is outstanding”. Work trackers answer “where did the time go and what did it cost”. Tools like Clockify and actiTIME do both, which is why they appear on lists for each.
How many users do free task trackers allow?
The caps as of August 2026: Microsoft To Do has none, Trello allows 10 collaborators per Workspace, Clockify 5 users, actiTIME 3 users, Asana 2 users, and Basecamp’s free plan is a single project for personal use. ClickUp’s Free Forever plan allows unlimited members but limits certain features by usage instead. Check before you commit, because several of these tightened during the past year.
When is it worth paying?
Three signals. You have outgrown the user cap and are sharing logins, which breaks any record of who did what. You are exporting to a spreadsheet every month to produce a report the tool cannot. Or you are running two free tools because neither does the whole job. Any of the three usually costs more in time than the paid plan does in money.
Start free, then measure what it cost
A free task tracker will tell you what is outstanding. What it rarely tells you is whether the work was worth the hours, and that gap is what people notice about six months in.
actiTIME is free for up to 3 users and records tasks with estimates and deadlines, tracks hours against them, and reports the variance. Start a free 30 day trial to see the full version first. No credit card required, and you can continue on the free version afterwards.
