Pricing models
The honest guide to flat-rate project management.
Almost nobody searches this phrase because they love flat pricing in the abstract. They search it because a per-seat bill did something to them — a minimum they didn’t agree to, a seat rung they had to round up to, a guest who turned into an invoice. Below: what the genuinely flat-priced tools cost, who they suit, and the tradeoff flat pricing never prints on the page.
Sahnga is not a flat-rate tool: it is $5 per maker per month with the first one free — flat per person, so the total is simply your maker count times $5. No tiers, no minimums, no upsells; your headcount is the only thing that ever moves the bill, in either direction.
The real search intent
The traps people are fleeing
Every tool named below is good at what it does, and several are better than us at things we haven’t built. These are facts about packaging, not verdicts on the product — each one links the vendor’s own pricing page so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Seat minimums — you buy people you don't have.
Monday.com bills a 3-seat minimum, so a two-person team pays for three. Wrike Business bills five seats whether or not you have five people. Neither number appears on the sticker.
Seat brackets — headcount rounded up to the next rung.
Monday sells seats at the fixed rungs of its own selector — 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 — so a team of six buys the ten-seat rung and pays for four people it doesn't have. You cannot buy exactly twelve.
Tier cliffs — one more hire repriced the whole team.
Wrike's Team plan is $10 a user and caps at a hard 15 users; the sixteenth person moves everyone to Business at $25. The jump is the entire org, not the one new seat.
Add-on stacking — the plan is the start of the quote.
Wrike Whiteboard is $15 per seat per month on top of the plan, with Integrate, Lock, Datahub and Two-Way Sync each licensed separately. Smartsheet's Dynamic View — controlled external sharing — is a flat $125 a month, and Data Shuttle, Control Center and Resource Management are priced apart again.
Guests that quietly become billable.
The people you invite are the ones you never budgeted for. ClickUp: Guest limits vary by plan, and guests granted edit rights have converted to billable seats. Teamwork.com's client users need the Accelerate tier — they are not free. On Trello's free plan, single-board guests; on free they count toward the 10-person cap.
Terms above checked July 2026 against each vendor's own pricing page, linked on every row. The full working for all thirteen tools is on the comparison pages, and which features sit behind which paywall is mapped on the paywall map. Spot something out of date? Tell us and we'll fix it.
The field
The genuinely flat-rate tools, credited
Four tools whose published price does not move when you hire. Each row was read off the vendor’s own pricing page before it was written, each says what that vendor is genuinely good at before it says anything else, and each ends with who the price actually suits — in both directions. A vendor we could not verify from its own site isn’t here at all.
| Tool | What they get right | What it costs | Who it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basecamp | Basecamp made this argument first and has kept it for twenty years. Clients are genuinely free, the product is deliberately calm, and Pro Unlimited is the cleanest flat plan in the category — one number for your whole organization, no seat math at all. | Pro Unlimited is $299 a month billed annually. Their page publishes no month-to-month rate for it; the per-user Pro plan is $15 per user billed monthly.Unlimited users, 5TB of storage, every feature and upgrade included, clients and contractors free.basecamp.com/pricing · checked August 5, 2026 | A 60-person team pays about $4.98 a head here — big teams are who the number was set for. Three people paying $299 are overpaying enormously, and Basecamp says so themselves by selling those three the $15 per-user plan instead. |
| Thicket | The cheapest unlimited-user flat plan we could verify anywhere, and it is a complete tool rather than a stripped one — tasks, docs, messages, chat, scheduling and files at a single price. | Pro is $49 a month for the whole organization, or $468 a year — about $39 a month — on annual billing. There is a free plan for 20 people and one project.Unlimited users and projects, 50GB of storage, full history, forms, timesheets and API access.thickethq.com/pricing · checked August 5, 2026 | A 40-person team does very well here at about $1.23 a head. A three-person team is paying $49 for three people — about $16 each, the flat-rate tax in miniature. |
| ProofHub | ProofHub has been flat-priced with unlimited users for years, and its proofing and review workflow is a real strength for teams whose work is reviewed by people outside the team. | Ultimate Control is $89 a month billed annually as a limited-time offer for three months, then $135 a month; monthly billing is $99 then $150. Essential is $45 a month billed annually.Unlimited users on every plan. Essential carries 40 projects and 15GB; Ultimate Control is unlimited projects and 100GB.proofhub.com/pricing · checked August 5, 2026 | A 30-person team at $135 is paying about $4.50 a head, which is a good deal. A five-person team is paying $27 a head for the same plan — the promotional first three months soften that, and then they end. |
| Eigenfocus | An indie tool that publishes its whole price list on one page with no sales call anywhere in it, and sells a self-hosted edition outright — $139 once for Essential, $489 once for PRO — which almost nobody in this category will do any more. | Cloud is flat inside a headcount bracket rather than flat outright: $15 a month up to 5 people, $39 up to 10, $59 up to 25, $110 up to 50. Above 50 people it is a conversation.Unlimited projects and issues on every cloud bracket, with multiple view types, custom fields, time tracking and templates.eigenfocus.com/pricing · checked August 5, 2026 | A 25-person team at $59 is very well served. A 26th hire moves that team to $110 — a bracket jump, the same mechanic this page just spent a section on. The difference is that Eigenfocus prints the whole ladder in public rather than burying it in a seat selector. |
These four sit outside the thirteen-tool set audited July 2026, so they carry their own date: we read each vendor's published page directly on August 5, 2026 and every row says so. Promotional rates are printed as promotional, and the standing price is printed next to them.
The arithmetic
The tradeoff nobody prints
A flat price is one number divided by however many people you have, which means small teams subsidise large ones. Three people on a $299 plan are paying about $100 each for software the sixty-person team down the road gets for $4.98 a head. That is not a scandal — it is what “flat” means, and the vendors are not hiding it. It is just rarely the sentence on the pricing page.
Per-seat is the mirror image. It is fair when you are small and the meter never stops when you are not: every hire is another line on the bill, forever, and that is before the minimums, the rungs and the add-ons in the section above.
We picked the second shape, honestly, rather than dressing it up as something else: per-seat, with no minimum and no upsells. The first maker is free, every maker after that is $5 a month — a small team pays small-team money, and a large team pays for exactly the people it has, never for seats it doesn't. Viewers, commenters, guests and clients are never counted at any size, there is no minimum and no rung to round up to, and seats settle at renewal rather than mid-cycle.
| Monthly, by team size | 3 people | 10 people | 60 people | 200 people |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basecamp | $299 | $299 | $299 | $299 |
| Thicket | $49 | $49 | $49 | $49 |
| ProofHub | $135 | $135 | $135 | $135 |
| Eigenfocus | $15 | $39 | By quote | By quote |
| Sahnga | $10 | $45 | $295 | $995 |
Team size means makers — people who create and edit; on our row the first one is free, and viewers, guests and clients would add nothing at any size. Our column is computed from the same billing code that writes the invoice, not typed. Eigenfocus publishes no cloud price above 50 people, so those cells say so rather than guess. Vendor prices checked August 5, 2026.
Questions
Flat-rate pricing FAQ
Is Sahnga flat-rate?+
No. Sahnga is per-seat: the first maker is free, every maker after that is $5 a month, and the total is simply your maker count times $5 — no tiers, no minimums, no upsells, and viewers, guests and clients never counted. Before assuming a flat plan is the cheaper answer, divide its price by your headcount: at most team sizes, $5 a maker with the first one free is the smaller number — and it stays proportional to the team you actually are, instead of the biggest team the flat price was set for.
What's the cheapest flat-rate project management tool?+
Of the tools we could verify from their own pricing pages on August 5, 2026: Thicket at $49 a month is the cheapest plan that is flat for unlimited users, or about $39 a month on annual billing. Eigenfocus starts lower at $15 a month, but that price covers up to five people and climbs by bracket. ProofHub's Ultimate Control is $135 a month billed annually after a $89 introductory period, and Basecamp Pro Unlimited is $299 a month billed annually.
When does flat-rate beat per-seat?+
Divide the flat price by your headcount and compare it to the per-seat rate. Flat wins as soon as your team is big enough — Basecamp Pro Unlimited at $299 is a bargain for 60 people and a poor buy for three, and the arithmetic is the same everywhere. It is worth saying the other half too: a flat price means small teams subsidise large ones, so if you are three people, a per-seat tool that charges you for three people is usually the cheaper honest answer. Ours charges for two of the three, because the first maker is free.
Open signup
A bill you can predict without a spreadsheet.
Founding teams keep launch pricing for life.
No waitlist and no credit card — sign up today. We’re onboarding new teams in small batches so every team gets a fast, calm first week; you’ll have your workspace usually within a day.
Want the whole model first? Read the pricing page.