Published 19 August 2026 · All prices below were read directly from each vendor’s own pricing page on 19 August 2026 and are quoted in USD as shown to a US visitor.
How we researched this: Every figure here was read from Zoho’s, Pipedrive’s, monday.com’s and ClickUp’s official pricing pages on 19 August 2026, under both the annual and monthly billing toggles. We have not run structured hands-on testing of these four products, and nothing below is a performance rating, a vendor quote, or personal experience. Prices change often — check the vendor page before you buy.
The short answer
If your constraint is the monthly invoice, Zoho CRM and ClickUp are the two cheapest entry points here, and Zoho is the only one of the four with a free tier that is actually a CRM. But the headline per-seat price is the wrong thing to optimise, because these four products gate you in two completely different ways.
- Zoho and Pipedrive gate on features and add-ons. You hit a wall because a capability sits one tier up, or is sold separately.
- monday CRM and ClickUp gate on hard usage caps. You hit a wall because you ran out of contacts, deals or automation runs — numbers printed right on the pricing card.
At five to twenty seats, that difference drives your real cost far more than the per-seat rate does.
Entry prices side by side
Cheapest paid tier from each vendor, on both billing terms, as displayed on 19 August 2026.
| Product | Cheapest paid tier | Annual | Monthly | Free tier? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoho CRM | Standard | 14 USD/user/mo | 20 USD/user/mo | Yes — 3 users |
| ClickUp | Unlimited | 7 USD/user/mo | 10 USD/user/mo | Yes — Free Forever |
| monday CRM | Basic | 12 USD/seat/mo | 18 USD/seat/mo | No |
| Pipedrive | Lite | 14 USD/seat/mo | 24 USD/seat/mo | No |
Two clarifications that trip people up. ClickUp’s 7 USD tier is its general platform pricing — ClickUp does not sell a separately priced CRM product, so you are buying a work platform you configure as a CRM. And monday CRM’s rates are the ones displayed at the pricing page’s default team size of 10 seats.
Zoho CRM — the only real free CRM of the four
| Plan | Annual | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Free (3 users) | 0 USD | 0 USD |
| Standard | 14 USD/user/mo | 20 USD/user/mo |
| Professional | 23 USD/user/mo | 35 USD/user/mo |
| Enterprise | 40 USD/user/mo | 50 USD/user/mo |
The free plan is capped at three users and described as forever free, covering contact management, workflow automation, tasks, meetings and calls, data import and export, standard reports, APIs and mobile apps. Zoho’s page carries a “Free Onboarding” banner and its FAQ states there are no contracts or commitments — it is pay-as-you-go monthly or yearly. There is no published minimum seat count.
Moving up buys capability rather than headroom: Standard adds mass email, built-in calling, multiple pipelines and forecasting; Professional adds AI agents, process management, inventory, CPQ and unlimited reports; Enterprise adds multi-team management, approval processes, a developer sandbox and field-level encryption. Zoho also lists Bigin Express, a separate lighter product, at 7 USD/user/mo annual or 9 USD monthly.
One practical warning: Zoho’s pricing page geolocates. Opened from outside the US it renders in local currency, so confirm you are reading the USD view before you budget.
Pipedrive — no free tier, and the add-ons matter
| Plan | Annual | Annual, paid up front | Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | 14 USD/seat/mo | 168 USD/seat/yr | 24 USD/seat/mo |
| Growth | 39 USD/seat/mo | 468 USD/seat/yr | 49 USD/seat/mo |
| Premium | 59 USD/seat/mo | 708 USD/seat/yr | 79 USD/seat/mo |
| Ultimate | 79 USD/seat/mo | 948 USD/seat/yr | 99 USD/seat/mo |
There is no free plan — only a 14-day trial with no card required. The annual toggle is labelled as saving up to 42 percent, and the gap between 14 USD and 24 USD at Lite is the widest annual-versus-monthly spread of any product here in percentage terms. Pipedrive’s FAQ states implementation is free on any plan over 400 USD a year.
The number to watch is add-ons. Pipedrive lists five, each priced “starting from”: LeadBooster 32.50 USD, Projects 16 USD, Campaigns 13.33 USD, Web Visitors 41 USD and Smart Docs 32.50 USD. The page does not state what billing basis or seat count those starting prices assume, so a Lite plan with two add-ons can quietly cost more than Premium.
monday CRM — cheap per seat, capped on volume
| Plan | Annual | Monthly | Contacts and deals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | 12 USD/seat/mo | 18 USD/seat/mo | 1,000 |
| Standard | 17 USD/seat/mo | 25 USD/seat/mo | 10,000 |
| Pro | 28 USD/seat/mo | 41 USD/seat/mo | 100,000 |
| Ultimate | Contact sales | Contact sales | Unlimited |
Plans start at three users, and above 40 users monday directs you to sales. There is no free tier for monday CRM: the free plan advertised elsewhere on monday.com belongs to monday work management, a different product. The CRM FAQ is explicit that your free option is a 14-day trial.
The caps are the story. Basic allows 1,000 contacts and deals, one dashboard, five columns per board and 20 quotes and invoices a month. Standard raises that to 10,000 contacts and 250 custom automations a month; Pro to 100,000 contacts and 25,000 automations. If your list grows past a tier ceiling, you are moved up by volume rather than by choice — and monday does not publish what exceeding a contact cap costs.
Worth knowing before you quote a discount figure: monday’s own page contradicts itself on annual savings. The billing toggle reads “Yearly SAVE 33%” while the FAQ on the same page says choosing yearly results in an 18 percent discount. We are reporting both rather than picking one.
ClickUp — cheapest seat, but AI is a separate bill
| Plan | Annual | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Free Forever | 0 USD | 0 USD |
| Unlimited | 7 USD/user/mo | 10 USD/user/mo |
| Business | 12 USD/user/mo | 19 USD/user/mo |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Contact sales |
Free Forever includes unlimited tasks and unlimited free plan members but only 60MB of storage and one form. Unlimited removes the storage cap and adds unlimited custom fields, native time tracking and guest permissions. Business adds 5,000 automations a month, unlimited dashboards with advanced cards, webhooks and Google SSO.
Two things change the maths. First, ClickUp’s FAQ states you upgrade the entire workspace — every member is billed, so you cannot put three people on a paid tier and leave the rest free. Second, AI is a separate per-user layer on top of your plan: Brain AI at 9 USD per user per month including 1,500 AI Super Credits, or Everything AI at 28 USD per user per month including 5,000 credits, with extra credits at 10 USD per 10,000. A 7 USD seat with Everything AI attached is a 35 USD seat.
ClickUp’s pricing page also carries a “super fair billing policy” stating that if AI providers raise rates, ClickUp will adjust pricing gradually — an explicit reservation of the right to increase AI prices.
What five seats actually cost for a year
The arithmetic below is ours, built from the annual list rates above. It excludes tax, add-ons, AI layers and any negotiated discount, and assumes five paid seats for twelve months.
| Product and tier | 5 seats, one year |
|---|---|
| ClickUp Unlimited at 7 USD | 420 USD |
| monday CRM Basic at 12 USD | 720 USD |
| ClickUp Business at 12 USD | 720 USD |
| Zoho CRM Standard at 14 USD | 840 USD |
| Pipedrive Lite at 14 USD | 840 USD |
| monday CRM Standard at 17 USD | 1,020 USD |
| Zoho CRM Professional at 23 USD | 1,380 USD |
| monday CRM Pro at 28 USD | 1,680 USD |
| Pipedrive Growth at 39 USD | 2,340 USD |
For scale against the tier most small teams actually compare these to: five seats of HubSpot Sales Hub Professional works out at 5,400 USD for the year plus a mandatory 1,500 USD onboarding fee, on the rates we verified on 18 August 2026. The full breakdown is in our HubSpot pricing explainer.
Which one fits which team
Price is the part we can verify, so it is the part we will commit to. On fit, we will only say what the vendors’ own published packaging supports:
- Three people or fewer, no budget. Zoho CRM’s free plan is the only genuine free CRM here, capped at three users. ClickUp’s Free Forever is free at any headcount but is a work platform you would configure yourself, with 60MB of storage.
- A small sales team that wants a CRM out of the box. Zoho Standard and Pipedrive Lite land at the same 14 USD annual rate. Pipedrive publishes no free tier, so budget for it from day one.
- Teams with a large contact list. Check monday CRM’s contact ceiling before the seat price. A 1,000-contact cap on Basic is the binding constraint for most lists, not the 12 USD seat.
- Teams that already run their work in ClickUp. The 7 USD seat is the cheapest here, but remember the whole workspace upgrades together, and AI is billed separately per user.
If HubSpot and Salesforce are also on your shortlist, we compare those two head to head on verified seat prices and onboarding fees in HubSpot vs Salesforce, and our best CRM for small business guide takes a wider view of the category.
What we could not verify
- None of the four publishes renewal pricing. Every rate above is a new-subscription list rate.
- monday CRM Ultimate and ClickUp Enterprise are “contact sales” with no public number. We are not going to print an estimate.
- Pipedrive does not state what seat count or billing basis its “starting from” add-on prices assume.
- monday does not publish the cost of exceeding a contact or automation cap, and ClickUp does not publish automation overage cost above 5,000 a month on Business.
- Zoho publishes no price for its Jumpstart or EBS onboarding services, and does not publish record storage or API call caps by tier.
- All figures are the USD prices shown to a US visitor, excluding local tax. We have not conducted hands-on testing of any of these four products and make no claims about performance, usability or support quality.
Sources
- Zoho CRM pricing — zoho.com/crm/zohocrm-pricing.html, accessed 19 August 2026
- Pipedrive pricing — pipedrive.com/en/pricing, accessed 19 August 2026
- monday CRM pricing — monday.com/crm/pricing, accessed 19 August 2026
- ClickUp pricing — clickup.com/pricing, accessed 19 August 2026
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