Trello's free plan stops at 10 collaborators: what 11 to 20 people pay

Trello's free plan allows 10 collaborators per Workspace, and Atlassian counts members, guests and pending invites toward that number. Once a Workspace reaches 10, nobody new can be invited. If it goes over 10, every board in it becomes view-only and automations stop running until people are removed or the Workspace is upgraded.

For a company of 11, Trello Standard costs $55 a month billed yearly, or $66 billed monthly. At 20 people that becomes $100 or $120. A second Workspace can split the team's work; making clients guests does not reduce the Free collaborator count. ClickUp and MeisterTask have free plans with no member cap, Zoho Projects costs less per seat than Standard, and Breeze includes all its features in one plan.

Disclosure: Breeze publishes this page and is one of the four options below. It has no free plan, and its entry says where Trello is the better fit.

Contents

• Who counts toward the Trello collaborator limit?
• Can an 11th collaborator join Trello Free?
• What do 11, 15 and 20 people pay for Trello?
• Can you stay on Trello Free?
• Which tools fit a team of 11 to 20?
• How do you move boards without starting over?

Who counts toward the Trello collaborator limit?

A Trello collaborator is anyone invited to a board in the Workspace or to the Workspace itself. Atlassian's collaborator limit article lists three groups:

• Workspace members: everyone on the team. On the free plan every member is also a Workspace admin.
• Guests: people on a board who are not Workspace members, such as clients, freelancers and contractors. Single-board and multi-board guests both count.
• Pending invites: an invitation nobody has accepted still takes a place.

Some people do not count. Anyone who is only on closed boards drops out of the total, and so do deactivated accounts and deactivated members. Requests to join count only once you approve them.

The limit is per Workspace, not per board. A board with four members can still show the over-limit warning if the Workspace as a whole has more than ten collaborators. The count is on the Workspace's Members page, which only admins can see.

For a company of 11 to 20, guests can be the reason the Workspace reaches its limit. Seven staff and four clients, each on their own board, is eleven collaborators. On the free plan, the size of the team is not the only number that matters.

Can an 11th collaborator join Trello Free?

A new collaborator cannot join a Trello Free Workspace that already has ten. Atlassian says that while a Workspace has 10 or more collaborators, you cannot add new ones, though you can still move existing collaborators between boards. Invites stop at ten.

A Workspace can still end up over the limit, most often when a paid plan or a Premium trial ends with more than ten people in it. Atlassian's article says that after a downgrade the limit applies "from the point your subscription ends". When it does, three things happen at once:

• Boards become view-only: people can still open the boards they belong to, but nobody can change a card.
• Invitations stay blocked: no one new can join any board in the Workspace.
• Automations stop: rules set up on the Workspace's boards do not run while it is over the limit.

Nothing is deleted. Removing collaborators until you are back at ten restores editing, and upgrading lifts the cap entirely. Watch the date a trial ends: a team that grew past ten during a Premium trial finds its boards frozen when the trial is over.

What do 11, 15 and 20 people pay for Trello?

Standard costs $5 per user per month billed yearly or $6 monthly; Premium costs $10 or $12.50. Paid plans have no collaborator cap, and Trello bills Workspace members, not every guest. The pricing page gives the per-seat prices; the totals below assume every person needs a paid seat.

Guests change the sums. On Standard and Premium, a guest on one board is not billed. A guest on two or more boards becomes a multi-board guest and costs the same as a member. Atlassian's guest article spells this out.

Sample billing example: a 12-person company with three clients, each on their own board. On Free that is 15 collaborators and frozen boards. On Standard it is 12 seats, $60 a month billed yearly, and the clients cost nothing as long as each stays on a single board.

Which plan fits depends on what you need beyond the board:

• Standard: unlimited boards (Free stops at 10 per Workspace), custom fields, advanced checklists and 1,000 Workspace command runs a month for automations, against 250 on Free.
• Premium: adds the Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard and Map views, plus views across the whole Workspace. If the reason for growing is more projects running at once, Premium is the plan with an overview.

Can you stay on Trello Free?

Removing former collaborators can bring a Workspace back within the limit. Splitting active work across Workspaces creates more places to manage, and making clients guests does not lower the Free count. Here is what each workaround involves:

• A second Workspace: the cap is per Workspace, so some teams split into two. Boards in one Workspace cannot see the other, anyone in both counts twice, and the 10-board limit applies to each. If you later upgrade both, Atlassian says you pay twice for people who belong to both.
• Closing old boards: people who are only on closed boards stop counting. This is a fair way to clear out former clients and freelancers, and worth doing before you pay for anything.
• Making clients guests: on Free this does not help, because guests count as collaborators. It only saves money on a paid plan, where single-board guests are free.
• One shared board for everyone: one poster on r/projectmanagement described an 11 or 12 person company running everything on a single board with a column per person. It is simple, but nobody can see the stages the work moves through, and it does nothing for the cap: everyone on the board still counts.
• Sharing logins: it keeps the count down and loses who did what. Assignments, comments and the activity log all point at the wrong person.

If more than ten people need to edit cards in one Workspace, choose a paid Trello plan or a tool with a higher free member limit.

Which tools fit a team of 11 to 20?

ClickUp and MeisterTask have free plans with no member cap. Zoho Projects costs less per seat than Trello Standard. Breeze includes boards, time tracking and free client users in one plan. Prices are from each vendor's pricing page; review summaries come from Capterra and G2.

Trello Standard costs less than most of the paid plans listed here. If your team likes Trello and only hit the cap, paying for Standard is a reasonable answer. The options below make sense when the cap arrived together with another problem, such as needing a timeline, time tracking or room for more clients.

ClickUp

Choose ClickUp if you want all 11 to 20 people on a free plan and are willing to spend time setting it up.

• Pricing: Free Forever with unlimited free members and 60 MB of storage. Core is $9 per user per month billed yearly or $12 monthly, with unlimited storage and Gantt charts. Business is $17 billed yearly or $25 monthly.
• Rating: 4.6/5 on Capterra from 4,631 reviews, 4.6/5 on G2 from 14,333.

ClickUp's free plan has no member cap, and it includes boards, a calendar view and time tracking. Storage is the limit to watch: Free Forever comes with 60 MB, which file attachments use up quickly.

Where ClickUp may not fit: a team that chose Trello because it needed no setup. ClickUp has far more settings, and its paid Core plan costs nearly twice Trello Standard per seat.

What reviewers say about ClickUp

Reviewers who stay with ClickUp describe building the system around their own process, with custom fields, statuses and many views, and retiring two or three other tools along the way. The other side is effort: a long learning curve, a crowded interface, and slowdowns in big workspaces come up again and again.

Sources: Capterra, G2

MeisterTask

Choose MeisterTask if the team works on a small number of shared boards and everyone needs to edit them.

• Pricing: Free with unlimited team members and up to 3 projects. Pro is $7 per user per month billed yearly or $9 monthly, with unlimited projects, recurring tasks and automations. Business, with timeline views and subtasks, is $12.50 billed yearly or $16 monthly.
• Rating: 4.7/5 on Capterra from 1,157 reviews, 4.6/5 on G2 from 173.

MeisterTask offers a board of sections and cards that a 20-person team can share for free. It imports from Trello directly. The cap is on projects instead, three on Free.

Where MeisterTask may not fit: a company with a board per client or per job. The three-project limit leaves little room for separate client boards, and Pro then costs more per seat than Trello Standard.

What reviewers say about MeisterTask

The praise is about ease: colleagues who never used a task tool pick it up without a tutorial, and the boards are pleasant to look at. The complaints are about the paid line, as subtasks, extra projects and sharing outside the team moved behind an upgrade. Most of the reviews on both sites are from 2021 to 2023.

Sources: Capterra, G2

Zoho Projects

Choose Zoho Projects if you are going to pay and want the lowest seat price, with time logs and timesheets included.

• Pricing: Free for up to 5 users and 3 projects. Premium is $4 per user per month billed yearly or $5 monthly, with unlimited projects, time logs, timesheets and project budgets. Enterprise is $9 billed yearly or $10 monthly.
• Rating: 4.5/5 on Capterra from 872 reviews, 4.4/5 on G2 from 567.

At $4 a seat, 15 people on Premium cost $720 a year, less than Trello Standard for the same team. The free plan is no use at this size, at five users. Reviewers praise its Gantt charts, dependencies and milestones, which Trello only offers as a timeline on Premium.

Where Zoho Projects may not fit: a team that values Trello's simplicity. Zoho Projects takes real setup time, and the interface is busier.

What reviewers say about Zoho Projects

Value is the main theme: reviewers get Gantt charts, dependencies and time tracking for less than most rivals, and teams already on Zoho like how the apps connect. Criticism centres on an interface that looks dated and gets cluttered on larger projects, and on a setup that is hard to work through alone.

Sources: Capterra, G2

Breeze

Choose Breeze if the team is growing into client work and wants boards, time tracking and free client access in one plan.

• Pricing: $9 per user per month billed yearly, or $10 billed monthly, with every feature included. A Solo plan for one person is $14 a month. Client users are free. 14-day free trial, no free plan.
• Rating: 4.4/5 on Capterra from 45 reviews, 4.1/5 on G2 from 22.

Breeze keeps the board, with lists, cards and swimlanes, and adds what Trello sells on Premium or leaves to Power-Ups: a team calendar across projects, task dependencies, roadmaps and built-in time tracking with budgets. Client users are free, so a company working with outside people pays only for staff. It can import Trello boards directly, and the board and feature comparison lists the differences.

Where Breeze may not fit: it has no free plan and costs more per seat than Trello Standard. A team that only needs a shared board is better off paying for Standard.

What reviewers say about Breeze

Reviewers keep returning to how little it takes to get started, for staff and clients alike, and many track time in it every day. The criticism is that it does less than the larger platforms for complex projects or heavy automation, and that reporting across the whole team is basic. Both samples are small.

Sources: Capterra, G2

How do you move boards without starting over?

Export first, then import into the new tool, one board at a time. View-only boards remain readable. Start by reducing the collaborator count, then move one board as a trial:

• Clear the count: close boards you no longer use and remove former guests. If that gets you back to ten, you have time to decide calmly.
• Export the boards: every board member can export a board as JSON; CSV export needs a Premium Workspace. The Trello export walkthrough covers both, and the Trello spreadsheet export steps explain how to open them in Excel. On Free, a free JSON converter turns the JSON file into a CSV or Excel sheet in your browser.
• Move one board first: MeisterTask and Breeze import from Trello directly. Run one live board in the new tool for a week before moving the rest.
• Count seats properly: staff as members, clients as guests or free client users. It is the difference between paying for 12 and paying for 15.

If your team likes Trello and the cap is the only problem, Standard is the cheapest fix at $5 a seat billed yearly. If the cap arrived with other limits, compare the options above on what the team does every day. Breeze's plans and pricing page lists what its single plan covers.

Written by Lucas

Lucas writes content at Breeze and specializes in project management, team collaboration, and practical workflow advice. He helps small teams and growing businesses plan projects, track progress, and keep work organized by sharing clear, actionable guides.