Best Task Management Software: 2023 Test Results

The best task management software you can currently buy is either ClickUp or Wrike, which both score 4.7/5 for task management in our most recent round of project management software testing.

Wrike and ClickUp will provide you with multiple ways to view your tasks, including Kanban boards and Gantt charts, plus features like sub-tasks and time tracking that ensure you’re able to stay organized, no matter how complex your project is. The raft of features they offer means you'll be able to leave the days of hopping between apps behind and centralize your workplace operations around them – they are complete Work OS programs.

Hot on their heels is monday.com, however, which scores 4.5/5 for task management and is our top-rated provider overall – plus, it’s easier to use than ClickUp and Wrike. In this guide:

• The Best Task Management Software: Comparison Table
• What Is Task Management Software?
• The Best Task Management: Test Summary
• The Best Task Management Software: Reviews
• Key Features to Look for in Task Management Software
• About Our Research
• Verdict: Why ClickUp Is the Best Task Management Software
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Best Task Management Software: Comparison Table

As we've covered, the best task management software is ClickUp or Wrike. Overall, the top five are:

ClickUp – the best overall & great for collaboration
Wrike – the best for large companies & organizations
monday.com – the easiest to use software
Teamwork – the most value for the least money
Asana – the best for tracking budgets & displaying project data

If you’ve not got much time on your hands, check out the table below for a whistlestop tour of the providers, or alternatively, read on for more in-depth task management software reviews.

Note: All the images used in this article were taken during Tech.co's project management user testing series. For more information on how we test project management tools, as well as other products, visit our product research page.

What Is Task Management Software?

Task Management Software is any software that facilitates one of the key components of managing a project – managing tasks through their various stages from beginning to end. This includes project management software tools.

Task management software will typically allow you to input all of your project’s tasks, order and organize them, and display them in different ways, helping you understand how they interact with one another.

Task management software tools such as monday.com include features like sub-tasks for splitting up your largest core tasks into smaller components, task dependencies that will illuminate your project’s critical path and features like milestones that mark the most important stages of your project's life cycle.

The Best Task Management Software: Reviews

Here, we've put together reviews of the best task management software available. Read on to find out more:

ClickUp

Price From: $7 per user, per month
Best task management software for: Overall functionality
Task management score: 4.7/5

ClickUp is our top-rated task management tool overall, and it's packed with useful features for managing tasks, even on its cheapest plans.

ClickUp can handle complex task management thanks to sub-tasks and custom fields and has a color-coded “priorities” function which is helpful for understanding the most important tasks in your project.

Although features like this helped ClickUp score highly for task management, it only scored 3.9/5 on our recent ease-of-use tests. The sheer number of features can actually be a little overwhelming at first, and some members of our testing group experienced long loading times and screen freezes. It was quicker to set up with monday.com and Asana.

Adding a due date to a sub-task in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's Testing Process.

Like its rival Wrike, ClickUp provides all the basics needed to visualize the progression of your tasks, including a Gantt chart and Kanban board. There are also 13 additional views, giving you the freedom to find one that works for you – a privilege you won’t have when using Basecamp. ClickUp’s spreadsheet view supports formulas, although the “Team view” isn't available on the free plan.

Users will be able to track the time it takes to complete tasks with a time-tracking feature, and you can attach comments to tasks that require feedback or input from multiple team members. ClickUp has one of the most comprehensive resource management tools on the market. It can provide a comparative overview of each team member's resources, including month-by-month and week-by-week breakdowns. You’ll also get a Gantt-style view of each of your team member's assigned tasks.

ClickUp pricing

ClickUp offers a free plan and three paid plans. The Unlimited plan costs $7 per user, per month when billed annually and is highly capable considering its price – it’s a lot more powerful than Smartsheet’s Pro plan, which costs the same.

ClickUp’s Business plan costs $12 per user, per month, while the Enterprise plan – which is only really suitable for very large businesses – doesn’t have public pricing available at present. Check out our ClickUp pricing page for more information.

Wrike

Price From: $9.80 per user, per month
Best for: Large businesses
Task management score: 4.7/5

Wrike scores the same as ClickUp for task management – but it’s not quite as good in other areas and doesn’t offer that many task management features on its free and first paid plan, so comes in second place on this list. However, it does have a great range of integrations and two plans geared towards large businesses.

All of the project views in Wrike are really easy to navigate between, and the platform will auto-populate them all with the information you initially input into your first view.

Essential task management tools and features, such as a Gantt chart, a calendar, a milestones function, and custom fields are included in the Team plan and upwards.

The free plan is missing a few things – such as the calendar – but it's got no user limit and would still suit a small team that needs somewhere to track their day-to-day work. A resource management tool and time-tracking feature, on the other hand, is reserved for Business plan customers with larger teams.

When I tested Wrike, I found the setup to be really, really smooth – there was a lot of guidance provided which meant that by the time I was eventually let loose on the software myself, a lot of the things I needed to set up were already set up. It scored 4.1/5 on our recent ease-of-use tests, which is a slight improvement on its 2023 test result and a better score than ClickUp. The layout is very similar to Asana's and Teamwork's, and it's not hard to get to grips with.

Wrike's Table view. Image: Tech.co's Testing Process.

Like ClickUp and monday.com, Wrike has AI capabilities that can help you automate many of your task management processes – and it’s available on all plans. Wrike’s AI text tool can provide AI-based task prioritization recommendations, turn unstructured text into action items, voice notes into actions and proactively identify project risks based on historical data.

Wrike pricing

Like ClickUp, Wrike has a free plan, but it’s quite limited and doesn’t include task management features like a Gantt chart task dependencies, or a calendar view.

The Team plan is available for $9.80 per user, per month, which is more expensive than monday.com’s and ClickUp’s first paid plans. Strangely, although the free plan is unlimited, there's a user limit of 25 on this plan.

Wrike Business plan costs $24.80 per user, per month and includes the provider’s full suite of task management tools. Wrike has two plans without public pricing – the Enterprise plan and the Pinnacle plan – which have advanced security features geared toward large businesses such as “Locked spaces”. Head over to our Wrike pricing page for more information.

monday.com

Price from: $8 per user, per month
Best for: Ease of use
Task management score: 4.5/5

monday.com is the easiest-to-use task management tool we’ve tested, utilizing a minimalistic layout that’s significantly less intimidating than the raft of features that appear on your screen when you log into Wrike and ClickUp.

Despite not looking complicated, monday.com has a range of task management features, including a spreadsheet that supports conditional formatting on all plans, and a custom fields function for storing different types of data there isn't a dedicated field for already.

monday.com’s Kanban board was one of my favorites to use – it was really straightforward to drag cards around, which could be edited at the click of a button. Again, the inviting and unintimidating layout made the task-editing process significantly less stressful.

Using monday.com's Kanban board. Image: Tech.co's Testing Process.

monday.com has a more capable task commenting feature than most competitors and will let you tag users in comments as well as assign users to comments (Teamwork will only let you do the first of these two actions). This is really useful to have if you're expecting a lot of back on forth on tasks between team members, like you might while implementing a content strategy for a website.

monday.com pricing

monday.com has five plans, which is one more than both Wrike and ClickUp. There’s a free plan that has a decent range of task management tools but a user limit of two, so it won’t be suitable for your team if it’s larger than that.

The Basic projects plan is available for $8 per user, per month, but in terms of task management tools, it’s just as limited as the free plan – there’s a Kanban board but no Gantt chart, calendar view, or task dependencies.

The Standard Projects plan is just $2 more expensive, retailing at $10 per user, per month, and for that little bit extra you’ll have access to a calendar view, a milestones function, and a Gantt chart.

The Pro Projects plan ($19 per user, per month) adds in a task dependencies function and a time-tracking feature so you can plan better with regard to how long tasks may actually take. monday.com also has an Enterprise plan (custom pricing) which is the only plan with onboarding assistance available.

Creating a task dependency in monday.com. Image: Tech.co's Testing Process.

Teamwork

Price From: $5.99 per user, per month
Best Task Management Software: Value for money
Task Management Score: 4.3/5

Teamwork came second overall in our last round of project management testing, and joint third when it comes to task management, scoring the same as Asana.

Teamwork is our best value task management plan because almost all of its task management tools are available on its free plan and $5.99 per user, per month Starter plan. This is quite different from monday.com and Wrike, who lock away some task management tools on their more expensive plans.

Teamwork will let you manage intricate tasks without paying a penny, and although it might not have brought out an AI tool to assist you, that is unlikely to concern those on a tight budget. Most importantly, all the basics are covered – there are sub-tasks and task dependencies to help with the finer details, and a sufficient number of views are offered up for keeping track of the progress of your project.

Along with solid task management options, Teamwork provides an excellent automation builder, which you'll enjoy using if you feel like you're always bogged down by little administrative tasks that have to be done throughout your day. Along with its wide range of preset project templates, this helped teamwork to a 4.2/5 for workflow creation, second only to ClickUp.

Teamwork's Table view. Image: Tech.co's Testing Process.

Like Wrike, when I tested Teamwork, I found the onboarding really helpful and assuring – it set me up for success from the word go, leaving nothing to chance.

Teamwork is a really easy-to-use platform, and it actually came second on our ease-of-use tests (4.3/5), beaten only by monday.com. The only downside to Teamwork is that it limits the number of custom fields you can create – there's a limit of two on the free and first paid plan and a limit of three on the Grow plan.

Teamwork pricing

Teamwork is the best value provider on this list, with a highly capable free plan with a 3-person limit. Despite this low user cap, it offers more task management tools than any other free plan other than ClickUp’s – including a Gantt chart and custom fields.

The aforementioned Starter plan is available for just $5.99 per user, per month, and has an impressive range of task management features considering it's the cheapest first paid plan on this list.

The Deliver ($9.99 per user, per month) and the Grow ($19.99 per user, per month) plans might have similar offerings when it comes to task management.

Asana

Price from: $10.99 per user, per month
Best for: Tracking budgets and displaying project data
Task Management Score: 4.3/5

Asana is one of the most widely task management tools in the world, with at least 139,000 paying customers.

Asana offers a raft of useful task management features, including classic project views (Gantt, Kanban, etc.) and all the task management fundamentals, such as task dependencies. You'll also be able to attach files and documents to tasks, comment on them, and add tasks to multiple projects.

Asana is one of your best options if you want to track the budgets of individual tasks – Teamwork only lets you do this on its most expensive plans, and although monday.com offers this as an option, I found it much, much trickier than I did in Asana.

Asana is a really easy-to-use program and scored 4.2/5 on our ease-of-use tests, meaning it's not far off monday.com and Teamwork. Although I found the interface looks a little cluttered when you open up a task to edit it, it’s all pretty intuitive – especially compared to the likes of Jira.

Creating a custom field in Asana. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

Like Wrike and monday.com, Asana has been working on an AI assistant that can make task prioritization recommendations and an AI text tool that can turn unstructured text into actions. However, this hasn’t been released just yet, so you'll have to wait a little longer to find out how it actually functions.

Asana pricing

Asana has four plans, including a basic free plan, but as we've covered, it doesn’t have many features – milestones, task dependencies, a Gantt chart and custom fields aren't included. It also has a user limit of 15 so it definitely isn't suitable for teams larger than that.

The paid plans offered by Asana are quite expensive – the first paid plan costs $10.99 per user, per month, almost double the price of Teamwork’s first paid plan. However, it does add the features listed above missing from the free plan.

The Business plan costs $24.99 per user, per month, and this is the first plan with time-tracking and resource management features.

There’s an Enterprise plan with no public pricing, but it offers virtually the same collection of task management features as the Business plan. For more information, visit our Asana pricing guide.

Key Features to Look for in Task Management Software

In 2023, although most task and project management tools offer a wide range of features, there are some core ones you should be on the lookout for because they provide essential functionality. Here are a few to keep in mind:

Project views

The different “Views” provided by task management software providers like monday.com will help you understand how the different tasks that make up your project slot together.

For example, a Kanban board, which is provided by all the top project management software brands, focuses on the status of your tasks.  They could be “in progress”, “completed” or “blocked”. Gantt charts, on the other hand, show tasks displayed against time.

Tools like ClickUp also provide over 15 project views, including a “List” view, which is just a simple board showing a list of your project tasks and the most straightforward way to see what you have to complete.

Setting a task duration time in ClickUp. Image: Tech.co's testing process.

Most project management tools also offer a calendar view and a spreadsheet-style view, as well as a “team view”, which lets you see tasks organized by the team members assigned to them.

Sub-tasks

Sub-tasks are a key component of granular task management, and they’re exactly how they sound. They’re the smaller, secondary tasks that every larger, core task in your project will be made up of.

For example, if you’re building a website, one of your tasks may be “Design a Website Logo” – but this might be broken up into sub-tasks such as “background research”, “competitor analysis” and “submit designs to graphics team”.

Sub-tasks ensure you're not forced to oversimplify tasks just to input them into your project management software or deal with an unmanageably large task list.

Time-tracking

Task management software tools that have a time-tracking feature, such as Asana and Teamwork, will let you track how long tasks are taking to complete. If you're trying to improve the efficiency of your team, this can be an important metric to have.

Some time-tracking tools will also let you attach time estimates for specific tasks, which can help with mid-project planning. Others, such as the one included in monday.com, will let you add billing amounts to time spent on tasks.

AI work assistance

As you’re probably aware, since the rise of ChatGPT, businesses have been finding inventive ways to use AI to save themselves time with increasing frequency – and more and more companies have started to build AI capabilities into their software.

Task management software tools monday.com and ClickUp both have AI assistants – monday.com’s is currently in Beta and is gradually released to the platform’s users, while ClickUp’s costs $5 per workspace per month.

ClickUp’s AI tool will soon be able to autogenerate tasks and sub-tasks, while monday.com’s can already do this as well as summarize and rephrase documents and text.

ClickUp's list view with AI chatbot. Image: Tech.co's Testing process.

Custom fields

Project and task management software tools have a variety of different “fields” that allow you to input different types of information. For example, there might be a field in your list view that lets you input the status of a task – another may before for the task assignee.

However, custom fields are fields where you can input any information you want,.They come in handy when your task management software doesn’t have a dedicated field for a specific type of information, such as budget data.

About Our Research

At Tech.co, we conduct research into all of the products, services, and software we write about. This includes extensive market research to scout out the major players in every vertical we cover, and instigating conversations with businesses that have to make difficult buying decisions every day in the name of improving efficiency, organization, and their top line. Everything we learn from this work is then fed into our unique user testing criteria.

To find out what the best task management software tool is, our research team naturally focused on providers that offer a selection of fundamental features that are required to manage tasks effectively, and how easy they are to use. This became one aspect of a broader series of project management software and Work OS platform tests, as these are the tools that are the most effective at task management.

During the testing series, we focused on six different areas: Security, Integrations, Pricing, Customer Support, Functionality, and  Ease of Use. “Functionality” is broken down into four subsequent assessment areas: task management, data visualization, workflow creation, and collaboration.

Although we have commercial partnerships with some of the providers we write about, this never impacts how we rank products, services, and software that appear on our site. In fact, it's our research that allows us to remain editorially independent.

Task Management Software: Frequently Asked Questions