Notion vs ClickUp for a startup team under ten

A team of three can run on chat and memory. A team of eight can't. Plans, decisions, customer notes and who's doing what have to live somewhere the whole team can find them, and the tool you pick for that tends to stay for years.

Notion and ClickUp are the two most startups end up choosing between. Notion started as a writing tool and grew databases that can track tasks. ClickUp started as a project manager and grew documents and chat. Both now claim to replace most of your other tools, and both can, up to a point.

This comparison is for a team under ten that wants one place for its written knowledge and its work.

Notion and ClickUp at a glance

Prices are per member a month on yearly billing, from each company's pricing page on the day we checked.^⁠[1],[3]

The free plans

The free plans are where these two differ most, and where a small team should start its decision.

Notion's free plan is for one person. A workspace with a single owner gets unlimited blocks, and a block is any piece of content, such as a paragraph, a table row or an image. When a second person joins a free workspace, they join as an owner, and a workspace with two or more owners is limited to 1,000 blocks in total. Deleting content doesn't lower the count. Once you reach the limit, you can still edit what's there but can't add anything new, after a three-day grace period.^⁠[2] Because every paragraph and table row counts, a team writing every day uses that allowance quickly.

Notion's free plan also limits file uploads to 5MB each, keeps seven days of page history and allows ten guests.^⁠[1]

ClickUp's free plan is built for teams. Free Forever includes unlimited members and unlimited tasks, collaborative docs, Kanban boards, sprints and a calendar view, plus support around the clock.^⁠[3] The limits are storage, at 60MB for the whole workspace, one form, and automations. Free workspaces can have five active automations and 100 automation actions a month.^⁠[3],[4]

If your team wants to stay on a free plan for a while, ClickUp lets you. Notion doesn't, past the first few weeks.

What a team pays

Both charge per member, and ClickUp says an upgrade covers the whole workspace, so everyone in it becomes a paid seat.^⁠[3]

These are monthly totals on yearly billing. Monthly billing costs $12 per member on Notion Plus and $10 on ClickUp Unlimited.^⁠[1],[3]

Notion Plus removes the block limit and adds unlimited file uploads, 30 days of page history, unlimited guests, unlimited charts, custom forms and database automations.^⁠[1] ClickUp Unlimited adds unlimited storage, Gantt charts, custom fields, native time tracking, goals, guests with permission controls, ClickUp Chat and integrations with tools such as Slack, HubSpot and Google Drive.^⁠[3]

Documents and the company wiki

Notion is the stronger writing tool. Every page can hold text, tables, images, embedded files and databases, and pages nest inside each other, so a wiki grows naturally from a handful of pages into a structured handbook. Teamspaces separate areas such as engineering and sales, and Business adds private teamspaces for anything sensitive.^⁠[1]

ClickUp Docs are capable and sit right next to the work, so a spec can live inside the project it describes. For a short brief or a meeting note that works well. For a long-lived handbook with dozens of pages, Notion's editor is more pleasant to write in and to read.

Tasks and projects

ClickUp is the stronger project manager. Every plan includes list, board and calendar views, and the paid plans add Gantt charts, time tracking, custom fields, resource management and goals.^⁠[3] Business adds dashboards with advanced cards, timeline views, sprint points and portfolio workload management, which matter once you're running several client projects at once.^⁠[3]

Notion tracks tasks in databases. A task database can have assignees, due dates, statuses, subtasks, dependencies and custom properties, and every plan includes them.^⁠[1] That works well for a product backlog or a content calendar. Notion's plans don't list time tracking or resource management, which ClickUp includes from Unlimited, so teams that bill by the hour tend to prefer ClickUp.

Automations

Both automate routine work, such as moving a task when its status changes or notifying someone when a form is submitted, and both limit it by plan.

Notion's free plan has basic automations, meaning buttons. Plus adds custom database automations, which run when a row is added or changed.^⁠[1]

ClickUp counts automation actions. Free Forever gets 100 a month, Unlimited 1,000, and Business 5,000. Limits reset on the first of each month, and when a workspace goes over, its automations pause until the next month.^⁠[4] Business also adds webhooks and automation integrations, which the cheaper plans don't have.^⁠[4]

For anything that crosses into other apps, a dedicated automation tool is often simpler. Our comparison of Make, Zapier and Pabbly Connect covers those.

AI

Both sell AI on top of their plans, and both charge for it in ways worth reading carefully.

Notion includes its AI agent, AI meeting notes and enterprise search on the Business plan. Free and Plus get a limited trial. Custom agents that run tasks on their own use Notion credits, at $10 per 1,000 credits a month.^⁠[1]

ClickUp sells AI as a separate add-on, from $9 per user a month for Brain AI, with a larger bundle at $28. Both include a monthly allowance of credits for agents and automations, and extra credits cost $10 per 10,000.^⁠[3]

For a team under ten, AI shouldn't decide this choice. Try each one's trial on your own documents before paying for it.

Security and admin

At this size, the controls that matter are two-factor authentication, guest access and single sign-on.

ClickUp includes two-factor authentication on every plan and adds Google sign-in on Business, with SAML single sign-on and SCIM on Enterprise.^⁠[3] Notion includes SAML single sign-on on Business, along with granular database permissions, and keeps SCIM for Enterprise.^⁠[1]

If your company runs on Google Workspace and you want everyone to sign in with it, ClickUp Business at $12 per member is the cheaper route.

Using both

Plenty of teams use Notion for writing and ClickUp for tasks. It works, and it costs both bills. For a team of eight on yearly billing, Notion Plus and ClickUp Unlimited together come to $136 a month.^⁠[1],[3]

Before paying twice, try living in one for a month. Most teams under ten find that one tool used well beats two tools used halfway.

Setting it up for a small team

The tool matters less than a few decisions made in the first week.

Give the workspace two administrators, so nobody is locked out when one person is away or leaves. Create areas by function, such as product, sales and operations, rather than by person, so work stays findable after people change roles.

Invite contractors and clients as guests, not members, so they see only what you share with them. Notion Plus allows unlimited guests, and ClickUp Unlimited includes guests with permission controls.^⁠[1],[3] Check how each counts guests against paid seats before you invite a large client team.

Write a one-page guide to how the team uses the tool, covering where specs go, how tasks move from open to done, and what belongs in chat instead. Pin it at the top of the workspace. New hires will read it on their first day, and it saves the slow drift into three different ways of doing the same thing.

Moving later

Switching costs a team a week or two of disruption, so it's worth knowing the way out before you start.

Notion lists exporting an entire workspace as HTML, Markdown and CSV among its features.^⁠[1] ClickUp adds custom exporting on its Business plan.^⁠[3] Either way, documents move far more cleanly than tasks. Statuses, assignees, comments and automations usually need rebuilding in the new tool.

Which one to pick

Choose Notion if your team writes more than it tracks. A startup writing specs, a handbook, investor updates and meeting notes will get more from Notion Plus at $10 per member a month billed yearly. Don't plan on the free plan once a second person joins.

Choose ClickUp if your team tracks more than it writes. An agency, a services business or a team that needs time tracking and Gantt charts will get more from ClickUp Unlimited at $7 per member a month billed yearly, and can start on Free Forever for longer.

Whichever you pick, set it up with the rest of your stack in mind. The startup tech stack shows how docs and tasks fit with email, files and the other tools a new team pays for.