Battle of the Giants 2025: ClickUp vs. Monday.com – The Ultimate Comparison

Recently, the need for reliable project management tools has surged significantly.

Because of this, choosing the perfect platform for their teams has become increasingly challenging for many organizations.

In this article, I will compare two leading project management solutions: ClickUp and Monday.com.

Let’s jump right in!

First, let’s look at a general overview of these two software options.

ClickUp is a cloud-based platform that consolidates project management functions into one central hub, allowing teams and businesses to coordinate seamlessly. It replaces multiple productivity tools across various departments and facilitates collaboration through features like task management, document sharing, chat, goal setting, and team oversight.

And it’s highly adaptable. You can utilize it not only for project planning but also for workflows, email marketing campaigns, organizing documents, maintaining marketing tasks, file storage, managing website processes, and much more.

Monday.com is a visual project management platform designed to facilitate teamwork and collaboration. It offers tools to support your daily task management and help you reach your weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. Whether you’re launching a new product, organizing an event, or working on a publication, Monday provides an intuitive interface to build, visualize, and communicate your ideas effectively.

Features include project planning, inventory control, resource allocation, workflow automation, time and goal tracking—all tailored to boost productivity and streamline team collaboration.

Get started with Monday.com now.

Let’s examine how these top-tier project management tools stack up against each other in this comprehensive comparison.

Monday and ClickUp are two of the most widely used project management platforms in the SaaS industry. Both provide support for agile project methodologies, team collaboration, document sharing, managing multiple projects concurrently, and more. Now, let’s take a detailed look at each.

ClickUp is a versatile tool that simplifies task organization and workflow management. It allows teams to create, assign, and monitor tasks from any location or device, fostering productivity on desktops, tablets, and smartphones alike. Its core functions revolve around task management—enabling efficient, distraction-free progress tracking and collaboration.ClickUp features a wide range of tools to help manage your projects effectively. When you start using the platform, you are first prompted to select a template for your dashboard that aligns with your specific needs, industry, and level of experience.

The platform impressively offers around 128 pre-designed templates, providing ready-made solutions tailored to various workflows. One of the most beneficial templates available is their project management layout, which includes multiple layout choices, customizable statuses, fields, and other options to suit your workflow.

The entire system is organized hierarchically, making it easy to break down your work into manageable parts. The components from the top level down include workspaces, spaces, and lists. Think of a workspace as your virtual office where all work-related activities happen. Within this workspace, you create spaces to categorize your projects based on teams, departments, or different work types. These spaces can be further divided into lists that group related tasks together.

If you’re familiar with other project management tools like Trello, you will recognize this similar structure. You can also organize related lists into folders for better grouping.

Here’s an overview of what the dashboard looks like: a snapshot of task management within a workspace, showcasing the different lists and the overall layout, which can be customized to your preferences.

In the workspace, tasks are organized within various spaces, each containing multiple task lists, providing a clear view of your project’s structure and progress.You can assign tasks to multiple team members simultaneously, set due dates, update statuses, create recurring tasks, and prioritize with color-coded flags. Comments can be directly added within each task, keeping everyone in the loop about ongoing discussions.

Another essential feature of ClickUp is the customizable “Views.” These let you see tasks in various formats, allowing you to pick the best view for your project. Available options include List, Kanban boards, Box, Docs, Calendar, Mind Maps, and Gantt charts. For example, Gantt charts help you visualize project timelines, task dependencies, and track progress whether tasks are “Done,” “In Progress,” or “Completed.”

ClickUp also supports embedding charts, tables, and data from sources like Google Sheets. It has built-in time-tracking across multiple devices, perfect for client meetings, development, quality assurance, and delivery. The tool provides estimated times based on task complexity, team input, and priorities. To enable time tracking, simply go to the ClickApps section in the sidebar.

You can organize your workflow with folders, lists, tasks, and subtasks, and create dependencies and visualizations to ensure deadlines are met. This functionality is particularly beneficial for Scrum teams practicing Agile methodologies. Additionally, ClickUp assists with budgeting and expense management to keep projects within financial scope.

Project planning, defining requirements, and managing resources are essential steps to ensure a successful project. Additionally, these tools help teams monitor real-time statuses and keep track of progress throughout the project lifecycle.

The platforms offer a variety of resources, including onboarding videos, self-help articles, product demos, webinars, and more. These materials are especially useful if you encounter obstacles or wish to learn more in-depth details about specific features.

Monday.com is a popular project management solution that offers comprehensive tools for task management and team collaboration. It helps users analyze project progress, identify bottlenecks, and address issues more efficiently.

Like ClickUp, Monday.com provides a library of workflow templates designed to streamline setup and organization. Among these templates are five predefined project management options tailored to different needs.

These five built-in templates include:

Each template caters to specific scenarios. For example, the ‘Advanced Project Management’ template is suitable for handling complex projects, offering tools to manage budgets, track progress, mitigate risks, and allocate resources effectively.

Users can also import data from various platforms such as Asana, Google Sheets, Jira, Zendesk, Trello, Basecamp, and more. Tasks can be assigned to multiple team members simultaneously, prioritized, given due dates, and tagged with color-coded labels to indicate status or importance. Progress updates can be tracked in real-time, and reminders or notifications help prevent missed deadlines.

The ‘Weekly Tasks’ module fosters transparency and accountability by providing a shared overview of weekly responsibilities. Workspace visualization options include different views like Gantt, Timeline, Files, Map, Workload, Charts, Kanban boards, List, and more, all accessible via customizable layouts. Managers can monitor team workload, assign daily tasks, and address resource conflicts or dependencies. Tagging specific tasks allows for quick searches and real-time updates on progress throughout the project lifecycle.

In conclusion, making a choice between Monday.com and ClickUp can be challenging, as both platforms excel at streamlining daily workflows. They enable multiple perspectives on tasks, support team collaboration, and facilitate easy assignment, filtering, sorting, and prioritization of work. Both solutions cater to organizations of all sizes—from small, remote teams to large enterprises and HR departments.

Monitoring project progress and team collaborations are fundamental to effective project management. Let’s compare how ClickUp and Monday facilitate these processes.

ClickUp allows you to create goals, break them into measurable targets, and track their progress in real-time. You can assign a name to each goal, set an end date, and grant access to multiple team members. To enhance accountability, specific owners can be designated for each goal, and reviewers or watchers can be added to monitor progress. You can also include detailed descriptions of your goals and outline strategies to achieve them.

Goals are further subdivided into targets, which are quantifiable outcomes that contribute to achieving the overall goal. You can assign names, select target types such as numerical scales, true/false indicators, percentages, currencies, or tasks, and set specific measurement criteria. These features facilitate precise tracking and ensure that team efforts align with project objectives.

Breaking tasks into clear goals, targets, and milestones is an effective way to manage your projects and ensure progress. You can organize your most critical tasks right on your homepage, providing a quick overview of your to-do list, scheduled tasks, and reminders for each day.

ClickUp simplifies the process of measuring progress and tracking key results. It enables you to compare different tactics and actions, estimate how long tasks will take, and monitor their completion. Managers can set up and oversee progress through milestones, identify obstacles quickly, implement solutions, and ensure team members stay on track.

Several tools within ClickUp allow you to analyze how your team allocates time. The “Roll-Up” feature provides a combined total of time spent on various tasks and subtasks, which you can adjust by adding or subtracting time as needed.

Users can modify tracked time, adding or subtracting as necessary. ClickUp also provides widgets (ClickApps) to enhance time management, including features like Time in Status, which shows how much time was spent in each task status across the workspace; Time Estimates, for adding expected durations to tasks; and Time Estimates Roll-up, which sums time estimates across subtasks.

You can build personalized Timesheets directly within the dashboard, allowing you to monitor time spent daily, weekly, monthly, or within defined custom ranges. They enable setting time goals, grouping entries by dates, and reviewing detailed individual logs to see where and how time is being allocated.

Besides standard project time tracking, ClickUp offers features to monitor billable versus non-billable hours and generate cost estimates. Its free Chrome extension further simplifies time tracking from your desktop, mobile device, or web browser, providing flexibility and ease of use.

Monday.com functions by creating dedicated workspaces for different project segments, allowing better organization and tracking progress across various verticals. Within each workspace, you can set up multiple boards—some shareable with external collaborators, others private for personal use, and some accessible only to team members. Each board contains columns for different aspects of project management, such as progress, which indicate the completion percentage of individual tasks or project phases.

You have the ability to move tasks between different groups such as scheduled, completed, and backlog items. The progress indicator reflects the status of tasks; for example, when all tasks are marked as “Done,” the progress bar will automatically reach 100%. The dashboard provides a real-time view of active tasks and monitors each team member’s progress. It allows you to track deadlines individually and see how close you are to completing specific projects. Additionally, the Timeline view visually displays your project schedules and timelines, giving you a clear overview of how long each task or project will take, which helps with planning. A separate Workload View offers insight into how team members are distributed across tasks, highlighting who may be overextended and helping you reassign tasks or adjust deadlines as needed. The platform also includes a Resource Management feature that tracks all project assets, including team members, to ensure optimal resource allocation.

Winner: ClickUp. Its extensive tools for time management and resource tracking make it the superior choice.

3. Automation

Workflow automation is an effective way to boost productivity without extending working hours. It simplifies routine tasks involved in managing your business. Comparing ClickUp and Monday, both platforms offer automation features, but they differ in their capabilities and ease of use.

ClickUp’s automation system helps streamline repetitive tasks, saving time and reducing manual effort. It offers pre-built “Triggers and Actions” that can be combined for various automation scenarios. You can monitor how many automation recipes are active at any time and modify them as needed. For instance, you can automatically add the same watchers to a task or assign specific tasks to designated team members. The platform also provides a categorized library of ready-to-use automations based on different criteria such as status changes, creation dates, or deadlines. A visual overview of activated automations is available, making it easy to manage and customize workflows efficiently.

The ‘When’ tab is used to set up triggers in automation workflows, allowing you to specify specific conditions that initiate an automation process.

You have a wide range of trigger options to select from, depending on your needs. As soon as a trigger is activated, the ‘Then’ button becomes available, enabling you to choose what actions should follow.

You can select from numerous possible actions to customize your workflow further.

You can also define conditions that must be met for the automation to run. For example, automation may only trigger if a task has a “Priority” label. This way, you can prevent unwanted automation from occurring unless specified criteria are met.

Additionally, it’s possible to modify your automation steps whenever needed.

ClickUp enables you to create automation rules through third-party integrations, such as creating new issues on GitHub or sending notifications via SMS or email. For instance, if a task’s deliverable changes, you could set up an automation to send alerts when a deadline approaches or a status updates.

Monday.com offers pre-designed automation templates that streamline task management by providing ready-to-use triggers and actions.

Similar to ClickUp, it offers a plethora of options categorized under status changes, recurring tasks, due dates, item creation, and more. For instance, you could automatically update a task status once certain numerical conditions are met.

You can find pre-set automation recipes—combinations of triggers and actions—that fit nearly any requirement. These can be used to shift items between boards, send reminders about upcoming deadlines, assign tasks to team members, and more.

Managers can also establish task dependencies and set conditions to control how tasks interact. Teams can set up triggers via SMS or email to stay updated with all the latest notifications. When tasks are completed or dependencies are no longer valid, they can be removed easily.

Overall, both platforms offer robust automation capabilities, making it challenging to declare an outright winner in this category. It’s a tie.

Effective reporting is vital for managing projects and understanding team productivity. To evaluate progress, you need detailed insights into individual and team performance, task completion, time management, and more.

Unfortunately, not all project management tools include comprehensive reporting features. Here’s how ClickUp and Monday.com compare in this area.

ClickUp stands out as one of the few platforms that offers extensive reporting tools. These reports help you identify who is working on what and measure productivity over specific periods.

You can customize reports to focus on particular time frames or specific project spaces. For example, you can see a breakdown of projects completed by each team member, providing clear insight into individual contributions.

The platform also allows you to view reports on tasks that have been worked on, giving a detailed look at ongoing efforts and time allocation. Multiple filters and status options help you analyze how much time was spent on each task, offering valuable data to improve workflows and resource distribution.

The “Team Points” report shows the score assigned to each team member. It introduces a gamified element, where team members earn points based on specific activities like clearing notifications, adding comments, resolving comments, completing tasks, and the number of jobs they handle. This feature helps track productivity and team engagement.

The report enables you to identify who is working faster and delivering higher quality work. Additional reports include tools like the Who’s Behind Report, Time Tracked Report, and Time Estimation Report. The Who’s Behind Report helps pinpoint team members who are lagging behind or facing obstacles. It’s useful for identifying bottlenecks and fostering better collaboration within the team.

Using these analytics, managers can create effective roadmaps and strategic plans. You can also incorporate visual dashboards that provide a quick summary of project status, remaining tasks, weekly priorities, and much more.

Among project management tools, ClickUp stands out with its robust reporting and analytics capabilities. However, many of the more advanced reports require a paid plan, while the free version only provides access to information on completed projects.

While Monday doesn’t offer dedicated reports like ClickUp, it features a “Chart View” that provides analytical insights into your workspace. You can select from a variety of chart types, such as pie charts or stacked bar charts, to visualize your data. Here’s an example:

You can also customize the data breakdown within your charts for a tailored analysis.

Using Monday’s Workload View provides a comprehensive snapshot of your team’s tasks and how they are allocated across team members.

Winner: ClickUp.

With its more advanced analytical reporting features, ClickUp takes the lead in this comparison.

5. Third-Party Integrations

No project management tool can deliver optimal productivity without the support of compatible third-party apps.

Both ClickUp and Monday feature marketplaces that facilitate easy addition of collaboration tools and apps to enhance functionality.

ClickUp offers native integration with over 1,000 third-party services, allowing seamless connection with nearly all major business tools. Popular integrations include Dropbox, GitHub, GitLab, Outlook, Google Drive, Vimeo, YouTube, and Google Calendar. Additionally, you can develop custom integrations using ClickUp’s public API or leverage Zapier to expand your options.

Monday.com supports native integration with numerous leading CRM, marketing, software development, and project management platforms. Key integrations include Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Excel, Jira, Salesforce, and OneDrive. Automation workflows can also incorporate third-party apps through predefined recipes—for example, automatically notifying a Slack channel when a task status changes to “Done.”

These integration capabilities help streamline workflows and increase efficiency.

Winner: Draw.

6. Pricing Plans

ClickUp offers four distinct pricing tiers, catering to different user needs and organizational sizes.

The free “Individual” plan supports unlimited tasks and users, with access to five workspaces, customizable views, 100MB storage, and 100 automation recipes each month. The “Unlimited” plan, at $5 per user/month when billed annually, removes limits on tasks, workspaces, views, and increases automation allowances. The “Business” tier, costing $12 per user/month annually, adds features like goal setting and detailed time tracking. For larger teams, the “Enterprise” plan provides advanced options such as 250,000 automation recipes, dedicated customer success managers, and priority support, with pricing customized per organization.

Monday.com offers a variety of plans to suit small startups up to large enterprises, with five different options. (Details in the source document include specifics on each plan’s features and costs.)

Overall, both platforms provide flexible pricing models tailored to different business needs.

These plans are billed annually, which can save you 18% compared to monthly payments.

Heading 2: Why Project Management Software Is Essential

As remote work becomes more common and collaboration among team members is crucial, having effective project management software is vital for completing projects on time and within budget. These tools centralize all project-related information and communication in one place. Instead of juggling multiple apps and messaging channels, teams can use a single platform to track progress, share files, give feedback, and communicate instantly. This reduces misunderstandings and keeps everyone aligned throughout the project.

In addition, these tools often include features like task scheduling, progress tracking, and budget management. These help project managers and team members stay organized, prioritize tasks effectively, and prevent delays. Automated notifications and reminders also ensure deadlines are met and work continues smoothly toward completion.

Another big advantage is that project management software provides valuable insights into how projects are performing. By analyzing metrics such as task completion rates and budget usage, teams can identify areas for improvement and adjust their strategies accordingly. Using this data allows businesses to make smarter decisions that improve efficiency and outcomes.

Security is also a concern in today’s digital landscape. Project management tools help safeguard sensitive information by controlling access through user permissions and data encryption. This ensures that only authorized individuals can view or modify confidential data, giving companies peace of mind and building trust among team members.

Heading 2: Executive Summary

The search for the ideal project management software can feel overwhelming. Choosing the right tool is crucial for businesses, freelancers, startups, and non-profit organizations seeking to improve their project processes. These tools offer solutions that help managers and teams achieve higher productivity and better project outcomes.

Among the top options are ClickUp and Monday.com. Both platforms provide comprehensive project management features, easy usability, mobile apps for iOS and Android, high levels of customization, and extensive resources like tutorials and knowledge bases to help users get started. However, selecting the best one depends on your specific needs and preferences.

If you want detailed project insights and team productivity tracking, consider ClickUp. It also offers robust time-tracking and advanced automation capabilities. On the other hand, if your focus is on automation, workload management, or you manage a medium to large-sized team, Monday.com might be a better fit. It also helps track personal goals effectively.

This overview summarizes the main differences between ClickUp and Monday.com. For a deeper dive into ClickUp, check out my comprehensive review. Which of these tools are you considering? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Additionally, explore my other detailed reviews on project management tools:

– Comparing Asana and Monday
– Trello vs. Monday
– ClickUp vs. Asana