Basecamp gives free users everything, then allows one project

Basecamp scores 54, which puts it in our Limited band and third from the bottom in project management, above Asana at 41 and Monday.com at 31. That reads harsher than the plan feels when you are inside it, and the split between two pillars is why.

Feature depth is the strongest number Basecamp posts here, because a free user is not handed a sampler. Generosity is what drags the total down, since the entire toolset is aimed at a single project, and freedom follows it for reasons that are partly historical rather than technical. The four pillars below carry the specifics. Basecamp is unusually open about what it gives away and unusually strict about how much of it you may use at once.

Worth saying plainly: this score is not a ranking of Basecamp the product. Basecamp is unranked in our category list because it is a paid incumbent, and the free plan score asks only how far zero dollars gets you.

The cap that binds is the first one you meet. 37signals states it directly: you can only run one project at a time on the Free package, and in order to start a new one, you must delete the current one (as of July 2026). There is no archive, no read-only shelf, no way to park last quarter's work and open this quarter's.

The rest of the ceilings, in the order they tend to matter:

• 1 GB of storage across the whole account, which is thin for a product that sells Docs & Files as one of its seven tools.
• 20 users, including clients and outside collaborators. This is the one number here that is not a problem: it beats every other capped free plan in the category.
• No public sharing links, which are excluded from Free.
• No add-ons at all, since Timesheet and the Admin Pro Pack cannot be purchased on a free account.

Three more restrictions are not free-plan restrictions and will follow you up the ladder. There are no Gantt charts, no advanced analytics and no bulk export at any price, which is 37signals' deliberate restraint rather than an upsell, and it is the thing most likely to catch someone arriving from Jira or Asana. Time tracking exists only as a paid add-on. And there is no Linux desktop app and no self-hosted edition, so Basecamp runs in a browser or in the Windows, macOS, iOS and Android apps and nowhere else.

The first paid step removes the free plan's only real constraint and adds almost nothing else. Projects go from one to unlimited and storage from 1 GB to 500 GB, at $15 per user per month billed monthly (as of July 2026). That is unusually honest as upgrades go, because you are not buying features back: you already had them.

There is no cheap middle rung. The ladder runs free, per-seat, then a flat $299 a month for unlimited users, and the crossover is easy arithmetic. Flat costs the same as 20 seats, so it is the better deal from person 21 onward and pure overpayment below that. The flat plan is also annual only, so the entry ticket is a full year of commitment, though 37signals prorates a cancellation back.

Two details bend the maths more than the headline prices do. Clients and contractors are free on paid plans, since 37signals bills only employees and full users, which matters a great deal to agencies putting clients in the tool. And the add-ons are flat fees rather than per-seat ones: $50 a month each for Timesheet, the Admin Pro Pack and an extra terabyte. On a five-person team that wants time tracking, that is $50 on top of a $75 seat bill, a two-thirds increase for one feature, and it is the clearest reason a mid-sized team jumps to the flat plan where both add-ons are included.

The single thing people upgrade for is the second project, which is not a feature at all. That is the most direct way to see what this free plan is designed to do.

Not really, and the reason is one sentence long: Basecamp manages projects, the free plan holds one, and the only route to a second is deleting the first (as of July 2026). A free plan you cannot add to without destroying what is already in it is a way to see the product rather than a way to run a portfolio of work, which is what puts this at taster instead of a real plan with a ceiling you grow into.

That verdict is unfair to one specific group, and they deserve naming. A team of up to 20 people with a single ongoing thing to run, a committee, a club, a one-client agency, a product launch, with files under 1 GB, can stay here indefinitely and use every tool Basecamp sells. Nobody is billed, nothing expires, no card is required, and clients count as free users. That is a better offer than Monday.com's 2 seats or a new Asana account's 2 users, and we would not talk anyone out of it.

Everyone else is on a countdown that ends at project two, which for most teams is week one. If that is you, free Basecamp alternatives ranks the tools that never count projects, ClickUp's free plan is the closest swap with no project cap and no member cap, and best free project management tools covers the whole category.