Teamwork.com built its whole product around one job: agencies and client-services teams that need to track billable hours, invoice clients, and see project profitability without leaving their task tool. That's a real, specific thing to be good at. It's also why the free plan feels like a demo of a different product — five users, a handful of projects, and none of the billing layer that's the actual reason agencies pick Teamwork in the first place.
Yes, there's a free Teamwork alternative that doesn't cap users or gate views: Comuna. It's free forever with Kanban, Table, Calendar and Gantt all unlocked, plus an AI coworker Teamwork doesn't have. What it doesn't have is Teamwork's billing and client-portal layer — and if that's the actual reason you're on Teamwork, you should know that before you switch anything.
What does Teamwork's free plan actually include?
Five users and a small cap on active projects, plus a limited allowance of automation actions per month. To Teamwork's credit, the free tier does include access to some of its AI features and a handful of integrations — it's not a bare-bones trial wearing a "free forever" label. But the cap that actually pushes people to search for an alternative is the user count: a five-person studio or a six-person marketing team outgrows Teamwork's free plan the moment they add one more collaborator, long before they've filled five projects.
Past that, pricing climbs in real per-seat jumps — from the free tier into paid plans priced per user per month, rising again for the tier that unlocks deeper reporting and resource management. None of that is hidden, but it means the free plan is genuinely a five-person ceiling, not a "free forever, just fewer bells and whistles" tier the way some competitors frame theirs.
Where does Teamwork still win?
On the exact thing it was built for: billing clients for project work. Teamwork's time tracking feeds directly into invoices, its client-facing views let you share progress without exposing your whole backlog, and its budgeting tools flag when a project is running over before the client asks why. Comuna has none of that — no invoicing, no client portal, no budget-vs-actuals reporting. If your team bills clients by the hour and needs that loop closed inside the same tool, Teamwork (or a dedicated agency tool like Productive or Accelo) is doing a job Comuna isn't trying to do.
That's a real, unglamorous strength, and it's worth being direct about: if billing is the reason you're evaluating this category, a free Teamwork alternative that drops the billing layer isn't actually solving your problem — it's solving a different one.
What do other "free Teamwork alternatives" actually give you?
Most of the lists ranking for this keyword point toward general-purpose tools — Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Bitrix24, Trello — that are good task managers but weren't built with an agency's billing workflow in mind either. A few (ActiveCollab, GoodDay) do keep some invoicing built in, which is worth knowing if that's non-negotiable for you. What almost none of them mention is an AI that actually works your board, and few say plainly what their own free tier caps — user counts and project limits get buried in a pricing page footnote, the same problem you're trying to escape from Teamwork.
Comuna is a complete project management tool first — Kanban, Table, Calendar, Gantt, built-in chat, notes and wiki, all included at the free tier, with no user cap and no project cap to hit. You're not trading Teamwork's five-seat ceiling for a narrower tool, and you're not adding a fourth app just to get chat and notes alongside your board.
What does Comuna add that a feature list doesn't?
The AI coworker. Connect Claude or ChatGPT once — OAuth, no API key, about a minute — and your existing subscription becomes a member of the board, not a chat window bolted onto it. It creates and moves cards, writes notes and comments, and proposes new work, and every action carries its own name in the activity feed instead of an anonymous "system" entry. When it hits something that needs your judgment — closing an ambiguous card, reassigning a task — it opens a small approval request instead of guessing.
Teamwork's own AI features summarize tasks and draft replies inside them. Comuna's AI has a badge, an owned list of cards, and standing instructions you leave it — closer to what an AI coworker actually is than a writing assistant. Worth stating precisely: it's pull, not push — the AI acts when you or a scheduled prompt trigger it, not unattended around the clock.
Is Comuna a strictly better free Teamwork alternative?
For a client-billing agency, no — not yet. If invoicing, a client-facing portal, or budget-vs-actual tracking is core to how your team works, that functionality lives in Teamwork (or a purpose-built agency tool) and nowhere in Comuna today. Comuna's third-party integration catalog is also smaller than Teamwork's; check integrations before committing if a specific connector matters to your stack.
The clearer fit: a services or client-facing team that doesn't bill by the hour inside the tool itself — or handles invoicing separately, in something like an accounting app or a spreadsheet — and wants every core view unlocked without a five-seat ceiling, plus an AI coworker doing real work on the board. It's also a fit for the internal, non-billable side of an agency's work — pitches, hiring, internal ops — even if client delivery stays on Teamwork. See the full feature list for specifics, or free forever for exactly what "no paywall" means here.
Migrating isn't instant but it's not a rebuild either. Teamwork exports tasks to CSV, and titles, assignees, due dates and status map cleanly onto Comuna's cards. Billing history, invoices and time-tracking records don't have anywhere to go in Comuna — keep that data in Teamwork (or export it to your accounting tool) rather than expecting it to follow the tasks over.
How do the free plans actually compare?
- Users — Teamwork: capped at 5 on free. Comuna: unlimited, always.
- Projects — Teamwork: a small cap on free. Comuna: unlimited.
- Views — Teamwork: task lists, board and some reporting on free; deeper views sit on paid tiers. Comuna: Kanban, Table, Calendar, Gantt, Diagrams and Canvas, all on free.
- Billing & invoicing — Teamwork: built in, the product's core strength. Comuna: not a feature — use a dedicated tool alongside it.
- Chat, notes, wiki — Teamwork: chat and some docs on paid tiers. Comuna: included free.
- AI — Teamwork: task summaries and drafting from its own AI features. Comuna: connect your own Claude or ChatGPT subscription as a real board member, no extra charge.
Also worth reading: a free ClickUp alternative and a free Basecamp alternative if your team's bottleneck isn't billing specifically.
Is Teamwork's free plan actually usable, or just a trial?
It's a real free tier, not a time-boxed trial — the five-user cap and project limit stay in place indefinitely, they don't expire into a paywall after a set number of days.
Does a free Teamwork alternative exist that still handles client billing?
Not Comuna — it doesn't do invoicing or client portals today. If billing is essential, stay on Teamwork or look at a purpose-built agency tool like Productive or Accelo instead of a general free alternative.
Is there a free Teamwork alternative without a user cap?
Yes — Comuna doesn't cap users or projects on its free plan, unlike Teamwork's five-user ceiling.
Can my AI actually do work on the board, or just summarize it?
It does the work. Connected via MCP, Claude or ChatGPT creates, moves and completes cards, writes notes and comments with its own identity, and escalates anything that needs your judgment instead of guessing.
Comuna is free forever — no credit card, bring your own AI. Spin up a workspace and try it.