Most project management software is sold to teams, and a freelancer is not a team. The question that actually splits this list is whether anyone else ever opens it. If it is just you, a fast list beats a workspace. If a client logs in, you are buying a portal and the price is suddenly per seat. Filter the twelve below by which of those you are solving.
12 tools compared, no affiliate links
A task list that stays fast as it grows, with natural-language dates.
Best for: Keeping your own work straight, nothing more
A task manager for Apple devices, bought once rather than subscribed to.
Best for: Apple users who are tired of monthly fees
Cards on a board, which is enough structure for most freelance projects.
Best for: A visible pipeline a client can follow
Task and project tracking with timelines, built for teams and usable alone.
Best for: Projects with real dependencies and dates
Tries to be every work tool at once: tasks, docs, time tracking and goals.
Best for: Replacing three tools with one, if you will configure it
Pages and databases you shape yourself, used as a tracker, wiki and client portal.
Best for: One place for projects, notes and client handovers
A spreadsheet that behaves like a database, with views for every way of looking at it.
Best for: Work that is really a list of records: clients, briefs, deliverables
A project space built around client communication, priced flat rather than per seat.
Best for: Keeping client conversation out of email
monday.com (opens in a new tab)
Free planColour-coded boards with automations, aimed at teams that want to see status at a glance.
Best for: Showing progress to a client who wants a dashboard
A freelance suite where projects, contracts, time and invoices sit in one account.
Best for: Running the whole business from one tool
A smaller all-in-one with projects, invoices and a white-labelled client portal.
Best for: A client portal that carries your name, not the tool's
Puts your tasks into your calendar itself, rescheduling automatically when the day slips.
Best for: Deciding what to do now rather than listing what to do
No tool in this list matches that filter yet.
Outbound links are not affiliate links and no tool paid to be listed. Plans change often, so check the current pricing page before you commit.
If the tool is only ever open on your own screen, the winner is whichever one you will actually keep using: Todoist and Things 3 are built for exactly that and nothing more. The moment a client logs in, you are buying something else entirely, and per-seat pricing becomes the deciding factor. Basecamp charges a flat price no matter how many people you add, which changes the maths once you have several clients at once.
Five of these have AI features, and they split into two kinds that solve different problems. Motion uses it to make a decision: your tasks become calendar blocks, and when the day slips it moves the rest. Notion, ClickUp, Airtable and monday.com use it to write and summarise inside a tool you were already using. The first changes how you work; the second saves typing.
Seven have a free tier that works on its own. For one person, Notion and ClickUp are the most complete, and Trello is the fastest to set up and the easiest for a client to understand without being taught. The cap you will actually hit is rarely the task count: it is guests, records or storage. Airtable's record limit arrives sooner than most people expect. Filter the list by Free plan to compare them.
Nine of these can be opened by a client, and they differ in what that costs and what the client sees. Basecamp gives the client a separate view with your internal notes hidden. Plutio lets the portal run on your own domain, so it carries your name rather than the tool's. Notion and Trello need no portal at all: one shared page or board does the job. Check how guests are counted before you commit, because that is where per-seat pricing turns a cheap tool expensive.
Four of these log hours or produce invoices from the same place the work lives, which removes the retyping step between a timesheet and a bill. Bonsai and Plutio go furthest and run the proposal, contract and invoice too. One thing to check before you commit: they issue the invoice in your own name, so you need a registered business in the country you bill from. If you do not have one, that is where it stops, and it is the gap Ruul fills by letting you invoice without a company and acting as the legal counterparty when you send the invoice. For hours specifically, the time tracking category compares twelve tools built for it.
Before you commit
Everything follows from it. If the answer is no, you are choosing a personal list and anything with permissions, seats and workspaces is overhead you will pay for in setup time. If the answer is yes, you are choosing a client portal and the tool's per-seat pricing is now a real cost.
Per-seat pricing is quoted for teams, where the count is stable. A freelancer with six clients has a different curve entirely. Flat pricing, guest seats and free collaborators are worth more to you than to the teams these tools were designed for, so check that line specifically.
The configurable tools are genuinely powerful and genuinely cost you a weekend before they do anything. That is a fine trade if you will use it for years and a bad one if you are trying it. Be honest about which you are doing.
If you bill hourly, a project tool that does not track time means keeping the record somewhere else and joining the two by hand every month. Either pick one that tracks time, or pick a tracker that exports cleanly into it, and compare the dedicated trackers before assuming the built-in one is enough.
The all-in-one tools solve project management, contracts and invoicing at once, which is compelling until you realise you are switching three working tools to fix one gap. If the missing piece is getting paid rather than getting organised, solve that on its own and keep the tools you already like.
Ruul lets you invoice clients without a registered company, in 190 countries, with payouts in 140+ currencies. You send the invoice, Ruul acts as the legal counterparty and collects the payment, and you get paid within one business day of the client paying. No setup cost and no monthly fee, just a 5% transaction commission.
