Buying guide
Free agile project management software: team limits and sprint gates
For a hosted team of up to ten people, start with YouTrack Cloud and compare Shortcut. YouTrack's free offering includes full functionality except custom branding; Shortcut provides Stories, Epics and Iterations within a single team and workflow. GitHub Projects is another practical route when repository issues already hold the work and flexible iteration grouping is enough.
The useful question is whether the free plan supports your next several sprints. A large member allowance can coexist with a small issue limit, restricted roles or a feature that stops after a fixed number of uses.
Ongoing free plans and their practical limits
These hosted allowances apply to the stated Free plan. Self-hosted infrastructure is a separate budget.
| Product | Free scope | The limit to check first |
|---|---|---|
| YouTrack Cloud | Ten users, 30GB, full functionality except a custom logo | Count actual accounts and confirm external-user billing; Observer is not proof of a free extra seat |
| Shortcut | Ten users; Stories, Epics and Iterations | One team, workspace and workflow; restricted roles |
| Jira | Ten users, 2GB; backlog, boards, timeline and reports | Standard adds roles and permissions |
| Linear | Unlimited members, two teams, 250 issues | Everyone is an administrator; private teams and guests require Business |
| GitHub Projects | Issues and Projects, with table/board/roadmap views and iteration fields | Private repository visibility remains separate from project access |
| GitLab.com | Five users per top-level group, 400 compute minutes/month, 10GiB | One group issue board; iteration and advanced board controls are paid |
| ClickUp | Sprints and unlimited tasks | 100 Sprint Points uses, plus 60MB storage; unlimited points/cards need Business |
| Plane commercial Free | Twelve users with core work items, cycles and modules | Separate this from Community and check required edition features |
| Taiga hosted | Unlimited users, one public and one private project | 10MB storage is a very small attachment allowance |
| Backlog | Ten users, one project, 100MB | One-project scope; paid charts and other controls need a plan check |
YouTrack is the starting choice when a small team needs configurable issue and board work without immediately paying for role breadth. Choose Shortcut first when one Story/Epic/Iteration process is enough.
Does the free workflow support a real sprint?
Check four things with actual work: backlog triage, estimates, the sprint commitment and review of what finished. GitHub iteration fields support timed grouping and rollover; if capacity or burndown is essential, check that exact report before choosing the planning setup. GitLab's ordinary free issue board should not be confused with its paid iteration configurations.
ClickUp's 100 Sprint Points uses are particularly important for repeated estimation. Business supplies unlimited points, Sprint Cards and Sprint Automations; a free trial view of those features is not a continuing entitlement. Forecast locking is irreversible, so agree when the team's commitment is final before using it.
Repository connections also need a permissions check. A board collaborator may lack private repository visibility in GitHub. ClickUp guests and limited members cannot use its GitHub integration. A free seat count alone does not establish that every engineer or contractor can perform the job.
Free self-hosted software has an operating budget
OpenProject Community supports unlimited users/projects and, from 17.3, action boards and dedicated sprint objects. Multiple active sprints remain an Enterprise feature. Plane describes Community as free, self-hosted and unlimited-user, under AGPL-3.0; do not transfer commercial import entitlements to it. Taiga also has a buyer-operated deployment route for Scrum/Kanban work.
Those options require infrastructure, updates, backup and restore ownership, and integration configuration. They can satisfy a hosting requirement, but a zero subscription price is not a zero total cost. Read the self-hosted agile comparison before choosing on free seats alone.
Avoid a trial-shaped budget
monday dev has no ongoing free plan. Shortcut's temporary trial allowances do not define Free roles or Observer access. Backlog warns that an account started on a paid trial cannot downgrade to Free, so select the intended starting route deliberately. For Zenhub, confirm the permanent repository and issue allowances separately from trial access before relying on Free.
If switching, keep enough room for the data you already have. An import may exhaust storage before new work starts, and migration tools differ in the fields and history they preserve. Test a representative sample separately from repository event updates: linking a pull request is not historical issue synchronization.
Read the free-plan reviews
Pick a free plan you can keep using
Inspect YouTrack Cloud's ten-user terms with your actual account list, then compare Shortcut's one-workflow fit. Include engineers, administrators and external participants in that check. If the team expects to exceed a limit soon, compare the required paid tier before configuring the backlog.
For more choices use Jira alternatives or the software-team comparison.