If your team uses Wrike mainly as a board of tasks that move from left to right, a Wrike alternative can be a plain kanban board. You give up Gantt charts, resource planning, budgeting and the reporting layers, and you stop paying per seat for a tool you use one view of. If you run client work with budgets, approvals and resource forecasts, a board will not replace Wrike, and you should compare other work management platforms instead.
We build a kanban board, so we are not neutral. Wrike's prices below come from Wrike's pricing page, read on 29 October 2026, in US dollars on annual billing. Check it before you budget, because plans change.
Why do people look for a Wrike alternative?
Usually it is one of two things: the price follows the number of seats, or the tool is built for a bigger organisation than theirs.
Wrike lists a Free plan at $0, Team at $10 per user per month for 2 to 15 users, and Business at $25 per user per month for 5 to 200 users, all billed annually. Pinnacle and Apex have no published price, only a request to contact sales. The step from Team to Business is where Gantt-style planning, templates and standard integrations come in, and it is also where the bill stops being a small line.
The other reason is fit. Wrike's higher plans are organised around resource planning, budgeting and advanced reporting. That suits a department that has to answer to finance. It is a lot of structure for a design studio, a small agency or a team of five that wants to see who is doing what this week.
What do the current Wrike alternative lists miss?
The top results are lists of seven to fourteen tools, mostly written by project management vendors who rank their own product first, plus a forum thread. They line up features and usually quote prices for the other tools, not for Wrike itself.
They rarely ask the smaller question. What if you only use the board? Nobody prices that case for a team of three to ten, and nobody says which tool on the list is simply columns and cards. Some of the prices in the older lists are also several years old. This post covers those two gaps.
What does Wrike cost compared with a flat-price board?
Wrike charges per user on paid plans, so the bill follows headcount. These are the annual-billing numbers from the pricing page.
| Users | Team per month | Business per month |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | $30 | not available (5 seat minimum) |
| 5 | $50 | $125 |
| 10 | $100 | $250 |
EasyKanban is free for 3 boards with unlimited cards and up to 3 team members per board. Pro is €6 a month or €60 a year and removes the board and member limits. Wrike does things a board does not, so read the numbers as the price of the part you actually use. Wrike also has a free plan with a board view, which may be all you need. In that case the question is whether you are happy with its limits, and the pricing page does not state a user cap, so check it yourself.
Which parts of Wrike does a kanban board replace?
A board replaces one habit: cards in columns, dragged across as work progresses, filtered by tag or person. It does not replace Gantt charts, resource planning, budgeting or advanced reporting, which Wrike's pricing page places on its upper plans.
Here is a quick test. Look at your last ten tasks. If each one was created, moved through a few statuses and closed, with no dependencies, no time estimates and no budget line, you are running a board inside a work management platform. If you schedule against a Gantt chart, balance people across projects or report spend per client, you are using Wrike for what it was built for.
Two things a plain board still does well:
- A limit on work in progress. A long task list shows everything at once. A board can warn you when a column holds too many cards, which is how WIP limits keep a small team from starting everything at the same time.
- No cap on the backlog. Cards are unlimited on the free plan, so an old idea can sit in a column for a year without costing anything.
Which Wrike alternatives fit which kind of team?
Pick by how you work, not by the longest list of tools.
If you want to stay in the same category and spend less, the monday.com alternative guide and the Smartsheet comparison make the same board-only argument for other platforms. If you want one tool for tasks, docs and goals and accept per-seat pricing, see the ClickUp alternative guide.
If you want a board and nothing else, see how EasyKanban compares to Trello, or try a board without an account on the no-signup board. It is columns, cards and tags, at a price that does not change when a fourth person joins.
How do I move from Wrike to a kanban board?
Export your tasks from Wrike as a spreadsheet, then bring them in as a CSV. EasyKanban reads a CSV and asks you to map its columns in the import dialog, pre-filling any column called Title. Keep one column for the card title and one for the status, which becomes the column name on the board. Check what your Wrike export actually contains before you plan around it, because the format depends on how you export.
Before you import, close or delete the tasks nobody will look at again. A card holds a title, a description and a tag. Dependencies, time tracking, custom fields, approvals and Gantt dates do not come across, so it is better to find that out on a copy than on your live account. Keep the Wrike account for a month and read from it, so nothing is lost if you change your mind.
What are the trade-offs of leaving Wrike?
You lose planning depth. Gantt charts, resource views and reporting are the reason many teams choose Wrike, and a board has none of that. You also lose whatever integrations your team set up, and the approvals other departments may rely on.
You gain a smaller thing to maintain, and a bill that does not follow headcount. For a team of three to ten that tracks design work, client requests or a backlog of ideas, that is usually the right trade. For an organisation that plans capacity across many projects, it usually is not.
FAQ
What is the best free alternative to Wrike?
For a plain task board, a free kanban board is enough. EasyKanban is free for 3 boards with unlimited cards. Wrike itself also has a Free plan with a board view, so compare the two on the limits that matter to you. If you need Gantt charts and resource planning, you would compare other work management platforms instead.
How much does Wrike cost per user?
Wrike's pricing page lists Team at $10 per user per month for 2 to 15 users and Business at $25 per user per month for 5 to 200 users, both billed annually. Pinnacle and Apex are priced on request.
Is there a Wrike alternative with no per-user pricing?
Yes. Wrike's paid plans are priced per user. EasyKanban charges per account instead, free for 3 boards or €6 a month for Pro with unlimited boards and members, so adding a fourth person does not change the bill.
Can I import my Wrike tasks into a kanban board?
Yes, through CSV. Export your tasks from Wrike, make sure one column holds the status and one holds the title, then import it. Dependencies, custom fields, time tracking and attachments do not come across, so check a copy first.
When should I stay on Wrike?
Stay if your team plans against Gantt charts, balances resources across projects or reports on budgets. A board is the better choice when Wrike has turned into a task list with a status column and you pay per user to move cards.