ActiveCollab Pricing 2026: Plans, Get Paid Add-On & Real Cost Breakdown

ActiveCollab is one of the few project management platforms where the sticker price is close to the real bill. There is no platform-side payment processing markup -- if a client pays an invoice, you pay Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢ or PayPal's 3.49% + 49¢ direct, not a HoneyBook-style 3.4% surcharge. That changes the total cost of ownership math more than the subscription tier you choose.

What is not obvious from the pricing page: the Plus plan caps at three chargeable users (functionally a flat $9/mo team plan, not per-user), the Get Paid bundle exists in two SKUs at two prices, and there is no prorated refund if you cancel mid-cycle. Every number below was verified against activecollab.com/pricing on May 2, 2026.

ActiveCollab Pricing at a Glance (2026)

Free trial: 14 days, no credit card required. Free plan: none. Refund policy: no prorated refunds -- you keep access through the paid period. Annual savings: roughly 15% off monthly rates across Plus and Pro tiers. Client-role users: unlimited and free on every plan -- only "chargeable" team members count toward seat pricing.

Source: activecollab.com/pricing.

The Distinction Most Reviews Miss: Chargeable Users vs Client Role

ActiveCollab splits seats into two categories, and the difference is the single biggest factor in your real bill. Chargeable users are people who can create projects, assign tasks, log time, and run reports -- typically your internal team plus contractors with access. Client-role users can comment, approve work, view projects you share with them, and pay invoices, but cannot do internal task work. Client-role users are always free and unlimited.

For an agency with 8 internal staff and 60 active client contacts, you pay for 8 seats, not 68. This is the structural reason ActiveCollab can publish a $3.50/user Enterprise rate at 100+ seats without losing money -- their definition of "user" excludes the people who would inflate competitor seat counts (Asana, ClickUp, and Monday all charge guest seats above certain thresholds).

The catch is the Plus plan's hard ceiling: 3 chargeable users, not 3 + a discount on the fourth. When you hire your fourth team member you are not paying $9 + one extra seat -- you are migrating to Pro at $8/user/mo for the entire team, which on annual billing means $384/year vs the $108/year you paid on Plus. That is a 256% subscription jump for one new hire.

The Get Paid Bundle Has Two Prices, Not One

The Get Paid features (invoicing, online payments, profitability tracking, budgeting against time, QuickBooks sync, expense tracking advanced views) are sold two ways:

On annual billing the bundled Pro+ Get Paid plan ($11.75/user) is roughly 6.8% more expensive than the equivalent Pro + add-on combo ($11/user). On monthly billing, the bundled plan ($14/user) is 7.7% more expensive than the add-on path ($13/user). If you already know you need invoicing, the math still favors picking Pro and adding Get Paid as an add-on rather than choosing the bundled SKU. ActiveCollab does not flag this on the pricing page.

What's in Get Paid (regardless of which SKU): unlimited invoices, recurring invoices, online payment links via your connected gateway, expense-to-invoice conversion, QuickBooks Online sync, real-time profitability per project, and budget burn-down by user.

Source: activecollab.com/pricing and ActiveCollab payment gateway docs.

What Each Plan Actually Includes (and Locks Out)

Plus -- $9/mo flat, up to 3 chargeable users

What's in: unlimited projects and tasks, three task views (List, Kanban, Gantt), time tracking with stopwatch, in-app chat and discussions, task dependencies, project templates, mobile apps (iOS and Android), client-role users (unlimited, free), 10 GB total storage.

What's locked: no expense tracking, no budgeting, no profitability, no advanced reports, no Zapier or Slack integration, no webhooks, no resource workload view, no invoicing. Basically: it does projects and time, nothing else.

Real fit: a 2-3 person studio that needs Trello-with-Gantt and a place for clients to comment. The $9/mo flat rate makes it the cheapest legitimate PM tool on the market for tiny teams. You will outgrow it the first time a client asks for an invoice or you need to know which project is losing money.

Pro -- $8/user/mo annual, $9/user/mo monthly

What's in: everything in Plus plus expense tracking, advanced reports (assignments, capacity, profitability, time by user), Zapier integration, Slack integration, webhooks, resource workload and capacity planning, time-off requests, custom roles, more granular permissions, 125 GB storage on annual (100 GB monthly).

What's locked: no invoicing, no online payments, no budgets-vs-time tracking, no QuickBooks sync. You are paying for the operations layer (capacity, profitability) without the billing layer.

Real fit: agencies and internal teams who already invoice somewhere else (FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Xero) and just need PM + time + capacity. The $8/user/mo annual rate is competitive -- ClickUp Business is $19/user, Asana Advanced is $30.49/user, Monday Pro is $19/user. Where Pro sits below all of them on raw subscription.

Pro+ Get Paid -- $11.75/user/mo annual, $14/user/mo monthly

What's in: everything in Pro plus full invoicing (recurring, partial, deposit, multi-currency), online payment integration (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.Net, PayPal Payflow Pro), QuickBooks Online sync, project budgets tied to time and expenses, real-time profitability per project, expense-to-invoice automation.

What's locked: no native CRM beyond a lightweight client address book -- if you need lead pipelines, deal stages, or marketing automation, you are still pairing this with a CRM. No native proposal/contract engine like HoneyBook or Dubsado. No e-signatures.

Real fit: services agencies (design, dev, marketing, consulting) who deliver work, track time, and bill from one tool. The total stack ActiveCollab covers at $11.75/user is roughly equivalent to ClickUp Business + a separate invoicing tool, which would run $25-$35/user combined.

Enterprise -- $3.50/user/mo (100+ seats, annual only)

What's in: everything in Pro+ Get Paid, plus dedicated success manager, security review documentation, custom contract terms, single sign-on, expanded storage. Minimum 100 chargeable seats -- this plan is gated, not a fallback for larger SMBs.

Source: activecollab.com/pricing.

Self-Hosted ActiveCollab: Still Available, Often Forgotten

ActiveCollab is one of the few mature SaaS PM tools that still sells a self-hosted (on-premise) license. You install the application on your own server, run your own database, and never send project data through ActiveCollab's cloud. The license includes one year of priority support and version upgrades; after that period, the app keeps working but you stop receiving updates unless you renew the support contract.

Pricing for the self-hosted license is not published on the public pricing page -- it is sales-quoted based on user count, and the configuration is one-time license + annual support and upgrade renewal. Use cases that justify it: regulated industries (legal, healthcare, government contractors) with data residency requirements, agencies whose enterprise clients require air-gapped systems, and teams in regions where SaaS billing in USD is operationally painful.

For most teams under 50 seats, the cloud subscription is materially cheaper than the self-hosted total cost (license + server + DBA time + upgrades). Self-hosted earns its price somewhere between 50-200 seats depending on infrastructure costs and compliance overhead.

Source: ActiveCollab self-hosted and self-hosted installation guide.

Get Paid Add-On Payment Processing: Pass-Through, Not Marked Up

This is the line item that materially separates ActiveCollab from HoneyBook, Dubsado, and most "all-in-one" creative business platforms. ActiveCollab does not run its own merchant processing. When a client pays an invoice, the money flows through whichever gateway you connected -- Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Authorize.Net, or PayPal Payflow Pro -- at that gateway's published rate. ActiveCollab takes zero percent and zero cents on top.

Why this matters in dollar terms: a $5,000 invoice paid via Stripe through ActiveCollab costs $145.30 in processing. The same invoice on HoneyBook costs $145.25 if card-entered, $170.09 if card-on-file (3.4% + 9¢). On a service business doing $200K/year through invoicing, the platform-markup difference between ActiveCollab and a HoneyBook-style platform with a card-on-file surcharge runs $1,500-$2,500/yr -- often more than the entire ActiveCollab subscription.

Source: ActiveCollab payment gateways, Stripe pricing, PayPal merchant fees.

Original Cost Analysis: ActiveCollab Total Annual Cost at 3, 10, and 25 Seats

Most pricing breakdowns stop at the per-user multiplication. The real question is what an agency actually pays for the full stack -- subscription, payment processing, and the Get Paid add-on if they invoice through it. Methodology: assume Pro+ Get Paid bundle (since most paying customers eventually want invoicing), Stripe as the payment gateway, $250K revenue per 3-person team scaled linearly, and 100% of revenue billed via card at the 2.9% + 30¢ Stripe rate.

The takeaway: subscription is 1-3% of total platform cost once payment processing is included. The lever for cost reduction is not switching plans -- it is moving payments to ACH (0.8% capped at $5 on Stripe) where the client agrees, which on a $5,000 invoice drops processing from $145.30 to $5.00. That single change saves more than the entire Pro+ Get Paid annual subscription on a 3-person team.

Hidden Costs and Caveats Most Reviews Skip

1. Plus plan's 3-user ceiling is hard, not soft. No fourth-seat add-on price exists. Hire user four and you migrate to Pro at $8/user across the entire team, $384/year vs $108. Plan the jump.
2. Get Paid as a bundled SKU costs more than as an add-on. Pro+ Get Paid is $11.75/user; Pro + add-on is $11/user. ActiveCollab does not steer you to the cheaper path.
3. No prorated refunds on cancellation. You pay for the period ahead, and if you cancel month 4 of an annual plan, you keep access through month 12 but receive nothing back. The pricing page is explicit but understated.
4. Monthly billing is roughly 15% more expensive than annual. Plus jumps from $9 to $11/mo, Pro from $8 to $9/user, Pro+ Get Paid from $11.75 to $14/user.
5. Storage is plan-gated. Plus is 10 GB, Pro/Pro+ are 125 GB on annual (100 GB on monthly). Agencies storing video files or design source assets will hit the cap fast and need to clean up old projects rather than pay for storage upgrades.
6. Onboarding/training is not free for Enterprise. Implementation services for 100+ seat deployments are quoted separately, typically in the $1,000-$5,000 range depending on data migration scope and custom integration work.
7. No native e-signature on contracts. ActiveCollab handles invoicing but not contracts -- you pair it with HelloSign, DocuSign, or Pandadoc. Add ~$15-$25/user/mo for signature workflow if your business needs it.
8. No native CRM. The client address book is a contact list, not a CRM with deal stages and pipeline reporting. If you need lead-to-cash, you are running ActiveCollab + HubSpot / Pipedrive / Agiled.
9. Enterprise minimum is 100 seats. The "talk to sales" option is gated -- 50-99 seat teams pay per-user Pro+ Get Paid rates ($11.75/user annual) without access to Enterprise pricing or the dedicated success manager.

Source: activecollab.com/pricing and ActiveCollab billing terms.

ActiveCollab vs Asana vs Basecamp vs ClickUp vs Agiled

The competitive set splits into two camps: per-user PM (Asana, ClickUp, ActiveCollab Pro) and flat-rate team tools (Basecamp, ActiveCollab Plus). Pricing comparison at 10 users on annual billing, top published tier most agencies actually use:

Where ActiveCollab wins: agency-style work where invoicing, time tracking, profitability, and project management all need to live together. Pro+ Get Paid at $1,410/yr for 10 users undercuts Asana Advanced by 60% and includes invoicing that Asana does not have.

Where it loses: pure software-team workflows. Asana, ClickUp, and Linear have stronger sprint planning, automation, and developer integrations. ActiveCollab is built for billable services teams, not engineering orgs.

Agiled sits in the same lane as ActiveCollab on functional scope -- CRM, contracts, invoicing, projects, scheduling, client portal -- but adds the native CRM and proposal/contract layer that ActiveCollab does not have. At 10 users the annual subscription delta is roughly $390 in Agiled's direction. Whether that matters depends on whether you actually use the contracts and CRM modules, since they are real cost adds when bolted on separately.

Use Case Fit: Who Each ActiveCollab Tier Is Right For

Tiny studios and freelancers (1-3 people)

Best tier: Plus. The flat $9/mo for up to 3 chargeable users is the cheapest legitimate Gantt + time tracking + chat + Kanban tool on the market. Pair it with Wave or FreshBooks for invoicing until you are doing enough volume to justify Pro+ Get Paid.

Agencies (4-25 people, mixed services)

Best tier: Pro+ Get Paid (or Pro + Get Paid add-on for the marginal savings). The full operations stack -- capacity planning, profitability per project, time-to-invoice flow -- earns its price at this size. The $11/user effective rate beats the per-user math at Asana, Monday, or ClickUp once you add a separate invoicing tool to those.

Internal ops teams at non-agency companies

Best tier: Pro. You probably have a separate finance/billing system (NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage); you do not need Get Paid. Pro at $8/user/mo annual gives you PM + time + reports without paying for invoicing you will not use.

Regulated industries and large enterprises

Best tier: Self-hosted or Enterprise (100+). If you have data residency, security review, or air-gap requirements, the cloud tiers will not pass procurement. Self-hosted is the unusual differentiator versus competitors -- Asana, Monday, and ClickUp do not offer it.

Where ActiveCollab hits a ceiling for everyone

• Software development teams: sprint planning, story points, and release management are thin compared to Linear, Jira, or ClickUp.
• High-touch sales pipelines: the client address book is not a CRM. Agencies running outbound or high-volume inbound need a separate CRM.
• Marketing campaign management: no native marketing automation, email sequencing, or campaign analytics.
• Companies needing e-signatures on contracts: ActiveCollab does invoicing but not contract signature. Pair with HelloSign or Pandadoc.
• Retail or product businesses: no inventory, no e-commerce. ActiveCollab is service-business shaped.

Original Research: Verifying Public Pricing Against User Reports (May 2026)

To check whether published pricing matches what users actually pay, we cross-referenced activecollab.com/pricing (May 2, 2026) against G2 user reviews, Capterra reviews, and ITQlick's pricing breakdown. Findings:

• All three sources confirmed the $9 Plus, $8 Pro, $11.75 Pro+ Get Paid annual rates within rounding.
• The $3.50/user Enterprise rate at 100+ seats is consistently reported but only quotable through sales -- not a self-service signup option.
• ITQlick reported onboarding/training services in the $100-$500 range for SMB and $1,000-$5,000 for Enterprise; ActiveCollab does not publish these on the pricing page but confirms them on quoted Enterprise SOWs.
• The most common pricing complaint in G2/Capterra reviews is the 3-user Plus ceiling and the cost jump to Pro -- multiple reviewers wished for a 5-user middle tier.
• Zero G2/Capterra reviews mentioned hidden payment processing fees, which aligns with the pass-through model: there is no surprise markup because there is no markup at all.

Methodology note: pricing was verified against the activecollab.com pricing page (May 2, 2026). User review sentiment was sampled from the most recent 50 reviews on G2 and Capterra for ActiveCollab dated January-April 2026.

Not For You: When to Skip ActiveCollab

Skip ActiveCollab entirely if:

• You are a solo freelancer with under 5 clients/month. Plus at $108/year still costs more than the free tiers of ClickUp or Trello, and you do not need ActiveCollab's depth.
• You need a serious CRM with deal stages and pipeline reporting. ActiveCollab's client address book is contacts, not a CRM. HubSpot, Pipedrive, or Agiled (which bundles CRM with PM and invoicing) are better fits.
• You run an engineering team. Linear, Jira, and ClickUp have sprint, story point, and release tooling ActiveCollab does not. Pro+ Get Paid is wasted on dev teams that do not invoice.
• You sell physical products. ActiveCollab has no inventory or e-commerce module. Use Shopify, Square, or NetSuite.
• You need contract e-signatures in the same tool as invoicing. ActiveCollab handles invoices but not contract signature. HoneyBook, Dubsado, and Agiled bundle both.
• You are 4-9 chargeable users budget-constrained. The Plus-to-Pro jump is the steepest in the lineup -- $108/yr to $384/yr for moving from 3 to 4 seats. If 4-5 users is a permanent state, Basecamp's $99/mo flat ($1,188/yr) for unlimited users may pencil better despite the higher absolute spend, because it caps at flat instead of climbing per-user.
• Your team will not actually use time tracking. Half of ActiveCollab's value -- profitability, capacity, billable hours -- depends on people logging time. If your team will not log time, you are paying for features the software cannot calculate.

FAQ: ActiveCollab Pricing Questions

How much does ActiveCollab cost per month in 2026?

ActiveCollab costs $9/month flat for up to 3 chargeable users on Plus, $8/user/month on Pro, and $11.75/user/month on Pro+ Get Paid -- all on annual billing. Monthly billing rates are $11, $9/user, and $14/user respectively. Enterprise pricing starts at $3.50/user/month with a 100-seat minimum and is annual-only. Source: activecollab.com/pricing.

Does ActiveCollab have a free plan?

No permanent free plan. ActiveCollab offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. After the trial you must choose a paid plan -- there is no perpetually free tier the way Asana Personal or ClickUp Free Forever exist. Client-role users (people you invite to view, comment on, and pay invoices for projects) are unlimited and free on every paid plan, which materially reduces the seat math for client-heavy agencies.

What is the difference between the Pro+ Get Paid plan and the Get Paid add-on?

Pro+ Get Paid is a bundled plan at $11.75/user/month annual ($14/user/month monthly). The Get Paid add-on layered on Pro costs $3/user/month additional on annual ($4/user/month on monthly), so Pro + Get Paid add-on totals $11/user/month annual or $13/user/month monthly. The add-on path is cheaper by $0.75-$1/user/month. Both unlock the same invoicing, online payments, budgeting, and QuickBooks features. Source: activecollab.com/pricing.

Does ActiveCollab charge payment processing fees?

No. ActiveCollab does not run its own payment processor and does not add a platform markup on payments. When clients pay invoices, the money flows through your connected gateway -- Stripe (2.9% + 30¢ for cards, 0.8% capped at $5 for ACH), PayPal (3.49% + 49¢), Braintree, or Authorize.Net -- at that gateway's published rate. This is structurally different from HoneyBook (which charges 2.9% + 25¢ on cards plus 3.4% + 9¢ on card-on-file) and Dubsado is similar to ActiveCollab in that it also passes processor fees through unchanged. Source: ActiveCollab payment gateways.

Is ActiveCollab self-hosted still available in 2026?

Yes. The self-hosted (on-premise) edition is still sold, with a one-time license plus one year of priority support and upgrades. After the support year ends, the application keeps working but stops receiving updates unless you renew. Pricing is sales-quoted, not published. Use cases: regulated industries with data residency requirements, large enterprises with security review processes, and teams in regions where USD subscriptions are operationally inconvenient. Source: ActiveCollab self-hosted.

How does ActiveCollab compare to Asana on price?

At 10 users on annual billing, ActiveCollab Pro+ Get Paid costs $1,410/yr ($11.75/user) and includes invoicing. Asana Advanced costs $3,659/yr ($30.49/user) and does not include invoicing -- you pair it with FreshBooks or QuickBooks. Asana wins on automation depth and software-team workflows; ActiveCollab wins on services-business workflows where time-to-invoice is the core flow. The price gap is roughly 2.6x in ActiveCollab's favor at the same headcount.

What is ActiveCollab's refund policy?

There are no prorated refunds. You pay for the period ahead (monthly or annual), and if you cancel before the period ends, your account remains active through the paid period and then closes. There is no money-back guarantee window equivalent to HoneyBook's 60 days. Use the 14-day free trial to validate fit before committing to annual billing. Source: activecollab.com/pricing.

How many users are on the Plus plan?

Three chargeable users maximum, plus unlimited free client-role users. There is no per-seat overage on Plus -- you cannot pay $9 + one extra seat. The fourth chargeable user requires migrating to Pro at $8/user/month for the entire team, which on annual billing means $384/year vs the $108/year Plus charges. Plan the jump if you anticipate hiring.

Are there any hidden fees in ActiveCollab?

The non-obvious costs are: the Plus-to-Pro migration jump when you hire your fourth chargeable user, the price difference between Pro+ Get Paid bundled and Pro + Get Paid add-on (the bundle is roughly 6.8% more expensive), the 15% premium on monthly vs annual billing, the no-refund policy, the 100-seat minimum on Enterprise pricing, and onboarding/migration services for Enterprise deployments ($1,000-$5,000 quoted separately). There are no payment processing markups -- that is genuinely absent from the bill.

How does ActiveCollab compare to Agiled?

Agiled bundles CRM, contracts and proposals with e-signature, invoicing, projects, scheduling, and client portal at a flat per-user rate ($15/user/month annual). ActiveCollab Pro+ Get Paid covers projects, time, capacity, profitability, and invoicing at $11.75/user/month annual but does not include native CRM, contracts, or e-signature. At 10 users, ActiveCollab is roughly $390/yr cheaper on subscription. Agiled wins when you would otherwise pair ActiveCollab with HelloSign ($15/user) and a CRM ($25-$50/user) -- the bundled stack ends up cheaper. ActiveCollab wins when you only need PM + invoicing and have CRM/contracts handled elsewhere.

Bottom Line: Should You Pay for ActiveCollab in 2026?

Pay for ActiveCollab if you run a services business that needs project management, time tracking, capacity planning, and invoicing in one tool, and you are at 4+ chargeable users where Pro or Pro+ Get Paid earn their price. The pass-through payment processing model is a real and uncommon advantage -- you are not paying a platform markup on every client invoice the way HoneyBook customers do.

Pick Plus if you are 1-3 people who only need PM and time tracking. Pick Pro if you have invoicing handled elsewhere. Pick Pro+ Get Paid (or Pro + Get Paid add-on, which is $0.75/user/month cheaper) if you want the full bill-from-projects flow.

Skip ActiveCollab if you need real CRM, contract e-signature, or marketing automation in the same tool -- those are missing modules. In that case Agiled covers the full CRM + contracts + invoicing + projects stack at $15/user/month, which lands $1.5-$3.50/user/month above ActiveCollab Pro+ Get Paid but eliminates two or three other subscriptions (HelloSign, HubSpot or Pipedrive, sometimes a separate proposal tool).

The single most actionable lever regardless of platform: shift as many clients as possible to ACH for invoicing. On Stripe through ActiveCollab, ACH is 0.8% capped at $5 -- on a $5,000 invoice, that drops processing from $145.30 to $5.00. On a $250K agency, that one change saves more than the entire annual ActiveCollab subscription.

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