Smartsheet vs monday.com in 2026: Which Is Better for Your Team?
Pick Smartsheet if your work lives in sheets: project plans with dates, formulas, Gantt and reports across many sheets. Pick monday.com if many teams need a friendly board with lots of views and AI built in. On price, Smartsheet Pro ($9) is the cheapest start, but the real bill depends on who counts as a paid seat.
Disclosure: my company, SSPM, is a Smartsheet partner. I also build on monday.com for clients, and I flag where monday.com is the better pick. Prices below were checked on smartsheet.com/pricing and monday.com/pricing on October 20, 2026, billed yearly.
Quick verdict
| You need | Better pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Gantt plans with dependencies and formulas | Smartsheet | Sheet model, rich formulas on every plan |
| Cross-team boards that non-PMs enjoy | monday.com | Easier boards, more views |
| Lots of automations on a budget | Smartsheet Business | Unlimited automations at $19 |
| Many read-only watchers | Tie | Both give free view-only users |
| Outside partners who edit | Smartsheet Business | Free Guests can edit shared items |
| AI agents and AI columns | monday.com | AI credits on every paid plan |
What you will actually pay
Smartsheet (yearly, per member a month)
- Pro $9: 1 to 10 Members, unlimited free Contributors, Gantt, table, board and calendar views, 250 automations a month.
- Business $19: 3+ Members, unlimited free Guests and Contributors, timeline view, workload tracking, unlimited automations, 1 TB storage.
- Enterprise: custom price, 10+ Members, SAML SSO, Portfolios.
- Advanced Work Management: custom price, adds Control Center, Dynamic View and Data Shuttle.
monday.com (yearly, per seat a month)
- Free: 2 seats, 3 boards.
- Basic $9: unlimited free viewers, no automations.
- Standard $12: timeline and Gantt, guests, 250 automation and 250 integration actions a month.
- Pro $19: private boards, time tracking, 25,000 actions each a month.
- Enterprise: quote.
For 10 people who all edit work: Smartsheet Pro is $90 a month, monday.com Standard $120, and both Smartsheet Business and monday.com Pro are $190.
The seat rule that changes your bill
This is the part buyers miss. Smartsheet’s seat types article splits people into:
- Members: paid. They create and edit sheets, reports and dashboards.
- Contributors: free on Pro, Business and Enterprise. They can view, and with Commenter access they can comment and add attachments. They cannot edit content.
- Guests: free on Business and Enterprise, for people outside your email domain. Shared as Editor, a Guest can edit rows that are not locked.
- Provisional Members: if a free internal user takes a paid action, Smartsheet gives them full access free until the end of the billing cycle. Then, by default, they drop back to a free seat. An admin can instead set them to auto-upgrade, which adds cost.
My advice: on Business, check Admin Center’s Provisional Member setting before go-live. If it is set to auto-upgrade, every staff member who edits a cell once can become a paid seat at renewal.
monday.com is simpler: viewers are free from Basic, and guests (from Standard) are for outside people. Anyone on your team who edits is a paid seat.
Planning and Gantt
Smartsheet is a sheet first. Every row can have start and end dates, a predecessor and a parent row. The Gantt view comes from that data, so a plan of 300 rows with dependencies works well. Formulas like =SUMIFS() and cross-sheet references are on every plan.
monday.com has timeline and Gantt views from Standard. Its strength is many boards rolled into one dashboard. For a single big schedule, I find Smartsheet faster to build and easier to audit. See our Smartsheet Gantt guide.
Automation
Smartsheet Pro allows 250 automations a month; Business and up are unlimited. Each sheet can hold up to 150 workflows, per Smartsheet’s workflow docs.
monday.com counts actions. One “notify board subscribers” rule uses one action per person notified. monday.com’s own help page says 250 actions can be gone “within days.” For busy teams, monday.com Pro (25,000) is the real starting point.
Reporting
Smartsheet reports pull rows from many sheets into one live list, and dashboards chart them. Business adds workload tracking. Enterprise adds Portfolios.
monday.com dashboards combine boards with charts, numbers and workload widgets. They are easier to make pretty. Smartsheet reports are easier to filter by exact criteria.
What changed this month
Smartsheet’s release notes say card view was retired for Business plan customers on October 12, 2026, replaced by board view. If your team uses card view on Business, expect board view instead. monday.com’s pricing now leads with AI credits: 1,000 a month on Basic, 2,000 on Standard and 3,000 on Pro.
How I would test both in two weeks
Smartsheet gives a 30-day free trial, and monday.com lets you try its paid plans for free. Use the time on real work, not a demo.
- Rebuild one live project in both, with the same 50 rows and dates.
- Add the same three automations, such as a status alert and a due-date reminder.
- Build one dashboard that your manager would actually open.
- Invite two editors and three viewers. Then check how many paid seats each tool says you need.
- After one week, check how many automation actions monday.com used. Multiply by four for a monthly view.
The tool that your team keeps using by day 10 is usually the right pick.
Who should pick which
Pick Smartsheet if:
- Your PMO runs dated plans with dependencies.
- You want unlimited automations without a high per-seat price.
- Outside partners need to edit (Business Guests are free).
Pick monday.com if:
- Many non-technical teams need their own boards.
- You want AI columns and agents in daily work.
- Most users will watch, and a small core will edit.
Pick neither if you run software sprints (look at Jira or Linear) or need a simple to-do list (look at Trello).
Related: Smartsheet pricing, monday.com pricing, Smartsheet for beginners.
Common questions
Is Smartsheet cheaper than monday.com?
At the entry level, yes: Smartsheet Pro is $9 per member a month yearly, monday.com Standard is $12. At the mid tier, both Smartsheet Business and monday.com Pro are $19.
Does Smartsheet have free users?
Yes. Contributors are free on all paid plans but can only view, comment and add attachments. Guests (outside your domain) are free on Business and Enterprise and can edit shared items.
Which is better for Gantt charts?
Smartsheet, for dependency-heavy plans, because the Gantt is built on rows with predecessors. monday.com’s Gantt is fine for lighter timelines.
Which has better automation limits?
Smartsheet Business has unlimited automations. monday.com Pro has 25,000 actions a month, and Standard only 250.
Can I move from monday.com to Smartsheet?
Yes. Export boards to Excel and import them into Smartsheet, then rebuild automations by hand. Plan a week for a mid-size workspace.
Sources
- Smartsheet pricing (checked Oct 20, 2026)
- monday.com pricing (checked Oct 20, 2026)
- Smartsheet: Seat types
- Smartsheet: Automate processes with workflows
- Smartsheet release notes
- monday.com: Automation and Integration actions and limits
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