The recommendation
For the one agency we hold fixed below - 10 staff plus 6 client contacts who log in, 16 people in total - the decision is set almost entirely by how each vendor bills client access, and by which of the five steps in a client project you actually need the software to carry.
Choose Basecamp if what you need is a shared place for projects and client communication, and you are willing to price the whole room, clients included. Basecamp bills per account rather than per seat, and its pricing FAQ is explicit that every person you add is counted, including clients, contractors and guests (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). With 16 people that puts this agency past the 15-user cap on Pro Plus and onto Pro Unlimited at $199/mo billed annually, or $329/month billed monthly. Above that point the price stops scaling with headcount. One thing the recommendation rests on, which our Basecamp review had left open: Basecamp’s help documentation does set out what a client can see and do, and the model is per item and closed by default, so an agency can share selectively inside one project (5.basecamp-help.com/article/1082-what-clients-can-see-and-do, retrieved 2026-11-08). The cost of that control is that someone chooses visibility on every post.
Choose Teamwork.com if the requirement is billable time capture, workload planning and invoicing from logged time. Billable time tracking and reporting starts at Basics, $9.99 per user per month billed yearly or $13.99 billed monthly (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Planning team workloads with live capacity, time budgets, retainers and client invoices built from logged time all start at Accelerate, $24.99 per user per month billed yearly or $29.99 billed monthly (same page, same date). Client users are a free license type available on Basics and above (support.teamwork.com/projects/using-teamwork/working-with-client-users, retrieved 2026-11-08), so the 6 client logins change nothing about the bill.
What tips an agency in between. If you need project profitability, we cannot give you a Teamwork.com number. Revenue, cost and profitability insights sit on Optimize, and Optimize publishes no price and no seat minimum: the card says Let’s talk and offers a demo booking (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Quoting the Accelerate price for a profitability recommendation would be wrong, and we will not estimate. So an agency whose actual problem is margin has to enter a sales conversation before it can compare anything on cost. An agency whose problem is capacity and billable hours can cost that decision today.
No overall winner, no score and no ranking is given here, and neither product was used.
The agency we hold fixed
One scenario throughout: an agency of 10 staff, plus 6 client contacts who need to log in. 16 people in total. Holding that fixed is what makes plan tiers, seat caps and client allowances comparable, because the two vendors count people in opposite ways and a different headcount would move the answer on one side without moving it on the other.
What our two reviews are, and why some prices here differ from them
This faceoff draws only on two of our own approved reviews: the Basecamp review, whose vendor pages were retrieved 2026-11-07, and the Teamwork.com review, whose vendor pages were retrieved 2026-11-06. There is no other evidence behind anything below.
Basecamp has since renamed and repriced its plans. The plan names and prices in this article come from basecamp.com/pricing retrieved 2026-11-08, and where they differ from the Basecamp review’s 2026-11-07 capture, the 2026-11-08 reading supersedes it. Both dates are stated at every figure so you can see which is which.
Step 1: assigning work to the team
Basecamp’s answer is a small fixed toolset, the same set on every tier: Message Boards, To-dos, Card Tables (the vendor’s own description is its take on Kanban for process tracking), Chats and Pings, Scheduling, Docs and Files, Reports and Automatic Check-ins (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-07). The ability to put more than one tool of a kind in a single project is a paid-up feature: Freelancer excludes multiple tools per project and templates, and Pro adds both (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-07 and 2026-11-08). For a 10-staff agency that is academic, because 10 staff are already above the 5-user Freelancer cap.
Teamwork.com’s answer is multiple views over the same work: Gantt, Table, List and Board views plus unlimited templates from Basics (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-06 and 2026-11-08). Free also carries task, list, board, Gantt and table views, but Free is capped at 5 users (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-06), so it cannot hold 10 staff.
Where the control is: Basecamp gives you fewer decisions to make, which is useful if the failure mode you are trying to avoid is a team inventing a new process per client. Teamwork.com gives you more ways to look at a schedule, which is useful if work is sequenced across people and dates. Where it adds work: Basecamp’s one-of-each-tool default means a project that genuinely has two workstreams needs a tier that allows multiple tools per project; Teamwork.com’s view choice is a configuration decision someone has to own.
Neither review establishes how either assignment flow behaves in use. No product was used, and neither set of vendor pages contains a workflow walkthrough.
Step 2: getting client feedback, and what the 6 client contacts can actually do
This is where the two reviews are not symmetrical, and saying so is more useful than filling the gap.
On the Teamwork.com side it is documented. Client users can create project items such as tasks, milestones and messages, edit them, complete tasks and milestones, view and upload files, add and reply to messages, comment on items, and use My work and My timesheet. They cannot create or manage forms, view project profitability, manage a project’s members, be a project administrator, or reach My calendar, Templates, Reports, People, or Resourcing (Schedule, Workload, Portfolio). They can only be added to client companies, never the owner company, and can be added to up to 5 of their client company’s projects (support.teamwork.com/projects/using-teamwork/working-with-client-users, retrieved 2026-11-08).
On the Basecamp side our review left this open, because none of the five vendor pages it read explained how client access is scoped. Basecamp’s help documentation does answer it, and the answer changes this step rather than leaving it a gap (5.basecamp-help.com/article/1082-what-clients-can-see-and-do, retrieved 2026-11-08).
The model is per item, and it defaults closed: “Everything starts private. You control what gets shared, item by item.” When your team posts a message, a schedule event, a to-do list, a card table, a check-in question, or a doc or upload at the root of Docs and Files, you choose at that moment whether it is private to the team or visible to the client.
Within what has been shared, Basecamp clients are participants rather than viewers. They can post messages, comments, to-dos and files, answer automatic check-in questions they have been added to, and use Pings with anyone they share a project with as well as with admins and the account owner.
What they cannot do is a longer list: see the visibility flags that tell your team what is private, share items publicly, see Hill Charts, use loose to-dos, create projects, add or remove people from projects, administer a project at all (no renaming, no changing tools, no chatbots or webhooks, no archiving or trashing), or be made an account admin.
Two details matter for an agency. Making one item visible also exposes everything under it: all existing comments on that item, chat lines in a Chat tool you share, answers to a shared check-in, nested items in a shared folder, and to-do groups inside a shared list. And while an item is set to “Our team only”, you cannot @mention a client on it or add them as a subscriber, so you have to change its visibility first.
So both products do separate internal from client-facing work inside one project, by different means. Basecamp decides it per item at posting time, which is granular and relies on your team choosing correctly every time. Teamwork.com decides it by license type and project membership, which is set once per person but caps a client at five active projects.
Step 3: logging time
Both reviews answer this one, so it can be compared directly, at the level of which plan carries the feature.
Basecamp: time tracking is not included on Freelancer and not included on Pro. It first appears on Pro Plus at $99/mo (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). The Basecamp review’s 2026-11-07 capture also recorded time tracking as one of three capabilities withheld from the cheapest paid tier.
Teamwork.com: time logging is on Free, and tracking and reporting billable time starts at Basics (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Client users get My timesheet (support.teamwork.com, retrieved 2026-11-08).
The practical consequence for our fixed agency is a plan floor on each side. If you want time logged, the cheapest Basecamp plan that carries it is Pro Plus, not Pro, so Pro’s $79/mo is not a price for this workflow. On Teamwork.com the floor for billable time is Basics.
Neither review documents the mechanics on either product: timer entry, approvals, timesheet locking, rounding or rate cards are not described in the pages either review read. Treat the comparison as a plan-gate comparison only.
Step 4: checking team capacity
Teamwork.com places planning team workloads and viewing live capacity at Accelerate, and scheduling resources by role or skill at Optimize (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Our Teamwork.com review also notes that Resourcing (Schedule, Workload, Portfolio) is outside what client users can reach (support.teamwork.com, retrieved 2026-11-08), so capacity planning is a staff-side view.
Nothing on the Basecamp pricing page read on 2026-11-07 or 2026-11-08 offers workload planning. That is a statement about what the vendor publishes, not a measurement: this is a capability one review documents and the other’s pages do not offer. It is not a case of one product being slower or worse at the same job, and it would be wrong to present it as a tested difference.
Step 5: seeing whether the project is profitable
Teamwork.com splits this across two tiers. Time budgets, retainers and client invoices built from logged time are Accelerate. Revenue, cost and profitability insights, plus quotes, financial and multi-currency budget tracking and resource scheduling by role or skill, are Optimize (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Client users explicitly cannot view project profitability (support.teamwork.com, retrieved 2026-11-08), which is the sensible default for an agency but worth knowing if you intended to share margin views with a client sponsor.
Nothing on the Basecamp pricing page read offers project profitability.
The pricing consequence is the one stated in the recommendation: the Teamwork.com tier that carries profitability has no published price, so this step cannot be costed on either side of the comparison from the sources we have.
Who counts toward the bill, which is the whole comparison
Basecamp bills per account, not per seat. The pricing page attaches no per-user fees to any paid tier, and its FAQ asks whether clients, contractors or guests are included in the user count and answers: Yes, every person you add is counted, but Pro Unlimited includes unlimited users (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08; the same FAQ wording was recorded on 2026-11-07). There is no free client seat, no guest tier and no viewer role outside the count. So our 6 client contacts are 6 of the counted users.
Every Basecamp plan is a flat rate with a user cap, and the caps form a ladder: Basecamp Personal is free with one project and up to 3 people, Freelancer $29/mo covers 5, Pro $79/mo covers 10, Pro Plus $99/mo covers 15, and Pro Unlimited is uncapped. Pro Unlimited is simply the next rung above 15, not a separate enterprise product, and at 16 people it is the only rung whose cap fits. Nothing on the pricing page offers a way to add users to a lower package, so there is no per-seat route from Pro Plus to 16 people.
That ladder is worth reading as a lever rather than a verdict. The step is caused by headcount, not by what the agency does: 16 people cost $199/mo billed annually, and 15 people cost $99/mo. If one of the 6 client contacts does not need their own login, this agency is back on Pro Plus, and that single seat is worth $100 a month.
Teamwork.com bills per user per month, and only standard users are billed. Its licence documentation is explicit: “Each standard user added will be counted as a paid seat in your recurring subscription cost. Client users and collaborators added to your site do not incur a cost”, and its FAQ answers “Do client users and collaborators cost anything?” with “No. Only standard users count as paid seats” (support.teamwork.com/projects/using-teamwork/license-types, retrieved 2026-11-08). Client users are available on Basics, Accelerate, Optimize and Enterprise, but not on Free (support.teamwork.com/projects/using-teamwork/working-with-client-users, retrieved 2026-11-08). So the same 6 client contacts add nothing to the bill, and the agency still pays for 10 seats.
There is a second free external licence worth knowing about, because it is not interchangeable with the first. A collaborator is also free, but more limited: collaborators cannot add tasks, task lists, milestones, notebooks, links or tags, cannot set statuses, and cannot log time (same page, same date). For an agency that wants a client to log time or raise work, the client user licence is the one that does it.
One thing we have verified and one we have not, and they are different claims. Verified: client users are free and do not occupy a paid seat. Not verified: whether any Teamwork.com plan carries a minimum seat count at all. Neither the pricing page nor the purchase documentation states a minimum; the purchase flow simply says to “Enter the number of paid seats (standard users) you need” (support.teamwork.com/projects/subscription/purchase-a-teamwork-subscription, retrieved 2026-11-08). So we cannot tell you that client users are exempt from a plan minimum, because we cannot confirm a plan minimum exists. If you intend to buy fewer seats than you have staff, ask Teamwork.com whether a floor applies before you rely on these totals.
That is the comparison in one line. The flat-rate product is the one where 6 client logins change the plan, and the per-seat product is the one where they do not.
Pricing for this agency, two columns
All Basecamp figures from basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08. All Teamwork.com figures from teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08. Arithmetic is ours.
| Plan and billing | 10 staff alone | 10 staff plus 6 client contacts (16 people) |
|---|---|---|
| Basecamp Pro, $79/mo, no time tracking | $79/mo, covers up to 10 users | Over the 10-user cap, not available |
| Basecamp Pro Plus, $99/mo, cheapest Basecamp plan with time tracking | $99/mo, covers up to 10 of 15 users | Over the 15-user cap, not available |
| Basecamp Pro Unlimited, billed annually | Not required at this headcount | $199/mo, $199 x 12 = $2,388 a year |
| Basecamp Pro Unlimited, billed monthly | Not required at this headcount | $329/month, $329 x 12 = $3,948 a year |
| Teamwork Basics, billed yearly | 10 x $9.99 = $99.90/mo, $1,198.80 a year | Unchanged: 10 paid seats, $99.90/mo, $1,198.80 a year |
| Teamwork Basics, billed monthly | 10 x $13.99 = $139.90/mo, $1,678.80 a year | Unchanged: $139.90/mo, $1,678.80 a year |
| Teamwork Accelerate, billed yearly | 10 x $24.99 = $249.90/mo, $2,998.80 a year | Unchanged: $249.90/mo, $2,998.80 a year |
| Teamwork Accelerate, billed monthly | 10 x $29.99 = $299.90/mo, $3,598.80 a year | Unchanged: $299.90/mo, $3,598.80 a year |
| Teamwork Optimize, the plan carrying profitability | Price not published | Price not published |
Basecamp’s $199/mo figure is the annually billed rate, and its own FAQ confirms the monthly-billed figure is $329/month (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Teamwork.com’s pricing page describes the annual rate as a 25% saving against monthly, and states that annual subscriptions are prepaid and run the full term (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Our Teamwork.com review recorded the same toggle labelled Save 29% on 2026-11-06, so the discount label itself has moved between the two retrievals.
What the pricing pages do not state
Currency. Teamwork.com’s currency is USD, taken from the pricing page’s own structured pricing data; the page itself shows only a dollar sign (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Our Teamwork.com review recorded something different two days earlier: the pricing page rendered a placeholder where the currency symbol should be, while the homepage pricing block showed the euro symbol for Basics and Accelerate (teamwork.com, retrieved 2026-11-06), and that review left currency as an open question. Basecamp’s pricing page states no currency anywhere and carries no structured pricing data, so its figures are dollar amounts whose currency the page does not state (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08 and 2026-11-07). Neither page says anything about tax or VAT treatment.
Basecamp’s billing basis below the top tier. Freelancer, Pro and Pro Plus are each shown only as $X/mo, with no annual or monthly basis stated and no billing toggle on the page (basecamp.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). We therefore do not assert which basis those three are on, and we do not derive an annual discount for them. That is why the table above gives no annual total for Pro or Pro Plus. Pro Unlimited is the only Basecamp plan on that page with both an annual and a monthly figure.
Teamwork.com’s top two tiers. Optimize and Enterprise publish neither a price nor a seat minimum.
The two cheapest Basecamp options, compared
The brief this piece answers has two halves, so Basecamp has two cheapest answers, and at this headcount they turn out to be the same plan.
The cheapest Basecamp option that gives 16 people client collaboration is Pro Unlimited, $199/mo billed annually or $329/month billed monthly, because it is the only plan whose cap reaches 16. The cheapest Basecamp option that includes time tracking is also Pro Unlimited, for the same reason: Pro Plus at $99/mo is the first plan with time tracking, but it stops at 15 people.
So at 16 people the two requirements cost the same, and time tracking arrives at no extra step. Below 16 they separate: for a team of 10 with no client logins, collaboration alone is Pro at $79/mo and adding time tracking means Pro Plus at $99/mo, a $20 monthly difference. The agency in this scenario never sees that difference, because headcount has already carried it past both.
The lowest plan that carries each workflow
No recommendation here is priced below the plan that carries its feature.
Basecamp: Pro ($79/mo) for assigning work with multiple tools per project and templates, but it does not include time tracking. Pro Plus ($99/mo) is the cheapest Basecamp plan with time tracking. Pro Unlimited ($199/mo billed annually, $329/month billed monthly) is the plan this agency lands on once 16 people log in, because clients count. Workload planning and project profitability are not offered on the pricing page read, so no Basecamp plan is named for steps 4 and 5.
Teamwork.com: Basics for tracking and reporting billable time, and for client users at all, since client users are not available on Free. Accelerate for planning team workloads and live capacity, time budgets, retainers and client invoices built from logged time. Optimize for revenue, cost and profitability insights, and for resource scheduling by role or skill. All from teamwork.com/pricing and support.teamwork.com, retrieved 2026-11-08.
The unknown a reader will hit
An agency that genuinely needs project profitability cannot be given a Teamwork.com figure. Optimize shows only Let’s talk and a demo booking, with no published price and no published seat minimum (teamwork.com/pricing, retrieved 2026-11-08). Pricing that recommendation at Accelerate’s $24.99 per user per month would be quoting a plan that does not carry the feature, so we do not do it, and we do not estimate what Optimize costs.
What that does to the recommendation is concrete. The capacity-and-billable-time recommendation is fully priced: Accelerate, 10 seats, $249.90/mo billed yearly or $299.90/mo billed monthly. The profitability recommendation is not priced at all, on either side, because Basecamp’s pricing page does not offer profitability and Teamwork.com’s plan that does has no number. If margin visibility is your reason for buying, the comparison you can make from published pages ends before the decision does.
Which situation each product suits
Basecamp suits the agency whose requirement is a shared place for projects and client communication, where the work is discussion, files, to-dos and dates rather than utilisation and margin, and where total headcount including clients can be priced deliberately in advance. The flat per-account model is good value right up to a cap and then steps: at 16 people this agency pays the Pro Unlimited rate, and after that the price stops moving however many more client contacts are added. The condition attached to this is the unsettled one from step 2: our Basecamp review could not establish from the pages it read what a client can see, or whether internal and client-facing discussion can be separated inside one project.
Teamwork.com suits the agency whose requirement is billable time, capacity and client invoicing, where the question being asked of the software is who is over-committed and what has been billed. Basics carries billable time, Accelerate carries workload planning and invoicing from logged time, and the 6 client contacts are free licenses with a documented permission set, capped at 5 projects each within their client company. The profitability case for this product is left open on price, not on capability.
Sources and limits
Vendor pages behind the claims above, with retrieval dates: basecamp.com/pricing (2026-11-08, superseding 2026-11-07), basecamp.com (2026-11-07), teamwork.com/pricing (2026-11-08 and 2026-11-06), teamwork.com (2026-11-06), and support.teamwork.com/projects/using-teamwork/working-with-client-users (2026-11-08).
Neither product was used. There was no trial, no account, no screenshots and no measurements, on either side. Everything above is an account of what the two vendors publish, read against one fixed agency, and the items the published pages do not settle are listed as open questions rather than answered.