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Projectous vs Bonsai

You bought it when you were freelancing. There are four of you now.

Why choose Projectous over Bonsai

One team price rather than a per-person bill that grows with every hire.
It can tell you what a job cost once other people are doing it, not only what you charged.
Fixed payouts for the freelancers helping you, with approval before they count.
An internal side to every client conversation, which a solo tool has no reason to have.

What Bonsai is genuinely good at

Proposals, contracts and e-signatures in the same place as the invoicing, which nobody else here does as neatly.
It starts at $9 a month, below anything we offer.
For one person running a freelance business it is genuinely excellent, and better than us.

Side by side

Capability	Projectous	Bonsai
Works for client work on day one	Yes	Yes
Tells you what needs attention	Prioritisation and the Today tab on every plan; stale detection from the Team plan up	No
Drafts your standup from what actually happened	Yes	No
File storage that will not stop you	No	Not published in a form we could confirm
Timeline or Gantt view	No	No
Work your team can claim, rather than be given	Yes	No
Notices client emails you have not answered	Yes	No
Helps the person doing the work, not the person watching	Yes	No
Time tracking	Yes	Yes
Invoice from the tracked time	Yes	From Essentials, $19/user/mo
Whether a project made money	Basic profitability reports on every plan; per-project margin tracking from the Team plan up	No
Hourly, fixed-price, at-cost and retainer	Yes	Proposals and contracts for clients, not internal contract types
Fixed payouts to the freelancer doing it	Yes	A subcontractor side, built around one person billing
The client can be in the work with you	From the Team plan up — the Solo plan has no client access. No separate portal either: clients are invited into the app and invoices are shared links	Client portal from Essentials, around documents
Internal and client conversation on the same task	Yes	No
Team chat with channels and direct messages	Yes	No
Encrypted vault for client credentials	Yes	No
Priced per team, with free clients	Yes	No

Amber means it exists behind a plan, an add-on or a caveat, and the row says which. Checked 2026-08-24 against Bonsai’s own pricing and documentation.

What you came to compare

Pick the argument you actually care about. They are different questions and they have different answers.

Both tools bill and track time. They behave differently once there is more than one of you.

What growing costs

Projectous

Per team. Hiring does not change the bill until you cross a band.

Bonsai

Per user, and the tier matters: Basic at $9 a month billed annually has no invoicing, proposals or client portal — those start at Essentials, $19 per user per month. The Elite tier needs at least three users.

Checked 2026-08-24, here.

Whether a job made money

Projectous

Margin per project against what you quoted, while the work runs, including a fixed payout per task for whoever is doing it.

Bonsai

It knows what you invoiced. What the work cost you once other people were doing it is a different question, and a per-person cost side is not what the product is built around.

Paying the people helping

Projectous

Fixed payouts per task, approved before they count, alongside hourly, at-cost and retainer contracts.

Bonsai

There is a subcontractor side, but the shape of the product is one person billing clients rather than a team splitting a job and its money.

What each one costs

Not the reason to switch, and not something you should have to go looking for either.

Projectous

Per team

One subscription covers a band of people rather than a price per head. Client and guest access starts on the Team plan — the Solo plan has none — and from there guests are free and uncapped.

Hiring does not change the bill until you cross a band. Checked against the live plans on 2026-08-24.

See the current plans

Bonsai

Per user

Basic$9 / user / mo — $15 billed monthly
Essentials$19 / user / mo — $25 billed monthly
Premium$29 / user / mo — $39 billed monthly
Elite$49 / user / mo — minimum 3 users

Invoicing, proposals and the client portal all start at Essentials.
Unlimited clients and projects on every tier.
Time tracking is on every plan including the cheapest.

Checked 2026-08-24 against their pricing page.

Where we will not go

Projectous exists to help people coordinate work with more clarity, trust and humanity.

Which means some things are permanently off the table, whatever a feature comparison says.

No screenshot monitoring
Nobody works better because software is watching their screen.
No keyboard activity scoring
Movement is not effort, and measuring it teaches people to move.
No public shaming dashboards
A league table changes behaviour. Never in the direction you wanted.
No manufactured urgency
If something is not actually on fire, we are not going to tell you it is.

Also weighing something else?

Outgrown a tool built for one person?

Try it against a real project of yours and see whether it tells you something your current stack does not.

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