CiteLadder asked Claude Sonnet 5.5 20 buyer questions about project management software. Each question ran three times in three conditions: from memory, with web search available, and told to search first. Asana was the brand Claude named most often from memory and when told to search. This page reports what Claude said through the Anthropic API. It is not a ranking of which product is best, and the Claude apps can answer differently.
What we asked Claude
The 20 prompts cover the ways buyers ask about this category. Some ask for an overall pick, some describe a specific team, some focus on price, some on features, and some ask for a shortlist.
Examples, quoted exactly:
- "What's the best project management software right now?"
- "Good project management app for a construction company tracking job sites?"
- "Cheapest project management software that still has Gantt charts?"
Other prompts covered marketing agencies, sprint-based dev teams, nonprofits with volunteers, enterprises with strict security needs, freelancers, event planners, open source self-hosting, time tracking, resource planning and AI features. The requests gave no current date. A separate model listed the brands in each answer, and code did the counting.
Brands Claude named from memory
With no tools, Claude gave 60 answers. They named 97 distinct brands, with 8.5 brands per answer on average.
Asana appeared in 75% of answers and was named first 19 times. ClickUp followed at 67%, then Monday.com at 60% and Trello at 55%. Trello was named first 15 times, close to Asana, even though it appeared in fewer answers. Notion (47%) and Jira (43%) rounded out the group above Smartsheet at 30%.
The three runs agreed fairly often. The run agreement score was 66.8%. Asana was named in every run for 13 of the 20 prompts, ClickUp for 11 and Monday.com for 10. The top three brands together took 23.8% of all mentions, so the rest spread across a long list of tools.
When search was only available, Claude did not search
In the second condition, Claude had web search available but was not told to use it. Across 60 answers it ran 0 searches. Every answer in this condition came from memory.
The results looked much like the no-tools runs. Asana appeared in 82% of answers, ClickUp in 72%, Monday.com in 65% and Trello in 60%. These answers named 124 distinct brands, with 10.3 per answer. For this category, giving Claude a search tool did not by itself bring web sources into its answers.
What changed when Claude was told to search
When the system prompt told Claude to search before answering, all 60 answers used search, with 254 searches in total. Answers got shorter lists: 6.8 brands on average and 83 distinct brands overall. Run agreement fell to 56.8%, so the three runs differed more from each other.
Asana stayed the most named brand at 67% of answers. Four of the top five from memory stayed in the top five: Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com and Trello.
- Notion left the top five. Its share went from 47% from memory to 22% when told to search.
- Jira entered the top five at 37%, compared with 43% from memory. It moved up because Notion dropped further.
The brand named first also shifted. Asana was named first only 4 times when told to search. Trello was named first 11 times, ClickUp 9 times and monday.com 8 times. The top three brands took 27.5% of mentions, a little more concentrated than from memory. None of these 60 answers carried inline citations.
What Claude searched for
Claude's queries often mirrored the prompt and added a year. 44.3% of queries included a year. The year 2025 appeared in 113 queries and 2026 in 3. Since the requests gave no date, the year came from Claude's own assumption. 48.1% of queries included the word "best".
Some queries, quoted exactly:
- "best free project management software small teams 2025"
- "Trello vs Asana vs ClickUp free plan limits"
- "Procore vs Buildertrend vs JobTread vs Fieldwire comparison small construction company"
For niche prompts, Claude named specialist tools in its queries. Examples include "self-hosted project management Plane vs OpenProject vs Taiga vs Vikunja comparison" and "event planners tools vendor management timelines Aisle Planner Monday Asana Cvent".
Sites Claude's searches returned
The most frequent result was ones.com, returned in 50 of the 60 searched answers (83%). Next came thedigitalprojectmanager.com at 63% and monday.com at 52%.
Vendor sites were common. clickup.com appeared in 43% of searched answers and asana.com in 40%. Review and comparison sites also showed up often: taskrhino.ca at 43%, project-management.com at 40%, goodday.work at 37%, celoxis.com at 33% and plaky.com at 30%. Several of these are sites run by other project management vendors that publish comparison articles.
What a project management brand can take from this
From memory, Claude has a stable core list for this category: Asana, ClickUp, Monday.com and Trello. A brand outside that list has a harder time showing up in answers to general prompts.
Search changes the picture in specific ways. Claude only searched when told to. When it did, it read comparison pages and vendor pages, often with a year in the query. Brands that appear on frequently returned pages, such as ones.com and thedigitalprojectmanager.com, have a path into searched answers. Vendor pages on monday.com, clickup.com and asana.com were also returned often, so a brand's own comparison and pricing pages can be read too.
Use-case prompts matter. Construction, event planning and open source questions pulled in specialist tools by name. A brand built for one audience can focus on the questions that audience asks. CiteLadder tracks these answers over time so you can see which prompts name you and which sources Claude reads.
Brand shares in each condition
Share of the 60 answers (20 prompts, three runs) that named each brand. "Prompts named in every run" counts the prompts where the brand appeared in all three runs from memory.
| Brand | From memory | Prompts named in every run | Told to search |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asana | 75% | 13 | 66.7% |
| ClickUp | 66.7% | 11 | 63.3% |
| Monday.com | 60% | 10 | 58.3% |
| Trello | 55% | 9 | 50% |
| Notion | 46.7% | 7 | 21.7% |
| Jira | 43.3% | 7 | 36.7% |
| Smartsheet | 30% | 4 | 25% |
| Linear | 26.7% | 4 | not in top 15 |
| Wrike | 23.3% | 2 | 25% |
| Microsoft | 18.3% | 2 | 13.3% |
| Basecamp | not in top 15 | 13.3% |
Sites Claude's searches returned
When told to search. Share of answers whose searches returned at least one page from the site.
| Site | Answers | Share of searched answers |
|---|---|---|
| ones.com | 50 | 83.3% |
| thedigitalprojectmanager.com | 38 | 63.3% |
| monday.com | 31 | 51.7% |
| clickup.com | 26 | 43.3% |
| taskrhino.ca | 26 | 43.3% |
| project-management.com | 24 | 40% |
| asana.com | 24 | 40% |
| goodday.work | 22 | 36.7% |
| celoxis.com | 20 | 33.3% |
| plaky.com | 18 | 30% |
The 20 prompts
- What's the best project management software right now? (best overall)
- Which project management tool do most teams actually stick with long term? (best overall)
- Top rated project management apps for growing companies? (best overall)
- What project management platform would you recommend for a mid-size business? (best overall)
- Best project management tool for a small marketing agency juggling client work? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which project management software works best for software dev teams running sprints? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Good project management app for a construction company tracking job sites? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- What should a freelancer use to manage multiple client projects? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best project tracking tool for a nonprofit with mostly volunteers? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Which project management software suits large enterprises with strict security requirements? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Project management tool for a non-technical team that hates complicated software? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- What do event planners use to manage timelines and vendors? (for a specific buyer or use case)
- Best free project management tool for a small team? (budget or free)
- Cheapest project management software that still has Gantt charts? (budget or free)
- Any open source project management tools worth self-hosting? (budget or free)
- Which project management apps have the best built-in time tracking? (feature-led)
- Project management software with strong resource planning and workload views? (feature-led)
- Which project tools have good automation and AI features built in? (feature-led)
- Compare the top 5 project management tools for a 20-person team. (comparison shortlist)
- Kanban-style vs all-in-one project management apps: which ones should I shortlist? (comparison shortlist)
Frequently asked questions
Which project management brand did Claude name most often?
Asana. It appeared in 75% of answers from memory and 67% of answers when Claude was told to search. This reflects what Claude said, not a judgment of which product is best.
Did Claude search the web on its own for these questions?
No. With search available but not required, Claude ran 0 searches across 60 answers. It searched only when the system prompt told it to, and then it ran 254 searches across 60 answers.
Why did Notion drop when Claude searched?
Notion appeared in 47% of answers from memory and 22% when told to search. Searched answers named fewer brands on average, 6.8 compared with 8.5 from memory, and Notion was one of the brands that fell out of those shorter lists.
Do these results match the Claude app?
Not necessarily. The study used Claude Sonnet 5.5 through the Anthropic API at low effort, with no current date in the requests. The Claude apps can use different settings and give different answers.
Track how often Claude recommends you
CiteLadder tracks how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews mention your brand for the buyer questions you care about, and where you sit against competitors. Every result links back to the recorded answer, so you can see what was said.
Visibility over time
| Series | 8 Sep | 15 Sep | 22 Sep | 29 Sep | 6 Oct | 13 Oct | 20 Oct | 27 Oct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme Analytics | 27.9% | 29.6% | 30.2% | 31.8% | 32.5% | 33.1% | 34.2% | 38.4% |
| Northwind | 46.0% | 45.2% | 45.8% | 44.6% | 44.1% | 43.5% | 42.9% | 41.7% |
| Lumen | 30.4% | 31.0% | 29.8% | 30.6% | 29.9% | 29.2% | 28.8% | 27.5% |
412 answers to 120 prompts across 4 engines, week of 27 Oct – 2 Nov 2026
Brands
| Brand | Visibility | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Northwind | 41.7% | down 1.2 pts |
| Acme Analytics | 38.4% | up 4.2 pts |
| Lumen | 27.5% | down 1.3 pts |
| Fathom Labs | 16.9% | down 0.2 pts |
Acme Analytics by engine