Notion has four plans and most comparisons stop there. The plan you need is decided by a handful of specific limits, a billing model with several ways to charge you by accident, and an AI allowance Notion will not tell you the size of.
Everything below was checked against Notion’s own pages in September 2026. Where Notion’s documentation contradicts itself — and it does, in three places — we quote both.
The prices
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Free | $0 per member/month |
| Plus | $10 per member/month |
| Business | $20 per member/month |
| Enterprise | Custom — no public number |
One honest caveat. Notion’s billing toggle is JavaScript-driven and only one state renders. We fetched the page three times, including with the monthly parameter forced, and got the identical $10 and $20 both ways. Notion states that yearly billing “saves up to 20%”, but the page does not disambiguate which term those figures represent.
So: $10 and $20 are the figures Notion displays. Applying Notion’s own 20 per cent, the two readings are either $12.50 and $25 monthly, or $8 and $16 yearly. We are not going to publish a number Notion would not show us. Flip the toggle yourself before you commit, and screenshot it.
The repricing nobody told you about
On 13 August 2025 Notion killed the standalone AI add-on — previously around $10 per member per month on top of any plan — and bundled AI into the paid tiers, repricing Business upward in the process.
Updated pricing goes into effect today for new subscriptions. If you’re an existing customer and your plan has changed price, the change won’t go into effect until your first renewal after August 13, 2025.
Notion, “Introducing Notion AI for Work”
The practical consequence: if you were on Business and were not paying for the AI add-on, your renewal price went up and you received AI you may not have asked for. If you were paying for the add-on, your total bill probably fell.
The limits that actually decide your plan
The free block limit — and the trigger everyone gets wrong
It still exists. The cap is 1,000 blocks, and Notion’s help centre states the trigger precisely:
Restrictions on block usage apply to workspaces that are on the Free Plan and have more than one workspace owner.
Notion, “Understanding block usage”
Three details that matter more than the number:
- Notion’s own two pages disagree on the trigger. The block-usage article says “more than one workspace owner.” The pricing FAQ says “a Free Plan workspace with multiple members.” Those are different conditions and Notion has not reconciled them.
- Deleting does not help. “Deleting blocks, or emptying the trash, will not reduce your block count.” The counter is cumulative, not a live measure of workspace size. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Notion’s free tier.
- There is a three-day grace period when you hit 1,000. After that you can read and edit existing content but cannot create new content until you upgrade.
For scale: every text line, table row, image and video is a block. A thousand blocks is roughly 25 to 50 substantial pages. A two-person free team reaches it in weeks.
A solo free workspace has unlimited blocks. If you work alone, this limit does not apply to you at all.
Everything else that is capped
| Limit | Free | Plus | Business | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File upload per file | 5 MB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| External guests | 10 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Page history | 7 days | 30 days | 90 days | Unlimited |
| Blocks (multi-owner workspace) | 1,000 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
The guest figures are worth flagging as a change: Plus and Business historically carried hard caps of 100 and 250. The live page now says unlimited for all three paid tiers. Though note Notion’s Education page still states a 100-guest limit for what is a free Plus plan — another unreconciled contradiction.
On recovery, the real window is wider than the page-history number suggests: trash retention is 30 days and plan-independent, and Notion keeps database backups allowing support-mediated restore of a snapshot from the past 30 days. So on Free the worst case is 7 days of granular history plus a 30-day trash window plus a support route — not 7 days full stop.
The database ceilings money cannot lift
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Maximum rows per database | 250,000 |
| Maximum properties per database | 500 |
| Property data per page | 2.5 MB across all properties |
| Database schema size | 1.5 MB total |
| Two-way relation references | 10,000 from one page |
These are identical on every plan, including Enterprise. You cannot pay to exceed 250,000 rows or 500 properties. That fact belongs in any serious decision about building an operational system on Notion, and it is the strongest argument in this whole article.
API limits
Roughly three requests per second per integration, with some burst allowance. There is a separate per-workspace limit “scaled to the workspace plan” — Notion does not publish the per-plan numbers. Over-limit returns a 429.
Per request: 1,000 block elements maximum, 500 KB total payload, 100 elements per block array, 100 related pages per relation, 2,000 characters for rich text and URLs.
How Notion actually charges you
The billing unit is the seat: one seat per member. Members are billable. Guests are not. A guest gets page-by-page access and cannot touch workspace settings, join groups, manage billing or add members.
Plans are billed per workspace. Three workspaces means three subscriptions.
Six ways people get charged unexpectedly
- The domain auto-upgrade. This is the big one. If your workspace exceeds its guest limit, new people you share with can only be added as a member rather than a guest if their email is on your workspace’s domain. On Free, that means guest number eleven from your own company arrives as a billable member.
- The invite dialogue default. Notion’s own documentation warns that inviting guests “requires confirming you select the guest option before sending.” The dialogue leans toward member. One mis-click on an annual plan is a full prorated seat.
- Adding a member mid-cycle on annual billing. You get an off-cycle invoice covering the remainder of your annual term plus retroactive proration. It arrives as a surprise.
- Adding a member mid-cycle on monthly. Immediate invoice for the coming month plus retroactive proration from the previous interval.
- Removing someone refunds nothing. “Billing decreases take effect at your next billing cycle and are not prorated mid-cycle.”
- The free-workspace trap. Two owners, 1,000 blocks, three-day grace, and a counter that never goes down however much you delete. The only exit is paying.
Two things that save money, and one refund window worth knowing
- Seat recycling. Since removals are not prorated, you keep the seat you paid for and “may add replacement members at no extra cost during this window.” If someone leaves in month two of an annual term, backfill immediately — that seat is already paid for.
- Temporary members. Approved marketplace consultants with time-limited access do not use a paid seat.
And the refund rule almost nobody knows: Notion offers a full, non-prorated refund if you downgrade within three days of signing up monthly or 30 days of signing up annually. For an accidental member addition, refunds are available within three days of the invoice date. That is the fix for mistake number two above — but only if you notice fast.
Notion AI: what you are actually buying
This is where the article has to be blunt, because the documentation is evasive in a way that costs money.
AI is bundled into paid plans since August 2025. Business adds Notion Agent and AI Meeting Notes; Enterprise adds zero data retention with LLM providers. So far so normal. Then:
Business and Enterprise plans include a usage allowance for certain Notion AI features.
Notion help centre
Usage is measured in a six-hour window and a monthly window. Notion publishes no quota figure for either. You cannot find out how much AI you have bought until you run out, at which point “access to some AI features may temporarily pause.”
The allowance also appears to be workspace-pooled rather than per-member, so one enthusiastic user can degrade AI for the whole team.
And here is the part that decides whether the tier is worth it. What the included allowance does not cover: AI Meeting Notes, Custom Agents, Workers, and premium models. It covers personal Notion Agent usage, image generation and page translation. In other words, the marquee features used to justify the $20 Business price sit outside the included allowance.
Credit pricing
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Notion credits, monthly | $10 per 1,000 |
| Notion credits, annual | $13 per 1,000 |
| Custom Agents | Free to try, then $10 per 1,000 monthly credits |
| Workers | $0.0023 per run — roughly 4,348 runs per 1,000 credits |
Two oddities to report rather than smooth over. The annual credit pack costs 30 per cent more per unit than the monthly one, and Notion’s page offers no explanation. And credits never carry over — monthly credits reset each month, annual credits expire at renewal. You cannot bank them, so buy short.
Diarise this one: Workers are free during beta on Business and Enterprise, but from 15 October 2026 they require credits, with no included post-beta allowance stated.
Is the AI worth the tier jump?
Plus to Business is a doubling of per-seat cost. What you get for it is an allowance whose size Notion will not state, which excludes the two features actually being marketed, and everything with a knowable unit price is a separate metered purchase on top.
Our honest recommendation: buy Business for the deterministic features — private teamspaces, 90-day history, granular database permissions. Those you can verify you are getting. Treat the AI as a bonus of unknown size. If AI is the actual reason you are upgrading, run the 30-day Business trial and measure whether you hit the invisible ceiling before committing a year of seats.
What each tier actually unlocks
| Feature | Free | Plus | Business | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited blocks (multi-owner) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited file uploads | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Unlimited guests | ✗ (10) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Private teamspaces | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Granular database permissions | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SAML SSO | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Export with subpages | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audit log | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| SCIM provisioning | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom domain for Sites | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
One ambiguity to disclose: the pricing table places SAML SSO on Business, while Notion’s Enterprise page lists it among enterprise capabilities. If you are buying Business specifically for SSO, confirm in-app first.
Which of these are actually worth the money
- Unlimited file uploads (Free → Plus). Worth it, and usually the real reason to leave Free. A 5 MB cap fails on a single phone photo.
- Unlimited guests (Free → Plus). The change from hard caps to unlimited makes Plus much stronger for client work than it used to be. See the consultant scenario below.
- Private teamspaces (Plus → Business). “Only members or owners of this teamspace can invite other people, and it won’t be visible to people who are not added.” Worth it the moment you have HR, finance or founder-level content. This is usually the honest trigger for Business, not AI.
- Granular database permissions (Business). Worth it for anything with a client-data or personnel dimension — but read the limitation below before assuming it does what you need.
- SAML SSO (Business). A compliance purchase, not a productivity one. Worth it only if IT requires it.
- SCIM (Enterprise). Below roughly 100 seats, manual invites cost less than the Enterprise premium.
- Audit log (Enterprise). If a contract or auditor demands it you have no choice. Otherwise not worth the jump on its own.
Education and nonprofit
Students and educators get Plus free, with a one-member limit. The requirements are strict: your institution must be listed in the World Higher Education Database, your school email must be the primary email on your Notion account (an added secondary address will not do), and you re-verify annually. Notion does not accept student IDs.
The genuinely good deal almost nobody writes about: verified student organisations get unlimited members per workspace, free, with the same unlimited uploads and 30-day history. That is free Plus for an entire club.
Note that Notion AI is not mentioned as included in the Education plan documentation. Do not assume it is.
Nonprofits get 50 per cent off Business — that tier only, no discount on Plus or Enterprise, up to three workspaces, with a 3 to 7 business day review. Notion supports “civil society organizations worldwide” and does not state a 501(c)(3) requirement.
The arithmetic there is worth stating plainly: at 50 per cent off, Business costs the same as Plus while including private teamspaces, granular permissions and 90-day history. For any eligible nonprofit, discounted Business strictly dominates Plus.
Sites, Calendar and Mail
All three are free front doors, and none of them is a reason to pay Notion anything.
- Notion Sites publishes on every plan including Free. What Plus and above adds is the custom domain, navigation bar, themes, favicon, removal of Notion branding, and Google Analytics. No per-site fee.
- Notion Calendar is free, standalone, with no stated tiers, gates or limits.
- Notion Mail is free — and Gmail and Google accounts only. No Outlook, no IMAP. That constraint is the fact most reviews bury.
Who should be on which plan
Solo user — Free, indefinitely
A single-owner free workspace has unlimited blocks. The 1,000-block cap does not apply to you. You accept a 5 MB file cap and 7-day history. Upgrade when you hit the file limit or want a Site without Notion branding. Do not upgrade for AI. Realistically most solo users never need to pay.
Two-person side project — Free until it hurts, then Plus
The trap lives here. Two owners means 1,000 cumulative blocks with a three-day grace, and you will hit it within weeks of real use. The workaround people try — one owner, one guest — works only within the 10-guest cap and gives the second person page-level access rather than a workspace. Budget $20 a month from day one rather than being surprised.
Five-person startup — Plus, unless you have secrets
$50 a month buys unlimited blocks, files, guests and 30-day history. The trigger for Business is not AI — it is the first piece of content the whole team should not see: salaries, the cap table, a performance conversation. That is private teamspaces, Business only, and it doubles your bill. Run the 30-day trial first. Most five-person teams stay on Plus for a year.
Thirty-person company — Business, and take it seriously
At this size private teamspaces and granular permissions are load-bearing, SSO is probably an IT requirement, and 90-day history matters when someone destroys a database in week six. Do not go Enterprise for SCIM at 30 people — manual offboarding of about one person a month is cheaper than the premium. Go Enterprise when an auditor demands the audit log, a contract requires zero-retention AI, or you pass roughly 100 seats. And cap AI credit spend in the admin dashboard, or one user will drain the pooled allowance.
A school — the Education plan, but understand its shape
Free Plus per person, one member per workspace. This is not a collaboration plan. If you need a shared department or club space, apply as a verified student organisation, which grants unlimited members free. An institution wanting a real multi-department deployment with SSO needs Enterprise and a sales conversation.
A consultant with clients — Plus, and it is now a strong deal
Guests are free and Plus guests are unlimited. One $10 seat, each client as a guest on their own page tree, no per-client cost. Three cautions: pick “guest” explicitly every time; if a client shares your email domain and you are over a guest limit they may be forced in as a member; and guests can see sub-pages by default, so restrict sub-page permissions per client or you will leak Client A’s tree to Client B.
When to leave Notion
Three structural limits, none of which money fixes.
The row ceiling is hard and unbuyable
250,000 rows and 500 properties per database, on every plan including Enterprise. Performance degrades well before the ceiling — Notion publishes an entire article on optimising database performance, which tells you the problem is real. If you are building an operational dataset rather than a team wiki, you will meet this.
No field-level permissions
Business buys “granular database permissions” — permissions on the database, not on columns within a row. You cannot show someone a row while hiding one property on it.
Any workflow where a record has both shared and restricted fields — candidate records with compensation, client records with margin, anything patient-adjacent — cannot be modelled correctly in Notion at any price. The standard workaround of splitting into two databases joined by a relation is fragile, and burns into the 10,000-reference relation cap. This is Notion’s most consequential structural limitation and it is essentially absent from the articles currently ranking for this query.
Your export is not a backup
Formats are PDF, HTML, and Markdown with CSV. But:
- Export with subpages requires Business or Enterprise. On Free or Plus, exporting a page tree means clicking through page by page.
- Workspace exports “can take up to 30 hours to process” and the download links expire after 7 days.
- Form-view databases cannot be exported at all.
- Pages the exporter lacks access to are silently omitted — so an admin export is not a complete workspace backup.
- Notion states plainly: “You can’t instantly recreate your workspace by reuploading your exported workspace.”
Your export is a readable archive. It is not a restorable backup and it is not a migration path. Anyone treating Notion as a system of record needs to know that before, not after.
Where to go instead
| If you are hitting… | Go to |
|---|---|
| The row count or performance ceiling | Airtable at moderate scale, or Postgres with a light front end |
| The need for field-level permissions | Airtable (with caveats), Smartsheet, or a purpose-built tool |
| The need for real backup and restore | Not a document tool at all |
| Only wanting docs and wikis | Confluence or Google Docs are cheaper per seat |
Questions people actually ask
Is Notion still free in 2026?
Yes, and a solo free workspace has unlimited blocks. The 1,000-block cap applies only to Free workspaces with more than one owner — though Notion’s pricing FAQ words that as “multiple members.” The two pages disagree.
Does the 1,000-block limit still exist?
Yes. Three-day grace period when you hit it, then you can read and edit but not create. Deleting blocks does not lower your count.
Does Notion charge for guests?
No. Free gives you 10; Plus, Business and Enterprise all show unlimited. A guest becomes billable only if converted to a member — which can happen automatically when you are over your guest limit and the person’s email is on your workspace domain.
How much is it per person?
$10 per member per month for Plus, $20 for Business, on the figures Notion displays. Notion says yearly saves up to 20 per cent, but its toggle is JavaScript-only and both states returned identical figures when we checked. Verify the toggle yourself.
Is Notion AI included now?
Yes, bundled into paid plans since 13 August 2025 — the standalone add-on is gone. But the included allowance has no published number, and AI Meeting Notes, Custom Agents, Workers and premium models all sit outside it.
What do Notion credits cost?
$10 per 1,000 monthly, $13 per 1,000 annually. Business and Enterprise only. Credits never carry over. Workers run at about $0.0023 each and stop being free on 15 October 2026.
Can I get a refund?
Yes, within a stated window: a full non-prorated refund if you downgrade within 3 days of monthly signup or 30 days of annual signup. Accidental member additions are refundable within 3 days of the invoice date.
Is Notion free for students?
Yes — free Plus with a one-member limit, requiring a WHED-listed institution and your school email as your account’s primary address, re-verified yearly. Verified student organisations get free unlimited members.
Do nonprofits get Notion free?
No — 50 per cent off Business, that tier only, up to three workspaces.
How many rows can a Notion database hold?
250,000, with 500 properties maximum and 2.5 MB of property data per page. Identical on every plan; you cannot pay to exceed it.
What we could not verify
- The exact annual-versus-monthly split. The toggle is JavaScript-rendered and three fetches returned identical figures.
- Enterprise pricing. No public figure.
- The Notion AI included allowance, in any unit. Notion states a six-hour and a monthly window and no quantity for either.
- Credits consumed per Custom Agent run. Two Notion help pages that should answer this both return 404.
- Why annual credits cost more per unit than monthly. Stated, unexplained.
- Per-workspace API rate limits by plan. Described only as “scaled to the workspace plan.”
- Whether SAML SSO is Business or Enterprise. The pricing table and the Enterprise page disagree.
- Guest limits. The pricing page says unlimited on paid tiers; the Education page says 100 for what is a free Plus plan.
- The file upload cap on paid plans. The pricing page says unlimited; the help article mentions PDFs under 20 MB and images under 5 MB without distinguishing upload cap from preview threshold.
- Whether Calendar or Mail features are gated by plan, and how Mail’s AI draws on allowances. Neither product page addresses it.
The short version
- Solo? Stay free. Unlimited blocks, and the cap does not apply to you.
- Two people on Free is a trap. 1,000 cumulative blocks, deleting does not help, three-day grace.
- Leave Free for the 5 MB file cap, not for AI.
- Buy Business for private teamspaces, not for an AI allowance Notion will not size.
- Pick “guest” explicitly every time you invite someone — and if you slip, you have three days from the invoice to get the money back.
- Nonprofits: discounted Business costs the same as Plus and strictly beats it.
- 250,000 rows and no field-level permissions are hard walls. Money does not move them.
- Your export is an archive, not a backup. Plan accordingly.
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