Monday.com Pricing: Complete Breakdown of Every Plan

If you're trying to figure out what Monday.com actually costs, you've probably noticed their pricing page requires more math than it should. The per-seat prices look simple enough, but there's bucket pricing, minimum seat requirements, and feature limitations that make the real cost harder to pin down.

Let me cut through the confusion and give you the actual numbers.

Monday.com Pricing Overview

Monday.com offers five pricing tiers for their Work Management product:

Here's the catch: paid plans require a minimum of 3 seats, and you can only add users in increments of 5 after that. So if you have 6 people, you're paying for 10 seats. That's a significant cost consideration most reviews gloss over.

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Understanding Monday.com's Bucket Pricing Model

Monday.com uses what they call "bucket pricing" - a system that groups seats together rather than charging per individual user. This pricing structure impacts your costs in ways that aren't immediately obvious.

The bucket system works like this: you start with a 3-seat minimum for any paid plan. After that, you can only purchase seats in groups of 5. If you have 4 users, you're forced to buy 5 seats. If you have 8 users, you're paying for 10 seats. This means you could be paying for 20-40% more capacity than you actually need.

For small teams or solo entrepreneurs trying to use Monday.com professionally, this creates a barrier. Even if you're just one person needing paid features, you're required to pay for three seats - essentially triple the advertised per-seat price. This minimum requirement doesn't exist with competitors like ClickUp or Notion, which allow single-user paid plans.

The bucket pricing becomes particularly frustrating during growth phases. When your team grows from 10 to 11 people, you suddenly need to jump to 15 seats, adding 5 unnecessary seats to your bill. For a team on the Standard plan at $12/seat/month, that's an extra $60/month ($720/year) for capacity you don't need.

Monday.com Product Pricing: Work Management, CRM, Dev, and Service

Monday.com isn't just one product anymore - it's evolved into a suite of four separate products, each with its own pricing structure. This is crucial to understand because if you need multiple products, you'll pay for each one separately.

Monday Work Management

This is the core project management product most people think of when they hear "Monday.com." It's designed for teams managing tasks, projects, marketing campaigns, operations, and general workflow coordination. The pricing follows the structure outlined above: Free, Basic ($9/seat/month), Standard ($12/seat/month), Pro ($19/seat/month), and Enterprise (custom).

Monday CRM Pricing

Monday CRM is their dedicated sales and customer relationship management platform. The pricing is slightly different from Work Management:

Note that CRM pricing is generally $3-5 higher per seat than Work Management at each tier. For a 10-person sales team on Pro CRM, you're looking at $240/month ($2,880/year) compared to $190/month for Work Management Pro.

The important gotcha: if you want both Work Management AND CRM, you pay for both products separately. There's no bundle discount. A 5-person team using both Work Management Standard and CRM Standard would pay $12 + $17 = $29 per seat, totaling $145/month or $1,740/year. That's significantly more than most people budget for when they first explore Monday.com.

Monday Dev Pricing

Monday Dev is built specifically for software development teams managing sprints, roadmaps, bugs, and product backlogs. The pricing mirrors Work Management: $9/seat for Basic, $12/seat for Standard, $19/seat for Pro, and custom Enterprise pricing. Dev includes specialized features like Git integrations, sprint planning tools, and agile workflows that aren't available in Work Management.

Monday Service Pricing

Monday Service is their newest product for customer support and IT service management teams. Unlike the other products, Service doesn't offer a Basic plan - pricing starts at Standard and goes up from there. This product is designed for ticket management, service workflows, and customer support operations.

What Each Plan Actually Includes

Free Plan

The free plan is limited to 2 users maximum and lets you create up to 3 boards with 200 items total. You get basic Table and Kanban views, unlimited docs, and access to 200+ templates.

What you don't get: no automations, no integrations, no Timeline or Gantt views, no guest access, and a 7-day activity log. The free plan works for personal task tracking but it's too restrictive for any real team collaboration.

The 2-user limitation is particularly restrictive. Even a small startup with 3 founders can't use the free plan together. And with only 3 boards and 200 items total, you'll hit the ceiling fast if you're managing anything beyond basic to-do lists. This makes the free plan more of a trial experience than a viable long-term option for most users.

Basic Plan ($9/seat/month)

For a team of 5, you're looking at $45/month billed annually ($540/year) or $60/month if paying monthly.

Basic gets you:

Still missing: no automations, no integrations, no Timeline/Gantt views, no guest access. If you need any workflow automation or third-party app connections, Basic won't cut it.

The Basic plan is Monday.com's most limiting paid tier. Without automations or integrations, you're essentially getting a fancy spreadsheet with better visualization. You can't connect to Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, or any of the tools your team already uses. For most modern teams, this makes Basic a poor value proposition - you're paying $540/year but still doing everything manually.

The 1-week activity log is also problematic. If you need to reference what happened on a project two weeks ago, that data is gone. For compliance, auditing, or simply understanding project history, this limitation can be a dealbreaker.

Standard Plan ($12/seat/month)

This is Monday.com's most popular plan for a reason. For a team of 5, it costs $60/month billed annually.

Standard adds:

The 250 automation actions per month sounds decent until you realize that includes integrations too. If you're syncing data with Slack, Google Drive, and a CRM, you can burn through that limit fast.

Let's break down how quickly 250 actions disappear: If you have an automation that notifies your Slack channel every time a task status changes, and your team of 5 people updates 50 tasks per week, that's 200 actions per month just from one automation. Add an integration that syncs new leads from your website form to Monday.com (let's say 25 leads/month), and you've already hit 225 actions. One more automation for sending email notifications and you're over the limit.

On the Standard plan, guests are billed using a 4:1 ratio. You get 3 free guests, but the 4th guest counts as 1 billed seat. So if you invite 7 guests total, 4 of them consume 1 seat, and the remaining 3 are free. This matters for agencies, consultants, or teams that work extensively with external clients or contractors.

Pro Plan ($19/seat/month)

For a team of 10, you're paying $190/month billed annually. Pro is where Monday.com starts feeling like a complete project management tool.

Pro adds:

The jump from 250 to 25,000 automation actions is massive. If you're serious about building workflows, Pro is the minimum viable option.

Private boards are a critical feature for many teams. Without them, everyone in your workspace can see every board by default. If you're managing sensitive client information, financial data, HR matters, or executive planning, you need the ability to restrict access. Pro is the first tier that offers this.

Time tracking becomes essential if you're billing clients hourly, managing project budgets, or need to understand where your team's time actually goes. The formula column allows you to perform calculations across columns - useful for calculating project costs, margins, or custom metrics.

Unlimited free guests on Pro and Enterprise plans removes a significant cost barrier for teams that collaborate heavily with external stakeholders. Agencies working with dozens of clients, or companies managing multiple vendor relationships, save substantially here.

Enterprise Plan (Custom Pricing)

Enterprise pricing isn't published, but based on community reports and negotiation data, it typically runs $29-51 per seat depending on your deal. For a 200-seat deployment, expect around $96,000/year as a starting point.

Enterprise includes:

Enterprise plans require annual billing only. If you're over 300 users, Monday.com has an off-menu "Monday One" plan with unlimited seats that's worth asking about.

The Enterprise tier is designed for large organizations with complex needs. Multi-level permissions let you control access at the workspace, board, group, item, and column levels - critical for organizations with strict data governance requirements. HIPAA compliance is only available at Enterprise level, making it mandatory for healthcare organizations handling protected health information.

The dedicated customer success manager is more valuable than it might seem. They help with onboarding, optimization, training, and strategic planning. For large deployments, having someone who knows your account inside-out can save hundreds of hours and prevent costly mistakes.

The Real Cost: What You'll Actually Pay

Here's what different team sizes typically spend:

Team SizeBasic (Annual)Standard (Annual)Pro (Annual)
3 users$27/month ($324/year)$36/month ($432/year)$57/month ($684/year)
5 users$45/month ($540/year)$60/month ($720/year)$95/month ($1,140/year)
10 users$90/month ($1,080/year)$120/month ($1,440/year)$190/month ($2,280/year)
15 users$135/month ($1,620/year)$180/month ($2,160/year)$285/month ($3,420/year)
25 users$225/month ($2,700/year)$300/month ($3,600/year)$475/month ($5,700/year)
40 users$360/month ($4,320/year)$480/month ($5,760/year)$760/month ($9,120/year)

Remember: you pay for seat buckets, not exact users. A team of 17 pays for 20 seats. A team of 23 pays for 25 seats.

These numbers add up quickly. A growing company that starts with 8 people on Standard (paying for 10 seats = $1,440/year) might grow to 28 people within two years, suddenly paying for 30 seats at $4,320/year on Standard or $6,840/year on Pro. That's a 200-300% cost increase that needs to be budgeted for.

Automation and Integration Limits: The Hidden Bottleneck

One of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of Monday.com pricing is how automation and integration limits work. These aren't just theoretical numbers - they represent real constraints that can break your workflows if you're not careful.

What Counts as an Action?

Every time an automation or integration performs its task, it consumes one action from your monthly quota. Here are some examples:

Actions are counted at the account level, not per user. So your entire team shares the monthly quota. Standard plans get 250 automation actions and 250 integration actions per month (500 total). Pro plans get 25,000 of each (50,000 total). Enterprise gets 250,000 of each (500,000 total).

What Happens When You Exceed Your Limit?

If you go over your monthly automation allocation, Monday.com doesn't stop your automations immediately. Instead, the overage gets deducted from next month's allocation. For example, if you use 280 automation actions in April on a Standard plan (30 over the 250 limit), you'll start May with only 220 actions available.

This rollover penalty can create a downward spiral. If you consistently use more than your allocation, you'll start each month in a deficit, making it increasingly difficult to maintain your workflows. Eventually, you'll be forced to either disable automations or upgrade your plan.

When you completely deplete your actions, Monday.com blocks you from creating or editing automations and integrations until the next billing cycle or until you upgrade. Existing automations may continue to run but with delays, or they may simply stop working - creating silent failures in your workflows that you might not notice until something breaks.

Estimating Your Action Usage

Before committing to a plan, estimate your monthly action usage:

  1. List all the automations you plan to create
  2. Estimate how many times each automation will trigger per month
  3. Add up the total actions needed
  4. Include a 30% buffer for unexpected usage and growth

For most teams using Monday.com seriously, Standard's 250 actions runs out within the first week. Pro's 25,000 actions is the realistic starting point for teams running automated workflows.

AI Credits: The New Cost Variable

Monday.com has introduced AI-powered features that operate on a separate credit system. Understanding how AI credits work is essential because they represent an additional cost beyond your base subscription.

How AI Credits Work

Every Monday.com account receives a one-time trial of 6,000 AI credits (12,000 for Enterprise accounts). Once you use those credits, you need to purchase more if you want to continue using AI features.

AI credits cost $0.01 each, and each AI action consumes 8 credits. So every AI-powered action costs $0.08. If you trigger multiple AI actions on the same item within 24 hours, you're only charged once (8 credits total), which is a nice efficiency consideration.

The cheapest AI credit plan starts at $200/month when billed annually - that's at minimum $2,400 upfront. This plan typically includes 20,000-25,000 credits per month, allowing for 2,500-3,125 AI actions.

What Uses AI Credits?

AI credits are consumed by features like:

Some AI features are free and don't consume credits, including AI suggestions for automations, basic AI assistance in the interface, and certain AI-powered insights. However, the most powerful and useful AI features require credits.

Should You Pay for AI Credits?

For most small teams, the answer is probably no - at least not initially. The 6,000 free trial credits let you experiment with AI features to see if they provide value. But committing to $2,400/year for AI credits only makes sense if those features save significant time or directly generate revenue.

The AI pricing feels particularly steep because it's on top of your base subscription. A 10-person team on Pro is already paying $2,280/year. Adding AI credits brings the total to $4,680/year - more than doubling the cost. For that price, you could hire a part-time assistant or invest in other productivity tools.

Hidden Costs to Watch For

Automation Overages: If you exceed your monthly automation/integration limit, the overage gets deducted from next month's allocation. Monday.com uses this to push plan upgrades.

AI Credits: Every account gets a one-time trial of 6,000 AI credits. After that, you'll need to buy an AI credits add-on if you want to keep using AI features. The cheapest plan starts at $200/month billed annually.

Guest Seats: On Standard plans, every 4 guests count as 1 paid seat after your first 3 free guests. If you're working with lots of external contractors or clients, this adds up. A team with 20 guests on Standard would be paying for approximately 4-5 additional seats.

Multiple Products: Monday.com now has separate products (Work Management, CRM, Dev, Service) that are priced individually. If you want both Work Management and CRM, you're paying for both. There's no multi-product discount.

Storage Limits: Basic plans include only 5GB of storage, Standard includes 20GB, and Pro includes 100GB. If your team works with large files, videos, or extensive documentation, you might hit these limits faster than expected. Additional storage isn't advertised as an add-on, suggesting you'll need to upgrade plans to get more space.

Implementation and Training Costs: While not a Monday.com charge, many organizations need help with setup, configuration, and training. Professional implementation services typically cost $500-$2,000 for small businesses, $3,000-$7,000 for mid-sized companies, and $10,000+ for enterprise deployments. Factor these one-time costs into your budget.

Migration and Data Transfer: If you're moving from another project management tool to Monday.com, you'll need to migrate your data. Unless you do this manually (which can take dozens of hours), you might need to pay for data migration services or use third-party tools like Zapier or Make.com, adding to your costs.

Annual vs Monthly Billing: What Makes Sense?

Monday.com offers both monthly and annual billing options, with annual billing providing an 18% discount. Here's how the math works out:

For a 10-person team on Standard:

The annual discount is significant. For larger teams, the savings can be thousands of dollars. A 50-person team on Pro saves $3,600 per year by choosing annual billing over monthly.

However, annual billing requires paying upfront or committing to a full year of payments. If you're not sure Monday.com is the right fit, or if your team size is likely to shrink, monthly billing provides more flexibility despite the higher per-seat cost.

Monday.com offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, which provides some protection if you choose annual billing and then decide it's not right for you. But after that 30-day window, you're locked in for the year.

A useful breakeven analysis: if you're uncertain about using Monday.com for a full year, calculate how many months you'd need to use it for annual billing to make sense. For most plans, if you're confident you'll use it for 10+ months, annual billing is the better value despite the upfront cost.

Monday.com vs Competitors: Price Comparison

Monday.com's pricing sits in the middle of the project management market. It's more expensive than ClickUp ($7/user/month) or Trello ($5/user/month), but typically cheaper than Asana's Business plan ($24.99/user/month).

The main differentiator is Monday.com's visual interface and flexibility. It's genuinely easier to use than most competitors, which matters for team adoption. But if budget is your primary concern, ClickUp offers similar functionality at lower price points.

Monday.com vs ClickUp

ClickUp's pricing starts at $7/user/month (annual billing) for their Unlimited plan, which includes unlimited tasks, unlimited storage, unlimited integrations, and unlimited dashboards. That's 28% cheaper than Monday.com's Standard plan and includes features that Monday.com locks behind Pro.

However, ClickUp's interface is more complex and has a steeper learning curve. Teams often report that ClickUp takes longer to set up and requires more training. Monday.com's visual simplicity means teams can start using it productively within days rather than weeks.

Monday.com vs Asana

Asana's pricing is higher than Monday.com at the top end. Asana Premium costs $13.49/user/month (annual billing), comparable to Monday.com's Standard. But Asana Business costs $24.99/user/month, significantly more expensive than Monday.com's Pro at $19/user/month.

Asana's free plan is more generous than Monday.com's, allowing up to 15 users with unlimited tasks and projects. This makes Asana a better option for small teams looking for a free solution. However, Asana's paid plans include fewer visual customization options than Monday.com.

Monday.com vs Notion

Notion takes a different approach, combining project management with knowledge management. Notion's Plus plan costs $10/user/month (annual billing), cheaper than Monday.com's Standard, and includes unlimited pages, blocks, and file uploads.

However, Notion lacks Monday.com's advanced automation capabilities, timeline views, and project tracking features. Notion excels at documentation and knowledge bases but isn't purpose-built for project management like Monday.com is.

Check out our Monday.com vs Asana comparison or Monday.com alternatives for deeper dives on the competition.

How to Save Money on Monday.com

Always go annual: You save 18% compared to monthly billing. There's a 30-day refund policy if it doesn't work out. For a 10-person team on Pro, that's $456 saved per year - enough to cover an additional seat.

Right-size your plan: Start with Standard and upgrade to Pro only if you're actually hitting automation limits. Most small teams don't need 25,000 actions per month. Monitor your usage for 2-3 months before committing to a higher tier.

Use viewers strategically: Read-only viewers are free on all paid plans. If you have stakeholders who just need to see progress without editing, don't pay for full seats. A team might have 15 full members but another 10-20 viewers (executives, clients, contractors) accessing boards without additional cost.

Leverage the free trial intelligently: Monday.com offers a 14-day free trial of the Pro plan. Use this to test your highest-usage scenarios. Build your most complex automations, integrate your most important tools, and simulate your actual workflows. This reveals whether Pro's features are necessary or if Standard would suffice.

Negotiate enterprise deals: For teams over 50 users, enterprise pricing is negotiable. Multi-year commitments can get you 10-20% off, and bundling products (Work Management + CRM) gives you leverage. Don't accept the first quote - Monday.com's sales team has flexibility, especially at quarter-end.

Consider mixed licensing: You don't need to put everyone on the same plan. Assign Pro licenses to power users who need advanced features (project managers, automation builders), while keeping most team members on Standard. Some organizations also mix products - Work Management for most teams, CRM for sales, Dev for engineering - optimizing costs across departments.

Nonprofit discount: Monday.com offers special pricing for nonprofits and NGOs. Eligible organizations can get up to 10 free Pro seats and a 70% discount on additional seats. If you qualify, this can reduce your costs from thousands to hundreds per year. Check their nonprofit program if you qualify.

Audit your automations regularly: Many teams create automations and integrations that run continuously even after they're no longer needed. Review your automation usage quarterly and deactivate anything that's not providing value. This can free up actions for more important workflows and might let you stay on a lower-priced tier.

Understanding Guest Pricing and External Collaboration

Monday.com's approach to guest pricing varies by plan and can significantly impact your costs if you work with external collaborators.

On the Basic plan, there is no guest access at all. Everyone needs to be a full paid member. This makes Basic unsuitable for agencies, consultants, or any team that collaborates with clients or contractors.

On the Standard plan, guests are billed using a 4:1 ratio. You get the first 3 guests free at the account level. After that, every 4 guests count as 1 billed seat. So if you have 11 guests total, you're using 2 seats (the first 3 are free, guests 4-7 count as 1 seat, guests 8-11 count as another seat).

On Pro and Enterprise plans, guests are completely unlimited and free. This is a significant value-add for teams that work extensively with external stakeholders. An agency managing 50 client accounts could invite hundreds of guest users at no additional cost.

Guests have restricted permissions - they can only access boards they're specifically invited to and can't see the rest of your workspace. This makes guest access suitable for external collaborators without compromising security or privacy.

When Does It Make Sense to Upgrade to Enterprise?

Enterprise pricing is custom-quoted based on your specific needs, but it generally becomes cost-effective around 50-100 users. Here's when Enterprise makes sense:

Security and Compliance Requirements: If you need HIPAA compliance, SAML SSO, IP restrictions, or audit logs, Enterprise is your only option. Healthcare, finance, and government organizations often have no choice but to go Enterprise due to regulatory requirements.

Advanced Permissions: Enterprise offers multi-level permissions that let you control access at granular levels. If you need to restrict who can view, edit, or manage specific boards, groups, items, or even individual columns, Enterprise provides that control.

Heavy Automation Usage: With 250,000 automation and integration actions per month, Enterprise suits organizations running complex, automated workflows across many teams and departments. If you're consistently exceeding Pro's 25,000 actions, the upgrade to Enterprise makes economic sense.

Dedicated Support: Enterprise includes a dedicated customer success manager who helps with onboarding, optimization, training, and strategic planning. For large deployments with 100+ users, having dedicated support can prevent costly mistakes and improve adoption rates.

Volume Discounts: At scale, Enterprise per-seat pricing often comes in lower than Pro pricing through volume discounts. A 200-seat Pro deployment costs $45,600/year at list price, but Enterprise pricing for the same team might be $35,000-40,000/year depending on negotiation.

Which Plan Should You Choose?

Choose Free if: You're a solo freelancer or duo doing basic task tracking. Don't expect it to scale beyond personal task management. The 2-user and 3-board limits make it unsuitable for anything beyond individual use.

Choose Basic if: You have a small team that needs unlimited boards but doesn't require automations or integrations. Honestly rare-most teams need at least Standard. Basic works for teams managing simple projects where manual processes are acceptable and no external tool integration is needed.

Choose Standard if: You're a small-to-medium team (5-15 people) who needs Timeline views, basic automations, and integrations with tools like Slack or Google Drive. Standard is Monday.com's sweet spot for most small businesses and startups. It provides the essential features that make Monday.com valuable without the premium pricing of Pro.

Choose Pro if: You need private boards, time tracking, or heavy automation usage. This is the sweet spot for teams running complex workflows. Pro makes sense for teams of 10-50 people doing sophisticated project management, agencies managing multiple clients, or any organization where automation drives efficiency.

Choose Enterprise if: You need advanced security, compliance (HIPAA), or have 50+ users where volume discounts make sense. Enterprise is built for large organizations with complex requirements, strict security needs, or teams that need dedicated support and strategic guidance.

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Real-World Pricing Scenarios

Let's look at how Monday.com pricing plays out in realistic business scenarios:

Scenario 1: Marketing Agency (12 employees + 8 clients as guests)

This agency needs to collaborate with clients on campaign boards. They choose Pro for private boards (to keep client work separated) and unlimited guest access.

The alternative on Standard would require paying for guest seats, adding approximately 2 additional seats at $12 each, totaling $2,880/year. Pro costs $540 more but includes time tracking (essential for billing clients) and 100x more automations.

Scenario 2: SaaS Startup (8 employees using both Work Management and CRM)

This startup needs Work Management for their product team and CRM for their sales team. They're paying for both products.

This startup is effectively paying $29/seat/month to use both products. If they only needed Work Management, they'd pay $1,440/year. The additional CRM product doubles their Monday.com costs.

Scenario 3: Enterprise Manufacturing Company (250 employees)

This company needs Enterprise for HIPAA compliance (they handle health data for workers' compensation), SSO for security, and advanced permissions across multiple departments.

This seems expensive until you consider they're replacing multiple legacy tools (project management, CRM, help desk) and consolidating onto one platform, with better security and compliance than their previous patchwork of systems.

Common Pricing Mistakes to Avoid

Underestimating automation usage: Teams often start on Standard thinking 250 actions will be enough, only to hit the limit within a week. If you plan to use Monday.com seriously, budget for Pro from the start.

Not accounting for growth: Your team of 8 might become 15 within a year. Because of bucket pricing, that means jumping from 10 seats to 15 seats - a 50% cost increase. Factor growth into your budget from day one.

Forgetting about multiple products: If you think you might need CRM in addition to Work Management, budget for both products separately. There's no bundle discount, so costs stack.

Ignoring the enterprise threshold: Some teams stay on Pro with 60-80 users, paying premium per-seat pricing, when Enterprise would be cheaper with volume discounts. Once you cross 50 users, get an Enterprise quote.

Not using the free trial strategically: The 14-day Pro trial is your chance to stress-test the platform. Build your actual workflows, integrate your actual tools, and involve your actual team. Don't waste it on casual exploration.

Is Monday.com Worth the Price?

Monday.com isn't the cheapest project management tool, but it's also not trying to be. You're paying for an interface that's genuinely intuitive, solid customization options, and a platform that scales from small teams to enterprise.

The pricing structure with bucket seats and automation limits can feel restrictive if you're not prepared for it. But if you go in eyes open and pick the right plan, Monday.com delivers good value for teams that will actually use its visual workflow features.

The platform's biggest value proposition is adoption. Monday.com's visual, colorful interface gets teams actually using it, whereas more powerful but complex tools like ClickUp or Jira often face resistance. If a tool doesn't get adopted, it doesn't matter how cheap it is - you're wasting money.

For teams serious about project management and workflow optimization, Monday.com's Standard or Pro plans provide strong value. The automation capabilities, integration ecosystem, and visual project tracking can save hours per week per person. For a 10-person team saving 2 hours per week each, that's 80 hours per month - easily justifying the $2,280/year cost of Pro.

However, for price-sensitive teams or those with simpler needs, alternatives like ClickUp, Trello, or Notion might offer better value. The key is understanding your requirements and matching them to the right tool and tier.

For more details on whether it's right for your specific situation, check out our full Monday.com review or how to use Monday.com guide to see the platform in action.