I have been using Asana and this particular board I work on everyday, in fact I just used it through the course of this morning. Now I went to open a task and get the error message “You need a paid license to access this project” and the project board is grayed out. Is this a system error? Also I tried to access Support Chat and that doesn’t work either.
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@Cheryl_Stash Hi, are you using Asana within an organization? Or for personal use?
I’m also having this problem. I use it for my business but I’m a startup and I’m my only employee. Some of my projects are available and some require me to have a license. Very frustrating. Hopefully this fix this soon
What I’ve found as information:
This issue typically occurs when a user without a paid seat tries to access a project that requires a license due to organizational settings or specific paid features.
Common Causes
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Workspace vs. Organization: In a Workspace, every member (including those with limited access) requires a paid license. In an Organization, only users with the company’s email domain count as paid members; external guests are usually free.
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Seat Limit Reached: The plan may have exceeded its total seat limit, preventing additional free users from joining until someone is removed or the plan is upgraded.
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Privacy Settings: The project might be set to “Private to members,” which requires explicit access that may be tied to a paid tier in certain organizational structures.
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Trial Expiration: If the user previously had access through a trial that has since expired, they will lose access to paid features and projects until a license is assigned.
Troubleshooting Steps
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Check User Email Domain: Ensure the user is invited correctly. If they have the company domain but are not on the paid plan, they may be blocked. Invite them as a Guest using a non-company email (e.g., Gmail) if they do not need a full license.
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Verify Seat Allocation: Admins should check the Admin Console > Members tab to see if there are available seats or if the user is listed with a “View only” or “Paused” license.
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Adjust Project Permissions: Try changing the user’s permission to “Viewer” or “Commenter” instead of “Editor,” as some permission levels might still require a paid seat depending on your specific Enterprise settings.
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Confirm Membership Type: If you are in a Workspace, consider moving to an Organization structure to take advantage of free guest seats.
It is for personal use. I haven’t had any issues ever like this. I am locked out of a board I use every day 
I ran into this exact issue, just random projects were unavailable all of a sudden.
Found a workaround where you just duplicate the blocked project (with the little drop down arrow beside the project name), and then archive the original. The duplicate seems to work fine (for now!)
Check the access for the project - I just clicked the ‘change access’ link that was part of the error message. That brought up a dropdown that had an access settings dropdown. I changed the access from ‘anyone in my organization’ can access to 'shared with team’ and this fixed the issue. Seems like anyone in organization is newly a paid feature. I am the only person in my organization, so not a big deal for me.
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Thanks Martha. Just tried this and it works. Had the same exact problem as cheryl. Out of the blue got the error message.
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same exact issue, out of the blue. Just did what @Martha_Elliott in this thread suggested and worked: “Check the access for the project - I just clicked the ‘change access’ link that was part of the error message. That brought up a dropdown that had an access settings dropdown. I changed the access from ‘anyone in my organization’ can access to 'shared with team’ and this fixed the issue. Seems like anyone in organization is newly a paid feature. I am the only person in my organization, so not a big deal for me.”