Onplana vs Clarity PPM: Skip the Custom Build
Onplana vs Clarity PPM: Clarity is a quote-only enterprise platform usually heavily customized for telecom and finance. Here's what that customization costs.
Clarity shows up on enterprise PPM shortlists for a real reason: Broadcom built it to map people, work, financials, and objectives across a portfolio big enough that "which project is this budget actually funding" is a hard question without it, and that reputation is exactly why teams that don't have that problem yet end up evaluating it anyway.
The direct answer: Onplana vs Clarity PPM comes down to how much configuration you want to do before the platform reflects your actual portfolio. Clarity is a quote-only strategic portfolio management platform built for large, often regulated enterprises, telecom, banking, government, that need deep financial and organizational mapping, typically reached through months of configuration. Onplana publishes every price, runs dependency scheduling and a critical path on its free tier, and scales the same engine to a 12-stage governance pipeline at Enterprise, all without an implementation engagement required to see the product working.
Clarity publishes no pricing; Broadcom routes every prospect to a demo, and the platform is usually reached through a configuration project sized to a large, often regulated enterprise portfolio. It's genuinely strong at mapping financials, work, and objectives across divisions, which is exactly the depth that makes it slow to stand up. Onplana runs Free through $29-per-seat Enterprise, all published, with dependency scheduling, a Gantt and critical path, and a resource pool on every plan, plus a 12-stage governance pipeline with gate reviews at Enterprise. Pick Clarity when cross-division financial mapping at enterprise scale is the actual, current requirement. Pick Onplana when you want real governance depth without months of configuration to find out if it fits.
What Clarity Actually Is
Broadcom markets Clarity as a Strategic Portfolio Management platform built to unify strategy, funding, and execution, with named strength in telecommunications, banking, government, healthcare, and other large, often regulated industries. The platform's own positioning centers on mapping "the many-to-many relationships spanning your enterprise, including people, work, financials, and objectives," alongside financial transparency into where portfolio spend actually goes. Broadcom's Clarity product page lists no pricing anywhere; every path leads to a demo request, which tracks with a platform sold into enterprise deals rather than self-serve signups.
Onplana vs Clarity PPM: Compared on 8 Dimensions
| Dimension | Onplana | Clarity PPM |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Published: Free / $7 / $12 / $20 / $29 per seat, 20% off annual | Not published; quote-only through Broadcom sales |
| Free tier | Yes: 5 members, 2 projects, Gantt + critical path included | None; evaluated through a demo |
| Time to first real portfolio | Minutes, self-serve signup | Typically months, configuration-heavy by design |
| Dependency types & critical path | FS, SS, FF, SF + lag, every plan including Free | Included in its scheduling module; depth set during configuration |
| Financial mapping across divisions | Multi-currency budgets, rate cards, earned value management | Purpose-built cross-portfolio financial and objective mapping |
| Stage-gate governance | 12-stage proposal pipeline, weighted gate scoring (Enterprise) | Configurable workflows, typically built during implementation |
| Deployment | Cloud-agnostic (AWS, Azure, GCP); self-hosted on Enterprise Plus | Broadcom-hosted, enterprise licensing |
| Target org size | Free individual use through enterprise, one product line | Large, often regulated enterprises: telecom, banking, government |
The diagram below shows the same split as the table: two products reaching real portfolio depth, one through a self-serve product, one through a configured enterprise deployment.
Where Clarity Genuinely Wins
Cross-division financial mapping at real enterprise scale is the honest edge case. Clarity's positioning around unifying "people, work, financials, and objectives" reflects a platform purpose-built for the question a large, multi-division enterprise actually has: not "is this project on schedule" but "which strategic objective is this spend actually funding, across which division, against which capital plan." Onplana's financial tooling, multi-currency budgets, rate cards, and full earned value management, covers general PMO cost tracking well but isn't built around that specific enterprise-wide capital mapping. A regulated enterprise whose finance and strategy functions already require that kind of cross-portfolio mapping has a real reason to put Clarity on the shortlist that has nothing to do with brand inertia.
Where the Configuration Project Costs You Time
The bigger practical difference shows up before either platform gets judged on features at all. Reaching real value from Clarity typically means a configuration project scoped to your organization's specific portfolio structure, sized appropriately for the enterprises it's built to serve but slow by the standard of a team that wants to see the tool working against a real project this week. Onplana's free tier ships the full dependency model, Gantt, and critical path with no configuration step and no sales conversation, so a team can validate the scheduling engine against a real project before any implementation budget gets discussed at all. The PMO Maturity Assessment is a useful gut check before that conversation starts: walk through it first to see whether your PMO's current practice actually needs cross-division financial mapping at Clarity's scale, or whether that's depth worth growing into rather than configuring on day one.
Which One Wins
Clarity wins for: large, often regulated enterprises, telecom, banking, government, that need to map financials, work, and strategic objectives across multiple divisions and already have the capital-planning process that depth is built to serve.
Onplana wins for: teams that want to see real scheduling depth, dependencies, critical path, a resource pool, before committing to anything, and PMOs that want the governance features Clarity is known for (stage gates, weighted reviews, portfolio rollups) at a published price with no configuration project required to find out if it fits.
PM tool evaluation criteria walks through the fuller checklist if Clarity is one of several enterprise platforms on your list, and the RFP template covers how to structure the ask so a quote-only vendor's proposal is actually comparable to a published-price one. Onplana vs Planview covers the adjacent comparison against another quote-only enterprise PPM platform, if Clarity isn't the only configuration-heavy option on your shortlist. The compare hub has side-by-side pages for the tools most commonly shortlisted alongside enterprise PPM platforms.
Run the free PMO Maturity Assessment Answer a short set of questions about your current practice and get a structured read on whether cross-division financial mapping and portfolio-level governance are worth configuring now or worth growing into first. → Open the assessment
Frequently asked questions
What's the main difference between Onplana and Clarity PPM?
Clarity, Broadcom's strategic portfolio management platform, is built for large enterprises, telecom, banking, government, that need to map people, work, financials, and objectives across a big portfolio, typically with heavy configuration work before it fits. Onplana runs the same core scheduling and governance depth self-serve, with published pricing and no configuration project required to start.
Does Clarity publish its pricing?
No. Broadcom's own Clarity product page lists no pricing anywhere and routes every visitor to a demo request. Third-party estimates for Clarity vary widely enough, and disagree enough with each other, that none is reliable to repeat here; the only verifiable fact is that pricing is negotiated, not published.
Is Clarity overkill for a mid-size PMO?
Often, yes. Clarity's strength is mapping many-to-many relationships across a large enterprise portfolio, people, work, financials, and objectives, all at once, which is real depth that a team running a few dozen projects usually doesn't need yet and will pay implementation cost to configure regardless.
Why do large financial and telecom PMOs end up customizing Clarity so heavily?
Because the platform is built as a configurable framework for portfolio and financial mapping rather than a fixed workflow, which is exactly what a regulated, multi-division enterprise needs, and exactly what turns a deployment into a project of its own before the first real portfolio goes live in it.
Does Onplana have the governance depth Clarity is known for?
On Enterprise, yes: a 12-stage proposal pipeline with automatic project creation on approval, multi-reviewer gate reviews with quorum logic, weighted scoring criteria, and a formal Change Control Board, at a published $29 per seat per month rather than a scoped implementation engagement.
How long does it take to get real portfolio visibility in each platform?
Onplana's free tier is self-serve, create an account and you have dependency scheduling, a Gantt, and a critical path in minutes. Clarity's portfolio and financial mapping depth is the reason enterprises choose it, and that same depth is usually why a live implementation takes months, not an afternoon.
Can a PMO that starts on Onplana move to Clarity later if it needs that scale?
Yes, and the organizations that eventually need Clarity-specific depth, cross-division financial mapping tied to a formal capital planning process, usually know it going in rather than discovering it after a year on a lighter tool. For everyone else, starting on a platform with published pricing costs nothing to try first.
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