Onplana vs Float Scheduling for Project Teams
Onplana vs Float scheduling: Float is a dedicated resource scheduler you pair with a PM tool; Onplana puts capacity and the schedule in one place.
Float is good at one job: showing who's booked on what, week by week, with a clean drag-and-drop calendar. It doesn't schedule tasks, doesn't calculate a critical path, and was never built to. Almost every team running Float pairs it with a separate project management tool for the actual work, which means two systems now hold two different versions of the same reality, and nothing forces them to agree.
The direct answer: in Onplana vs Float scheduling, Float is a dedicated resource scheduler, strong at capacity and time-off management, weak at everything else a PMO needs. Onplana puts the resource capacity view and the task schedule in the same data model, so a person's booked hours and their assigned tasks can't quietly drift apart the way they can across two separate tools. Float's own pricing lists Starter at $7 per person per month and Pro at $12; once you add a second tool for the schedule itself, the combined cost and the sync overhead both grow, and that combination is what the comparison actually has to weigh, not Float's price alone.
Float schedules people; it doesn't schedule work. There are no task dependencies, no critical path, and no way to sequence what a booked person is actually supposed to do, which is why most Float customers run a second PM tool alongside it. Onplana's resource capacity planning, on Professional and above, shows the same per-person weekly capacity and time-off picture Float does, but reads it from the same tasks and dependencies the Gantt chart already tracks, so the two views can't disagree. The two-tool model still wins for teams where resourcing and delivery are owned by different groups with an existing sync process; it loses once a PMO needs one number for "is this person actually free" that both sides of the org trust.
What Float Actually Does
Float's interface is a calendar grid: people down one side, weeks across the top, colored blocks showing who's booked on which project and for how many hours. It's built around three things: capacity and time-off management, project scoping (a rough hours estimate per project, not a task list), and, on the Pro plan, time tracking against those bookings. It's a genuinely good tool for that specific job, and its simplicity is deliberate: a resourcing coordinator can learn it in minutes without needing to understand a project's schedule at all.
What Float doesn't have is a schedule. There's no task object with a duration and a predecessor, no dependency graph, and no critical path calculation, because Float was never designed to answer "what order does this work have to happen in." A block on the Float calendar says a person is booked on a project for a stretch of time; it says nothing about which of that project's tasks they're actually supposed to be doing this week, or whether the task they need to start depends on something that hasn't finished yet.
Where the Two-Tool Model Breaks
Pairing Float with a separate PM tool means two systems hold two different pictures of the same person's week: Float says they're booked at 80% on Project A, while the PM tool's task assignments say something else entirely, because nothing keeps the two in sync automatically. That gap doesn't show up as an error message. It shows up weeks later, as a resourcing coordinator confidently reporting someone has headroom for a new project while that person is actually underwater on task assignments Float never saw.
The difference between capacity planning and resource planning is exactly the seam this gap opens up in: Float answers the capacity-planning question (does this person have hours available) without ever touching the resource-planning question (which specific tasks are they actually on the hook for), and a two-tool setup depends entirely on someone manually reconciling the two on a regular basis. Skip that reconciliation for a sprint or two, which is exactly when a team is busiest and least likely to do it, and the capacity numbers stop meaning anything.
The diagram below shows the structural difference: two systems connected by a manual sync step, against one data model where the capacity view and the task schedule are the same underlying data.
Onplana vs Float Scheduling: Eight Dimensions
| Dimension | Float | Onplana |
|---|---|---|
| Core purpose | Book people against projects, week by week | Schedule tasks and manage the people assigned to them, together |
| Task dependencies | None | FS, SS, FF, SF with lag, every plan |
| Critical path / Gantt | Not available | Included on every plan, including Free |
| Resource capacity view | Per-person weekly capacity vs booking | Per-person weekly capacity vs allocation, reading from real task assignments, Professional and up |
| Time-off management | Yes, every plan | Yes, comes out of available hours automatically |
| Time tracking | Pro plan | Timesheets with approval workflow, Professional and up |
| Project structure | Rough hours estimate per project, no tasks | Full task and subtask breakdown with dependencies |
| Pricing (per user/month) | Starter $7, Pro $12, Enterprise custom | Free / $7 / $12 / $20 / $29 |
Pricing: Float Alone vs the Combined Stack
Float's published pricing lists Starter at $7 per person per month, covering scheduling, capacity, and time-off management, and Pro at $12, which adds time tracking and reporting. Both plans require pairing Float with a separate tool for the actual project schedule, since neither plan adds task dependencies or a critical path; that second tool's per-seat cost sits on top of Float's, not instead of it.
Onplana Professional, also $12 per person per month, already includes the resource capacity view Float Pro offers, reading from the same task and dependency data as the Gantt chart, plus the scheduling depth (dependencies, critical path, baselines) that Float has no equivalent for at any price. For a team currently paying for Float Pro plus a separate PM tool, the combined per-seat cost is the number to compare against a single Onplana plan, not Float's sticker price by itself.
When Float's Two-Tool Model Still Wins
Float remains the better fit when resourcing and delivery are genuinely owned by different teams, a staffing or resourcing function booking people across projects it doesn't manage day to day, and a separate delivery team running its own PM tool, with a sync process the organization has already made work. Float's calendar-first interface is also easier to hand to a non-PM staffing coordinator who only needs to move bookings around, not read a dependency graph.
Onplana wins once a single team owns both questions, who has capacity and what they're actually supposed to be doing, and needs one number that answers both without a reconciliation step in between. The free Resource Heatmap shows where allocation conflicts already exist in an .mpp or exported schedule, which is a fast way to see whether your team is currently carrying the kind of hidden overallocation a two-tool setup tends to hide until it's already a problem. For the broader distinction this comparison sits inside, capacity planning vs resource planning and Onplana's resource management against Project Online's enterprise resource pool cover the same ground from different starting points.
Run the free Resource Heatmap Upload an .mpp file or exported schedule and see where resource overallocation is already hiding, in about two minutes. No signup required. → Open the Resource Heatmap
The rest of the Onplana blog covers the wider comparison set against the scheduling and resourcing tools PMOs shortlist alongside Float.
Frequently asked questions
What does Float actually do?
Float is a dedicated resource scheduler: a drag-and-drop view of who's booked on what, capacity and time-off management, project scoping, and time tracking on its Pro plan. It has no task dependencies and no schedule of its own; it schedules people against projects that live in a separate tool.
Can Float replace a project management tool?
No. Float has no task-level dependencies, no critical path, and no way to sequence work; it books people's time against projects, not tasks against each other. Most Float customers run it alongside Asana, Jira, or a similar PM tool for the actual schedule.
What's the real cost of running Float alongside a separate PM tool?
Float's own published pricing lists Starter at $7 per person per month and Pro, which adds time tracking, at $12. Add a separate PM tool's per-seat price on top, plus the ongoing cost of keeping two rosters and two schedules in sync, and the combined bill usually lands above a single platform that includes both.
Does Onplana have the same capacity view as Float?
Onplana's resource capacity planning shows per-person weekly capacity against allocation across every project, with billable-versus-total-hours views and a forecast mode for upcoming weeks, on Professional and above. It reads from the same task assignments the Gantt schedule uses, rather than from a separate booking calendar.
When does Float's two-tool model make more sense than Onplana?
When resourcing and delivery are genuinely owned by different teams with different tools already in place, and the two already have a workable sync process. Float's booking-first interface is also simpler to hand to non-PM staffing coordinators who only need to move people around, not manage a schedule.
Does Float track time off?
Yes, time-off management is part of Float's core scheduling view on every plan. Onplana's capacity view works the same way: booked time off comes out of a person's available hours automatically, so a forecast reflects who's actually free, not just who's nominally on the roster.
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