Planner Premium Pricing by Team Size

Planner Premium's headline price is $30 a seat. Almost nobody pays $30 a seat, because Plan 3 and Plan 5 are add-ons: they sit on top of a Microsoft 365 subscription that is not included in that number, and which tier of Microsoft 365 you need changes with how many seats you're buying. That's the real shape of Planner Premium pricing by team size: a flat per-seat rate up to 300 users, then a step up the moment a PMO crosses that threshold.

Planner Premium Pricing, Tier by Tier

Microsoft's current Planner pricing page lists three purchasable tiers. A fourth, Plan 5, no longer appears on it at all.

Tier	Price (per user/month)	What it adds	Still purchasable?
Planner in Microsoft 365	Included	Grid, board, schedule, and chart views; basic tasks	Yes, included with M365
Planner Plan 1	$10	Timeline (Gantt) view, task dependencies, up to 10 custom fields	Yes
Planner and Project Plan 3	$30	Baselines, critical path, portfolio creation, advanced dependencies with lead/lag	Yes
Planner and Project Plan 5	$55 (legacy)	Portfolio analysis, enterprise resource management, full admin controls	No, existing customers only

Plan 3 is the tier most PMOs evaluating Planner Premium land on, since it's the highest tier still on general sale. Plan 5's disappearance from the pricing page matters for anyone comparing Planner Premium against alternatives: the enterprise-grade portfolio and resource capabilities Plan 5 used to sell are not for sale anymore, full stop, regardless of budget.

The Microsoft 365 Floor Underneath Every Tier

Plan 1 and Plan 3 are add-ons, not standalone products. Both require an active Microsoft 365 subscription, and which one you're allowed to buy changes the math:

• Microsoft 365 Business Standard costs $14 per user per month with Teams, paid yearly. Microsoft caps Business plans, including Business Standard, at 300 users total.
• Office 365 E3, the enterprise-tier equivalent most orgs use once they outgrow Business Standard, costs $26 per user per month, paid yearly, with no seat cap.

If your organization already licenses M365 for email and Office apps, this floor isn't a new cost tied to the Planner Premium decision specifically. If you're evaluating Planner Premium as a fresh Project Online replacement and don't already carry M365 seats for every project team member, the floor is real money, not a rounding error, and it belongs in the comparison from the start.

Modeling the Real Cost at 5, 25, 100, and 500 Seats

Combining Plan 3 with the M365 tier each seat count actually requires produces a fully loaded per-seat rate that holds steady, then steps up:

Team size	Underlying M365 tier	Plan 3 + M365, per seat/year	Total annual cost
5 seats	Business Standard	$528	$2,640
25 seats	Business Standard	$528	$13,200
100 seats	Business Standard	$528	$52,800
500 seats	E3 (Business Standard caps at 300)	$672	$336,000

The diagram below shows that step: flat through 100 seats, then a 27% per-seat jump the instant a PMO crosses the 300-user Business Standard ceiling and has to move to E3.

Where Planner Premium Is Genuinely the Cheapest Answer

For a team already fully licensed on Microsoft 365 Business Standard or E3 for reasons unrelated to project management, the incremental Plan 1 or Plan 3 add-on is a legitimately small number: $120 to $360 per seat per year on top of a platform cost that was going to exist anyway. If that describes your organization and your scheduling needs are modest (a handful of dependency chains, no formal portfolio governance), Plan 1 or Plan 3 is hard to beat on sticker price alone.

Where the License Stack Makes It the Expensive One

The math changes for two groups. First, any team evaluating Planner Premium from scratch, without an existing M365 seat for every project contributor, is comparing Plan 3's $30 against a true floor of $528 to $672 per seat per year, not $360. Second, any PMO that actually needed Plan 5's portfolio analysis and enterprise resource management (the gaps the Planner Premium enterprise limitations post covers in full) can no longer buy that capability from Microsoft at any price: Plan 5 is off the pricing page. A 500-seat PMO in that position is paying the E3-driven $336,000 floor for Plan 3 and still not getting the portfolio layer it actually needs.

That's the gap a purpose-built Project Online alternative closes without the platform tax. Onplana's Professional tier runs about $120 per seat per year with no Microsoft 365 subscription required underneath it, and the Business tier, which adds portfolio rollups and AI risk detection, runs about $192 per seat per year, still well under even the flat $528 Plan 3 floor. The migration cost calculator builds the same seat-by-seat comparison against your actual headcount rather than the four illustrative tiers here.

For the deeper total-cost-of-ownership picture, including the admin and reporting overhead Project Online itself carries, see the Plan 3 vs Plan 5 cost comparison. For what actually transfers if a PMO chooses Planner Premium as its Project Online migration target, see the migration decision breakdown.

Model your own seat count with the free Migration Cost Calculator Enter your actual team size and current license mix to see the fully loaded cost of Planner Premium against Onplana, side by side. No signup required. → Open the Migration Cost Calculator

Microsoft Project Online™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Onplana is not affiliated with Microsoft.