Onplana vs Microsoft Planner

Planner Premium is Microsoft's planning tool inside Microsoft 365. For many PMOs it falls short: the 3,000-task cap, no stage gates or timesheets, and the 10-custom-field limit bite within the first quarter.

Microsoft Planner Premium is the right call if your PMO already runs entirely on M365, your projects fit inside the 3,000-task cap, and you don't need formal stage-gate governance, timesheets or capacity across plans. Onplana is the right call if any of those constraints bite, most enterprise PMOs hit at least one within the first quarter.

Run Migration Preview on a sample .mpp Start free

For teams committing to AI-first workflows: Onplana ships a public MCP server so Claude Desktop, Gemini CLI, ChatGPT, and Cursor work directly against your projects. Microsoft's strategy for Planner is Copilot-only; no public MCP server as of May 2026.

Feature-by-feature comparison

Sourced from Microsoft's own Planner Premium documentation and Onplana product specs. Where Planner has parity, we mark it.

Feature
Microsoft Planner Premium
Microsoft 365 native
Onplana
Modern & AI-native
Task limit per plan
3,000 tasks per plan
No task cap per project
Custom fields
10 plain-typed fields
12 field types (text, number, date, dropdown, multi-select, currency and more); no formula fields
Dependency types
✓ Finish-to-start, start-to-start, start-to-finish and finish-to-finish, on premium plans
FS, SS, FF, SF + lag/lead
Critical path
✓ Shown in the timeline view, on premium plans
Auto-computed + visualised on Gantt
Baselines
✓ On Planner and Project Plan 3 and up
Saved baselines + variance overlay
Tasks shorter than a day
Not compared here; Microsoft documents Planner task dates in its support pages
Onplana Schedule plans to the minute (type 2h or 90m); the web app schedules in whole working days
Resource capacity
Per-plan only, plans are not summed
Weekly capacity against allocation for each person across projects, with a forecast of the weeks ahead, on the Professional plan and up
Portfolio rollups
Portfolios across premium plans, with a roadmap and a status set by hand; Planner and Project Plan 3 or Plan 5 to create one
Multi-project portfolios + RAG health
Stage-gate governance
Not supported
12-stage proposal pipeline, multi-reviewer gates and an audit trail, on the Enterprise plan and up
.mpp / MSPDI native import
No (manual rebuild required)
Native, preserves all four dep types, ECFs, costs
Desktop app that opens .mpp files
No (Microsoft Project desktop is a separate paid licence)
Onplana Schedule: free Windows and Mac app, opens, edits and reschedules, saves back to Project XML
AI integration
Microsoft 365 Copilot, under Microsoft licensing
Claude (Anthropic) + Azure OpenAI, both disclosed, within the AI token balance on every plan, including Free
Pricing at PMO scale (50 seats)
Per-user Microsoft licence, priced on Microsoft's Planner pricing page
$29/seat/mo Enterprise (no M365 prerequisite)
Free tier
Basic Planner only (in M365)
✓ Free plan with full Gantt + critical path. Some Free workspaces are offered a 14-day trial of a paid plan in the app, with no card
Phone and tablet apps
✓ Planner mobile apps
Onplana Tasks on iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets; Onplana Schedule from the Microsoft Store, the Mac App Store, the App Store and Google Play. All free.
Microsoft 365 SSO
Native
SAML / OIDC (Enterprise), plus Sign in with Microsoft on the login screen
Dedicated deployment
No
Enterprise+, in your own Azure subscription
ResultM365-native, capability-limited Wins 11/17

These gaps in detail

One question each, with the Microsoft position checked and dated.

Past the 3,000-task cap

Formal governance, not just a bigger task list

Planner Premium caps a plan at 3,000 tasks and has no stage gates. This is a twelve-stage proposal pipeline with weighted scoring, multi-reviewer gates with a quorum, and a project created automatically on approval.

Stage-gate governance with an audit trail, on Enterprise.

When Planner Premium is the right call

  • •Your org already runs entirely on M365 and your CIO has standardised on Microsoft's stack as a strategic policy.
  • •Your projects fit comfortably under the 3,000-task cap and you don't see that changing in the next 24 months.
  • •You don't currently use stage-gate governance, timesheets or capacity across plans, and you don't plan to.
  • •You've already paid for Microsoft 365 Copilot and want a single AI surface across Word, Outlook, Teams, and Planner.

When Onplana is the right call

  • •Any of your active projects has more than a few hundred tasks, the 3,000 cap will start blocking work sooner than expected.
  • •You need timesheets with approval and earned value on the same schedule.
  • •You have an existing portfolio of .mpp files that need to migrate without manual rebuild.
  • •You want choice of AI provider (Claude vs Azure OpenAI) per workload, not one Microsoft-locked default.
  • •You need formal stage-gate governance with audit trail (regulated industries, federal PMOs).
  • •You want a free starting tier to evaluate before committing seats.

Planner's free tier is one of five in our list of free Microsoft Project alternatives a team can share, with how many people and projects each one allows.

Coming from Microsoft Project? Start with your files.

Onplana imports your .mpp files natively, with all four dependency types, custom fields and costs. The migration path covers the steps and the gate criteria.

See migration path

Already on Planner or Project for the Web? Bring it in

Both import through a Microsoft sign-in from the Onplana import wizard: pick the plan, check the counts, and the project is built in place. Run the same import again later and its tasks update rather than duplicate.

From Microsoft Planner

  • Buckets become epics, or sprints if you choose.
  • Tasks with their title, start and due dates, percent complete, priority and description.
  • Checklist items become subtasks, ticked ones already done.
  • Labels become tags.
  • Assignees matched to your members by their Microsoft account; the first becomes the assignee and the others collaborators.
  • Not carried: comments and attached files, which Microsoft stores outside the plan.

From Project for the Web (Planner Premium)

  • The project itself: name, description, dates and progress, with its buckets as epics.
  • Tasks with their description, dates, progress, priority, effort as estimated hours, milestones, and the summary-task hierarchy.
  • Dependencies of all four types, with their lag.
  • Resource assignments matched to your members by email; the first becomes the assignee and the others collaborators.
  • Not carried: custom columns added in Dataverse, and cost fields. Reading Dataverse needs one extra Microsoft permission (Dynamics 365), which an admin may have to consent to.

Every format the import reads and the step-by-step import guide.

Pressure-test the comparison with your own data

Three free tools, no signup. Run them against the.mpp or Project XML files you exported before you choose.

MS Project Migration Tool

Upload a .mpp and see how much of it each destination keeps: Planner, Project for the web, Onplana, or a portable file.

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Migration Preview

Upload a .mpp; see exactly what would land in Onplana, task fidelity, deps, costs.

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Migration Cost Calculator

Estimate full 3-year cost: licenses, parallel running, training, integrations.

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Frequently asked questions

Can Microsoft Planner Premium handle a 5,000-task project?▾
No. The 3,000-task cap is enforced at the plan level. Workarounds include splitting one plan into multiple linked plans, which loses cross-plan dependencies and rollup. Project for the web is now part of Planner and carries the same 3,000-task limit. Onplana has no such cap.
Does Microsoft Planner Premium import .mpp files?▾
Not natively. Microsoft Planner accepts CSV imports and offers limited Excel import; .mpp binary files require Project Desktop or Project for the Web as an intermediate. Onplana imports .mpp directly via its Java MPXJ-based parser, preserving all four dependency types, custom fields and costs in a single upload.
How does Onplana compare on cost at 50 seats?▾
Price Planner Premium from Microsoft's own Planner pricing page and your Microsoft agreement, since the per-user price depends on the licence your organisation buys. Onplana Enterprise is $29/seat/mo with no Microsoft 365 prerequisite, and every Onplana price is on the pricing page: 50 seats for 12 months on Enterprise is $17,400.
What about AI features, Microsoft Copilot vs Onplana?▾
Microsoft's AI in Planner is Copilot, licensed under Microsoft's terms. Onplana includes Claude (Anthropic) and Azure OpenAI in every plan, including Free, operated by Onplana with per-endpoint model choice and a standby provider. The features overlap but Onplana's billing model bundles AI into the seat price.
How long does it take to get a first working plan?▾
Under two minutes in our own timing. On 29 October 2026 we timed a new Free workspace on a development copy of Onplana, from the sign-up page to a project whose tasks all have dates, three runs each, typing at a normal pace: a plan drafted by AI from a one-sentence description took about a minute (54 to 62 seconds), and importing an Asana CSV export took about 13 seconds (13 to 14). The time you spend reading each screen comes on top.

Choose between Planner and Onplana with your own data

Free plan, no credit card. Import a sample .mpp in five minutes, see what your existing schedule actually looks like in each tool.

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