Disambiguation: similar names, different categories

Onplana vs Plane.so

Both built around AI. Different audiences. The name similarity is unfortunate; the products solve different problems.

Plane.so and Onplana sound similar but solve different problems. Plane is excellent issue tracking built around AI for software dev teams, think Linear with self-host. Onplana is AI-native PMO and portfolio management, a Microsoft Project alternative for organisations running formal program governance, schedules with critical path, and .mpp imports. If you're a 12-person engineering team shipping a SaaS product, Plane fits. If you're a PMO running a 30-project portfolio with stage gates, Onplana fits. Most readers landing here from "AI-native project management" searches were looking for one of these, picking the wrong one is the actual risk.

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The audience map

Pick the tool whose audience matches yours. Both are well-built; the wrong category is the actual cost.

Plane.so, software dev issue tracking

Built around the rhythm of software development teams: cycles, modules, sprint backlog, GitHub/GitLab sync, fast issue triage. Open-source friendly with a self-host option. Best when your team is shipping a SaaS product or platform.

Closer to Linear / GitHub Projects in category than to Microsoft Project.

Onplana, PMO + portfolio management

Built around the rhythm of program/portfolio management offices: native .mpp import, critical path on Gantt, saved baselines, four dependency types, formal stage-gate governance, capacity for each person across projects. Best when your org runs formal program management.

A Microsoft Project alternative.

Feature-by-feature comparison

Where Plane is strong by design, we mark it. Where Onplana wins for PMO use cases, we mark that.

Capability
Plane.so
Dev-issue tracking
Onplana
PMO + portfolio
Primary audience
Software dev teams (issue tracking); its home page says "teams and agents"
PMOs / portfolios (project + program management)
Native .mpp / MSPDI import
Not supported: its importers are Jira, Linear, Asana, ClickUp, and CSV
Direct .mpp + .mpx + MSPDI XML + XER + Excel/CSV
Desktop app that opens .mpp files
Not offered: Plane for Desktop (macOS and Linux; Windows coming soon) opens a Plane workspace
Onplana Schedule: free Windows and Mac app, opens, edits and reschedules, saves back to Project XML
Stage-gate governance
Not in scope: workflows on Business and approvals on Enterprise Grid (coming soon), no stage-gate pipeline
12-stage proposal pipeline, multi-reviewer gates and an audit trail, on the Enterprise plan and up
Resource capacity
Limited (cycles + workspace assignment); no capacity view on its pricing page
Weekly capacity against allocation for each person across projects, with a forecast of the weeks ahead, on the Professional plan and up
Custom-field schema
Custom properties per project from Pro; workspace-wide with roll-ups on Enterprise Grid
12 field types (text/number/date/dropdown/multi-select/currency and more), no formulas
Critical path on Gantt
Not documented: its timeline docs name finish-to-start, start-to-start, and finish-to-finish links on Pro, and no critical path
✓ Auto-computed + highlighted
Saved baselines
Not documented on its pricing page or timeline docs
✓ Multiple baselines, Gantt overlay
Tasks shorter than a day
Start and due dates by the day; estimates in points, sizes or time (docs, 31 October 2026)
Onplana Schedule plans to the minute (type 2h or 90m); the web app schedules in whole working days
AI architecture
✓ Plane AI and agents from Pro (its pricing page), and an open-source MCP server
Dual-provider (Claude + Azure OpenAI), on every plan, including Free
Dev-issue tracking primitives
✓ Cycles and modules on every plan; GitLab/GitHub sync from Pro
Issue tracking via tasks (general-purpose)
Self-host option
✓ Open-source self-host
No install kit; Enterprise+ is a dedicated deployment Onplana runs in your Azure subscription
Free tier
✓ Free for up to 12 users
✓ 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
iOS and Android apps (Plane Mobile)
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.
"Audience" rows mark category fit, not winner. Tie rows indicate rough parity within shared scope.

Different job, different screen

Portfolios and programmes, not a dev backlog

Plane's cycles and modules are built around shipping software, and they are good at it. This is the other end of the problem: many projects at once, with health, budget and progress rolled up for people who have to report on all of them.

The portfolio view. A different audience from a dev-issue backlog.

Validate the audience-fit question with your own data

PMO Maturity

Diagnostic: governance-heavy or governance-light tooling? PMOs vs dev teams answer differently.

Open

Migration Preview

Have a .mpp? Upload it; if Plane is your audience, you wouldn't need this anyway.

Open

AI capabilities

See exactly what Onplana's AI does, plan generation, risk detection, intake conversion.

Open

Frequently asked questions

Aren't Plane.so and Onplana basically the same thing?▾
No, different category. Plane.so is software dev issue tracking built around AI (cycles, modules, sprint backlog, GitHub/GitLab sync, OSS-friendly self-host). Onplana is AI-native PMO and portfolio management (.mpp import, critical path, baselines, 12-stage governance, capacity across projects). Both bake AI into core workflows, but the workflows are aimed at completely different teams. The name similarity is unfortunate; the products are not.
If I'm a software dev team, which one should I pick?▾
Plane, almost certainly. Plane was designed around dev-team primitives (cycles, modules, issue triage, GitHub integration, OSS self-host) that Onplana doesn't ship. Onplana works for dev teams as a general-purpose PM tool, Kanban + Gantt + sprints, but Plane will fit the daily dev-team rhythm better.
If I'm a PMO running formal program management, which one?▾
Onplana. PMO criteria, native .mpp import (Microsoft Project migration), critical path, baselines, multi-stage governance, capacity planning across projects, are out of scope for Plane's issue-tracker model. Plane is excellent at what it does; PMO scheduling depth isn't what it does.
Both build AI into the product. What's the practical difference?▾
Plane's AI is integrated into the dev-issue workflow: its AI page (read 3 November 2026) describes structuring a project from a description, summarising cycle progress and project health, drafting briefs, triaging and labelling new requests, and agents you assign work to, and its pricing page lists AI agents and credits from Pro. Onplana's AI is integrated into the PMO workflow, generating project plans from one-line descriptions, detecting schedule risks, summarising portfolio status, parsing intake forms into projects. Same architectural choice, different application surface.
Will name confusion hurt either tool?▾
It creates some friction in search results, where both appear for "AI-native project management". Onplana uses the phrase because it's the most accurate description of the architecture; Plane's own pages say it was built around AI. We're not going to drop the phrase, but we acknowledge the overlap in positioning and try to be specific about audience here.

PMO audience? Onplana fits.

If you're choosing between the two for project/portfolio work, not dev-issue tracking, try Onplana free.

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