Most teams that ask me about Microsoft Planner vs monday.com already own Planner. It comes with Microsoft 365 business plans, it lives inside Teams, and IT has already approved it. So the real question isn’t “which tool is better?” It’s “is Planner good enough, or is the gap big enough to pay for another platform?”
I implement work-management tools for a living through SSPM, a Smartsheet Premier Aligned Partner, and I’ve cleaned up plenty of Planner tenants and monday.com accounts. Both tools are good at different things. Picking the wrong one usually doesn’t show up in week one. It shows up three months later, when someone asks for a cross-project dashboard or a dependency chain, and the tool simply doesn’t do it at the tier you bought.
Prices below come from Microsoft’s Planner plans and pricing page and monday.com pricing, checked October 5, 2026. For monday’s full tier breakdown, see our monday.com pricing guide.
The short answer
- Stay on Planner if your work is mostly task lists inside Microsoft 365, your projects rarely have more than one or two handoffs, and you’d rather not add another vendor.
- Upgrade to Planner Plan 1 ($10/user/month) if you need a Gantt-style timeline, dependencies, sprints and goals, but your people live in Teams and Outlook all day.
- Pick monday.com if you need one place for project tracking, intake, dashboards and automations that non-technical managers can build themselves, and you can live with another login.
- Don’t buy Planner and Project Plan 3 for everyone. At $30 a user it’s priced for schedulers who need baselines and critical path, not for the people who just tick off tasks.
What each one actually is in 2026
Microsoft Planner is now one app with several tiers. The basic version is included with Microsoft 365 and gives you grid, board, schedule and chart views, custom fields, and the ability to see dependencies. Planner Plan 1 adds sub-tasks, premium templates, backlogs and sprints, finish-to-start dependencies, a timeline (Gantt) view, calendar and People views, goals and milestones. Planner and Project Plan 3 adds baselines, critical path, lead and lag on dependencies, portfolios and the Project desktop app.
That last point matters. Microsoft folded the old Project for the web into Planner, so “Planner” can mean anything from a free Kanban board to a full scheduling tool. When someone on your team says “we use Planner,” ask which plan.
monday.com is a work platform built around boards. Each board is a table of items with typed columns (status, people, dates, numbers, formulas), and you switch the same data between table, Kanban, calendar, timeline and Gantt views. Automations and integrations are counted in monthly “actions.” Dashboards pull from many boards at once.
What it costs for a 15-person team
List prices, billed yearly, per user (Planner) or per seat (monday.com):
| Option | Per user/month | 15 people/month | What you get that you didn’t before |
|---|---|---|---|
| Planner in Microsoft 365 | $0 extra | $0 | Boards, grids, schedules, basic charts |
| Planner Plan 1 | $10 | $150 | Timeline, dependencies, sprints, goals |
| Planner and Project Plan 3 | $30 | $450 | Baselines, critical path, portfolios, desktop app |
| monday.com Standard | $12 | $180 | Timeline and Gantt, calendar, guests, 250 automation actions/month |
| monday.com Pro | $19 | $285 | Dependencies, time tracking, private boards, 25,000 actions/month |
monday.com plans start at three seats and come in seat buckets, so check the bucket above your headcount. Yearly billing is about 18% cheaper than monthly. The Free plan covers two seats, which is fine for a trial but not for a team.
Two things I’ve learned from budget conversations:
- Plan 1 vs monday Standard is closer than it looks. $150 vs $180 a month for 15 people. The real difference is what you need after the timeline: if it’s dependencies and time tracking, monday’s equivalent is Pro at $285.
- Not everyone needs a paid Planner license. You can assign Plan 1 to the people who build and manage plans, while everyone else works on tasks from basic Planner. Check Microsoft’s licensing notes for what unlicensed members can and can’t edit before you commit.
Where the features you’ll ask about live
| Need | Microsoft Planner | monday.com |
|---|---|---|
| Timeline (Gantt) | Plan 1 | Standard and up |
| Create dependencies | Plan 1 (finish-to-start); lead/lag on Plan 3 | Pro and up |
| Baselines | Plan 3 | Pro and up |
| Sprints and backlogs | Plan 1 | Separate monday dev product |
| Automations | Power Automate flows | Built-in; 250 actions/month on Standard |
| Time tracking | Not in basic Planner or Plan 1 | Pro and up |
| AI | Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on ($30/user) | AI credits included from Basic |
monday’s support article on dependencies confirms they’re Pro and Enterprise only. That’s the most common upgrade I see: a team buys Standard for the Gantt chart, then discovers they can’t link tasks. Our monday.com Gantt chart guide walks through the setup.
Where Planner wins
It’s already paid for. For a small team with simple projects, this is hard to beat. No procurement, no security review, no new identity provider.
It sits where people already work. Tasks show up in Teams and in Microsoft To Do. People who will never open a separate project tool will still see their Planner tasks.
Plan 3 is a real scheduling tool. If you have a PMO that needs baselines and critical path and reports to people who think in Microsoft Project, Plan 3 is the cleaner fit. If you’re weighing that path against monday.com and Asana, our Microsoft Project vs monday.com vs Asana comparison goes deeper.
Automation through Power Automate. It’s powerful and it’s already in your tenant. The catch: someone has to build and maintain those flows, and that someone is usually IT, not the project manager.
Where monday.com wins
Managers can build their own process. This is the big one. On monday.com, a marketing lead can design an intake form, a status workflow, an automation (“when status is Done, notify the requester”) and a dashboard in an afternoon. In Planner, the same thing usually means a Power Automate ticket.
Cross-project reporting. monday dashboards pull from many boards. In basic Planner, each plan is mostly its own island.
It isn’t only for projects. I’ve seen monday.com used for content calendars, hiring pipelines, vendor onboarding and light CRM. Planner stays a task and project tool.
Guests and external clients. Standard includes guest access, which agencies and consultancies use constantly.
The downside is the opposite of Planner’s strength: it’s another login, another bill and another place for data to live. If half your team won’t leave Teams, a beautiful monday board won’t get updated.
The integration question
monday.com connects to Microsoft Teams and Outlook, and those integrations count against your monthly integration actions. On Standard that’s 250 a month, which disappears fast if every update pings a Teams channel. If you’re comparing Smartsheet too, our Smartsheet and Microsoft Teams integration guide shows what a deeper Microsoft integration looks like.
Already planning a move? The Microsoft Project to monday.com migration guide covers exporting tasks, mapping fields and what doesn’t survive the trip.
My recommendation by team type
IT, operations or internal teams on Microsoft 365, simple projects: basic Planner. Revisit in six months.
Microsoft-first team that needs timelines and dependencies: Planner Plan 1 for the people who plan; basic Planner for everyone else.
PMO with scheduled, baseline-tracked projects: Planner and Project Plan 3 for schedulers only.
Marketing, agency or cross-functional team that needs intake, dashboards and automation without IT: monday.com Standard, and budget for Pro if you need dependencies or time tracking.
Mixed environment, budget is tight: start on Planner, and run a 30-day monday.com trial on one real workflow before you buy. If the trial board is still being updated in week four, that’s your answer.
FAQ
Is Microsoft Planner free?
The basic Planner experience is included with Microsoft 365 business subscriptions, so there’s no extra charge. Planner Plan 1 ($10 per user/month) and Planner and Project Plan 3 ($30) are paid add-ons.
Does Microsoft Planner have Gantt charts?
Yes, the timeline (Gantt) view is part of Planner Plan 1 and up. Basic Planner has a schedule view but not a full timeline with dependencies.
Is monday.com better than Microsoft Planner?
For flexible, no-code workflows and cross-project dashboards, yes. For teams that live in Microsoft 365 and need simple task tracking, Planner is usually the better value because it’s already included.
Which monday.com plan do I need to replace Planner Plan 1?
Standard gives you the timeline and Gantt views. If you rely on task dependencies or time tracking, you’ll need Pro ($19 per seat/month, billed yearly).
Can monday.com and Planner work together?
monday.com has Microsoft Teams and Outlook integrations. I wouldn’t plan on syncing tasks between monday.com and Planner, though. Pick one as the source of truth for each project.
Pricing and plan features checked against Microsoft and monday.com public pages on October 5, 2026. Prices change; confirm a current quote before you buy.
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