Microsoft Project vs monday.com vs Asana After Sept 2026
Project Online retires on September 30, 2026, which makes this a migration decision rather than a renewal decision. Teams that need genuine scheduling depth and already pay for Microsoft 365 should price Planner Plan 1 or Plan 3 first. Teams whose real problem is coordination rather than critical path usually end up weighing monday.com Standard against Asana Starter.
What the September 30, 2026 date actually changes
Microsoft’s Planner FAQ gives two dates. October 1, 2025 was the end of sale for Project Online-only SKUs to new customers. September 30, 2026 is the official retirement date, and Microsoft states that existing customers keep full support until then, with current projects, integrations and team member access remaining functional through that period.
Three details narrow the scope before anyone panics. The retirement does not affect Project desktop, Project Server Subscription Edition or Planner. Project for the web was already retired in August 2025, with users redirected to Planner for the web. And Microsoft says it does not provide a migration tool at this time, recommending instead that customers work with an experienced partner equipped with the right tooling. That last point is the most underestimated line item in the whole exercise, because the licensing decision is usually cheaper than the data move.
The replacement Microsoft points to is the new Planner, sold as Planner Plan 1 and Planner and Project Plan 3 above the Planner experience bundled with Microsoft 365.
Who should even consider each of the three
Microsoft Planner Plan 1 and Plan 3
Stay inside Microsoft if your project data already sits in Dataverse and the Power Platform, if Teams is where delivery conversations happen, or if you need dependency logic beyond shifting dates forward. On Microsoft’s Planner plans and pricing page, Plan 1 is $10.00 per user/month paid yearly and covers premium plans, backlogs and sprints, task dependencies, and Calendar, Timeline (Gantt) and People views. Planner and Project Plan 3 is $30.00 per user/month paid yearly and adds portfolios, baselines and critical path, and advanced dependencies with lead and lag. That Plan 3 feature set is the closest thing to what most teams were actually using Project Online for.
Planner Plan 5 exists in Microsoft’s wider lineup, but it is not priced on that public Planner comparison page. Confirm the figure with Microsoft licensing or your reseller rather than trusting a third-party number. If you want a wider view of how the Microsoft scheduling stack compares against a spreadsheet-style platform, our Smartsheet and Microsoft Project comparison covers the same ground from the grid side.
monday.com
monday.com suits teams whose bottleneck was intake, ownership and status rather than schedule mathematics: marketing calendars, client delivery, operations queues, cross-department requests. On monday.com’s pricing page, the Work Management plans run Basic $9, Standard $12 and Pro $19 per seat/month billed annually, with a free tier limited to 2 seats and up to 3 boards. Standard is the first tier with Timeline and Gantt views, calendar view, guest access, and 250 automation plus 250 integration actions per month. Pro raises those to 25,000 actions each and adds private boards, time tracking, advanced columns and dependency-capable advanced column types.
Ex-Project Online admins tend to like how quickly monday boards absorb intake forms and status reporting, and dislike how much rebuilding a dependency-heavy schedule takes. If sprint-style delivery is part of the plan, our monday.com sprint setup walkthrough shows the structure to build rather than the one monday suggests by default.
Asana
Asana is the choice when the work is cross-functional, ongoing and reporting-heavy rather than contract-scheduled. On Asana’s pricing page, Personal is free for 2 users, Starter is $10.99 per user/month billed annually ($13.49 billed monthly), and Advanced is $24.99 ($30.49 monthly). Starter removes the user seat cap and includes Timeline and Gantt views plus unlimited automations, which is the single biggest structural difference from monday’s action-metered tiers. Advanced is where unlimited portfolios arrive, and portfolios are usually the feature a former PMO actually wants.
A six-step decision checklist before you migrate
- Inventory what has to survive the move, not what exists. Pull the active project list, custom fields, resource assignments and any reporting that finance or clients depend on. Everything else is history you can archive as exports rather than pay to migrate.
- Decide whether you need a scheduling engine or a work tracker. If baselines, critical path or lead-and-lag dependencies are contractual, Plan 3 or the unaffected Project desktop and Project Server Subscription Edition are the honest answers. If nobody has opened a baseline in a year, monday.com or Asana will do more for the same money.
- Fix your seat count before you compare prices. monday.com uses bucket pricing: paid plans start at a minimum of 3 seats and then ascend in multiples of 5, so a team of 6 buys 10 seats. Asana adds seats in increments of 1 between 2 and 5 total users, then 5 up to 30 users, 10 up to 100, 25 up to 500 and 50 above that. Both round you upward.
- Count your monthly automation and integration actions. A single busy board that fires status updates into Slack or Teams will burn through monday’s 250 Standard actions in days, which pushes the real comparison to Pro at $19. Asana includes unlimited automations from Starter, so heavy automation users often find Asana cheaper than the headline suggests.
- Rebuild one real project, not a template. Take your most dependency-heavy live project and reconstruct it in each shortlisted tool during the trial. Note the .mpp problem while you are there: importing a Project desktop file is not available in Planner directly and has to go through the Planner Power App.
- Book migration help and set a cutover date well before September 30, 2026. Microsoft points customers at its partner network for Project Online to Planner moves, and those partners get busier the closer the date gets. Treat August 2026 as your practical deadline, not September.
How the three line up on paper
| Factor | Microsoft Planner | monday.com | Asana |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry paid tier (annual) | Plan 1, $10.00 user/month | Basic, $9 seat/month | Starter, $10.99 user/month |
| Tier most migrating teams need | Plan 3, $30.00 user/month | Standard $12 or Pro $19 | Starter $10.99 or Advanced $24.99 |
| Free tier | Planner in Microsoft 365 (with a qualifying subscription) | 2 seats, up to 3 boards | Personal, 2 users |
| Scheduling depth | Baselines, critical path, lead and lag on Plan 3 | Gantt and dependency columns, no critical path baselines | Timeline and Gantt views, no baseline engine |
| Automation limits | Not metered per action on these tiers | 250 actions/month Standard, 25,000 Pro | Unlimited automations from Starter |
| Seat purchase rule | Per user licence | Minimum 3 seats, then multiples of 5 | Increments of 1, then 5, 10, 25, 50 |
| Portfolio rollup | Portfolios on Plan 3 | Cross-board dashboards | Unlimited portfolios on Advanced |
What ten seats costs a year
Using only list prices from the four official pages linked above, annual billing, ten users:
- Planner Plan 1: $10.00 x 10 = $100 per month, $1,200 a year
- Asana Starter: $10.99 x 10 = $109.90 per month, $1,318.80 a year
- monday.com Standard: $12 x 10 = $120 per month, $1,440 a year
- monday.com Pro: $19 x 10 = $190 per month, $2,280 a year
- Asana Advanced: $24.99 x 10 = $249.90 per month, $2,998.80 a year
- Planner and Project Plan 3: $30.00 x 10 = $300 per month, $3,600 a year
Ten is a flattering number because it lands cleanly on monday’s seat buckets. At twelve users you buy fifteen monday seats, so Standard becomes $180 per month and Pro becomes $285, while Asana’s increments of 5 push you to fifteen seats too. Only the Microsoft licences track your actual headcount one for one. monday.com’s yearly option carries an 18% discount over monthly billing, and Asana’s monthly rates of $13.49 and $30.49 show the same penalty for staying flexible.
Where each one gets uncomfortable
Microsoft’s weakness is licensing arithmetic and gaps against the product you are leaving. Plan 3 at $30 per user is three times Plan 1, and Planner’s Portfolios feature does not connect to Azure DevOps projects or Project Online projects, which breaks the reporting pattern some Roadmap users relied on. Direct .mpp import is missing, Microsoft offers no first-party migration tool, and Plan 5 pricing is not published on the Planner comparison page.
monday.com’s weakness is metering and seat blocks. Action caps of 250 per month on Standard are genuinely low for any team automating status changes, so the practical tier is often Pro at more than double Basic. Bucket pricing means you pay for seats you have not filled, and the free plan’s 2-seat, 3-board ceiling makes it a demo rather than a starting point. Our monday.com versus ClickUp breakdown covers where those caps bite hardest.
Asana’s weakness is the jump to Advanced. Starter is competitive with everything here, but portfolios sit behind a $24.99 per user tier that costs more than monday Pro and closes on Plan 3 territory without matching Plan 3’s scheduling engine. Neither monday.com nor Asana models baselines and critical path the way Project did, so if your contracts reference schedule variance you are choosing to give something up. Our Wrike and Asana comparison is worth reading if resource-heavy delivery is the sticking point, and the ClickUp against Microsoft Project piece covers the same scheduling trade at a lower price point.
Questions teams ask before migrating
Does the retirement affect Microsoft Project desktop?
No. Microsoft’s FAQ states the retirement applies to Project Online and does not affect Project desktop, Project Server Subscription Edition or Planner. Project desktop and Project Server remain available and supported for both existing and new customers, so a desktop-scheduling workflow can continue past September 2026.
Is there a Microsoft tool to move Project Online data to Planner?
Not from Microsoft directly. The FAQ says Microsoft does not provide a migration tool at this time and recommends working with an experienced partner. Several Planner partners have built migration solutions for Project Online to Planner for the web, and Microsoft publishes a partner locator for finding them.
Is monday.com or Asana cheaper for a ten-person team?
Asana Starter at $10.99 per user/month annually works out to $1,318.80 a year for ten users, against $1,440 for monday.com Standard at $12 per seat. If you need monday Pro for its 25,000 automation actions, the gap widens to $2,280 a year versus Asana Starter’s unlimited automations.
Can the new Planner handle portfolio reporting like Project Online did?
Partly. Portfolios are available with Planner and Project Plan 3 and replace the retired Roadmaps feature, but Microsoft notes Portfolios only shows premium plans and does not connect to Azure DevOps projects or Project Online projects. Verify your specific reporting chain during a Plan 3 trial before committing.
Do we have to move everything before September 30, 2026?
Yes, if the data matters. Support continues until that date, but the service is retired afterwards. Build your export and migration schedule to finish weeks early, because partner capacity tightens as the deadline approaches and validating migrated schedules always takes longer than the move itself.
