Microsoft Project Online retires on 30 September 2026. After that date, your PWA environment goes dark — no access, no data recovery, no extensions. If you’re still running on Project Online, you need a plan before April 2026 at the latest.
- 5 Sep 2025 Microsoft officially announces Project Online retirement
- 1 Oct 2025 End of sale for new Project Online-only SKUs
- 1 Apr 2026 No new PWA sites or tenants; existing empty PWA sites become inaccessible
- 30 Sep 2026 Project Online retires — all environments and data become inaccessible
For individual project managers and small teams, Microsoft Project Professional 2024 is the cleanest exit. One-time cost, no ongoing subscription, full desktop power. No expiry.
Get Project Professional 2024 — £239What’s actually being retired
Project Online is the cloud-hosted, SharePoint-based version of Microsoft Project — the one sold as Project Plan 3 and Project Plan 5 for the past decade, giving organisations a Project Web App (PWA) environment in the cloud. Microsoft announced its retirement on 5 September 2025, citing legacy architecture that can’t support the AI and automation features it wants to build.
What is not being retired: Project desktop, Project Server Subscription Edition, and Planner. If your teams use the locally installed Project Professional or Project Standard, nothing changes for you. The retirement is specific to Project Online and the cloud-based PWA infrastructure sitting on top of it.
What happens to your data
After 30 September 2026, you cannot access your Project Online environment. Projects, schedules, resource data, custom reports — none of it. Microsoft’s advice is straightforward: export and back up before the deadline.
Data export options depend on what you need to preserve. Microsoft provides migration guidance for moving to Project Server Subscription Edition using tools like PowerShell scripts. For organisations moving to Planner, there’s no automated migration path — the data model is too different. You’re essentially starting fresh and importing manually what can be imported.
If your PWA environment holds years of project history used for reporting, Power BI connections, or audit purposes, deal with it well before September. Data migration from a deprecated platform is the sort of thing that reliably takes three times longer than estimated.
Microsoft’s official transition paths
Microsoft lists four options in its official retirement announcement. Each suits a different profile:
Planner with premium features (Plan 3 or Plan 5) — Microsoft’s preferred destination. The new Planner merges the old To Do, Planner, and Project for the Web into one product, with Gantt charts, baselines, dependencies, and the Project Manager AI agent available on premium licences. Plan 3 is £23.10/user/month; Plan 5 is £41.50/user/month (both billed annually). That’s the ongoing subscription cost, indefinitely, for every project manager seat.
Project Server Subscription Edition — The on-premises option for organisations that need to retain the full PWA interface and advanced enterprise PPM functionality. Significant infrastructure and licensing cost, but keeps your existing project management workflows largely intact. The right choice if you run a large PMO with complex resource and portfolio management that Planner won’t replicate.
Dynamics 365 Project Operations — Aimed at professional services firms that need timesheet management, resource scheduling, and project financials integrated. A different product category entirely — not a like-for-like Project Online replacement.
Project desktop (Standard 2024 or Professional 2024) — The perpetual licence option. Listed fourth in Microsoft’s own announcement, but for a large portion of Project Online users — those who never really needed the cloud collaboration layer and just wanted full-featured project scheduling — it’s the most practical answer.
The case for going perpetual
Project Online’s subscription model was always an odd fit for project managers who work independently or in small teams. The cloud PPM features — portfolio management, enterprise resource pools, PWA reporting dashboards — are powerful in large PMO environments. For a project manager running five to fifteen projects at a time on a desktop machine, they’re largely unused overhead.
Project Professional 2024 does everything the desktop client component of Plan 3 does. Gantt charts, critical path, resource levelling, baseline tracking, earned value analysis, the full MPP file format. It integrates with Excel and SharePoint when you need it to. The difference is that it costs £239 once, not £277 a year.
Five years of Plan 3 for a single user costs over £1,380. Five years of Plan 5 costs over £2,490. Project Professional 2024 at £239 stays at £239 — and doesn’t expire.
Subscription costs based on published UK pricing: Plan 3 £23.10/user/month, Plan 5 £41.50/user/month. Project Professional 2024 perpetual: £239 one-time.
Microsoft Project Professional 2024
- Full Gantt chart and critical path scheduling
- Resource management and levelling
- Baseline tracking and earned value analysis
- Timeline views and reporting
- Connects to Project Server and SharePoint
- Supports MPP file format (full compatibility)
- LTSC channel — Long-Term Servicing support
- 1 PC activation — instant digital delivery
Frequently asked questions
No. The retirement applies to Project Online — the cloud-hosted, SharePoint-based version. Project desktop (Professional and Standard) is not affected and remains available as a perpetual licence. Microsoft has confirmed this explicitly in its official retirement announcement. Project Server Subscription Edition also continues. The confusion stems from the fact that "Microsoft Project" refers to several products — the one being retired is specifically Project Online and its PWA environment.
Microsoft is steering users towards Planner with premium features (Plan 3 or Plan 5), which now combines the old Planner, Project for the Web, and To Do into a single product. For enterprise PPM requirements, Project Server Subscription Edition is the on-premises replacement. For individual and small-team use, Project desktop — available as Project Standard 2024 or Project Professional 2024 — covers the scheduling and resource management workload without the subscription. Planner adds AI features (the Project Manager agent) but requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence to access most of them.
Project Online uses a Project Web App (PWA) site, typically accessed via a URL like yourorg.sharepoint.com/sites/pwa, and manages projects using the .mpp scheduling engine in the cloud. Project for the Web (now rebranded as Planner) is accessed at project.microsoft.com or through Planner in Teams, and uses a different Dataverse-based data model — it doesn't use .mpp files. If your organisation runs resource pools, timesheets, or PWA dashboards in SharePoint, you're on Project Online. If you're accessing tasks and timelines through the new Planner interface, you're already on the replacement product.
No, and it never has been. Project is sold separately from Microsoft 365, either as a standalone subscription (Plan 1, Plan 3, or Plan 5) or as a perpetual desktop licence (Standard or Professional). The basic version of Planner is included in Microsoft 365 business and enterprise plans, but that covers task boards and simple scheduling — not the full project management feature set. Project Professional 2024 as a perpetual licence is the most cost-effective route for users who want the complete desktop application without committing to a monthly fee per seat.
As a subscription, Planner and Project Plan 3 costs approximately £23.10 per user per month (annual commitment), and Plan 5 approximately £41.50 per user per month. Over five years, that's roughly £1,386 and £2,490 respectively for a single seat. As a perpetual licence, Project Professional 2024 is £239 — a one-time cost with no renewal. For project managers who don't need the enterprise cloud features, the perpetual licence is the straightforward choice.
Gary Walsh is the Head of Tech Support at Software Supplies, with more than 20 years in the IT industry. Fully Microsoft-certified and experienced across the full business software stack — from Windows and Office to cloud infrastructure and device management — Gary delivers practical, no-nonsense advice that helps users and businesses get the most from their technology.
