Microsoft Project, Project Online, Planner, Planner Premium, Plan 3 — the naming has become genuinely confusing, and Microsoft hasn’t helped. Project Online retires on 30 September 2026. Project for the web is already gone. Here is what remains, what replaces what, and which option is actually right for your work.
Microsoft Project Professional 2024 — one-time purchase
Full critical path, resource levelling, baseline tracking, and Gantt scheduling. No per-user monthly fees. One licence, one machine, works permanently.
Where things stand in 2026
A year ago you could be forgiven for losing track of what Microsoft was doing with its project management stack. The answer, clearer now, is consolidation — and some of it has happened without much fanfare.
Project for the web retired on 1 August 2025. Its features were folded into Microsoft Planner, which Microsoft rebranded and repositioned as the unified home for everything from simple task lists to mid-complexity project delivery. If you were using Project for the web, you are now using Planner whether you know it or not.
The cloud service — Project Online — retires on 30 September 2026. Microsoft stopped selling new Project Online-only licences on 1 October 2025. From 1 April 2026, new Project Web App sites cannot be created. The platform is winding down. If your organisation still runs Project Online, migration is not optional — it is a deadline.
Desktop editions are a different matter entirely. Project Standard 2024 and Project Professional 2024 are perpetual licences with LTSC support. They are not subscription products, they are not retiring, and the chaos in the cloud tiers does not touch them.
The microsoft project planner online comparison: what each option does
| Feature | Project Professional 2024 | Planner Basic | Planner Premium (Plan 1) | Planner + Project Plan 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | — one-time | Included in M365 | ~£8/user/month | ~£24/user/month |
| Licence type | Perpetual | Subscription | Subscription | Subscription |
| Gantt chart | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Task dependencies | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Critical path analysis | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Resource levelling | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Baseline tracking | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Budget & cost tracking | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Works on Mac | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-project portfolio view | Limited | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Best for | Project managers running complex schedules | Teams tracking simple tasks within M365 | Teams needing timelines without desktop Project | Organisations managing multiple projects with shared resources |
Planner Basic: fine for what it is
If your team is already on Microsoft 365 and needs a shared board to track who is doing what by when, Planner Basic does the job. It is included in most M365 plans, it is in Teams, and it is simple enough that people actually use it. For sprint planning, marketing campaign tracking, or onboarding checklists, there is nothing wrong with it.
The moment you need dependencies — task B cannot start until task A is complete — you have hit the ceiling. Planner Basic has no dependency linking, no timeline view, and no way to see what is blocking what. For any project where sequencing matters, it is the wrong tool.
Planner Premium: the genuine middle ground
Planner Premium (sold as Planner Plan 1) is what Microsoft previously called Project for the web. The rebrand happened in 2025 and has caused a fair amount of confusion, but the product is solid. You get timeline views, task dependencies, and structured project delivery in a browser — no desktop install required, accessible from Teams.
At around £8 per user per month it is the right step up from Basic for teams that have genuinely outgrown task boards. The gap between Planner Premium and Plan 3 is significant though: no critical path, no resource levelling, no baseline tracking. If a project manager asks you whether Planner Premium replaces Project Professional, the answer is no — not for any schedule-heavy delivery work.
For team leads, ops managers, and project coordinators who need visibility and structure without a full PM tool, it earns its place. For qualified project managers running multi-phase delivery, it does not.
Plan 3: expensive unless you actually need the whole stack
Planner and Project Plan 3 sits at around £24 per user per month and unlocks critical path, resource management, and baseline tracking through the web. For a PMO managing multiple live projects with shared resource pools, it makes sense. For a single project manager running one complex programme, it almost certainly does not. Full details on what each tier includes are on Microsoft’s Planner pricing page.
A single Project Professional 2024 licence costs — as a one-time purchase. At £24 per month, Plan 3 breaks even against that in under a year — and then keeps charging. If you only need the scheduling power and not the portfolio layer or the multi-user web collaboration, the desktop licence is cheaper by a significant margin over any reasonable planning horizon. The Project 2024 vs Plan 3 comparison covers the cost arithmetic in detail.
Plan 5, for what it is worth, is now End of Sale as of 1 May 2026. New purchases are no longer available.
Who still needs Project Professional 2024
The desktop application has not been made redundant by any of this. If anything, the subscription tier complexity makes the case for it more clearly.
Project Professional 2024 is the right choice when you need full Gantt scheduling with dependencies and constraints, critical path analysis, resource levelling across a complex schedule, baseline comparison to track schedule variance, budget and cost tracking at task level, and the ability to work offline — on a train, on site, wherever the work happens.
It is also the right choice if your organisation has one or two project managers who need serious tooling and the rest of the team just needs Planner Basic for their task lists. Paying per-user Plan 3 rates for an entire team when only two people need the PM depth is an expensive way to solve a small problem.
Project Professional 2024 supports the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) and receives security updates through 2029. It is not going anywhere. For a detailed look at what the application covers day to day, the Project Professional 2024 in practice guide is worth reading before you buy.
The honest call
Most of the noise around “Project vs Planner” is people trying to decide whether Planner has become good enough to replace a real project management tool. For complex delivery work, it has not. The gap between Planner Premium and Project Professional on critical path and resource management alone is substantial.
Where Planner has genuinely improved is the middle ground — teams that need more than a to-do list but less than a full PM application. Planner Premium handles that well. A few years ago that cohort had no good Microsoft-native option. They do now.
For anyone coming off Project Online, Planner Premium is the natural landing point for most teams. Plan 3 for organisations with genuine portfolio complexity. Project Professional 2024 for the project managers who need the desktop tool. These are not competing options — they serve different jobs, and for most organisations the answer is a combination rather than a single replacement.
The subscription model question — whether paying per user per month indefinitely makes more sense than a one-time perpetual licence — is the same argument that applies across the Microsoft stack. The Office 2024 vs Microsoft 365 comparison covers the cost logic in full if that angle is relevant to your decision.
Common questions
Project Online is retiring on 30 September 2026. Project for the web retired on 1 August 2025. Project desktop — Project Standard 2024 and Project Professional 2024 — is not being discontinued. Both are perpetual licences available for purchase, with LTSC support through 2029. The retirements affect only the cloud-hosted subscription tiers.
Microsoft’s stated replacement is Microsoft Planner — specifically Planner Premium (Plan 1) for most teams, and Planner and Project Plan 3 for organisations with more complex portfolio requirements. Neither is a direct functional equivalent for everything Project Online offered, particularly around on-premises integration and legacy reporting. For a full breakdown of the migration options, see the Project Online retirement guide.
Planner Premium (Plan 1) cannot. Critical path analysis is available in Planner and Project Plan 3. If critical path is a requirement, you need either Plan 3 or Project Professional 2024 desktop — the desktop application remains the most capable option for schedule-intensive work.
Licensing and cost
Yes. Project Professional 2024 is a perpetual licence — one payment, one machine, no recurring fees. It installs on Windows and activates through Microsoft’s standard volume licensing process. Security updates are included through October 2029 via the LTSC channel. It does not require a Microsoft 365 subscription to run.
Planner Basic is the task management tool included with most Microsoft 365 subscriptions — Kanban boards, task assignment, due dates, checklist items. Planner Premium (Plan 1) adds timeline and Gantt views, task dependencies, goal tracking, and structured project templates. It costs around £8 per user per month on top of your M365 subscription. The jump matters if you are managing anything with sequencing or delivery milestones; for straightforward task tracking, Basic is sufficient.
No. Project Professional 2024 is Windows only. Mac users who need Project-level scheduling must use Planner Premium or Plan 3 through the browser, or run Project in a Windows virtual machine. There has never been a native Mac version of Microsoft Project desktop, and there are no signs that is changing.
For a single project manager, almost certainly yes. Project Professional 2024 costs — as a one-time purchase. Plan 3 at approximately £24 per user per month means you have spent more than the desktop licence cost within a year. Plan 3 makes more sense when you need multi-user web access, portfolio-level reporting across multiple projects, or resource management across a team — capabilities that go beyond what one desktop install provides. The Project 2024 vs Plan 3 guide covers the decision in detail.
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.
