Microsoft Project Pricing: Planner Plans, Project Standard and Professional

If you search for Microsoft Project today, you land on a page about Planner. Microsoft has folded its cloud project tools into the Planner brand, kept two desktop editions you buy once, and retired the old Project Online service. The result is four ways to pay, from $10 a month to $1,129.99 up front, and the right one depends less on features than on how many people need it and for how long.

The prices below are Microsoft's US dollar list prices from its en-us pricing pages at the time of our last update. Microsoft quotes its cloud plans per user per month, paid yearly.

Microsoft Project pricing at a glance

Microsoft also sells Project Server Subscription Edition for companies that run their own servers. It is sold through partners, with no price on the page, and it is beyond what a small business usually needs.

Planner in Microsoft 365: the version you may already have

Every Microsoft 365 business plan includes Planner. On the US page, Business Basic is $7 a user a month paid yearly, Business Standard with Copilot is $23.50 and Business Premium with Copilot is $32. All three list Planner among their apps, so if your company already pays for Outlook and Teams, you already have it.

What the included version does:

• Task lists with files, checklists and labels.
• Grid, Board, Schedule and Charts views.
• My Day, My Tasks and Assigned to me views across your plans.
• Basic plan templates and custom templates.
• The ability to view task dependencies and custom task fields.

What it doesn't do: there is no Timeline (Gantt) view, no sprints or backlogs and no goals. That is where many small teams find the line. If your work is "who is doing what by Friday", the included Planner may be enough and costs nothing extra. If you need to see how a delay in one task pushes everything after it, you need a paid plan.

What to watch: you need a work account. Microsoft 365 administrators install and enable Planner and assign it to people, so a solo user on a personal Microsoft account can't just switch it on.

Planner Plan 1: $10 a user a month

Planner Plan 1 costs $10 per user per month, paid yearly, and auto-renews each year. It adds the features most people mean when they say "project software":

• Timeline (Gantt), Calendar and People views.
• Sub-tasks, milestones and finish-to-start task dependencies.
• Backlogs and sprints for teams that work in short cycles.
• Premium plan templates and project goals.
• Create up to ten custom task fields.
• View portfolios (creating them needs Plan 3).

It works in the Planner web app and in Microsoft Teams. It does not include the Project desktop app, and you can view portfolios but not create them.

Choose it if your team plans in weeks and months, wants a Gantt chart that lives inside Teams, and doesn't need baselines or a critical path. For a team of five, Plan 1 is $600 a year ($10 × 5 × 12).

Planner and Project Plan 3: $30 a user a month

Planner and Project Plan 3 costs $30 per user per month, paid yearly. It includes everything in Plan 1 and adds:

• Task history, to see who changed what.
• The Assignments view, to set effort per person and track it.
• Create portfolios across several plans.
• Baselines, to compare the plan with what actually happened.
• Critical path, to see which tasks decide the finish date.
• Advanced dependencies with lead and lag.
• The Project desktop app, installable on up to 5 PCs per user.

That last line is the reason most people buy Plan 3. Microsoft's own FAQ says the desktop client that comes with Plan 3 has nearly the same core features as Project Professional 2024, plus Kanban task boards, but it only works while the Plan 3 subscription is active.

Choose it if you are the person who builds and defends the schedule: construction phases, client launches, anything with a contract date. For a team of five, everyone on Plan 3 is $1,800 a year. Most small teams don't need that; see the mixed setup below.

Project Standard 2024 and Project Professional 2024

Microsoft still sells the desktop software as a one-time purchase.

Project Standard 2024 handles task, schedule and cost management, with Calendar, Gantt Chart, Network Diagram and Task Sheet views, milestones, critical path and resource leveling. It is the classic "MS Project" that schedulers learned years ago, in its current version.

Project Professional 2024 adds comprehensive resource management, timesheets for payroll, project tracking and invoicing, and the ability to connect to Project Server Subscription Edition. Microsoft says the license is perpetual: once activated, the software doesn't expire.

What to watch:

• One user, one PC. Each license covers one person on one computer. Two schedulers means two licenses: $1,359.98 for Standard or $2,259.98 for Professional.
• No cloud sharing on its own. The desktop editions save .mpp files. Your team doesn't see a live plan in Teams the way they would with Planner, unless you pair it with Project Server.
• Version updates. The license is for Project 2024. The break-even math below assumes you keep that version rather than buying a newer one.

Which is cheaper over time

A one-time price looks expensive next to $10 a month, but it never renews. The chart shows what one user pays after one, three and five years.

The break-even points, per user:

• Project Standard vs Planner Plan 1: $679.99 ÷ $120 a year is about 5.7 years. Plan 1 stays cheaper for more than five years.
• Project Professional vs Plan 3: $1,129.99 ÷ $360 a year is about 3.1 years. If you would keep Plan 3 for longer than three years only for the desktop app, Professional is cheaper.
• Project Standard vs Plan 3: $679.99 ÷ $360 a year is about 1.9 years.

The cost isn't the only difference. Plan 1 is a team tool in the browser and Teams; Project Standard is a desktop app for one scheduler. Compare the work, not just the price.

What a small team actually pays

Microsoft's own FAQ makes a mixed setup possible. People who only have Planner in Microsoft 365 get editing access to plans created by a user with a paid Planner license: they can be assigned tasks, change start and due dates and add attachments. To open the Timeline, People and Goals views they need Planner Plan 1, and the Assignments view needs Plan 3.

So a small team doesn't have to license everyone at the top tier. Three common setups, priced for a business that already pays for Microsoft 365:

These figures are on top of your Microsoft 365 subscription and before tax. If your business doesn't use Microsoft 365 yet, add at least Business Basic at $7 a user a month, $420 a year for five people, to get Planner, Teams and business email in the first place.

The "one project manager" row is the one we would start with: the person who owns the schedule gets baselines, critical path and Project desktop, and everyone else sees the timeline and updates their own tasks.

Copilot in Planner

The Planner pricing page lists two Copilot options, both paid yearly:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month, shown as the add-on for Planner.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (add-on) at $21 per user per month, for up to 300 users who already have an eligible Microsoft 365 Business plan. Microsoft currently shows it on a promotion "now starting from $18"; the sums below use the $21 list price.

In Planner it adds AI-assisted plan creation, status reports generated from plan progress, and a Planner Agent you can assign simple, routine tasks to. Microsoft's FAQ says a Microsoft 365 Copilot license is required to use the Planner Agent.

What to watch: Copilot is priced per user, not per plan. At $30 it doubles the cost of a Plan 3 user ($30 to $60) and quadruples a Plan 1 user ($10 to $40). The $21 Business add-on takes a Plan 1 user to $31 and a Plan 3 user to $51. Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Premium "with Copilot" bundles exist too. Try the plans without Copilot first.

Free trial and cancellation

Planner Plan 1 and Planner and Project Plan 3 each come with a one-month free trial. Microsoft's terms say:

• A credit card is required to sign up.
• The trial converts to a paid subscription automatically when the month ends, unless you cancel during the trial.
• Storage for trials is limited.

Once a paid subscription starts, Microsoft gives a 7-day cancellation window for a prorated refund. When a subscription is canceled, its associated data is deleted, so export your plans before you cancel.

Project Online and the old plan names

Two changes trip up people reading older guides:

The plans were renamed. What used to be Project Plan 1 and Project Plan 3 now appear as Planner Plan 1 and Planner and Project Plan 3. Older articles also price a Plan 5 tier for portfolio and resource management. Microsoft's US Planner page doesn't list a Plan 5 price today, so we leave it out; ask Microsoft or a partner if you need that tier.

Project Online is gone. Microsoft's Planner blog said Project Online "will be retired on September 30, 2026", and that date has passed. The options Microsoft names for customers moving off it include Planner premium plans for work management, and Project Server Subscription Edition for advanced portfolio and resource scenarios. If someone quotes you a Project Online setup, it is out of date.

Microsoft Project vs other project software

Microsoft Project makes the most sense when your company already runs on Microsoft 365: plans live in Teams, Planner works with Outlook, and sign-in is the account you already have. For a team that lives in Google Workspace or Slack, that advantage disappears.

The alternatives small businesses compare it with:

• Smartsheet works like a spreadsheet with Gantt charts, which suits teams moving from Excel. See Smartsheet pricing.
• Wrike covers resource planning and request forms for client-service teams. See Wrike pricing.
• Asana, monday.com and others are compared side by side in our best project management software guide, and the dedicated timeline tools in Gantt chart software.
• If budget is zero, start with free project management software, which includes the Planner you may already have.

If you are also weighing Microsoft's sales software, our Dynamics 365 pricing guide covers what its CRM costs per user.

Is Microsoft Project worth it for a small business?

Choose Planner in Microsoft 365 if you already pay for Microsoft 365 and your projects are task lists with due dates. It costs nothing more.

Choose Planner Plan 1 at $10 a user if your team needs a Gantt timeline and dependencies inside Teams. It is the best value in the lineup.

Choose Planner and Project Plan 3 at $30 for the one or two people who build detailed schedules with baselines and a critical path, and leave everyone else on Plan 1 or the included Planner.

Choose Project Standard 2024 or Professional 2024 if a single scheduler wants desktop software you pay for once and keep, and the team doesn't need to edit the plan live. Over three years or more, Professional costs less than renting Plan 3 for the same person.