Project Planning Software: 19 Tools Compared for 2026

Most teams do not abandon their project planning software because it lacks features. They abandon it because the plan stops matching reality about three weeks in, and nobody wants to be the person maintaining a schedule everyone has quietly stopped reading.

The scale of that problem is well documented. Only 36% of organisations always or mostly complete projects on time, according to Wellingtone’s State of Project Management Report 2026, and 42% of respondents still spend a day or more manually collating project reports. Buying software has not fixed either number on its own.

That gap between the plan and the work is worth naming before you shop. A lot of what gets sold as project planning software is really work management software with a Gantt view attached. It will hold your task list beautifully and tell you nothing about whether the project is going to land on budget. Both kinds of tool are useful. They are not interchangeable, and buying the wrong one is how teams end up back in a spreadsheet six months later.

Below are 19 project planning tools, split into free and paid, with what each one is genuinely good at, where it runs out of road, and who should be looking at it.

Key takeaways

• Free versions are usually limited by seats rather than features. Most cap you at three to ten users, though Freedcamp and Trello are more generous.
• Gantt charts and task boards solve different problems. If your work has real sequencing, a board will fight you. If it does not, a Gantt chart is overhead you will abandon.
• Flat-rate pricing changes the maths for bigger teams. Nifty and Backlog charge per account rather than per seat, so they get cheaper as you grow.
• Very few planning tools tell you what work costs. Estimates, budgets and billing live in a small subset, and that tends to be what people discover they needed too late.
• Adoption beats features. The tool your team will actually keep updated is the right one, whatever the comparison table says.

What is project planning software?

Project planning software is a tool for defining the work a project requires, sequencing it, assigning it to people, and tracking whether it will finish on time and on budget. It replaces spreadsheets and email threads with a single shared view of tasks, dependencies, deadlines and resources that the whole team works from.

A capable project planning tool answers four questions:

• What has to happen, and in what order?
• Who is doing each piece, and do they have the capacity?
• Are we going to hit the deadline?
• Are we going to hit the budget?

That last question is where most tools go quiet, and it is worth checking early rather than late.

How we compared these tools

Every tool below was assessed against the same criteria, using each vendor’s own documentation and current pricing pages as of August 2026:

• Planning depth: can it handle dependencies, sequencing and milestones, or only flat task lists?
• Free version limits: how many users and projects before you have to pay?
• Pricing model: per user, per project or flat rate, and what that means as your team grows
• Views: Gantt, Kanban, calendar and list, and whether switching between them is genuinely useful
• Cost visibility: can you see what the work costs, not just how long it took?
• Who it fits: team size, industry and working style, since almost none of these tools suit everyone

Pricing reflects the vendor’s advertised starting rate at the time of writing and changes frequently, so confirm before you buy.

Project planning software at a glance

Free project planning software

1. actiTIME

Key features:

• Task estimates and deadlines
• Kanban board
• Cost and billing budgets
• Estimated vs actual reporting

actiTIME approaches planning from the opposite direction to most tools on this list. Instead of starting with a schedule and hoping the work matches it, it starts with the hours your team actually records and works backwards to whether the plan was realistic. You build the work as a customer, project and task hierarchy, set estimates and deadlines on tasks, assign them to people, and then watch the variance appear as time gets logged.

That variance is the useful part. The Estimated vs Actual Time Report shows which tasks are running over and by how much, which is the earliest honest signal that a deadline is in trouble. Budgets can be set at the customer, project or task level in three independent forms: hours, staff cost, and billable amount. Each one gets a progress bar that turns red when you go past it. If you have ever found out a project was unprofitable only after invoicing it, that is the gap this closes.

Time itself can be recorded in a weekly timesheet, a calendar view with start and stop times, a mobile app that works offline, or a Chrome extension. Reporting covers cost of work, billing summaries and profit and loss by customer, project or task.

Limitations: actiTIME is not a Gantt chart tool. There is no dependency mapping or critical path, so if your projects live or die on sequencing, pair it with something that handles that or look at GanttPRO instead. It is also worth knowing that the free version is genuinely free forever for up to three users but does not include estimates, budgets, priorities or custom fields, which are the features that make the planning side work. Those need a paid version.

Pricing: free forever for up to 3 users. Online from $5 per user per month, or $1,500 per month for unlimited users. Self-hosted is a one-time $120 per user. Every version includes human support and free onboarding, and the 30-day trial is full-featured.

Best for: teams of any size that bill for their time or need to know what internal projects actually cost.

Now we can better predict future project requirements

Our company needed a simple way of tracking time used on multiple projects – and actiTIME fit the need. Its interface is simple and easy to maintain. We use the application for time management, task estimation and also to communicate deadline information to our team members. Now having actiTIME we can better predict future project requirements!

Try actiTIME

2. MeisterTask

Key features:

• Project dashboards
• File sharing
• Mobile and desktop apps
• Time tracking

MeisterTask is a task board done carefully rather than a planning suite trying to do everything. The interface is genuinely clean, and the learning curve is short enough that you can get a team onto it in an afternoon without running a training session.

The free version gives you unlimited tasks across three projects, which is more generous on volume than most and stricter on breadth. That trade works well if you run a few long-running projects and badly if you juggle many small ones. You also get mobile and desktop apps, and importers for pulling existing work across from Asana or Trello, which removes most of the pain of switching.

Limitations: this is a board, not a scheduler. There is no dependency handling, so anything with real sequencing will need to live elsewhere. The three-project ceiling on the free version arrives faster than people expect. Paid tiers add collaboration controls, templates and admin rights.

Best for: small teams who want something tidy and immediately usable rather than configurable.

3. Nifty

Key features:

• Project roadmaps
• Milestones
• Team chat
• Document sharing

Nifty bundles the things teams usually spread across three tools: planning, discussion and documents. Roadmaps sit above task lists so you can see milestones and the work underneath them in the same place, and because conversations attach to the work rather than living in a separate chat app, context tends to survive longer.

The pricing model is the real differentiator. Nifty charges a flat monthly rate per account rather than per seat, starting at $79 per month on the Pro tier and rising to $399 for unlimited. For a team of five that is unremarkable. For a team of forty it is dramatically cheaper than anything charging ten dollars a head, and it removes the quiet friction of deciding whether a new contractor is worth a seat.

Limitations: the free tier has storage limits and fewer integrations, and teams with genuinely complex workflows tend to outgrow it. The breadth also means no single area is as deep as a specialist tool.

Best for: growing teams and agencies who want everyone in the tool without counting seats.

4. TeamGantt

Key features:

• Drag-and-drop Gantt charts
• Dependencies
• Kanban and calendar views
• Reporting

If you already think in Gantt charts, TeamGantt is the least painful way to move them out of a spreadsheet. Dependencies, durations and milestones behave the way a scheduler expects, dragging a bar reschedules what follows it, and the whole thing stays readable when a plan gets long.

It also sidesteps a problem most Gantt tools have, which is that they present a wall of complexity before you have entered anything. TeamGantt stays approachable enough that stakeholders who do not live in the tool can still read the chart, which matters more than it sounds when you are trying to get a plan approved.

Pricing is per project rather than per user, starting at $10 per project per month on Basic and $19 on Business, with a construction-focused Builder Edition at $99 per month. That model suits teams running a handful of substantial projects and punishes teams running dozens of small ones.

Limitations: no free version beyond a 14-day trial. Budget and cost features are add-ons rather than core, and it is a planning tool rather than a place your team will do daily work.

Best for: project managers whose plans genuinely have sequencing and who present schedules to clients or stakeholders.

5. Redbooth

Key features:

• Task deadlines
• Board and timeline views
• HD video meetings
• Calendar

Redbooth pairs project planning with communication more tightly than most, including HD video meetings inside the same workspace as the tasks. For distributed teams that keep having to jump from the plan to a separate call tool and back, that consolidation genuinely saves friction.

Work can be viewed as a board, a list or a timeline, and tasks organise by assignee and due date, so the question of what everyone is actually doing this week has a quick answer. There is AI assistance in the planning flow, and mobile apps for iOS and Android for people working away from a desk.

Limitations: Redbooth sits in the middle of the market rather than leading on any single dimension. The Gantt and timeline capabilities are usable but not as deep as a dedicated scheduler, and there is no cost or budget tracking to speak of.

Best for: distributed teams who want tasks and conversation in one workspace.

6. Todoist

Key features:

• Task priorities
• Reminders
• Filters and labels
• Calendar layout

Todoist is the best tool here for one person and a decent one for a small group. It is fast, the natural language input means you can type a due date into the task name and have it parse correctly, and it never gets in the way.

The free tier covers five personal projects with reminders and integrations. Pro at $5 per user per month lifts that to 300 projects and adds calendar layouts and custom reminders, and Business at $8 adds shared templates, activity logs and centralised billing for teams.

Limitations: this is task management, not project planning. There are no dependencies, no Gantt charts, no resource view and no budgets. Using it to run a project with real sequencing means holding the sequence in your head, which works until it does not.

Best for: individuals, freelancers, and small teams coordinating straightforward work.

7. Trello

Key features:

• Kanban boards
• Butler automation
• Power-Ups
• Activity logs

Trello is the tool most people picture when they think of a task board, and its clarity is the reason it has lasted. Cards move across lists, anyone can understand it within a minute, and there is no configuration required before you start.

The free version is unusually generous on people, allowing up to ten collaborators with unlimited cards, which makes it viable for a real team rather than just an evaluation. Butler automation handles repetitive board maintenance without any code, and Power-Ups add calendar views, custom fields and integrations when you need them. Trello also connects to actiTIME, so hours can be tracked against cards without leaving the board.

Standard at $5 per user per month adds unlimited boards and advanced checklists, Premium at $10 adds calendar, timeline and dashboard views, and Enterprise starts around $17.50.

Limitations: the board metaphor breaks down once work has dependencies or spans multiple projects that need rolling up. Timeline views only arrive at Premium, and cross-project reporting is weak.

Best for: teams whose work is genuinely a flow of independent items rather than a sequenced plan.

8. Backlog

Key features:

• Project boards
• Bug tracking
• Git and Subversion hosting
• Wiki

Backlog is built for teams who write software, and its distinguishing feature is that version control lives in the same product as the project plan. Commits link to issues, issues sit on boards and Gantt charts, and the documentation lives in a wiki alongside both. For a development team, that removes a whole category of context switching.

Bug tracking is treated as a first-class function rather than a task type, which matters once you are supporting something in production. It also runs on Linux, which narrows the field considerably.

Pricing is flat rather than per user: free to start, then $35 per month on Starter, $100 on Standard and $175 on Premium. As with Nifty, that model rewards larger teams.

Limitations: Gantt charts sit behind the paid tiers. Outside software development the vocabulary and structure will feel wrong, and non-technical stakeholders tend to find it unwelcoming.

Best for: development teams who want code, issues and plans in one system.

9. Freedcamp

Key features:

• Project templates
• Milestones
• Task boards
• Wiki and file management

Freedcamp‘s free tier is the most generous on this list by a wide margin: unlimited projects, unlimited tasks, unlimited storage and unlimited users. Most competitors treat seats as the thing you eventually pay for, and Freedcamp simply does not.

The core applications cover tasks, calendar, discussions and files, with templates and milestones for structuring repeat work. Paid tiers layer on issue tracking, CRM, invoicing, white labelling and daily backups, but the free version is a working product rather than a demo, and plenty of teams never leave it.

Limitations: the interface feels dated next to newer tools and the experience is functional rather than polished. Scheduling is basic, and some features you might assume are core, such as invoicing, sit behind paid tiers.

Best for: cost-conscious teams, nonprofits and anyone who needs to add people without adding cost.

10. ProjectManager

Key features:

• Gantt, Kanban, calendar and list views
• Automatic dashboards
• Resource management
• Mobile app

ProjectManager gives you real-time dashboards without configuring them, which is rarer than it should be. Most tools make you build a reporting view; here the project health, workload and progress charts populate as work happens.

It carries the full set of views, so a manager can work in a Gantt chart while the team works on a board, both looking at the same underlying data. Workload management is built in rather than bolted on, so spotting who is overcommitted does not require exporting anything.

Pricing starts at $15 per user per month on Team and $28 on Business, with a 30-day trial and no credit card required.

Limitations: there is no permanent free version, and the per-user pricing gets expensive quickly for larger teams. Some of the reporting depth is reserved for Business.

Best for: medium to large teams who want visibility without building it themselves.

11. Wrike

Key features:

• Custom workflows
• Cross-tagging
• Interactive Gantt charts
• Proofing and approvals

Wrike is aimed at organisations where work crosses team boundaries. Its cross-tagging lets a single task appear in several projects without duplicating it, which sounds like a small thing until you are trying to report on a piece of work that belongs to both marketing and product.

Proofing and approval workflows are strong for creative teams reviewing visual assets, and the API is open enough that engineering-led organisations can build the integrations they need rather than waiting for them. Interactive Gantt charts arrive on the Team tier.

Free is $0 with basic task management. Team is $10 per user per month for 2 to 15 users and adds Gantt charts and shareable dashboards. Business is $25 for 5 to 200 users, with Pinnacle and Apex priced custom.

Limitations: Wrike is dense. Setup takes real time, smaller teams routinely find it overbuilt, and several capabilities including whiteboards and two-way sync are paid add-ons on top of the subscription.

Best for: larger organisations with matrix reporting and cross-functional projects.

12. Pipefy

Key features:

• No-code workflow builder
• Process automation
• Templates and dashboards
• Electronic signatures

Pipefy thinks in processes rather than projects. If your work is the same sequence of steps repeated with different inputs, whether that is client onboarding, procurement or hiring, Pipefy models that better than a project tool does. You build the pipe once and every new case flows through it.

The no-code builder means operations teams can change their own workflows without waiting on engineering, and conditional logic handles the branching that real processes always have. Automations move work between stages, and dashboards report across cases.

The Starter tier is free for up to five processes and ten users. Business lifts the limits and adds API access, role-based permissions and electronic signatures, with Enterprise adding advanced automation and two-factor authentication.

Limitations: for a one-off project with a unique shape, Pipefy is the wrong abstraction and you will fight it. There are no Gantt charts or dependency scheduling in the traditional sense, and Business pricing is not published.

Best for: operations and process teams running repeatable workflows rather than bespoke projects.

13. Zoho Projects

Key features:

• Gantt charts
• Task dependencies
• Milestones
• Timesheets

Zoho Projects covers a lot of ground for the money and is the obvious choice if you already run other Zoho products, since it inherits the same account, integrations and general logic. Gantt charts handle dependencies properly, milestones structure longer work, and timesheets let you record effort against tasks.

At $4 per user per month for Premium, it is the cheapest paid tier on this list by some distance, and the free version supports five users across three projects with 5GB of storage. Enterprise at $9 and Ultimate at $14 add customisation, larger storage and more advanced features.

Limitations: the interface carries the Zoho house style, which some people find cluttered. If you do not use anything else in the Zoho ecosystem, the integration advantage disappears and it competes purely on price. The three-project cap on the free version is tight.

Best for: small and mid-sized businesses on a budget, especially existing Zoho customers.

14. Fieldwire

Key features:

• Plan viewing and markup
• Punch lists and inspections
• Offline access
• Messaging

Fieldwire is built for construction and it does not pretend otherwise. Its core capability is putting current drawings in the hands of people on site, with markup, task assignment against specific locations on a plan, and offline access for sites without reliable signal.

Punch lists, inspections and daily reports are treated as native concepts rather than adapted task types, and the mobile experience is built for a phone in a work glove rather than a desk. It is now part of Hilti. If construction is your whole business, it is worth reading our roundup of construction project management tools alongside this one.

The Basic tier is free per user. Pro is $39 per user per month, Business $64 and Business Plus $89, with the higher tiers adding unlimited projects and more admin capability.

Limitations: outside construction this is the wrong tool entirely. Per-user pricing at the Pro tier and above is high compared with general project planning software.

Best for: construction teams who need drawings and tasks in the field.

15. Jira

Key features:

• Scrum and Kanban boards
• Backlogs and sprints
• Agile reporting
• Automation and AI agents

Jira is the default for agile software teams for good reason. Sprint planning, backlog grooming and velocity tracking are treated as core mechanics rather than features, and the reporting on burndown and sprint progress is more mature than anything else here. Integration with Confluence and Bitbucket makes it the centre of an ecosystem rather than a standalone tool.

Automation rules give engineering leads fine control over how work moves, and paid tiers now include AI agents that handle status updates and turn planning documents into assignable work.

Free covers up to ten users with 2GB storage. Standard is $7.91 per user per month with 250GB, Premium is $14.54 and adds cross-team planning and unlimited storage, and Enterprise is billed annually.

Limitations: for non-technical teams Jira is heavy going. Adapting it for marketing or client services work takes real configuration effort, and if you are not running sprints most of what makes it good is irrelevant. Administration is close to a job in itself at scale.

Best for: software teams running Scrum or Kanban at any meaningful scale.

Paid project planning software

16. GanttPRO

Key features:

• Dependencies and critical path
• Baselines
• Workload management
• Budget planning

GanttPRO is the most schedule-focused tool on this list. Dependencies, critical path and baselines are all present, which means you can compare where the project is now against where you originally said it would be. Very few tools in this price range do baselines, and without them the question of whether you are behind is a matter of opinion.

Workload views show who is overallocated before it becomes a problem, and budget planning arrives at the Business tier alongside time tracking. There is also an AI chart generator for getting a first-pass schedule up quickly rather than starting from an empty grid.

Core is $7 per user per month, Advanced $10, Business $17 and Enterprise $25, all with a 14-day trial.

Limitations: this is a planning and scheduling tool, not a place your team will collaborate day to day. Communication features are thin, and there is no permanent free version.

Best for: project managers who need genuine scheduling with dependencies, baselines and critical path.

17. ProWorkflow

Key features:

• Project timelines
• Time tracking
• Quoting and invoicing
• Resource booking

ProWorkflow handles the full arc of client work rather than just the delivery part. A quote becomes a project, the project accumulates tracked time, and that time turns into an invoice, all without exporting anything. For agencies where the administrative tail of a project is as much work as the project, that continuity is the selling point.

Resource booking shows who is committed to what across projects, so taking on new work becomes a decision based on capacity rather than optimism. There is an Adobe extension for designers and Microsoft Teams integration for chat.

Professional is $18 per user per month with 25GB of storage, Advanced is $29 with 50GB and adds organisational charts, and Enterprise is custom with a dedicated account manager.

Limitations: the interface shows its age and the initial setup takes longer than the newer tools here. There is no free version, and the per-user cost is high for larger teams.

Best for: agencies and consultancies who want quoting, delivery and invoicing in one place.

18. Microsoft Planner

Key features:

• Multiple project views
• Templates
• Power BI reporting
• Microsoft 365 integration

Microsoft has consolidated Project, Planner and To Do into a single Planner experience. If your organisation already runs on Teams, Outlook and SharePoint, the argument for it is mostly about gravity: the data connects, permissions inherit from what you already have, and nobody needs another login.

The views span My Day, My Tasks, boards, grids and timelines, templates cover common project shapes, and Power BI reporting gives analytical depth that standalone tools struggle to match. For large, multi-phase programmes with formal governance, that reporting is the reason organisations stay.

A basic tier is included for Microsoft 365 users, with paid tiers adding task dependencies, scheduling and advanced reporting.

Limitations: the learning curve is steep and the licensing genuinely confusing, with different capabilities across web, desktop and the various plan levels. Practitioners consistently describe it as designed for the project manager rather than the team, with weak collaboration and reporting that is hard to share with stakeholders who do not use it. For smaller teams it is almost always more tool than the situation requires.

Best for: enterprises standardised on Microsoft 365 running large, formally governed programmes.

19. HoneyBook

Key features:

• Client portal
• Proposals and contracts
• Invoicing and payments
• Project pipeline

HoneyBook is client management with project tracking attached rather than the other way round. It covers the sequence a solo professional actually lives in: enquiry, proposal, contract, deposit, work, final invoice. Branded proposals, e-signatures and payment collection all happen inside it.

The pipeline view tracks where each client sits in that sequence, and automations handle the follow-ups that otherwise get forgotten. There are AI tools for drafting client communication, and integrations with QuickBooks and Zoom.

Pricing starts at $29 per month on Starter, with Essentials and Premium above it and a 30-day free trial. Payment processing is charged separately at 2.7% plus 10 cents for cards and 1.5% for bank transfers. It is available in the US, Canada, UK and Australia only.

Limitations: this is not project planning software in the scheduling sense. There are no dependencies, no critical path and no resource management across a team. For internal projects it makes very little sense.

Best for: freelancers, photographers, consultants and small service businesses managing clients end to end.

Project scheduling software: what it does that task tracking does not

Project scheduling software is the subset of project planning tools that models time and sequence rather than just listing work. The distinction matters when you are shopping, because plenty of tools marketed as planning software cannot actually schedule.

A scheduler handles four things a task list cannot:

• Dependencies. Task B cannot start until Task A finishes, and the tool knows it. Move A and B moves with it.
• Critical path. The chain of tasks that determines the end date, so you know which delays matter and which have slack.
• Baselines. A saved snapshot of the original plan, so being two weeks late becomes a measurement rather than a feeling.
• Resource levelling. Recognising that one person cannot do three tasks simultaneously, and adjusting the schedule accordingly.

This is a common source of frustration. Practitioners regularly report that Gantt tools default every task to running concurrently until dependencies are specified by hand, then cheerfully allocate one person to several hundred percent capacity. The fix is to link every work package, including the soft dependencies that exist only because you chose an order, and to leave hard-coded dates off wherever possible. Fixed dates mask slippage, because the constraint overrides the delay instead of showing it to you.

From the tools above, GanttPRO, TeamGantt, Zoho Projects, Wrike, ProjectManager and Microsoft Planner handle real scheduling. Trello, Todoist, MeisterTask and Freedcamp do not, regardless of how they are marketed. If you want the underlying methods rather than the software, our guide to project scheduling techniques covers them.

How to choose the right project planning tool

1. Write down your process before you look at a single demo.

   This is the most consistent advice experienced project managers give, and the most consistently ignored. Document how your team works now, on paper if necessary, then find software that supports it. Building your process around a tool is how you end up with software nobody uses.

2. Work out whether you need scheduling or task tracking.

   If your projects have genuine sequencing, you need dependencies and a critical path, and a Kanban board will not do. If they do not, a scheduler is elaborate overhead you will stop maintaining by week three.

3. Check what happens to non-project work.

   Adoption fails predictably when a tool only covers project tasks and people track everything else somewhere else. Nobody maintains two systems. If your team’s day is half project work and half everything else, pick something that can hold both.

4. Count the cost at the size you will actually be.

   Per-user pricing that looks cheap at five people is a different proposition at fifty, and the features you need are often a tier above the one advertised. Flat-rate options from Nifty, Backlog and actiTIME change that maths considerably.

5. Decide whether you need to see money.

   Estimates, budgets and cost reporting are absent from most tools here. If you bill clients, or if anyone will eventually ask what an internal project cost, sort this out at selection rather than discovering it during a post-mortem.

6. Run a real trial with real work.

   Not a demo project. Take an actual live project, put your actual team on it for two weeks, and see whether people update it without being chased. That single test predicts success better than any feature comparison.

Why project planning software fails

The failure modes are consistent, and none of them are about missing features. Wellingtone’s 2026 research found that 42% of organisations still spend a day or more each reporting cycle collating project reports by hand, which is a reasonable proxy for how often the software is not actually carrying the work it was bought to carry.

The most common failure is weight. Traditional planning software carries administrative overhead that small teams cannot absorb, and the honest outcome is that people quietly revert to a spreadsheet, which at least does not nag them. If maintaining the plan costs more than the plan is worth, the plan loses.

The second is the split-tool problem. When project work lives in one system and everything else lives in another, the project system goes stale first, because it is the one people can avoid without immediate consequence.

The third is treating the tool as the process. Software supports a workflow, it does not create one. Teams that buy planning software hoping it will impose discipline they do not have get a more expensive version of the same chaos.

The fourth is planning at the wrong resolution. Detailed task-level schedules for work that changes weekly generate maintenance without insight. Match the granularity of the plan to how stable the work actually is.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between project planning software and project management software?

Project planning software concentrates on defining and sequencing work before it starts: tasks, dependencies, timelines and resources. Project management software covers the whole lifecycle, including execution, collaboration and reporting. In practice the categories have merged, and the more useful distinction is whether a tool can actually schedule, meaning it handles dependencies, critical path and baselines, or whether it just holds a list of tasks with dates attached.

Which project planning tool is best for a small team on no budget?

Freedcamp, because it is the only one here with no user limit on its free version alongside unlimited projects, tasks and storage. Trello is the better pick if your work suits a Kanban board and you have ten people or fewer, and Zoho Projects is worth the $4 per user if you need real dependencies, which the free options do not provide.

Can project planning software tell me whether a project made money?

Only a few of them can. Most track time and completion but never connect either to cost or billing, which is why teams so often discover a project was unprofitable after invoicing. If that matters to you, look for three specific things: estimates you can compare against actual hours, budgets in both cost and billable terms, and a report that puts revenue and cost side by side. actiTIME, ProWorkflow and GanttPRO’s Business tier are the options here that cover it.

Plan with numbers you can trust

Planning is only as good as the information you get back once work starts. Estimates that nobody checks against reality are just optimism written down, and a schedule that cannot show you cost is telling you half the story.

If you want to see where your estimates and reality diverge, and what your projects cost while they are still running rather than after invoicing, start a free 30-day trial of actiTIME. It takes a few minutes to set up, needs no credit card, and includes free onboarding if you would rather have someone walk you through it.