Microsoft Planner, Tasks, and Project
The three task and project tools in Microsoft 365 — when to use each.
Microsoft 365 has three task-management products, all of which Microsoft has shuffled together and renamed several times. As of 2026 the picture is clearer than it was: Microsoft Planner is the unified task app, Microsoft To Do lives inside it for personal lists, and Microsoft Project sits on top for serious project management.
The unified Planner app
The new Microsoft Planner (the Teams app and standalone web app at planner.cloud.microsoft) is the single surface for:
- My Tasks — your personal task list (formerly Microsoft To Do).
- Plans — shared task boards for a team (formerly classic Planner).
- Premium plans — project-style plans with timelines, dependencies, and resource management (formerly Project for the Web).
- Outlook tasks and Loop tasks — surfaced in the same view.
For end users this consolidation is overdue. Tasks, regardless of where they came from, appear in one place.
Planner basic (the free tier)
Included with all Microsoft 365 plans:
- Boards — Kanban-style with buckets and labels.
- Charts and Schedule views for the same plan.
- Assignments — a task can have multiple assignees, due dates, attachments, checklists, comments.
- Teams integration — every Teams team can add a Planner tab.
- My Tasks — personal list (formerly To Do).
This level works well for team-level task management — what's traditionally called "lightweight project management" or "team kanban."
Planner premium (paid)
For more serious project management, Planner premium (formerly Project for the Web) adds:
- Gantt and timeline views with dependencies.
- Resource management — capacity, allocation, levelling.
- Roadmaps across multiple plans.
- Custom fields and conditional formatting.
- Power BI templates for project reporting.
- Critical path analysis.
- Backed by Dataverse rather than the Planner basic data store, with all the governance and extension benefits.
This is the tier for actual project managers running real projects.
Microsoft Project Online and Project Server
For very large enterprise project portfolios — multi-project resource pools, EVM (earned-value management), complex governance — Microsoft Project Online (a separate SaaS product) and Project Server (on-prem) still exist. Microsoft's direction is to migrate Project Online customers to Planner premium over time, but the migration is gradual.
Microsoft Project for the Desktop
The classic desktop Microsoft Project app (.mpp files) is also still around, primarily for stand-alone schedulers who need rich timeline editing. It can publish to Project Online but increasingly doesn't fit modern team-collaboration workflows.
When to use which
| Need | Tool | | --- | --- | | Personal task list | Planner — My Tasks | | Team kanban for a project | Planner basic | | Real project with timelines, dependencies, resources | Planner premium | | Enterprise portfolio with EVM, resource pools | Project Online / Project Server | | Quick task in a Teams chat | Loop task block (syncs to Planner) | | Task from an email | Outlook Tasks (syncs to Planner) |
Licensing
- Planner basic — included with all Microsoft 365 plans.
- Planner premium — separate per-user licence.
- Microsoft Project Online — per-user Plan 1, Plan 3, Plan 5 licences (different feature sets).
For most teams using Microsoft 365, Planner basic is enough. Reach for premium when you genuinely have dependencies and resource management to manage.