If your company already pays for Microsoft 365, Planner is sitting there at no extra cost, and that is a strong argument we are not going to wave away. This page is about what the free thing costs: a second licence for the views you expected, and four other services holding it up.
Capability by capability
Every line about Microsoft Planner was read on its own pages on 24 September 2026. Where we are still building something, the table says so.
| Microsoft Planner |  |
|
|---|---|---|
| Conversation | ||
| Team chat | Planner has no chat of its own. Comments on a task are stored in Exchange as email threads, and a user without Exchange Online may have trouble viewing or adding them. | Chat is the ground floor: channels, threads, voice notes and meetings on every plan. |
| From talk to work | ||
| What it needs underneath | Plans hang off Microsoft 365 Groups; attachments live in the group’s SharePoint library; comments and My Tasks need Exchange Online; premium plans are stored in Dataverse and run on Project for the web. | One product. Chat, boards, processes, calendar, culture and the dashboard are the same system, not four services wired together. |
| Timeline and dependencies | Timeline (Gantt) view, task dependencies, milestones, custom fields, sprints and goals are premium-only; a Project Plan 1 is required to create premium plans. | Kanban, list, table and Gantt views in Boards. |
| Who can use the premium features | A user with only a Microsoft 365 licence can keep collaborating on a premium plan but cannot use the premium features without a premium licence. | Everyone on the plan gets the same product. No second licence to decide who may open which view. |
| People and focus | ||
| Guests | Guest access lets you invite people outside the organisation into a plan, with limited functionality: create and delete tasks and buckets, edit task fields, edit the plan name, and attach a file or link only if given additional permission. | A guest gets a named channel and a project on Boards — the conversation and the work, not just the task list. |
| Culture, clients, tickets | ||
| Culture: kudos, surveys, eNPS | Not part of Planner. | Feedback Friday, kudos, leaderboards, anniversaries and surveys from Free; pulse surveys and eNPS from Workspace. |
| Where it runs | ||
| Works on its own | No — Planner comes with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Office 365 E1, E3, E5 and Microsoft 365 A1. It is a component of a suite, not a product you buy by itself. | taos works beside Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, and replaces the four to eight tools stacked on top of them. |
Sources: Microsoft Planner for admins · Manage the Planner app in Microsoft Teams · FAQ for Planner admins · Planner licensing. Checked against Microsoft Planner’s own pages on 24 September 2026.
Giving the point away
Three of them, and none is a throwaway. If these are what your team runs on, Microsoft Planner is the right answer and we would rather you knew now.
Planner comes with Microsoft 365 Business Basic and upwards. If the licence is on the desk already, the marginal cost of basic task management is zero, and no feature list beats zero.
The same account that opens Outlook opens Planner, with the same admin, the same conditional access and the same compliance tooling. For an IT department that has standardised on Microsoft, that is worth more than any single feature.
Dependencies, critical path, sprints, custom fields and goals come from a real project engine. Where a company genuinely runs classical project management, that machinery is deeper than ours.
Where the difference shows
Timeline, dependencies, milestones, custom fields, sprints and goals are premium. A colleague with only a Microsoft 365 licence can keep collaborating on that plan but cannot use those features. In taos everyone on a plan gets the same product.
Plans hang off Microsoft 365 Groups, attachments sit in SharePoint, comments and My Tasks need Exchange Online, and premium plans live in Dataverse on Project for the web. Each is a place something can go wrong and a place an admin has to look.
Task comments are stored in Exchange as email threads, and a user without Exchange Online may not be able to see or add them. In taos the discussion is a channel thread that becomes the task and comes back to the channel when the task moves.
Kudos, Feedback Friday, surveys, anniversaries and eNPS are simply not part of Planner, so a company that wants them buys another vendor and another login. Ours start on the free plan.
A Planner guest can create tasks and edit fields, and needs an extra permission just to attach a file. Ours gets a named channel and a project on Boards, so a client sees the work and the discussion around it.
Microsoft’s European presence is real and extensive. Ours is simpler: a Polish company on European infrastructure, one subscription, no suite to be a component of.