15 Best Planning Tools to Organize Projects, Goals, and Workflows (2025)

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Project planning tools play a significant role in managing projects, from ideation to execution, and the nuances in between. 

If you pick the wrong tool, planning can end up feeling just as chaotic as the work itself.

That’s why we’ve curated a list of top project management planning tools that actually make your job easier, not harder. Some keep everything simple and visual, and others are built to handle the demands of large, complex projects.

But before we explore the best free project management tools that made it to our list, let’s take a look at the key features to look for in a project planning tool.

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The Best Project Planning Tools at a Glance

The right tool often depends on your team’s size, style, and the kind of projects you manage. Here’s a quick overview of the tools we’ll be covering, so you can spot the one that fits your workflow.

Tool NameKey featuresBest forPricing
ClickUp15+ project views, AI-powered automation, native time tracking, real-time communication and collaboration toolsTeams of all sizes organizing goals, timelines, and tasks in one collaborative spaceFree plan available; Custom pricing for enterprises
WrikeInteractive Gantt Charts, work intelligence, Agile custom item typesSmall teams looking for structured, long-term project planningFree plan available; Paid plans start from $10/month 
JiraScrum/Kanban boards, Atlassian Intelligence (AI), dynamic backlogAgile teams needing technical and collaborative project planningFree plan available; Paid plans start from $7.53/month 
TrelloTrello Inbox, Atlassian AI, automationVisual task tracking for small teams or individualsFree plan available; Paid plans start from $6/month 
Microsoft PlannerBucket task organization, visual status charts, MS Teams integrationTeams already using Microsoft 365, seeking lightweight planningFree plans available; Paid plans start from $10/month (billed annually)
TeamworkResource management, client-level insights, intake forms automationProject budget planning and resource allocation for mid-sized to large teamsFree plan available; Paid plans start from $13.99/month
Toggl PlanDrag-drop timelines, team capacity view, integration with Toggl TrackSmall teams needing simple, visual project timelinesFree plan available; Paid plans start from $11/month per user
TodoistNatural language input, cross-device accessibility, and daily digest emailsManaging personal and team projects Free plan available; Paid plans start from $2.5/month per user
NotionFlexible database views, customizable blocks, Notion AICustom workflows combining docs, notes, and tasks for small to mid-sized teamsFree plan available; Paid plans start from $12/month per user
AsanaMulti-view planning, goal setting, automated workflowsMid-to-large teams needing structured workflows & automationFree plan available; Paid plans start from $13.49/user per month
Monday.comCustom visual boards, board-level automations, and Pre-built templatesMarketing and PMO teams needing customization and scalabilityFree plan available; Paid plans start from $14/seat per month
Zoho ProjectsDependency Gantt charts, blueprint automation, time and budget trackingScalable project management for growing teamsFree plan available; Paid plans start from $3.97/user per month
TeamGanttDrag-drop timelines, time tracking visuals, portfolio baselinesConstruction and manufacturing project planning for large teamsPaid plans start from $59/manager per month
AirtableRelational databases, interface builder, Omni AISmall teams needing flexible, database-driven planningFree plan available; Paid plans start from $24/seat per month
MiroVisual whiteboards, live team collaborationRemote and creative teams needing visual planningFree plan available; Paid plans start from $8/seat per month
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What Should You Look for in Project Planning Tools?

A good project planning tool keeps work organized, priorities clear, and collaboration simple. Here are the key features to watch for when choosing one.

  • Ease of use: Choose a planning tool that your whole team can adopt quickly, regardless of their technical skills
  • Task planning and management: Look for features to assign ownership, set deadlines, track progress, and break large projects into smaller, manageable tasks 
  • Custom views: Choose a tool that lets you switch between views—List, Kanban, Calendar, or Board—so you can manage projects the way that works best for you 
  • Built-in collaboration: Choose a project planning tool that keeps your team’s discussions and documents in one place for easy access 
  • AI-powered insights: Look for tools that help you forecast deadlines, flag risks, and suggest smarter ways to allocate resources. Choosing a tool with reliable AI features can give you an edge in staying on schedule and avoiding surprises 
  • Integration capabilities: Ensure your project management planning tool connects smoothly with the apps your team already uses, with built-in integrations or APIs

🔎 Did you know? When NASA built the James Webb Space Telescope, project planning spanned over 20 years, involving 258 suppliers across many U.S. states and 13+ countries. What kept the project on track? Rigorous phased planning and seamless coordination.

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15 Best Project Management Planning Tools

Now, let’s take a closer look at each tool’s features, pricing, ratings, and user reviews.

How we review software at ClickUp

Our editorial team follows a transparent, research-backed, and vendor-neutral process, so you can trust that our recommendations are based on real product value.

Here’s a detailed rundown of how we review software at ClickUp.

1. ClickUp (Best for organizing goals, timelines, and tasks in one collaborative space)

ClickUp for Project Management Teams
Manage complex projects, plan and visualize project timelines, and coordinate cross-functional work with ClickUp for Project Management Teams

ClickUp, the everything app for work, helps teams plan, organize, and track projects efficiently in one place.

With ClickUp for Project Teams, you can manage tasks, visualize timelines, automate workflows, and collaborate with your team in real time so everyone knows what’s happening. It keeps work visible and makes it easier to stay on top of priorities.

Project managers can start by breaking projects into manageable tasks with ClickUp Tasks. Assign responsibilities, set due dates and priorities, add stages, and use Custom Fields to capture important details.

To plan and track work in a way that works best for your team’s needs, you can switch between 15+ Custom Views.

🎯 Visualize your work, your way:

  • ClickUp List view: Get a clear overview of all tasks in an organized format, making it easy to see what’s next
  • ClickUp Board view: Move tasks across stages, helping visualize progress and the flow of work
  • ClickUp Timeline view: Create a visual roadmap of tasks and dependencies, making it easier to coordinate complex projects
  • ClickUp Gantt Chart view: See tasks on a timeline, highlighting overlaps and helping you plan more effectively

For planning and collaboration, ClickUp Whiteboards provide a space where teams can brainstorm, map ideas, and outline project workflows in real time. You can draw connections, assign tasks, and involve team members in discussions as the plan develops.

Brainstorm project ideas in ClickUp Whiteboards
Sketch, draw, and build your vision effortlessly with ClickUp Whiteboards 

ClickUp Docs complements this by letting you centralize project resources like meeting discussions, project briefs, notes, and SOPs. With formatting options, tables, banners, buttons, and attachments, you can create organized and accessible documentation without switching apps.

Link tasks directly and collaborate in real time with ClickUp Docs

If you are looking for ready-made frameworks, ClickUp’s library of fully customizable templates makes it easier to maintain consistency across projects without having to create detailed project plans from scratch.

The Example Project Plan Template by ClickUp lets you write out the project objectives, key deliverables, timeline, budget, stakeholders, and scope. With tasks, subtasks, Custom Fields, and dependency mapping for sequential tasks, you can easily monitor progress and adjust as needed.

Plan your projects with confidence and ensure everything is organized and on track at all times with ClickUp’s Example Project Plan Template

The template lets you:

  • Organize activities by project phases in the Project Plan Template List view
  • Use the Planning Progress Board to view project tasks as cards organized by their current status
  • Track each task’s completion status, impact, effort, and attach relevant files for added context

ClickUp’s Planning a Project Template is another great tool that helps you ensure every step of the process is planned before execution starts.

Track, manage, and organize your project tasks with the ClickUp Planning a Project Template

It has four main views:

  • Task List view: Organize tasks by phases and click on any task’s Custom Fields to quickly update or edit details
  • Status Board view: Track progress at a glance and click on any task card to view its details or drag it to another column to update its status
  • Project Schedule Gantt view: See your project’s timeline and dependencies between tasks, showing which activities need to be completed before moving on to the next stage
  • Team Members Box view: Check each team member’s current capacity and workload with the tasks assigned to them and their current statuses

Within ClickUp, project planning becomes more efficient because it combines AI-powered assistance, automation, and knowledge management directly within your workspace.

ClickUp Brain is a context-aware AI assistant that can instantly generate a structured plan with tasks, milestones, dependencies, and timelines based on your project requirements.

To prevent important details from getting lost in discussions, it turns meeting notes and chat messages into tasks, and even fetches updates from across your workspace.

ClickUp Brain
Get instant updates from across projects with ClickUp Brain

ClickUp best features

  • Built-in collaboration tools: Use task comments to tag, assign, and ask questions on specific tasks, or jump into threaded discussions using ClickUp Chat
  • One-click task automations: Automate repetitive tasks like status updates, deadline reminders, etc., using custom conditions and IF/THEN logics with ClickUp Automations
  • Track time efficiently: Log work hours per task, monitor team productivity, and generate reports for analysis or billing with the ClickUp Time Tracking tool
  • Visualize workload: Use the ClickUp Workload view to see team capacity, balance task assignments, and prevent overloading team members
  • Manage dependencies: Set Dependencies in ClickUp to ensure work is completed in the right order, reducing blockers and project scheduling conflicts 

ClickUp limitations

  • The wide range of features can be challenging for users unfamiliar with advanced project management tools 

ClickUp pricing

free forever
Best for individual users
Free Free
Key Features:
60MB Storage
Unlimited Tasks
Unlimited Free Plan Members
unlimited
Best for small teams
$7 $10
per user per month
Everything in Free +
Unlimited Storage
Unlimited Folders and Spaces
Unlimited Integrations
business
Best for mid-sized teams
$12 $19
per user per month
Everything in Unlimited +
Google SSO
Unlimited Message History
Unlimited Mind Maps
enterprise
Best for many large teams
Get a custom demo and see how ClickUp aligns with your goals.
Everything in Business +
White Labeling
Conditional Logic in Forms
Subtasks in Multiple Lists
* Prices when billed annually
The world's most complete work AI, starting at $9 per month
ClickUp Brain is a no Brainer. One AI to manage your work, at a fraction of the cost.
Try for free

ClickUp ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.7/5 (10,430+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.6/5 (4,500+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about ClickUp?

Here’s a TrustRadius review:

ClickUp has a lot to offer in one place such as project management, brainstorming options, task management, project planning, documentation management, etc. It has definitely made life comparatively easier as it’s easy to use, UI is well designed, and collaboration within the team and with other teams is easier. We were able to manage work better, track and report work easily, and based on progress daily huddles, future planning was easy.

Ready to get started with ClickUp? Watch this video to see how you can create a project plan in under 30 minutes!

2. Wrike (Best for structured, long-term project planning)

Wrike : project planning tools
via Wrike

Wrike is an AI-powered work management platform. It provides visual project boards that help teams create detailed project plans and execute them efficiently.  

With Wrike, you can customize how projects are set up and organized. You decide how tasks, timelines, and workflows are structured to match your team’s needs. You can view projects using List, Kanban, and Calendar views, and organize tasks using folders and nested hierarchies. 

Wrike AI works with the automation builder to analyze project flows and recommends automations at the account or space level, helping reduce repetitive work.

The cross-tagging feature allows you to connect tasks, subtasks, milestones, and even entire projects across multiple workflows. A single task can appear in multiple projects—like ‘Marketing Campaign’ and ‘Weekly Report’, so teams stay aligned without duplicating work or losing important details. 

Wrike best features

  • Implement detailed permissions and secure workspaces, ensuring data protection and compliance with organizational policies
  • Automate recurring workflows to reduce manual status updates
  • Use Wrike AI to generate content like briefs or project plans, summarize long discussions, predict risks, and more
  • Visualize project schedules with interactive Gantt charts and Kanban boards
  • Get resource management tools like Resource View, Workload Charts, Timesheets, and more (with Wrike’s Business plan and above)

Wrike limitations

  • Does not offer built-in chat, so teams must rely on external tools for communication

Wrike pricing

  • Free
  • Team: $10/month per user
  • Business: $25/month per user
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing
  • Pinnacle: Custom pricing

Wrike ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.2/5 (4,400+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.4/5 (2,800+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Wrike?

A G2 review says:

Wrike is one of the easiest project management platforms to set up and get started. It helps us to organize projects by their deadline, clients, and subject, and customize our workflow.

3. Jira (Best for Agile teams needing technical and collaborative project planning)

Jira helps you track and manage software, IT, and product launch projects by breaking work into epics, stories, tasks, and subtasks, giving you a clear picture of progress across your teams. 

This Agile project planning tool lets you customize your workflows, adjust screens, and design boards that match exactly how your team works. If you want a shortcut, you can pick a template specifically designed for Agile sprints, bug tracking, or product launches.  

The backlog view lets you prioritize tasks, plan sprints, and visualize exactly where each task sits on your Scrum or Kanban board. 

Jira key features

  • Generate real-time reports like burndown charts, velocity charts, cumulative flow diagrams, and custom dashboards to monitor team performance and project progress
  • Access deep integration with hundreds of tools, including Confluence, and CI/CD tools like GitHub, Gitbucket, and GitLab
  • Streamline project management with integrated Atlassian AI features such as Rovo Search, Chat, and Rovo Agents

Jira limitations

  • Limited native time tracking, so you need third-party apps or add-ons to monitor hours worked and generate detailed timesheets for your projects 
  • Setup and configuration can be incredibly complex, often requiring a dedicated administrator

Jira pricing

  • Free 
  • Standard: $7.91/month per user 
  • Premium: $14.54/month per user 
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Jira ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.3/5 (6,900+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.4/5 (15,280+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Jira?

A G2 review says:

Jira helps our team stay organized and on track with all ongoing projects. I really like how clearly it shows the progress of tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities. The boards and sprint views make it easy to follow up with developers, content creators, and designers; everything stays transparent.

4. Trello (Best for visual task tracking for small teams or individuals)

Trello : project planning tools
via Trello

Trello is a visual project management tool ideal for solo projects, small teams, and agencies. It has a minimalistic design, built atop the classic Kanban board view.

You create task cards for each piece of work and move them across columns as progress is made. If you need other perspectives, it’s easy to switch between Calendar, Timeline, Table, Dashboard, or Map views to see your tasks in different ways. 

You can link design files from Figma or InVision directly to a task card, so your team always sees the latest version. Emails and Slack messages can become tasks automatically, and you can even turn cards into QuickBooks invoices. 

Trello’s Power-Ups and automations add extra functionality. While power-ups help convert any email or Slack message into a task, standard automations let you handle repetitive work, like moving cards when a task is complete or sending reminders.

Trello best features

  • Capture to-dos, notes, and messages from email, Slack, and Microsoft Teams in a unified inbox inside Trello
  • Use Trello Planner to view your scheduled cards on a calendar and synchronize events from your favorite tools, like Google Calendar and Outlook
  • Drag-and-drop tasks across lists to instantly update status
  • Automate board-level and cross-platform workflows using the no-code automation builder

Trello limitations

  • Limited reporting capabilities and no offline access
  • Becomes unwieldy and difficult to view when managing complex projects with hundreds of tasks

Trello pricing

  • Free
  • Standard: $6/month per user 
  • Premium: $12.50/month per user 
  • Enterprise: $17.50/month per user (billed annually)

Trello ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.4/5 (13,700+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.5/5 (23,655+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Trello?

A G2 review says:

If you’re working on a small project with just a few team members and don’t want to spend hours setting up tools, I’d highly recommend Trello. It has all the features you need to track project progress and assign tasks to team members.

📮 ClickUp Insight: 29% of people focus on whatever ‘feels’ most urgent, rather than planning their focus time.

Why? The constant pressure to “put out fires” can make it hard to step back and prioritize what truly moves the needle. 🚒

With ClickUp’s Priorities, Dependencies, and read-to-use effort vs. impact templates, you can break the cycle—spotlighting high-value tasks so your energy goes where it counts, not just where it’s loudest.

5. Microsoft Planner (Best for teams already using Microsoft 365 seeking lightweight planning)

Microsoft Planner is a cloud-based project planning tool integrated with Microsoft 365, including MS Teams, Outlook, and SharePoint.

If your team already works within the Microsoft ecosystem, you can see and manage tasks without switching between applications. Collaboration is built in. You can co-author tasks, comment on them, and receive real-time updates, ensuring your team stays connected and informed. 

The platform enables you to group tasks, add priority labels, assign owners, and create checklists to ensure no details are missed.

Tasks can be organized into buckets, and you can view them in different formats: List, Board, Calendar, or Timeline.

Planner also supports task dependencies, enabling you to establish relationships between tasks. This feature is particularly useful for complex projects where the completion of one task depends on the completion of another.

Microsoft Planner best features

  • Use AI Copilot (available with the premium plan) to create tasks, buckets, and measurable goals for you
  • Manage complex resource allocation and level workloads across large teams
  • Pin a Planner board as a tab inside a Microsoft Teams channel and manage tasks directly while chatting with your team
  • Add external users (like clients or contractors) to specific plans while keeping your overall workspace secure
  • Forecast budgets and financials with granular cost-tracking tools
  • Calculate critical paths to identify tasks that directly impact project finish dates

Microsoft Planner limitations

  • Basic level reporting and time tracking with no built-in hours logging or detailed reports unless you connect to Power BI or other tools

Microsoft Planner pricing

  • Free
  • Planner Plan 1: $10/month per user (billed annually)
  • Planner and Project Plan 3: $30/month per user (billed annually)
  • Planner and Project Plan 5: $55/month per user (billed annually)

Microsoft Planner ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.2/5 (200+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.3/5 (200+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Microsoft Planner?

A G2 review says:

Microsoft Planner makes task organization a breeze and effortless. The ability to create tasks, assign them to members, set deadlines and prioritize them all in one platform is a boon to everyone in the industry.

💡Pro Tip: ClickUp is the only platform designed for true project execution, powered by contextual AI agents. Connect everything you need to run a full project lifecycle in one platform—powered by AI—to unlock flawless execution and deliver results for every team.

AI Agents in ClickUp can:

  • Automatically generate project plans: Agents like the Project Plan Creator can break down a project into actionable subtasks, assign owners, and set timelines based on your project brief
  • Provide real-time progress updates: Agents can summarize project status, highlight blockers, and deliver weekly or daily updates without manual input
  • Assign tasks intelligently: AI can recommend or auto-assign the best team member for each task based on workload, expertise, or past performance
  • Surface insights and answer questions: Agents can answer project-specific questions in chat channels, such as “Who is the project lead?” or “What’s the status of this deliverable?”
  • Automate intake and review: Agents can review new project requests, create briefs, and ensure all necessary information is captured before execution begins
ClickUp AI Agents
ClickUp AI Agents

6. Teamwork (Best for project budget planning and resource allocation)

Teamwork is an AI-powered project management software perfect for businesses and agencies managing client work.

For teams handling overlapping deadlines, it has resource planning features and built-in cost tools to help track budgets, log billable hours, and stay on top of profitability without exporting to spreadsheets. You can sketch out projects using tasks, milestones, and goals, then visualize them all as a Gantt chart or in simpler list and board views.

The AI features can be used to plan projects, fill in missing steps, create action items, or summarize long task threads. They even help with smart task assignment—matching work to people based on their skills, availability, and workload. 

Teamwork best features

  • Automate your way through project tracking, form intakes, data entry, reminders, task creation, and other monotonous jobs using Teamwork AI
  • Get all client-level insights, including billable time tracking, timesheets, budgeting, invoicing, and profitability tracking under the Client View
  • Create advanced project reports on project health, financials, workload capacity, planned vs. actual outcomes, and more
  • Track time spent on tasks and instantly convert logs into invoices

Teamwork limitations

  • The interface can be slow to navigate at times and doesn’t scale well for larger client-facing teams that need a more consistent experience

Teamwork pricing

  • Free
  • Deliver: $13.99/month per user
  • Grow: $25.99/month per user 
  • Scale: Custom pricing
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Teamwork ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.4/5 (1,180+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.5/5 (900+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Teamwork?

A G2 review says:

Teamwork.com is remarkable in managing tasks, with brilliant features, including Gantt Charts, time tracking, budgeting, resource management, etc.

🔎 Did you know? Nearly 1 in 4 projects experience scope creep, delays, or budget overruns due to poor planning and lack of visibility. The right project planning software helps teams stay aligned, manage complexity, and deliver on time.

7. Toggl Plan (Best for small teams needing simple, visual project timelines)

Toggl Plan helps you prioritize things, schedule tasks, and get projects done with drag-and-drop timelines. If you’re managing a team, a consultancy, or handling multiple projects, you can check who’s available and adjust workloads without the stress of micromanaging. 

You can break projects into smaller tasks, add checklists or SOPs, and move things around quickly if priorities shift. Boards and timelines give you two different ways to track project progress, depending on how your team prefers to work. 

Color-coded milestones and task cards in this free project management tool make it easy to see at a glance what’s coming up and what’s already in progress. Each card shows key details like due dates and hours spent. 

You can zoom out to view your project’s progress by month, quarter, or year, which makes forecasting and long-term planning easy.

Toggl Plan best features

  • Use Calendar view to visualize the team’s availability and schedule projects without conflicting with their time-offs and public holidays
  • Schedule tasks using a colorful, drag-and-drop team timeline view
  • Get in-app notifications when tasks or plans change, or when a colleague tags you
  • Track time spent on tasks, billable hours, estimates for project completion, and more with two-way integration to Toggl Track

Toggl Plan limitations

  • Slow loading times or lag, especially when dealing with a high volume of tasks and projects

Toggl Plan pricing

  • Free
  • Starter: $11/month per user 
  • Premium: $24/month per user 
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Toogl Plan ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.3/5 (40+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.6/5 (100+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Toggl Plan?

A G2 review says:

Toggl Plan offers several features that make it great for project management and team collaboration such as visual planning, user friendly interface, task management, customization and time tracking.

🌟 Bonus: When you’re starting a new project, ClickUp Brain MAX can help build a plan and structure it around priorities and dependencies. Because it links to your workspace, docs, task lists, and connected apps, it provides a “single source of truth” for project planning.

It knows your projects, team, deadlines, and work history, so you can ask natural-language queries like “Which tasks are planned in the first quarter for Project X?” and it scans your entire workspace for insights and provides accurate answers.

Here is a video on what it looks like in action ⬇️

8. Todoist (Best for managing personal and team projects )

Todoist is a versatile task management software for hobbyists, freelancers, and entrepreneurs looking to manage personal and team to-dos side-by-side.

Its clean dashboard keeps distractions away and makes it simple to navigate through your tasks. You can group tasks, set priorities,  add deadlines, and create separate spaces for different parts of your life—one for personal work and another for a team project. 

Todoist’s AI Assist helps generate project briefs, provides task and sub-task suggestions, breaks down complex work, turns emails into organized tasks, and even gives tips on what to prioritize next.

Todoist best features

  • Use Calendar View to oversee your workload for the day, week, or month, and simply drag and drop tasks to reschedule them
  • Organize tasks into sections and sub-tasks for a clean project hierarchy
  • Track progress with reminders and priority levels, get in-app reminders on desktop, mobile, and smartwatch apps
  • Capture, organize, and set up due dates for tasks using commands in natural language
  • Integrate with email and calendar tools to turn messages into actionable tasks

Todoist limitations 

  • Todoist isn’t built for advanced or complex project management, as it lacks Gantt charts and deeper automation features

Todoist pricing

  • Free 
  • Pro: $2.5/month per user  
  • Business: $8/month per user 

Todoist ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.4/5 (800+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.6/5 (2,000+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Todoist?

A G2 review says:

Todoist has completely transformed my workflow and productivity. Its intuitive interface, powerful task management features, and seamless cross-device syncing allow me to stay organized and focused, whether I’m at work or on the go. The flexibility to customize projects, set priorities, and automate recurring tasks makes it incredibly versatile for any type of user.

9. Notion (Best for custom workflows combining docs, notes, and tasks)

Notion
via Notion

When you’re planning projects, you can build them in Notion using dashboards, pages, wikis, and task databases, and link them together for a comprehensive view of all your project data.

It lets you create dedicated workspaces, break down projects into small tasks with details like descriptions, statuses, and due dates, and switch between views to track progress. And because it plays well with tools like Gmail and Google Calendar, you don’t have to switch tabs to get the most recent status update.

Notion AI edits and polishes your documents and answers questions directly from your docs and databases, helping you find the right information without searching manually. It can also be used to design and automate project workflows, such as generating task lists, structuring timelines, or summarizing meeting notes.

Notion best features

  • Build fully relational databases and display them as tables, boards, calendars, or timelines
  • Use progress bar formula or linked database rollups to show project completion percentage
  • Use project management templates with custom properties and automations to create tailored workflows
  • Embed live project plans directly inside documentation and meeting notes
  • Link pages and tasks bidirectionally to create a connected knowledge web

Notion limitations

  • Notion lacks a built-in chat feature for real-time team conversations, so teams rely on Slack or Teams alongside it
  • Requires significant setup time to build the workflow; it does not work out of the box like dedicated PM tools

Notion pricing

  • Free
  • Plus: $12/month per user 
  • Business: $24/month per user 
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Notion ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.6/5 (8,100+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.7/5 (2,610+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Notion?

A G2 review says:

Notion gives my team a ton of freedom to organize our work however we want. From project docs to back-and-forth brainstorming, it’s the only tool that doesn’t box us in.

10. Asana (Best for mid-to-large teams needing structured workflows & automation)

Asana : project planning tools
via Asana

With Asana, you can create shared project hubs to plan, track, and execute multiple projects simultaneously. 

This free project management software gives you flexible ways to track progress. You can map dependencies in Timeline view to see how tasks connect, or switch to the Calendar view when deadlines are piling up. If you’re running Agile sprints, the Board view keeps priorities clear, while the List view helps you with fine details.

Besides managing projects, Asana works well for content calendars, product launches, and cross-team initiatives. The tool also has a wide library of project planning templates built for different teams, such as marketing, HR, IT, operations, and sales.

If you’re looking to cut down on repetitive work, Asana’s AI Studio works with the Automation Builder to handle tasks like assignments, approvals, reminders, and routine updates. The AI also helps draft clear project goals, summarize team discussions into actionable tasks, measure project performance, and generate insights that highlight blockers or missed deadlines.

Asana best features

  • Create high-level project plans with built-in tools like goals, milestones, approvals, capacity planning, workload view, and more
  • Use Portfolio View to oversee multiple projects at once with smart task suggestions, auto-prioritization, and AI-powered project summaries
  • Leverage tools like time-tracking, workload management, and capacity planning for resource allocation and management
  • Automate routine handoffs and rules with a visual workflow builder

Asana limitations

  • The starter plan lacks advanced features like goals, approvals, time tracking, and AI studio
  • Strict “one assignee per task” philosophy can be frustrating for collaborative work items

Asana pricing

  • Personal: Free
  • Starter: $13.49/month per user 
  • Advanced: $30.49/month per user 
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Asana ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.4/5 (12,400+ reviews)
  • Capetrra: 4.5/5 (13,545+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Asana?

A G2 review says:

Asana is great for keeping projects organized and tracking team tasks. The interface is clean and intuitive, and the notifications make sure nothing gets forgotten.

11. Monday.com (Best for PMO teams needing customization and scalability)

Monday.com scales with your team’s needs, offering a highly customizable and visual work management platform.

There are project boards to help you manage tasks with over 30 column types, like Status, Date, Timeline, and People, to tailor workflows for your team’s needs. You can switch between views like List, Kanban, Timeline, and more.

The tool lets you create both basic board-level and cross-platform automations with an automation builder. 

For team and workload planning, it offers a native time-tracking widget, which you can embed on each task. When someone starts a task, they can simply start the timer. This way, you know which tasks are delaying projects. 

Monday.com best features

  • Analyze data with Pivot Board to slice, summarize, and uncover trends without exporting to Excel
  • Work with data in the Smart Spreadsheet App for Excel-style editing, formulas, and conditional formatting right inside monday.com
  • Use Portfolio Boards to oversee all your projects with key indicators like project health, percentage of completed tasks, the planned vs. actual timelines, and much more
  • Automate notifications and item movements with “If this, then that” recipes
  • Design custom dashboards with widgets for numbers, battery charts, and timelines

Monday.com limitations

  • Lacks in-app chat and many other functions, like Approvals, are dependent on add-ons from Monday.com’s marketplace

Monday.com pricing

  • Free
  • Basic: $12/month per user 
  • Standard: $14/month per user 
  • Pro: $24/month per user 
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Monday.com ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.7/5 (16,020+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.6/5 (5,500+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Monday.com?

A G2 review says:

Amazing tool to manage projects and products being released with multiple view options like charts, table and more which makes it highly useful. Easy to assign tasks and sprints to different teams.

12. Zoho Projects (Best for scalable project management)

If your team is already in the Zoho ecosystem, Zoho Projects is a reliable project planning software. You can connect with Zoho CRM to sync client details or Zoho Sprints to manage Agile workflows.

The tool lets you break down your long-term plans into a nested structure, including tasks, subtasks, milestones, deadlines, and clearly defined dependencies.

Time tracking is built in. This enables you to log hours and track billable and non-billable time. That data integrates with Zoho Books or Zoho Invoice for smooth invoicing and reporting.

Zia, Zoho’s proprietary AI, helps you work smarter by answering project-related questions, predicting outcomes, budget forecasting, and more. 

Zoho Projects best features

  • Use Blueprints to perform repetitive tasks with a click, trigger actions across boards and thousands of apps based on custom rules and events
  • Enable project portfolio management via Gantt charts, portfolio dashboards, and integration with Zoho Analytics for deeper reporting
  • Use built-in chat, together with live feeds and forums, for a complete and collaborative workspace experience
  • Log billable and non-billable hours with timesheets and approval workflows

Zoho Projects limitations 

  • Only users who are part of the Zoho Projects portal can access project tabs in Teams channels
  • User interface can feel dated and less intuitive compared to modern competitors

Zoho Projects pricing

  • Free
  • Premium: $3.97 /month per user  
  • Enterprise: $7.94 /month per user  
  • Project Plus: Custom pricing 

Zoho Projects ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.3/5 (400+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.5/5 (800+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Zoho Projects?

A G2 review says:

Zoho Projects makes it easy for us to manage multiple projects at once with clear visibility of tasks and deadlines. It also supports different project management methods, from traditional task lists to Agile boards, which makes it versatile for different teams.

ClickUp Brain helps project managers streamline planning by generating project timelines, summarizing meeting notes, and assigning priorities in seconds.

project planning tools

13. TeamGantt (Best for construction and manufacturing project planning)

TeamGantt simplifies visual planning, especially if Gantt charts are your go-to. 

The platform enables you to view tasks, dates, dependencies, and milestones across multiple projects in one intuitive timeline. You get the flexibility to organize tasks into color-coded subgroups and use filters to zero in on specific tasks, team members, or timeframes.

The built-in RACI chart lays out who’s responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed, so everyone knows their role. If something changes, the drag-and-drop scheduler makes it simple to move tasks or rebalance workloads.  

Moreover, you can also switch to Calendar, List, and Kanban board views. Collaboration happens in the task view, and the time-tracking features let you log hours, compare estimates against actuals, and check team availability.

TeamGantt best features

  • Spot conflicts between projects by opening multiple projects in a single Gantt chart
  • Use baseline reports to compare your original projections with the actual timeline of the project
  • Export Gantt charts as PDFs or share them via a public link so clients and stakeholders can view progress without logging in 
  • Drag entire task groups to reschedule projects while maintaining dependencies

TeamGantt limitations

  • Limited customization, making it challenging to adjust or personalize Gantt charts to fit specific project requirements
  • Reporting depth is limited; it focuses heavily on the schedule rather than detailed task data

TeamGantt pricing

  • Free
  • Pro: $59/month per manager
  • Unlimited everything: Custom pricing
  • Construction edition: Custom pricing

TeamGantt ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.8/5 (890+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.6/5 (200+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about TeamGantt?

A G2 review says:

I really like how TeamGantt enables team communication and coordination within the project environment, with features like @ tagging, discussions, and file sharing.

14. Airtable (Best for teams needing flexible, database-driven planning)

Airtable feels a lot like a spreadsheet at first glance, which makes it easy to get started. 

However, unlike traditional spreadsheets, Airtable lets you use 25 field types to organize projects, tasks, and people and build relational databases. If you find it difficult to configure relational tables or automations from scratch, simply type your project idea in Omni (Airtable AI), and it builds tables, interfaces, workflows, and automations around your data.

You can interact with data cells and choose to visualize data using different layouts—List, Calendar, Kanban, Timeline, Gallery, or Form.

The tool’s built-in collaboration tools allow you to leave comments, attach files, and @mention teammates. And with integrations to Slack, Google Drive, Trello, and plenty more, it fits into most team setups. 

Airtable best features

  • Build AI agents for project document analysis, lead generation, data visualization, and any custom use case from scratch, without code
  • Build custom interfaces and dashboards for different stakeholders
  • Prompt Omni or use Interface Builder to turn data records into visually interactive apps; drag-and-drop preset components, set role-based permissions, and share the app with your team
  • View data flexibly as grids, calendars, galleries, or Kanban boards
  • Automate data entry and status updates with powerful scripting and triggers

Airtable limitations

  • Some complex reporting capabilities require workarounds or third-party integrations to achieve desired results
  • Steep learning curve for users not familiar with database concepts

Airtable pricing

  • Free
  • Team: $24/month per user
  • Business: $54/month per user
  • Enterprise Scale: Custom pricing

Airtable ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.6/5 (3,100+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.6/5 (2,200+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Airtable?

A G2 review says:

It is a great platform can be used as an Excel and project management tool all in one place. Workspaces and templates and everything can be created with AI. Easy to use and manage projects and assign tasks with deadlines to people in teams.

15. Miro (Best for remote and creative teams needing visual planning)

Miro : project planning tools
via Miro

Miro, a collaborative whiteboard platform, makes it easy to collect and organize your team’s ideas in one place. You can brainstorm, map out workflows, or plan projects visually using flowcharts, mind maps, and Kanban boards. 

In addition to Whiteboards, it has project management tools like SWOT analysis, resource management, and a library of ready-made templates to get you started. You can build detailed flowcharts, process maps, and org charts with automated connectors, alignment tools, and interactive diagramming features. 

Permissions let you control access to sensitive projects or external collaborators, while embedded voting and prioritization tools make decision-making straightforward.

You can bring in Figma designs, MURAL boards, or other third-party apps directly onto your canvas and turn your boards into interactive presentations for stakeholders without exporting.

Miro best features

  • Add sticky notes, draw wireframes, diagrams, map out flow charts, roadmaps, and more in one board
  • Use AI-powered Miro Docs to turn the elements in your Miro Board into clear, professional text documents
  • Map complex user flows, diagrams, and org charts collaboratively in real time
  • Run interactive meetings with Timer, Voting, Video calls, Private mode, Estimation, and more

Miro limitations

  • Sometimes, large boards with many elements can become slow to load or navigate, especially when multiple users are editing at once

Miro pricing

  • Free
  • Starter: $8/month per user
  • Business: $16/month per user
  • Enterprise: Custom pricing

Miro ratings and reviews

  • G2: 4.7/5 (9,700+ reviews)
  • Capterra: 4.7/5 (1,600+ reviews)

What are real-life users saying about Miro?

A G2 review says:

The boards are incredibly versatile, allowing multiple people to contribute and collaborate in real time. It’s a great way to get started with collaborative whiteboarding.

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Not all planning tools are built the same. And that’s exactly what makes this list valuable.

While Notion or Todoist are personal productivity tools, Trello and Miro are good for brainstorming and visualizing workflows. But if you want all your project tasks, documentation, reports, and more in one converged workspace, pick ClickUp.

ClickUp, the everything app for work, excels at managing complex projects with advanced automation, AI, dashboards, time-tracking, and team collaboration features. That means fewer context-switches and a more consistent workflow across your team.

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