Planner Premium or basic Planner for a 10 person team

Short answer: basic Planner comes with a Microsoft 365 license, and a 10 person team can run its boards, buckets and checklists there. Premium features such as the timeline (Gantt chart), goals, templates and sprints need a Planner premium license (Planner Plan 1, Project Plan 3 or Project Plan 5), and only the people who use those features need one. If your real need is a record with your own fields, such as a request log or an asset list, neither Planner plan is the right shape. A SharePoint list is.

Disclosure first: I build on Microsoft 365, so I lean toward Microsoft tools. The facts below come from Microsoft's own pages. Where I give advice, I say so. I print no prices. Check Microsoft's current pricing page for your plan: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/project/compare-microsoft-project-management-software

What "basic" and "premium" mean

Inside the Planner app in Teams you meet two plan types. A basic plan is a plain board of buckets and tasks. A premium plan is a full project plan. Per Microsoft, the app merges Microsoft To Do, Planner and Project for the web into one place, and the My Plans view lists every To Do list, basic plan and premium plan a person has.

Microsoft also names the storage. Basic plans live in Azure under the Planner service. Premium plans live in Dataverse under the Project for the web service. You do not run any of that yourself. Your admin cares, and it is the reason the two plan types follow different rules.

What Microsoft says about licenses

Entitlement to the Planner app comes with a Microsoft 365 license, according to Microsoft. Premium capabilities need a Planner premium license, for example Planner Plan 1, Project Plan 3 or Project Plan 5. A person holding only a Microsoft 365 license may still work inside a premium plan, but the premium features stay locked for that person.

The service description makes a second point: premium subscriptions sit on top of Microsoft 365 and do not stand in for it. Whatever Planner ships inside Microsoft 365 is not bundled into Plan 1, Plan 3 or Plan 5, so each user still needs the Microsoft 365 subscription.

For a team of 10, suppose only 2 people want the timeline. Microsoft's pages describe licensing per user and mention no team-wide switch. Ask your admin what your plan covers and who needs a premium seat. Exact names may differ on your screen.

Side by side

These rows come from the feature table in Microsoft's service description. "Office 365" is the license that comes with Microsoft 365.

Board view, Grid view, checklists, labels: Yes for Office 365, Yes for Plan 1, Plan 3 and Plan 5.
Timeline view (Gantt chart): No for Office 365, Yes for Plan 1, Plan 3 and Plan 5.
Goals, Templates, Sprints and Backlogs, People view: No for Office 365, Yes for Plan 1, Plan 3 and Plan 5.
Dependencies: View Only for Office 365, Yes for Plan 1, Plan 3 and Plan 5.
Advanced Dependencies: View only for Office 365 and Plan 1, Yes for Plan 3 and Plan 5.
Critical path: No for Office 365 and Plan 1, Yes for Plan 3 and Plan 5.

What the basic plan gives you

Microsoft's feature table marks these as available with an Office 365 license: Board view, Grid view, task scheduling, checklists, subtasks, priority, labels, guest access and coauthoring. A footnote warns that the allowance differs between projects in default environments and custom environments, so ask your admin which applies to you.

Each person also gets three personal views in the Teams app: My Day for what is due today, My Tasks for private tasks, assigned tasks and flagged emails, and My Plans.

Numbers from Microsoft's limits page for one basic plan:

3,000 active tasks, meaning tasks not yet completed.
9,000 tasks in total.
200 buckets.
20 assignees on a single task.
20 checklist items on a single task.

Microsoft states these may change without notice, and the page covers basic plans in the Planner app in Teams, not premium plans. A group of 10 sits far below every figure.

What premium adds

From the same feature table, these items show "No" for an Office 365 license and "Yes" for Planner Plan 1:

Timeline view (Gantt chart)
Goals
Templates
Sprints and backlogs
People view
Creating reports from Project data

Some items show "View Only" for an Office 365 license and "Yes" for Plan 1. They include dependencies, milestones, custom fields, custom columns, conditional coloring and customized views and forms.

Plan 3 and Plan 5 add more. Critical path, the assignments view, and task history show "Yes" for Plan 3 and Plan 5 only (task history is not offered in Plan 1). Advanced dependencies and roadmaps show "Yes" for Plan 3 and Plan 5. Booking and skills features sit mostly in Plan 5. Microsoft says the table may change without notice, so read it again before you decide.

Premium has its own boundary. Microsoft lists a maximum of 3,000 total tasks for a project in Project for the web, and 20 resources on a task. The same page carries this note: "Microsoft Project for the web is retiring on August 1, 2025." The next sentence reads: "You can continue using most of the Project for the web capabilities in Microsoft Planner once it's rolled out to your organization." Check with your admin that this limit still applies in your Planner.

If a premium license ends

Microsoft says: "Users with a Microsoft 365 license can continue to collaborate on premium plans but won't be able to use the premium features without a premium license." Microsoft also says Project for the web instances are not automatically deleted until you have no active subscriptions that depend on Microsoft Dataverse.

A simple way to choose for 10 people

One way to start (this is our advice, not a Microsoft rule):

Write down the three things your team cannot do today. Use plain sentences, like "see all jobs on a calendar bar".
Match each one to the lists above. If none appears under "premium adds", stay on basic.
Count how many people need the premium feature. In a team like this it may be only the lead and one planner. The rest only update their own tasks.
Ask your admin which license each of those people would need.
Run one real job for two weeks. Keep the paid feature only if the team used it.

When a SharePoint list is the better tool

A Planner card carries a title, an owner, a date and a status. That fits tasks. A list holds records with fields you define yourself. Choose a list when you log items such as Vendor 12, Asset 31 or Request 204 and want to sort, filter and report on typed columns.

Save a view that hides closed records. Microsoft says a filter using [Today] or [Me] needs the classic view editor (Edit current view, then Filters). I use the same editor for blank and "is not equal to" filters. Our advice, not a Microsoft rule.

To compare the two shapes, read "Microsoft Planner vs SharePoint list for tracking team work". For another board product, read "Microsoft Planner vs Trello for a small team". Moving off a spreadsheet? Read "Replace a spreadsheet tracker with a SharePoint list".

What to avoid

Skip premium seats for all 10 people at the start. Begin with those who need a premium feature.
Pick by what the team will touch daily, not by who has the longer feature list.
Keep one job in one place. Running it in both a basic and a premium plan leaves nobody sure which copy is right.
The basic limits do not carry over to premium, because the limits page excludes premium plans.
Microsoft says its tables and limits can change without notice, so a feature or license today may differ later.
Licensing questions go to your admin, not to a guess.
A task board is the wrong home for records that need typed fields. Use a list.

When to get help

You can build all of this yourself in Microsoft 365. If you would rather have it built and tested for your team, I do that. A tracker like this is a fixed price: $5,000 for one, built in 2 weeks. See "What a SharePoint tracker costs to build". Bring one example of the problem to a free call.

Tell me what's still manual

I am Al Davies. I run 250 High Street LLC and build SharePoint trackers and Power Automate flows for operations teams. I work remotely. The first call is free, and I will not try to sell you anything.

See trackers I built: Tools I built

FAQ

Is basic Planner free?

Microsoft says users with a Microsoft 365 license are entitled to the Planner app, and premium capabilities need a Planner premium license such as Planner Plan 1, Project Plan 3 or Project Plan 5.

What does Planner premium add that basic does not?

Microsoft's feature table shows Timeline view (Gantt chart), Goals, Templates, Sprints and backlogs, and People view as "Yes" for Planner Plan 1 and "No" for an Office 365 license. Plan 3 and Plan 5 add more, such as critical path. Microsoft says the table may change without notice.

Do all 10 people need a premium license?

Microsoft's pages describe a license per user. People with only a Microsoft 365 license can keep working on a premium plan but cannot use the premium features. Ask your admin who would need one.

How much more does Planner premium cost than basic?

I print no prices. Check Microsoft's current pricing page for Planner Plan 1, Project Plan 3 and Project Plan 5, and ask your admin what your plan already includes.

What happens when a premium license ends?

Microsoft says users with a Microsoft 365 license can continue to collaborate on premium plans but cannot use the premium features without a premium license.

Are the task limits the same on premium?

No. Microsoft's Planner limits page says it does not apply to premium plans. Microsoft's Project for the web page lists a separate maximum of 3,000 total tasks for a project.