Microsoft Project Is Not Included in Any M365 Plan
This is the single most important fact about Microsoft Project licensing: it is an entirely separate product family, licensed independently of Microsoft 365 E3, E5, or any other M365 plan. An organisation holding 5,000 M365 E3 licences has zero Microsoft Project entitlement unless separate Project Plan licences have been purchased. Microsoft's licensing structure deliberately keeps Project outside the M365 suite, maintaining it as a separately upsold product category at prices ranging from approximately £8.30/user/month (Project Plan 1) to £46/user/month (Project Plan 5).
This separation creates three recurring problems in enterprise estates. First, organisations that need Project assume it is included in their E licence and do not purchase it — leaving project managers operating outside the standard tooling environment. Second, organisations that do purchase Project often buy Plan 3 uniformly across their project management population when a significant proportion of users would be adequately served by Plan 1 at less than half the price. Third, organisations holding older on-premises Project Server licences are unclear on the cloud equivalent and the migration path.
This guide addresses all three problems. It covers what each Project Plan delivers, who needs which tier, how to right-size a mixed population, and how to negotiate Project licensing within your EA.
The Microsoft Project Architecture: Cloud vs On-Premises
Microsoft Project exists in two distinct deployment models that are not interchangeable from a licensing perspective.
Project for the web (cloud) is the modern, web-based project management application included in Project Plan 1, Plan 3, and Plan 5. Data is stored in Microsoft Dataverse (part of the Power Platform). This is the application accessed via project.microsoft.com. It supports Gantt charts, dependencies, resource assignment, sprint management, and integration with Planner and Teams. It does not support the full feature depth of the Project desktop application — specifically, earned value analysis, baseline tracking beyond basic snapshots, advanced levelling algorithms, and deep custom field configurations are absent or limited.
Project desktop application (equivalent to Project Standard/Professional) is included in Project Plan 3 and Plan 5 only. It is the traditional Windows application that has existed in varying forms since the 1990s. For organisations with established PM methodologies built on Project schedules, baseline management, and earned value reporting, the desktop application remains essential. Plan 1 and Planner Premium do not include the desktop application.
Project Online is the legacy cloud-based portfolio management solution, built on SharePoint infrastructure. It is being sunset in favour of Project for the web but remains in active use in many enterprise estates. It is included with Project Plan 3 and Plan 5. Microsoft's current guidance is that new deployments should use Project for the web, not Project Online, but existing Project Online deployments continue to be supported within the Plan 3/5 subscription.
Plan Comparison: What Each Tier Delivers
| Capability | Planner Premium ~£8.30/user/mo |
Project Plan 1 ~£8.30/user/mo |
Project Plan 3 ~£23/user/mo |
Project Plan 5 ~£46/user/mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project for the web (web-based PM) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Gantt charts and task dependencies | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sprint management (agile) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Resource assignment and capacity | Basic | Basic | Advanced | Advanced |
| Project desktop application | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Project Online (legacy) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Portfolio management and reporting | Basic goals | Basic goals | Project Online portfolio | Advanced portfolio with BI |
| Enterprise resource management | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Demand management and governance | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Advanced Power BI portfolio reports | ✗ | ✗ | Basic | ✓ (Content Pack) |
At list price, Planner Premium and Project Plan 1 are both approximately £8.30/user/month. For users who only need web-based project management with Gantt charts, these plans deliver essentially equivalent capability. The primary difference is branding and the Planner integration context. If users need Project Plan 1 functionality, Planner Premium serves the same use case at the same cost with tighter M365 integration. Many organisations are better served by Planner Premium than Project Plan 1 for this user tier.
Who Needs Which Plan: The Right-Sizing Framework
The most common mistake in Project licensing is uniform tier assignment. A project management organisation of 200 people is not 200 identical Project users. The realistic distribution, based on our analysis across enterprise clients, is typically:
- 10–20% are portfolio managers or PMO leads who require desktop application access, baseline tracking, earned value analysis, and portfolio-level reporting — these users need Plan 3 or Plan 5
- 30–40% are working project managers who need Gantt scheduling, dependency management, resource assignment, and regular schedule updates — these users need Plan 3 if they require the desktop app, or Planner Premium/Plan 1 if web-based PM is sufficient
- 40–60% are team members and stakeholders who need to view project plans, update task status, and see their assignments — these users may need only the read-only access or Planner Basic that is already included in their M365 licence
The financial implication of uniform Plan 3 vs right-sized tiering is substantial. For 200 users at Plan 3 (£23/user/month), the annual cost is approximately £55,200. A right-sized distribution of 30 Plan 3 + 80 Planner Premium + 90 Planner Basic produces an annual cost of approximately £16,280 — a saving of approximately £38,920 per year, or £116,760 over a three-year EA term.
The Plan 3 Trap: When You're Paying for a Desktop App Nobody Installs
Project Plan 3's primary differentiator over Plan 1/Planner Premium is the Project desktop application. This is a Windows-only application that requires installation, has a significant learning curve, and is typically used by experienced project managers with a formal PM methodology. If none of these conditions apply to the user population assigned Plan 3 licences, the premium over Plan 1 is a straightforward waste.
The indicators that Plan 3 licences are misassigned in your estate:
- The Project desktop application is not installed on assigned users' machines (check via Microsoft Endpoint Manager / Intune inventory)
- Project Online site usage shows low activity despite Plan 3 subscriptions
- Users describe themselves as "occasionally checking project status" rather than "building and maintaining schedules"
- The organisation does not have a formal earned value or baseline management programme
- Project schedules are primarily maintained by a small PMO team rather than individual project managers
If three or more of these conditions apply, a right-sizing exercise for the Project Plan 3 population should be on your M365 optimisation workplan. The conversation with Microsoft at EA renewal is straightforward: you are reducing Plan 3 count and replacing with a lower tier, with documented justification based on usage analytics. Microsoft will push back — the Plan 3 seat is significantly more profitable — but usage data is a legitimate commercial argument that Microsoft cannot dismiss in a well-prepared negotiation.
Project Plan 5: Enterprise Portfolio Management
Project Plan 5 is the enterprise portfolio management tier, targeting Programme Directors, Portfolio Managers, and PMO executives responsible for managing portfolios of projects across the organisation. Its differentiating capabilities over Plan 3 are demand management (intake and prioritisation workflows for project requests), portfolio optimisation models (which projects to invest in given resource and budget constraints), and the advanced Power BI content pack for portfolio reporting.
Plan 5 is priced at approximately £46/user/month at list — exactly double Plan 3. The commercial justification requires a genuine portfolio management programme with centralised governance. Organisations where "portfolio management" means a spreadsheet of active projects reviewed in a monthly PMO meeting do not need Plan 5. The product is genuinely valuable for enterprises running formal Stage Gate governance, managing 50+ concurrent projects, or operating a Programme Management Office with approved capital allocation processes.
Plan 5 licence populations in well-run enterprises are small — typically 5–20 people in a PMO leadership function. If you are seeing Plan 5 licence counts in the hundreds, there is almost certainly a misassignment problem. Plan 5 entitlement includes Plan 3 capabilities for the same user, so Plan 5 users can do everything Plan 3 users can do plus the portfolio capabilities. There is no Plan 5 seat that should be assigned to a working project manager who only needs schedule management.
Project Server: The On-Premises Legacy Question
Some enterprise estates still run Microsoft Project Server — the on-premises portfolio and project management platform that predates Project Online and Project for the web. Project Server requires a separate licence: Server CAL + Server licence, and connecting users also need a Project Professional CAL or a subscription licence that includes Project Online access.
Microsoft's current position on Project Server is continued support but no new feature development. Project Server 2019 is the latest on-premises release and is supported through October 2026 for mainstream support, with extended support through October 2031. If you are running Project Server 2016 or earlier, you are already in extended support or beyond it.
The migration path from Project Server to the cloud is Project Online (for organisations wanting continuity of the SharePoint-based portfolio model) or Project for the web (for organisations willing to re-platform on the Dataverse architecture). Both require Project Plan 3 or Plan 5. The migration complexity depends heavily on the volume of historical project data, custom fields, timesheets, and third-party integrations built on the Project Server platform. For enterprises with significant Project Server investments, the migration timeline is typically 12–24 months and the cost should be factored into the Plan 3/5 business case.
Visio: The Related Licensing Gap
Microsoft Visio — the diagramming application — is licensed separately from Project and is also absent from all M365 plans. Visio Plan 1 (web only) is approximately £4.20/user/month; Visio Plan 2 (web + desktop) is approximately £8.50/user/month. Neither is included in M365 E3 or E5.
In Project-heavy environments, project managers and business analysts often need both Project and Visio — which creates a combined licence cost of approximately £27–£31.50/user/month for Plan 3 + Visio Plan 1 or Plan 2. This is a significant per-user cost that should be explicitly scoped in EA negotiations, particularly for organisations where process mapping, architecture diagrams, and project network diagrams are standard deliverables.
For organisations that need Visio primarily for process mapping and flow diagrams rather than complex technical architecture drawings, Microsoft 365 Whiteboard and the drawing capabilities in PowerPoint may reduce the Visio dependency — but this is a capability evaluation question, not a licensing negotiation. Evaluate Visio requirements independently of Project before combining them into an EA commitment.
Negotiating Project Licensing in Your EA
Project licences should be included in your Enterprise Agreement renewal scope rather than purchased as standalone subscriptions. The commercial benefits of EA inclusion are consistent with other M365 products: volume discount eligibility (typically 15–25% off list at enterprise thresholds), price lock for the EA term, and consolidated billing and management.
The negotiation dynamics specific to Project:
Volume threshold effects: Microsoft's volume discount tiers for Project apply to Project licence counts independently, not as part of the M365 user count. A 200-seat Project Plan 3 commitment is evaluated on the Project tier schedule, not blended with your M365 E3 count. This means small Project populations — under 50 users — may see minimal discount. Including Project in the EA still provides the contractual benefits and billing consolidation, even if the price discount is modest.
Mixed-tier commitments: If you are right-sizing from uniform Plan 3 to a tiered model, negotiate the new tier mix explicitly in the EA amendment rather than mid-cycle via the M365 Admin Center subscription changes. EA-documented tier splits are cleaner for audit purposes and may attract better pricing on the Plan 3 tier if the volume on that specific tier is more visible to Microsoft's commercial team.
Planner Premium as a negotiating position: If a portion of your Project population genuinely needs only Planner Premium (£8.30/user/month) rather than Project Plan 1 (same price but separately licensed), migrating those users to the M365-included Planner Premium saves the Project licence cost entirely. This is a meaningful commercial lever — particularly for teams that adopted Project for its Gantt functionality but are now willing to operate in the Planner environment. Propose this explicitly in EA renewal preparation, supported by usage analysis showing which Project Plan 1 users have never installed or used the Project application.
See our guidance on Microsoft EA negotiation and the EA pricing benchmarks that should anchor your Project tier cost expectations going into renewal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can team members who don't have a Project licence view project plans?
For Project for the web: read-only access can be shared via a link that allows viewing without a Project licence. Team members who need to update their own task status need a licence, but stakeholders who only need read access can use the sharing link without additional cost. For Project Online: all users accessing Project Online via the web interface require a Project licence.
Does Microsoft 365 Copilot work with Microsoft Project?
Copilot capabilities within Planner Premium (AI-assisted task planning, schedule summarisation, natural language project creation) require a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence in addition to the Project Plan or Planner Premium licence. The Copilot functionality is not included in Project Plan pricing — it is an incremental requirement. Evaluate the Copilot business case independently of the Project tier decision. See our M365 Copilot licensing guide for the full analysis.
Is there a difference between Project Plan 3 "cloud subscription" and Project Plan 3 purchased through EA?
The underlying product is identical. The commercial difference is price (EA typically 15–25% below cloud subscription list) and contractual terms (EA term pricing vs month-to-month or annual cloud subscription). For organisations with an existing EA, purchasing Project through the EA is almost always more economical than cloud subscriptions at equivalent volume.
What happens to Project files when a user's licence expires?
For Project for the web: project data remains in Dataverse and is accessible by other licensed users. The lapsed user cannot access the project application but their project records persist. For Project Online: the SharePoint site data persists. For the desktop application: .mpp files remain accessible to users with a current Plan 3/5 licence. Offboarding procedures should include project ownership transfer as a standard step to prevent orphaned schedules.