The 15 Best Capacity Planning Tools, Free and Paid

In today's dynamic market, organizations must adapt quickly to changing demands. Effective capacity planning is crucial for project managers to align team resources with project needs. Capacity planning tools, now enhanced with AI, help navigate the complex supply-and-demand relationship in project management.

This article reviews various capacity planning and resource management tools that can streamline your operations. In this article, we'll discuss what these tools are, how to perform capacity management, and factors to consider when choosing the right software for your needs.

1. Toggl Plan
2. Teamup Shared Calendar
3. Kantana
4. Smartsheet
5. Float
6. Resource Guru
7. Forecast
8. Runn
9. Mosaic
10. Wrike
11. ClickUp
12. Asana
13. Monday.com
14. Scoro
15. Jira

16 capacity planning tools

The right work management and capacity planning tools can significantly improve resource allocation, help avoid bottlenecks, and ensure timely project completion. Let's explore options to enhance your project management toolkit.

1. Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan offers comprehensive project management software with three main interfaces: one for project management, one for team planning, and one for task management. All interfaces allow you to view the workloads and tasks assigned to each team member, making it easy to track and plan for capacity.

Best for: Planning, visualizing, and balancing workloads for small teams

Pros:

• Free trial to test out core features before committing
• Compatible with other apps like Google Calendar
• Export data in different formats
• In-app updates and email notifications
• Track project progress directly from the dashboard
• Ability to group projects per client
• Drag-and-drop timelines
• Ability to assign a task to multiple team members and collaborate
• Visual resource planning to balance workload
• Allows you to add public holidays and personal time off to know when team members won’t be available
• Dashboard customizable with different colors to highlight your projects, milestones, and tasks

Cons:

• Charges per user, which can be expensive for large teams

Pricing:

• 14-day free trial
• Team plan for $9 per user per month—or $8 per user per month billed annually
• Business edition for $15 per user per month—or $13.35 per user per month billed annually

2. TeamUp Shared Calendar

The Teamup Shared Calendar simplifies your ability to organize teams, schedule work, manage availability, share events, and more. As the name implies, the focus is on seeing all of the above in a calendar format, which allows for easy visualization of workloads. Individuals can also share different events via Teamup’s mobile app for Android or iOS.

Best for: Organizing and scheduling work on a consolidated calendar

Pros:

• Cross-platform (laptop, mobile, tablet)
• Ability to add between eight and 150 sub-calendars depending on your selected pricing plan
• Color-coded calendars and folders for faster identification
• Add custom fields for text and numbers
• Share calendar with colleagues securely with Teamup’s custom access
• Integration with other tools like Slack, Zapier, and Trello
• Generates calendar components that can be embedded into websites
• Add images and files to events on your calendar

Cons:

• Provides a three-day trial period, which is quite limited compared with what other tools offer
• Calendar can become quickly cluttered with events, making it challenging to track them all

Pricing:

• Free plan but with limited tier functionality
• Teamup Plus for $12 per month—or $10 per month for annual billing
• Teamup Pro for $29 per month—or $25 per month for annual billing
• Teamup Business for $69 per month—or $60 per month for annual billing
• Teamup Enterprise for $129 per month—or $105 per month for annual billing

3. Kantata

Kantata—previously Mavenlink—offers a resource management and optimization tool. As a full-service software with all the bells, whistles, and metrics, Kantana enables you to streamline crucial processes and intelligently align staffing and team configurations to business goals. Plus, it has all sorts of forecasting and planning capabilities.

Best for: Identifying skills gaps and managing your talent network

Pros:

• Comprehensive dashboard to track all the projects’ progress
• Ability to manage project timing, profitability, and demands from a centralized location
• Assess multiple project plans simultaneously
• Track employees’ performance and identify growth opportunities
• Collaborate with external partners by adding their roles and rates to your workflow
• Access to real-time data for strategic decision-making
• Provides forecasting tools to help you plan for the future

Cons:

• Not transparent with pricing plans
• Advanced features may take beginners some time to master

Pricing:

• You have to contact the sales team for a custom quote

4. Smartsheet

Smartsheet's resource management software features simple resource allocation, accurate project planning, easy time tracking, and dynamic reporting. It contains the tools you need for capacity planning with teams of various sizes. 

One of the nice things about Smartsheet is that it can integrate with many other types of project and team management software.

Smartsheet is also harnessing the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for tasks like creating formulas and text and analyzing and summarizing data. However, these AI features are still in the beta phase and are only available to those in Smartsheet’s Early Adopters Program.

Best for: Tracking project schedules and budgets

Pros:

• Free trial that supports one user and two editors
• Supports up to 1TB of attachment storage
• Integrations with Microsoft 365, DropBox, Box, Slack, and Google Workspace
• Create unlimited dashboards, reports, and forms
• Access real-time updates via the Smartsheet mobile app
• Share your reports with both internal and external stakeholders
• Eliminate manual and repetitive tasks with automated workflows

Cons:

• Advanced features are only available in higher pricing plans
• Getting accustomed to all Smartsheet’s features may take some time

Pricing:

• Free plan but with limited tier features
• Smartsheet Pro for $9 per user per month—or $7 per month billed yearly
• Smartsheet Business for $32 per user per month—or $25 per month billed yearly

Smartsheet Enterprise for a custom price quote

5. Float

Float offers resource planning to keep projects on track. Its interface enables an accurate view of everyone’s workload and status, time off and public holidays, and future projects and capacity, making it useful for capacity planning.

Best for: Assigning work based on a team’s capacity

Pros:

• Encrypted data storage
• Mobile app for both Android and iOS
• Ability to track your team’s skills and rates
• Monitor resource utilization rates
• Set budget alerts by time or fees
• Generates prefilled timesheets with scheduled hours
• Integrates with Jira, Asana, Trello, Google Calendar, Slack, and more
• Access to timely updates

Cons:

• Charges per user, which can be expensive for large teams
• May require extra work to be integrated with existing systems

Pricing:

• Float Starter for $7.50 per person per month—or $6 per month billed annually
• Float Pro for $12.50 per person per month—or $10 per month billed annually
• Enterprise for a custom price quote

6. Resource Guru

Like some of the other tools in this list, Resource Guru approaches the resource management processes seeking user-friendly simplicity. But that simplicity comes with many capabilities, including resource scheduling, resource management, leave management, project scheduling, meeting room booking, capacity planning, project forecasting, and equipment management features.

Best for: Managing time through effective task allocation

Pros:

• All plans support unlimited projects and clients
• Personalize dashboards to suit your needs
• Create custom fields and filters
• Integrate key features directly into your application using Resource Guru’s API
• Change user permissions as you need
• Access to project forecasting tools

Cons:

• Relatively expensive due to the per-person payment model
• You can only generate reports in higher pricing plans
• Ability to import data is only supported in the Master plan

Pricing:

• Grasshopper plan for $5 per person per month—or $4.16 per month billed annually
• Blackbelt plan for $8 per person per month—or $6.65 per month billed annually
• Master plan for $12 per person per month—or $10 per month billed yearly
• All plans offer a 30-day free trial
• Non-human resources are billed at a lower rate

7. Forecast

Forecast is an AI-powered platform that enables work automation, team collaboration, project management, business intelligence, resource management, and project accounting. One of the big selling points for this software is its ability to connect with multiple other tools, such as Azure, Google Drive, Microsoft Excel, and more.

Forecast uses AI to analyze your previous records and perform predictive analytics. As a result, you can access more detailed and tailored analytics to enhance your future performance and financial return. The integrated AI functionality can also trigger advanced warnings, which give you ample time to mitigate risks.

‍Best for: Cutting costs and boosting profits using AI-generated analytics and recommendations

Pros:

• Ability to track billable time, revenue, costs, and profits
• Access your financial, resource management, and project management reports from a centralized location
• Automate your resource management workflow with AI
• Helps you plan your hiring or resourcing needs
• Effective task allocation
• User-friendly interface

Cons:

• Not transparent with pricing plans
• Can be time-consuming to set up

Pricing:

Contact Forecast’s sales team for a custom price quote for their Pro or Plus plan

8. Runn

Runn is resource management software that helps businesses plan, track progress and milestones in real time, and generate reports. With the integrated resource scheduling feature, you can easily create projects and assign team members to them. You can also keep track of what your team members are doing, ensuring you don’t lose sight of your goals.

Best for: Assigning team members to the right roles and projects

Pros:

• Integrated chat and onboarding features
• Free version supports unlimited projects and up to five members
• Drag-and-drop functionality to schedule projects
• Filter team members by role and skill to find those suitable for a project
• Access to real-time planning insights
• Forecast your team’s capacity and plan for different possibilities
• Automatically filled timesheets
• Provides a REST API to directly add key functions to an application

Cons:

• Limited integrations with other external applications

Pricing:

• Free plan with limited features for up to five people managed
• Runn Pro for $10 per person per month—or $8 per month billed yearly
• Runn Enterprise for a custom price quote

9. Mosaic

Mosaic harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to help you with capacity planning, resource utilization, and project management. With AI, Mosaic enables you to predict and automate your workflow, which results in increased productivity. Mosaic can also analyze your project plans, deadlines, budgets, and tasks—and suggest the right personnel to accomplish various tasks. 

It can also identify various risks in your projects and trigger warnings beforehand.

Best for: Planning projects based on the team’s capacity and workload

Pros:

• Shareable dashboards and reports
• Allows you to quickly move staff around to respond to changing conditions
• An intuitive user interface that’s easy to use
• Multiple permission levels to control access
• Fully integrated with financial and HR software
• Ability to plan collaboratively
• Automated and AI-powered workflows

Cons:

• Higher pricing tiers can quickly get expensive for large teams
• Mobile app has limited functionality

Pricing:

Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans require you to book a demo to learn pricing

10. Wrike

Wrike is a comprehensive tool for streamlining your project management workflow. It allows you to manage projects, organize work, and collaborate with colleagues and external stakeholders. Wrike also utilizes a centralized information repository, allowing you to easily align your teams and departments.

Best for: Managing workflows across multiple departments

Pros:

• Monitor progress with interactive Gantt charts
• Supports over 400 integrations, including apps like Salesforce and Asana
• Drag-and-drop functionality for creating schedules
• Intuitive and user-friendly interface
• Offers both mobile and desktop applications
• Access to detailed visualization and analytics
• No-code workflow

Cons:

• Integrations with certain apps may lead to delayed notifications.

Pricing:

• Free plan with limited tier functionality
• Team plan for $9.80 per user per month
• Business plan for $24.80 per user per month
• Enterprise edition for a custom price quote
• Pinnacle plan for a custom price quote

11. ClickUp

Clickup is a project management software that’s designed to streamline different workflows and projects. It facilitates collaboration by bringing different tools to a centralized location, allowing team members to work together. And with an integrated AI-powered assistant, individuals can perform different tasks like generative action items, checking spelling and grammar mistakes, summarizing long texts, and more—much faster.

Best for: Collaborating with team members across different projects and departments

‍Pros:

• Integrated chat functionality
• Centralized project-related communications
• Brainstorm ideas with whiteboards
• Divide projects into smaller sprints, which are easier to track
• Quickly assign and delegate tasks to team members
• Create detailed docs and add them to your tasks
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Custom project templates
• Integration with 1000+ tools
• Store data in the cloud and access it from anywhere

Cons:

• Can be time-consuming to set up
• Can be challenging for beginners to master

Pricing:

• Free Forever plan but with limited features
• Unlimited plan for $10 per member per month—or $7 per month billed annually
• Business plan for $19 per member per month—or $12 per month billed annually
• Enterprise available at a custom quote

12. Asana

Asana is project management and capacity planning software built to streamline your teamwork and key processes. It provides a collaborative workspace, allowing teams to plan, coordinate, and perform different tasks.

Asana Intelligence, powered by AI, brings even more capabilities to project management workflows, allowing individuals to be more creative and productive. For instance, teams have access to more comprehensive AI-generated insights, which assists in strategic planning.

Best for: Promoting collaboration across multiple projects—and coordinating work

Pros:

• Easy to set up and use
• Supports a high level of collaboration
• In-app updates and email notifications
• Real-time reporting and analytics
• Supports 100+ integrations

Cons:

• Delayed notifications on mobile app
• Limited time-tracking abilities
• Can be expensive for large teams due to the per-user payment model
• Supports only 10 members on the free version

Pricing:

• Personal plan available for free
• Starter plan for $13.49 per month—or $10.99 per month billed annually
• Advanced plan for $30.49 per month—or $24.99 per month billed annually
• Enterprise edition for a custom quote
• Enterprise+ edition for a custom quote

13. Monday.com

Monday.com seeks to transform the traditional way of working by providing powerful tools for managing projects, resources, and tasks. It’s suitable for wide use cases, including human resources, marketing, software development, and creative and design. 

With Monday.com, you can centralize all your work tools and processes into a single area—and collaborate with other team members to accomplish different goals.

Best for: Centralizing work processes and tools to boost productivity

Pros:

• Track project progress with timeline, Gantt, and chart views
• Multi-level permission for enhanced security
• Provides a wide variety of project templates

Cons:

• Only two seats on the free plan
• Expensive for large teams

Pricing:

• Free plan with limited features
• Basic plan for $12 per seat per month—or $9 per seat per month billed annually
• Standard plan for $14 per seat per month—or $12 per seat per month billed annually
• Pro plan for $24 per seat per month—or $19 per seat per month billed annually
• Enterprise available for a custom price quote

14. Scoro

Scoro helps businesses, agencies, and consultancies standardize their operations and manage work processes. Teams can manage their entire project lifecycle from a central place, track progress, and plan. Scoro also provides real-time updates and analytics, allowing stakeholders to make fast decisions as situations change.

Best for: Planning projects, tracking progress, and monitoring results from a centralized dashboard

‍Pros:

• A wide variety of project templates
• Late invoice reminders
• Ability to track billable time
• Generates detailed financial reports
• Plan and forecast your resources
• Supports cross-team collaboration

Cons:

• Quite expensive compared to other capacity planning tools
• No long-term  free version

Pricing:

• Free 14-day trial
• Essential plan for $28 per user per month—or $26 per user per month billed annually
• Standard plan for $42 per user per month—or $37 per user per month billed annually
• Pro plan for $71 per user per month—or $63 per user per month billed annually
• Ultimate plan for a custom quote

15. Jira

Jira is a popular project management tool that helps teams plan, track progress, and manage tasks. It’s primarily designed for software development teams and supports different Agile methodologies like Scrum and Kanban.

The Atlassian Intelligence feature available to Premium and Enterprise customers introduces AI capabilities to Jira, making it possible for software teams to quickly summarize meetings, draft responses, and find answers from virtual agents.

Best for: Software development teams to plan and track project milestones

Pros:

• Provides issue management and tracking
• Interactive timelines to keep your team and stakeholders in check
• Powerful Agile and Scrum boards
• Generates comprehensive reports and insights
• Customizable workflows
• 3,000+ apps and integrations

Cons:

• Beginners may require more time to get accustomed to different features
• Mainly tailored for software and engineering teams, meaning it doesn’t fit all use cases

Pricing:

• Free plan with basic features for up to 10 users
• Standard plan for $8.15 per user per month—or $850 per year (up to 10 users)
• Premium plan for $16 per user per month—or $1,600 per year (up to 10 users)
• Enterprise plan available for a custom quote

What is a capacity planning tool?

A capacity planning tool is software that assists individuals and organizations to predict future needs and manage their resources effectively. These tools help in ensuring that available resources can match the organizational demand.

Capacity planning tools feature characteristics like demand analysis, forecasting, time tracking, reports and analytics, and scenario modeling. They also foster a collaborative workspace, allowing different team members to combine their efforts and achieve goals. What’s more, they support a wide variety of applications and plug-ins, which extends their usability.

A project manager is responsible for creating project plans. They perform risk assessment and management, communicate with team members and other stakeholders, and engage in quality control, among other tasks. While it’s possible to perform all these tasks manually, they can be time-consuming and can even lead to burnout.

Capacity planning tools bring some much-needed relief by helping project managers with their responsibilities. These tools can even perform specific tasks autonomously, which frees project managers from repetitive and monotonous tasks, allowing them to focus on their core mandate.

Why use a capacity planning tool

Capacity planning tools serve different purposes, including the following:

• Resource optimization. Capacity planning tools can analyze available resources, identify gaps, and even predict future demands. As a result, they can assist project managers in allocating different resources, including labor, finances, or machines, effectively.
• Forecasting. Capacity planning tools can also use historical data to predict what future conditions look like. Project managers can then use insights from these tools for strategic planning.
• Cost efficiency. Capacity planning tools cut waste by ensuring that resources are used effectively.
• Risk mitigation. By analyzing different datasets, capacity planning tools can identify different risks and constraints. Such insights can help project managers navigate murky waters and achieve success.

How capacity management works

Capacity management and planning is the response to demand forecasting. With this process, you understand capacity requirements in the short or long term and determine if you have enough available resources or current capacity to meet those demands within the specified time frame.

The capacity planning process typically goes like this:

1. Conduct a demand forecast. Determine what’s required to meet the upcoming demands of projects or workload.
2. Determine the required capacity. Use information about forecasted demand to estimate future capacity. For example, this capacity may be the total number of work hours needed for a particular project.
3. Calculate resource capacity. Next, determine the capacity of your current team members over the period you’re planning for.
4. Measure the gap. Determine the size of the gap between demand and resource capacity.
5. Align capacity with demand. If capacity is greater than demand, you may be able to take on additional work, finish the planned work sooner, or downsize the team. If the demand is greater than the capacity, you may need to scale up your team or readjust priorities and timelines.

How to choose the best capacity planning tool

From Toggl Plan to Jira, you’ll find numerous capacity planning tools with varying features that you can use in your workflow. But to select the right one, you have to consider different factors, including:

• Ease of use. Capacity planning tools have different types of interfaces. Depending on your skills, it may be a good idea to settle for tools with intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces.
• Cost. Consider the tool’s pricing plan and determine if it fits your budget.
• Features. Before settling on a specific tool, ensure it has the right features for your project. For instance, if you’re a large team, ensure the capacity planning tool has a collaborative workspace.
• Data security. Capacity planning tools handle sensitive information such as user names, passwords, financial records, and other business data. So, ensure you consider the security measures a tool has to protect your data.
• Performance. Consider the reliability of capacity planning tools. Look for platforms with higher uptimes to minimize the likelihood of service interruption.

Find project managers on Upwork

Finding the right tools for the job is one step toward successful project management and capacity planning. Another step is finding the right professional services for the job. If your team’s capacity needs to expand to meet demand, Upwork can help you find qualified independent professionals to lighten your team's workload.  

You can find capacity planners for any scope, whether it’s a complex project, a longer-term contract, or a short-term job. On Upwork, you have access to top talent in various fields, including software development, writing, sales, marketing, and analytics. Post a job for free today and receive bids from top talent on Upwork.

If you have skills in capacity planning, find clients on Upwork who need project management support.

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Upwork is not affiliated with and does not sponsor or endorse any of the tools or services discussed in this article. These tools and services are provided only as potential options, and each reader and company should take the time needed to adequately analyse and determine the tools or services that would best fit their specific needs and situation.

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Prices are current at the time of writing and may change over time based on each service’s offerings.