Best Resource Planning Software for Growing Teams

Website: https://www.float.com

Best for: visual scheduling for agencies and studios

Starting price: $7 per scheduled person/month

Free plan: Free trial (30 days)

Pros: clean drag and drop schedule; you only pay for people you schedule

Cons: no free plan; Enterprise needs an annual contract

Float keeps resource planning visual. You see people, projects and time off on one board, then drag work into place and watch capacity change as you move it. That direct picture is why agencies and studios pick it: a producer can spot an overloaded designer in seconds and move a task to someone with room.

Starter is $7 per scheduled person per month, and Pro is $12. You only pay for people you add to the schedule, and guests who only view it are free. Pro adds time tracking, client rate cards with multi-currency support, project cost estimation and advanced reporting, and a 30-day free trial runs on Pro. The limit is scope: Float does not run your sales pipeline or general ledger, and Starter lacks time tracking and rate cards, so firms that bill by the hour need Pro.

Website: https://resourceguruapp.com

Best for: simple scheduling for small teams

Starting price: $5 per person/month (billed annually)

Free plan: Free trial (30 days)

Pros: lowest starting price here; placeholders for tentative bookings

Cons: no free plan; every person added is billed, even if they never log in

Resource Guru does one job and keeps it simple: it shows who is booked, who is free and what is coming next. Teams that found bigger tools too heavy often land here, because the calendar is the whole interface. You can book people, rooms and equipment, set tentative holds, and sync with your calendar.

Grasshopper is $5 per person per month on annual billing, Blackbelt is $8 and Master is $12, while monthly billing costs $6, $9.60 and $14.40. Blackbelt adds timesheets, reports, bill rates and project budgets, and Master adds booking approvals, single sign-on, data import and phone support. A 30-day free trial is available. The billing rule to note is that every person you add is charged, whether they log in or not, and rooms, equipment and placeholders beyond the free allowance cost extra, so a large roster can lift the real monthly bill. There is also no free plan.

Website: https://monday.com

Best for: visual boards with workload views

Starting price: $9 per seat/month (billed annually)

Free plan: Yes

Pros: flexible boards and views; workload view on Pro

Cons: 3-seat minimum on priced plans; Basic has no automation actions

monday.com is a work management platform that many teams bend into a resource planning tool. Boards hold projects, timelines show dates, and the workload view shows who is over capacity once you reach the Pro plan. Its strength is flexibility: a team can shape boards around its own process.

Basic is $9 per seat per month on annual billing, Standard is $12 and Pro is $19, while monthly billing costs $12, $14 and $24. There is a free plan for up to 2 seats, and a 14-day free trial of Pro. Pro adds time tracking, private boards, advanced dashboards and 25,000 automation and integration actions per month. The pricing structure needs care: every priced plan starts at 3 seats and uses seat buckets, so a 6-person team may buy 10 seats, and Basic includes no automation actions at all.

Website: https://www.smartsheet.com

Best for: spreadsheet style planning at scale

Starting price: $9 per member/month (billed annually)

Free plan: Free trial (30 days)

Pros: familiar grid layout; strong reporting and dashboards

Cons: no free plan; Business needs at least 3 members

Smartsheet will feel familiar to anyone who plans in spreadsheets, because its core view is a grid with rows, columns, formulas and attachments. Under that familiar surface it adds Gantt charts, card views, dashboards and resource management, so a team can plan work in a sheet and report on it. It suits operations leads who want structure and audit trails.

Pro is $9 per member per month on annual billing, or $12 monthly, and Business is $19 on annual billing, or $24 monthly. Pro covers 1 to 10 members with unlimited contributors, while Business needs at least 3 members and adds unlimited guests and contributors. A 30-day free trial is available with no credit card required. The main drawback is that there is no free plan, so every user is a paying member from the start, and the deeper resource management features sit on the higher tiers, while setup takes time because someone has to design the sheets and reports first.

Website: https://www.teamwork.com

Best for: client work with time and budgets

Starting price: $9.99 per user/month (billed annually)

Free plan: Yes

Pros: built for client work; time tracking on every plan

Cons: capacity planning needs Accelerate at $24.99; free plan caps at 5 projects

Teamwork is built for teams that deliver client work, and that focus shows in how it connects projects, time, budgets and invoicing. You can plan a project, track billable time against it, watch the budget burn down and raise an invoice from the logged hours. That closed loop is the reason agencies and consultancies choose it over general task tools.

The free plan covers up to 5 projects and 5 users, then Basics is $9.99 per user per month billed yearly, Accelerate is $24.99, and Optimize and Enterprise are on a custom quote. Basics covers up to 300 projects, unlimited templates, billable time tracking and portfolio health. Accelerate adds workload and capacity planning, time budgets and retainers, invoicing from logged time, and HubSpot and QuickBooks connections. The gap to plan around is that real capacity planning lives on Accelerate, so a team that buys Basics for resource planning will need to step up to $24.99 per user per month.

Website: https://clickup.com

Best for: all in one tasks, docs and capacity

Starting price: $9 per user/month (billed annually)

Free plan: Yes

Pros: generous free plan; resource management on Business

Cons: guest seats are limited on priced plans; deep feature set takes time to learn

ClickUp tries to hold the whole working day in one workspace: tasks, docs, goals, chat, time tracking and dashboards. For resource planning, its Business plan adds resource management, timesheets and advanced dashboards, so a team can plan capacity next to the tasks that create the work. The breadth is the appeal, and it is also the risk, because a team has to choose which features it will actually use.

The Free Forever plan is $0, then Core is $9 per user per month billed yearly, Business is $17, and Enterprise is on a custom quote. Core adds custom fields, unlimited storage, unlimited Gantt charts and 1,000 automations a month. Business adds resource management, timesheets, advanced dashboards, webhooks and 10,000 automations a month. The limits worth knowing are that guest seats are capped on priced plans, and that the interface can feel crowded until the team agrees on a setup.

Website: https://www.getharvest.com

Best for: time tracking tied to project budgets

Starting price: $9 per user/month (billed annually)

Free plan: Free trial (30 days)

Pros: simple time tracking; Forecast integration for capacity

Cons: no free plan; Flex usage fees sit on top of the seat price

Harvest is a time tracking and invoicing tool that many teams pair with Harvest Forecast for resource planning. The combination is simple on purpose: people log time against projects, managers see budgets and estimates in real time, and invoices go out from the same hours. Forecast adds the forward view, showing who is booked and who has room in the weeks ahead.

Teams is $9 per seat per month billed annually, and Enterprise is $14, with $11 and $17.50 per seat per month on monthly billing. Flex usage fees also apply for active projects, clients, tasks and invoicing, so the seat price is not the whole bill. A 30-day free trial is available. The trade-off is that Harvest is not a full project management tool, so teams still need somewhere to run tasks and files, and there is no free plan.

Website: https://www.scoro.com

Best for: full professional services automation

Starting price: EUR 15 per user/month

Free plan: Free trial (length not stated)

Pros: projects, resources and finance in one system; annual billing discount of 13 to 17 percent

Cons: 5-user minimum and a two-app minimum; prices are in euros

Scoro is a professional services automation platform, which means it tries to cover the whole job from quote to cash: sales, projects, resources, time, expenses, invoicing and reporting in one shared data model. Time logged in one place flows into invoices and profitability reports without re-entry, and the Resource app shows capacity across the team. It is built for consultancies, agencies and IT firms that want one system instead of five.

Pricing starts from EUR 15 per user per month, and the price per user depends on which apps you combine, with a 13 to 17 percent discount for annual billing. The minimum is 5 user seats and a combination of at least two core apps, chosen from Do, Deliver, Track, Resource, Sell, Estimate, Spend and Invoice, and add-ons and integrations are priced separately. A free trial is available. The entry bar is higher than the simpler tools here, with five seats minimum, two apps minimum, and prices in euros.

Website: https://www.kantata.com

Best for: large services firms needing PSA depth

Starting price: quote only

Free plan: No

Pros: deep PSA feature set; over 1,200 prebuilt connectors

Cons: no published prices; sales-led setup with no self-serve trial

Kantata is a professional services automation platform aimed at larger services businesses. It combines project management, resource management, financial management and business intelligence, with forecasting and utilization reporting built in. The pitch is control at scale: leaders can see margins, forecast revenue and plan resources across the whole portfolio.

Pricing is by quote only. The pricing page asks you to fill out a form so a PSA advisor can build a plan around your company size, goals and way of working, and no list prices are published anywhere on the page. That is normal for enterprise PSA, but it means budgeting needs a sales conversation. Kantata is not a tool you can price, trial and buy in an afternoon: implementation is services-led, and the depth that helps a 200-person firm can feel like overhead to a smaller team.

Website: https://www.accelo.com

Best for: services firms that want sales to delivery in one place

Starting price: quote only

Free plan: No

Pros: quotes, projects, retainers and billing in one flow; AI-informed forecasting

Cons: no published prices; no free plan or trial stated

Accelo is a professional services automation platform that follows work from the first quote through delivery and billing. It connects sales, projects, retainers, time tracking and invoicing, so a firm can see which clients and which kinds of work make money. Its newer forecasting features use past delivery data to project revenue and flag risks before they hit margins.

Pricing is by custom quote only. The pricing page shows no figures and asks you to talk to the team. There is no free plan, and the page does not state a trial, so evaluation means a demo and a sales conversation. That sales-led model is the main drawback for smaller firms: you cannot compare Accelo on price without engaging the vendor, and the platform is built for firms with a real sales-to-delivery pipeline rather than a team that only needs a schedule.