Nialli Visual Planner vs Open Planner Studio

Nialli Visual Planner is cloud-based software for construction teams coordinating project schedules as work changes. It brings milestone planning, phase pull planning, lookahead planning, and weekly work plans onto one canvas. Multiple users can update a plan simultaneously, with changes reflected across devices, and the product supports interaction across up to three connected displays. Each plan supports up to 25 lanes of activity; Nialli recommends splitting large or complex projects across plans to improve loading and performance. Teams can import milestones and activities from Oracle Primavera P6, Asta Powerproject, or Microsoft Project. Task status updates generate Percent Plan Complete and reasons-for-variance data, while plan data can be exported to Microsoft Power BI for portfolio reporting and resource planning. Mobile and tablet browsers provide a field view for upcoming work, progress tracking, and photo capture without a download. The single-plan subscription costs $1,400 per year and allows any number of users. A 30-day full-access trial requires no credit card.

Open Planner Studio is an open-source construction planning tool for buildings, infrastructure and civil works. It provides Gantt charts, automatic critical-path calculation, resource histograms and automatic levelling when resources are overallocated. Schedules use native IFC 4.3; the app imports and exports IFC, CSV, MS Project XML and Primavera P6 XML, and opens MS Project MPP files. Construction calendars can account for holidays, recesses, frost delays, inspections and phasing, with task durations entered in days or hours. Reports export as PDFs at approximately 220 DPI, on paper sizes up to A2, with baseline overlays and status or progress lines. A built-in MCP server allows compatible AI clients to read and edit schedules, with pause, read-only mode, backups and an activity panel. Schedules are stored as IFC files rather than a proprietary closed format. Crash recovery is available, alongside optional periodic saving to a writable project file. The app is marked Available Beta and includes an offline manual in fourteen languages. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows and the web.