Where it sits
Three tools on this desk. LumaPlan is all three.
Scheduling software has split into three markets that do not talk to each other. Heavyweight CPM engines build the schedule. Online Gantt tools are pleasant, but cannot do CPM properly. Analytics platforms grade a schedule someone else made. Most teams pay for two, and do the third by hand.
The three markets
Everyone is good at one third of the job.
Primavera P6 and MS Project
Real CPM engines. They handle 40,000-activity programmes. They are also desktop-bound, expensive per seat and slow to learn — and weak at telling you whether the schedule is any good.
Online Gantt tools
Fast to pick up, priced for whole teams, nice to use. The CPM underneath is shallow. Calendars, constraints, out-of-sequence progress and float discipline are where they stop.
Schedule analytics platforms
Schedule quality and forensic analysis, done properly. Sold separately, at five figures a year. Most still need a P6 or MS Project licence beside them just to open the file.
Feature by feature
How LumaPlan lines up.
| LumaPlan | Primavera P6 | MS Project | Online Gantt tools | Analytics platforms | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full CPM engine | Yes, minute-accurate | Yes | Yes | Partial — shallow float, limited calendars | Independent engine in some |
| MS Project and P6 date conventions | Both, per project | P6 only | MSP only | Neither, exactly | Reads both |
Opens .mpp and .xer natively |
Both, built in | .xer only |
.mpp only |
Usually import-once, lossy | Both, often via a licence you supply |
| Schedule health built in | 26 checks, every recalculation | Add-on / manual | No | No | Yes — it is the product |
| Monte Carlo | Built in | Separate module | Third-party add-in | No | Some |
| Resource leveling | Greedy + resource-constrained CPM | Yes | Yes | Workload views, not leveling | Analysis only |
| Time–location / flowline | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| 4D location timeline | Yes, tied to drawings | Via separate 4D product | No | No | No |
| Works offline | Browser and native, both offline | Desktop | Desktop | Cloud only | Cloud only |
| Real-time multi-user | Yes, with presence | Via EPPM server | Via Project Online | Yes | Yes |
| What you install | One app | Database + app server for the enterprise edition | Windows desktop | Browser | Browser |
“Online Gantt tools” and “analytics platforms” are generalisations across several products, because these categories are more consistent than the individual tools in them. Where a specific product is better than its category, assume it is.
Check it yourself
Every row above is testable in an afternoon.
A comparison table is worth exactly the verification behind it. None of these are positioning claims — each one is something you can put a real file through and settle for yourself.
Take a file you were actually sent
Not a sample. A contract programme, with the calendars, constraints and out-of-sequence progress that make real files awkward. It opens directly — no export step, no second licence.
Diff the dates against the source tool
Every activity, start and finish. The readers are checked field by field against what P6 and MS Project actually produced. On real project files, not samples. It is the only way date arithmetic gets settled.
Run the 26 checks on it
Then try the same check in whatever you use today. That gap is the argument. The assessment lives inside the scheduler, so it runs before the submittal goes out — not after it lands.
The whole idea
A P6-grade engine that opens everyone's files and grades them.
The gap in this market is not another Gantt chart. It is that three jobs have become three purchases: computing the dates, checking they are sound, and opening the file you were sent. Worse, the analysis tool usually needs a licence for the scheduling one before it can read the file at all.
LumaPlan collapses that into one engine, native readers for every format that matters, and a quality assessment on every recalculation. On a schedule you never needed the original tool to open.
One tool where you currently buy three.
The engine that computes the dates, the check that proves they are sound, and the reader that opens everyone else's file. Early access is opening to teams running live work.
Test the table yourself. Drop a .mpp or .xer straight into LumaPlan and it opens, schedules and grades it on the spot.