A ClickUp alternative, one-time purchase — Gantt, workload and scenarios without the per-seat plan
Looking for a ClickUp alternative, one-time purchase instead of a per-seat subscription? ClickUp is an everything-app with Gantt and workload on paid tiers. shadow-planner is a focused desktop planner — Gantt, resource utilisation, what-if scenarios, local data — for €4,99 once.
ClickUp's pitch is "one app to replace them all", and it's not an empty one: tasks, docs, whiteboards, chat, goals, time tracking, dashboards, a dozen views. For a team that wants to consolidate five subscriptions into one, that breadth is real value. It comes at two prices, though. The obvious one is the per-user, per-month plan, with Gantt and workload views on the paid tiers. The less obvious one is the time it takes to set up, configure and keep everyone using a tool that does everything.
shadow-planner is the narrow alternative. It does project planning and controlling — Gantt with dependencies, weekly resource utilisation, a portfolio roll-up, what-if scenarios, an AI assistant over your plan — and nothing else. It's a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux, keeps its data in a local file, needs no account, and costs €4,99 once for unlimited use. You install it and start planning the same minute.
Side by side
| shadow-planner | ClickUp | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Planning and controlling: timelines, capacity, scenarios | All-in-one work platform: tasks, docs, chat, goals, dashboards |
| Pricing | Free tier; €4,99 one-time, no per-seat fee | Free plan with limits; paid plans per user per month for Gantt, workload and advanced views |
| Where data lives | Locally on your machine (SQLite) | ClickUp's cloud |
| Collaboration | Single-user desktop app; share via export (XLSX / CSV / JSON) | Real-time multi-user, comments, chat, notifications |
| Gantt / timeline | Core feature, with finish-to-start dependencies and cascade preview | Gantt view on paid plans |
| Resource utilisation | Weekly capacity vs. allocation, cost roll-ups from daily rates | Workload view on higher tiers |
| What-if scenarios | Isolated scenarios, snapshots, templates | Not a concept; duplicate the space |
| AI | Chat assistant over your data + planning agent; bring your own model (local Ollama or cloud key) | ClickUp Brain, paid add-on |
| Offline | Fully | Limited |
Who should switch
- The one person who actually plans. In most teams, one or two people build the timeline and the capacity plan; everyone else updates status. Paying a seat-based subscription so that one planner gets the Gantt and workload views is the wrong shape. A €4,99 one-time purchase is the right one. See pricing.
- Anyone tired of configuring. ClickUp rewards the administrator who sets up custom fields, statuses, views and automations — and punishes everyone who doesn't. shadow-planner has one model: projects, epics, tasks, people, allocations. The Gantt and the utilisation table come out of the box.
- Planners who model before they commit. Copy the baseline into a scenario, move people and dates, compare finish dates and person-days. Snapshots keep the record; templates bootstrap the next scenario. Nothing touches the baseline until you decide.
- People who want AI that knows the plan without another add-on. The assistant is connected to your scenario: it answers "which projects are red this month?", reschedules tasks with an approval gate for anything destructive, and the planning agent drafts epics, tasks and assignments from a Markdown brief for review. Use a free local model through Ollama, or your own Anthropic, OpenAI or OpenRouter key — no credits, no upsell. See local LLM project planning.
- Anyone with data that can't go to a SaaS. Local SQLite file, no telemetry, fully offline, open source on GitHub.
Who should stay
- You genuinely use the breadth: docs, chat, goals, time tracking and dashboards in one place, for the whole team. shadow-planner replaces none of that.
- You need real-time, multi-user editing, comments and notifications. shadow-planner is single-user by design.
- Automations and integrations are how work enters your system. shadow-planner is a planner, not a workflow engine.
Many people end up with both: plan and steer in shadow-planner, execute in ClickUp. Export the scenario to Excel or CSV for the hand-off, snapshot it for the record, and keep the what-if work out of the team's workspace entirely. If you're comparing other tools too, the Asana and monday.com pages cover the same ground.
Install shadow-planner for free — the Gantt, utilisation and AI assistant are all in the free tier.