15 Best Free Gantt Chart Tools for Individuals and Teams
Whether you work as an individual or a team, planning bigger projects is the key to delivering on time. Choose one of the best free Gantt chart tools and plan better today.
Individuals and small teams find project management as bigger teams do. However, software pricing is one of the biggest hurdles when selecting tools for project management like Gantt chart makers. That’s why they search for the best free Gantt chart tools. On the downside, even finding a free tool does not solve the issue for them.
It is because the tool does not meet all their requirements and use cases. So, here we will discuss everything you need to know about these tools and how to select them. So, you can know which one of the 15 best free Gantt chart tools will work for you.
A Gantt chart is a graph that allows you to visualize a timeline for easier tracking. When working on smaller tasks, time tracking is not an issue; however, while working on bigger projects, you need to manage deadlines for every small deliverable, and that's where the Gantt chart can help you keep track. It divides the whole project into smaller parts assigned to different team members.
That way, achieving the smaller milestones becomes easy for employees. Similarly, keeping track of a project’s progress becomes easier for the manager.
Getting started with a Gantt chart tool will be a huge upgrade regardless of the size of your team. Here are a few ways these tools will offer you amazing value.
1. Gantt chart allows you to plan the whole project by breaking it into smaller tasks and scheduling them with realistic deadlines.
2. You can set actual and planned deadlines to check when your project is on track, lagging, and the team is performing ahead of the timeline.
3. Different resources are used for different tasks. With a Gantt chart, you can keep track of all resources and their respective tasks.
4. Gantt chart is an excellent way to track individual, team, and departmental progress. It is very easy since you only must track tasks and project progress.
5. With a Gantt chat, project managers can identify the potential risks and roadblocks in the project timeline. Those can then be resolved before time, which keeps your team's performance streamlined.
6. Gantt chart helps divide bigger projects into smaller tasks. Then you can set realistic planned deadlines for the project. Hence you are not setting deadlines with guesswork.
While there are many other ways, the best free Gantt chart tools will bring amazing value your way.
What to look for when selecting the best free Gantt chart tools?
When looking for the best tools coming free under this category, their pricing is not all that you need to look for. For a better experience, you need to look at several technicalities, including the following:
1. User Interface
The user interface is among the most important things to check for when selecting your Gantt chart tool. A Gantt chart tool is not something that you can change very often, and if you select one with the wrong interface, your experience won't be great. So, for a better experience using all the features of your Gantt chart tool, make sure to go with one that brings a well-designed UI.
2. Integrations
A Gantt chart tool is simple, but integrating it with other tools can get up to 10 times more functionality. For example, you can integrate the Gantt chart tool with your team's communication and collaboration application, Google Docs, Slack, etc., and get a better user experience.
3. Collaboration
Some tasks within projects need to be handled by multiple team members. That is known as multiple assignees in the Gantt chart technical terms. That is how team members can collaborate to work on a single project. No matter how small or large your team is, collaboration is essential if you have a team.
4. File management
File management is a feature that makes tracking and working together a breeze. It is because tracking things can be complex when a task is assigned to one platform, and the file is submitted to another platform. On the other hand, built-in file management offers a centralized experience with much better productivity.
5. Availability management
A project manager must get effective resource management features from the Gantt chart tool. Checking which human and hardware resources are available and which are not is key to efficiently distributing the workload among our team. Efficient resource management also ensures that you never hit a roadblock during a project's timeline due to unavailability.
6. Ease of use
No matter how many or less of features you get from your Gantt chart tool, it is always essential to get an easy user experience from the tool. Customization, task creation, and editing must be simple, and drag-drop builders make a great choice from that perspective.
7. Templates
Although it is more of an opinion, you must get Gantt chart templates with any tool you select. It is because most of the things are recurring when it comes to project management. So, project managers can edit a template, which will ease their job. Getting a customization option with template availability is equally important.
8. Pricing
Even when looking for free tools, always check paid service pricing. It is because when you grow, you will eventually need better services and use the paid plans for that. So, check tools for their pricing policies and transparency so you don’t have to switch between 2 Gantt chart tools after you grow since you are familiar with one.
15 Best Free Gantt Chart Tools You Must Try.
So, let's begin with the 15 free tools you can use to make and manage your Gantt chart for efficient management.
Instagantt is a simple yet powerful Gantt chart tool. You can start planning your project here, and you will be done within minutes due to its drag-and-drop usage ease. The progress tracking feature ensures that all the major goals and smaller milestones, like daily subtasks, are effectively tracked. Since it is designed for teams, it allows real-time schedule tracking and change tracking.
The interface of Instagantt allows you to check the load over each member so you can check if any of your team members are overloaded. The freemium plan here gives all the features for up to 3 projects.
ClickUp is another tool that strives to offer a complete experience with its Gantt chart tool and many other features. Scheduling and task planning have become a breeze with ClickUp due to its intuitive user interface. Above all, it brings other features like sorting, task dependencies, progress percentage tracking, and critical path calculation in one place.
Hence it offers a centralized experience for all your project planning, tracking, and resource management needs. The best part is that its free plan is available forever. So, you can manage all your projects with it while enjoying most of the standard ClickUp features.
Toggl Plan combines stunning visuals with great Gantt chart features to empower users looking for a reliable free Gantt chart tool. It comes with an interactive user interface with drag-and-drop functionality. The timeline view feature lets project managers keep track of everything in the project.
Lastly, it brings many collaboration tools that make project planning and implementing that plan effectively. One of the best features of the Toggl Plan is that you get resource management features at a high level by informing about the hourly availability of your resources.
If you want a cleaner user interface with different elements in their specific partitions and other sections showing other details, try Paymo. The free Gantt chart tool powers your creativity and makes project management easier. Apart from the interface, it comes with many features like drag-drop timeline designing, task duration estimation, and standard dependencies.
Paymo makes resource management efficient by taking overlaps into account. However, the best thing about it is still how its user interface is designed and shows the most important information in 3 sections.
nTask is your free Gantt chart tool with several other features to provide a complete experience. What makes it a better choice for many users is its interface which uses colored elements and different sections of the screen real-estate to make project planning and time tracking easier.
Apart from its Gantt chart features, it brings a to-do list, risk management, a checklist, and various other features like viewing the Kanban board. It allows collaboration on tasks within a team, with one project having multiple assignees. In addition to that, it brings an automatic instance creation option that streamlines the project schedule for you.
Bitrix24 project management tool comes with Gantt chart features and integrates communication features to centralize all your team's needs into one place. The good thing about it is that you can create and track unlimited projects for free, and Bitrix24 comes with its Cloud service featuring gigabytes of storage space.
It also ensures that no team member misses anything important since it has an Android and iOS app available for smartphones. So, even when your team members are away from their system, they can monitor and manage their availability.
TeamGantt is a cloud-based Gantt chart software with an interface design like no other tool. The user interface tries to bring as much information into the screen as possible without overpowering any other sections. Since you can manage the project with TeamGantt, it also allows tracking the availability of your resources and team members.
The views are customizable, so you can view them as a Gantt chart. One of the best smart features here is the planned and actual timeline comparison. It helps you see if your team is working at the right pace.
Pros:
· Mac users can add attachments to the Gantt chart
· Drag-and-drop functionality for designing, moving, and assigning tasks.
· Many other features like resource management and capacity planning
Although Backlog project management software provides Gantt chart features, it comes with an old-school interface; however, for some users, that can be helpful enough to track the project tasks and manage workloads at a glance. The interface consists of multiple elements, so you can quickly get an overview of much information before entering their details.
It allows you to grant and restrict access for different members depending on their roles in the team. Managing and tracking project progress is rather simple here, with a high-level view of the whole project that visualizes the complete timeline.
Pros:
· Work with parent and child tasks
· Project breakdown into checklists
· Invite stakeholders with a guest role
Cons:
· Only one project can be managed in the free plan.
It is one of the best project management tools and even better when it comes to Gantt chart capabilities. It works as your online project management tool for individuals, small teams, and even bigger teams. Zoho Projects has an attractive user interface that makes creating and tracking the Gantt chart simple and user-friendly.
Working with a Gantt chart is very efficient here since you can create one and edit it when needed to add more Gantt bars. Each task has a color distinction so you can know its status immediately.
If you work within the field production or events industry, you will find StudioBinder a great tool. Since it comes with the basic Gantt chart features, its interface makes it specific to this field of work. However, even then, it does not bring you any bad experience since it has all the features like a drag-drop interactive interface,
StudioBinder uses different calendar templates that can speed up the workflow for you. One of the best things about it is that everyone on the team can take notes, share details, and receive feedback on their input. Hence, the workflow improves for the whole team.
If you are up for an old-school experience, you must try MS Excel. It is spreadsheet software that everyone is familiar with. However, here we are talking about the online version of MS Excel since the offline version is paid. When designing your Gantt chart here, you can enjoy complete customization since you will design everything from scratch.
However, you can create and edit your workflow template for every project if you always go through similar workflows.
Google Sheets is much like MS Excel with the same spreadsheet experience. However, the features you get here are better. The good thing about it is that it offers Gantt chart designing features and templates within a spreadsheet interface. So, you can get as many customizations as you want while enjoying the modern-day features of Google Sheets.
It is a free tool for every Google account holder, so almost every team member will already have it. Hence, usage will become much easier here.
If you want an in-depth customization experience from your Gantt chart tool, try GoodDay. This work management platform helps manage projects by building your timelines and managing events, subtasks, and task dependencies. It is known for its Gantt chart customization, from chart elements to the interface, giving you a completely personalized experience.
When you make your Gantt chart with GoodDay, you can set priorities for different tasks to ensure that all the milestones and deadlines are met. It makes tracking even better with its over 20 views.
GanttProject is not a paid tool offering a free plan or services with limited features. Instead, it is available as open-source software that works on your hardware. So, while other tools work online, your team can use free offline Gantt chart software to manage project tasks, timelines, and dependencies.
The interface is intuitively designed so you can mark dependencies between projects by lines. It is open source, so you can modify it according to your needs. Another feature is that it allows importing and exporting files in multiple formats.
Pros:
· Easy to setup
· Colors for different interface elements for differentiating between tasks
Wrike is the online Gantt chart tool best known for its integration and project management features. Scheduling tasks and tracking progress becomes easy for the whole team with one tool since it comes with a progress visualizer. Additionally, project managers can manage dependencies with the drag-drop builder.
Wrike allows controlling the whole project from one centralized platform with baselining and critical path analysis for a much better experience.
Pros:
· Task dependency management
· Notification alerts for everyone
· Workload management for tracking assignments.
Cons:
· Only good for small teams
Which one of these best free Gantt chart tools is the best for you?
Each of the tools discussed here comes with amazing functionalities. So, which of them makes the better option for you since all of them are free? When selecting these tools, you must check the price, features, pros, and cons. Comparing your use cases with the tool's offers will tell you what type of experience you can get.
List out all your requirements and find out which tool fulfills all your requirements in the best way. These requirements include drag-and-drop usage, Kanban view, file management, etc.
Will the best free Gantt chart tools always be the right choice?
Usually, individuals and small teams opt for free Gantt chart tools since the budget is a major concern for them. However, it is important to note that most of these tools offer free usage with some limitations. For example, the number of projects you simultaneously manage, users in your team, resource limitations, feature limitations, etc.
So, when you grow, you will need more of whatever comes limited from the tool. The free tool will not be the right choice in that situation since the budget will not be a major concern.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has been helpful to you in finding out the best free Gantt chart tools. Always remember that it is not only about the tool is free but also about the features and limitations it brings along. Moreover, what matters the most is how that tool fulfills your requirements and use cases.
So, always start your search with what you need and find out the tool that meets your needs in the best way. Our experts are available if you still need assistance regarding the best free Gantt chart tools. Feel free to get in touch.
