Float alternative: build your own capacity planner with AI

Float is resource management software for agencies and professional services teams: a live schedule of who is allocated to which project, capacity and time off, project budgets and reports, with time tracking and financial reporting on its Pro plan. Many small studios use it mainly for one job: seeing each person's load per week before saying yes to new work. That part is small enough to build yourself.

Pricing checked October 2026 on float.com/pricing

Is there a cheaper Float alternative for a small agency?

Yes, if your team of 5 to 40 people mainly needs to see who has time each week: build a capacity planner from this blueprint, with weekly capacity after part-time days, holidays and time off, bookings in hours a day or a week, tentative work flagged separately, phase budgets in hours and a who-has-time search by skill. Float is not expensive, at $7 per scheduled person per month on Starter billed annually (checked October 2026), so the case for building is owning the rules and the data as much as the price. Keep Float if you need time tracking against your plans, rates and margins, placeholders or integrations.

Float compared with building your own

Compared	Float	Build from the blueprint
Price	Starter $7 and Pro $12 per scheduled person per month billed annually ($8.50 and $14 monthly); Enterprise through sales. Guests are free.	Free blueprint. You pay for your AI builder and hosting.
Capacity	Work days and hours per person, regional and team holidays, time off with types, balances and optional approval.	Hours for each weekday per person, one company holiday list, and time off in full or part days, recorded without approval.
Allocations	Hours per day, a total over a date range or a percentage of capacity; tentative, confirmed and completed statuses.	Whole weeks at hours a day or hours a week, confirmed or tentative.
Over-allocation	Overtime shown in red by day, and date range insights colored by utilization.	Weekly flags: Over when confirmed hours exceed capacity, Tentative over when only tentative work does.
Who has time	Date range insights sorted by unscheduled hours, with filters such as person tags for skills.	Search by skill and weeks, sorted by free hours, with tentative work counted as busy or not.
Budgets	Hours, fixed fee or time and materials, by project, phase or task; logged time on Pro.	Hours per phase, compared with booked hours and flagged when over.
Time tracking, rates and integrations	Time tracking and financial reports on Pro; calendar, Slack, Zapier and API integrations on every plan.	Not included.
Who maintains it	Float.	You. Every worked example in the spec doubles as a unit test.

Which should you choose?

Build your own if

You plan a team of 5 to 40 people by the week and mainly need to know who is free, not to track time or money.
Part-timers, holidays and time off change your capacity from week to week, and the spreadsheet doesn't account for them.
You pitch work before it is confirmed and want to see which weeks only break if the tentative work goes ahead.
You'd rather own the rules and the data than pay for every person you put on the schedule.

Pay for Float if

You want to compare planned hours with tracked time, or run budgets in money with rates and margins.
You have offices in several countries and need regional holiday calendars, or time off with balances and approvals in the same tool.
You plan with placeholders for roles you haven't hired, percentage allocations or AI staffing suggestions.
You need Slack, calendar or project-tool integrations, a mobile app or single sign-on.

What the blueprint covers

People with working hours for each weekday (so part-time works as fewer days or shorter days) and skills; one company holiday list; time off in full or part days; projects that are tentative or confirmed, with phases and budgets in hours; bookings by the week, in hours a day or a week, confirmed or tentative; a weekly schedule of booked hours against capacity with over-booking flagged, plus a separate flag for weeks that only go over if tentative work goes ahead; utilization per person and for the team; each phase's booked hours against its budget; a "who has time" search by skill and weeks; email through an outbox when a week goes over capacity or someone's confirmed bookings change; CSV export.

What you give up

Time tracking and anything that compares planned with logged hours; rates, costs, fees, margins, currencies, and fixed-fee or time-and-materials budgets; percentage allocations, specific times of day, repeating allocations, tasks, milestones, templates, draft projects and a project timeline view; placeholders and AI staffing suggestions; regional holiday calendars, time off types, balances and approvals; working-hour changes from a chosen date; overtime by day; billable and non-billable splits; Slack, calendar and project-tool integrations, an API, mobile apps, single sign-on, dashboards and an activity feed. If you need planned-against-actual reporting (Float's Pro plan, $12 per scheduled person per month billed annually), rates and margins, or holiday calendars for several offices, Float is worth paying for.

Read the Capacity Planner blueprint

Float alternatives: questions people ask

Does Float have a free plan?

Float's pricing page (checked October 2026) lists Starter, Pro and Enterprise plans and a 30-day free trial on Pro with no credit card required, but no free plan. You pay only for people on the Schedule; people who only need to view it can be free guests.

What does Float do that this blueprint doesn't?

Time tracking and planned-against-actual reports, rates, fees and margins, percentage and repeating allocations, placeholders and AI staffing suggestions, regional holiday calendars, time off balances and approvals, tasks and milestones, Slack, calendar and API integrations, a mobile app and single sign-on.

How much would Float cost for a 20-person team?

On Starter, 20 scheduled people cost $140 a month billed annually, or $1,680 a year; on Pro, $240 a month, or $2,880 a year (checked October 2026). Billed monthly, Starter is $8.50 and Pro is $14 per scheduled person.