Looking for an Altus PPM alternative? This one is written for enterprise PMOs running a real evaluation. Eighteen requirements, the tier each capability actually ships in, both vendors’ published prices, and the Microsoft licences a Dataverse product needs on top.
Commercial disclosure: PPM Express produced and funded this comparison. Every assessment was drafted with AI from the vendors’ own published documentation, then reviewed and approved by PPM Express Analysts before publication. It evaluates publicly documented product capabilities against a defined requirement set; it is not independent analyst research or a benchmark test of both systems on the same dataset.Read the method
Altus is a serious piece of PPM engineering. Governance registers, resource planning, timesheets and financials are all documented in unusual technical detail, the data never leaves your own Microsoft tenant, and the Microsoft Project Desktop integration is the deepest in this comparison set. Two things shape the buying decision. Altus is built on Microsoft Dataverse, so every hands-on user needs a standalone Power Apps licence, which does not appear on the Altus pricing page, and a deployment of this kind normally sits on Planner and Project licensing as well. And the strategy, prioritisation, optimisation and benefits capabilities a portfolio office usually shops for sit in the top Strategy tier, not the Portfolio plan assessed here.
Primary trade-off: If your data residency requirements say the portfolio must live inside your own tenant, that is a genuine architectural difference Altus offers and PPM Express does not.
Primary trade-off: Every hands-on user needs a Power Apps licence bought from Microsoft on top, over and above the Planner and Project licensing a deployment of this kind normally sits on. Strategic goal tracking, prioritisation, optimisation and benefits realisation require the higher Strategy tier.
The default scenario is an enterprise hybrid PMO with 250 modeled users, 75 to 250 active initiatives, several delivery systems in play, and a need for centralized portfolio, resource, financial and executive reporting.
Wants everyone in the portfolio, governance across the tools teams already use, resource and financial control, and a cost that does not move when headcount does.
Leads at the default 250-user benchmark because the $24,000 annual plan includes unlimited users and broad participation is mandatory.
Functionally close on governance, resources and time. Per-seat Altus pricing on top of per-seat Power Platform licensing is what costs it on broad participation.
Map initiatives to strategy and track progress against objectives or key results.
StrategyCentralize initiatives and provide governed portfolio-level health, status, dates, risks, and decisions.
Portfolio governanceCollect requests, score them consistently, and move approved initiatives into delivery.
Intake & prioritizationModel competing investment mixes using strategy, budget, capacity, timing, targets, and dependencies.
Portfolio modelingBalance demand and capacity across roles, named resources, teams, projects, and time periods.
ResourcesProvide portfolio and project financial control and connect spend to expected value.
Financials & benefitsAllow teams to use native schedules or external delivery tools without losing portfolio governance.
DeliveryCapture actual effort for projects and tasks and use it in reporting and resource analysis.
TimeCreate standardized executive reports with AI narratives and scheduled PDF or email delivery.
Executive reporting & AIAsk portfolio questions, identify risk, generate plans, summarize health, and automate routine management work.
AIRoll up work from Jira, Azure DevOps, Planner, Project, Smartsheet, monday.com, and other systems into a portfolio view.
IntegrationsCreate or update connected tasks and work items while preserving team execution in the source system.
Bidirectional integrationEnable enterprise reporting, data export, integration, and repeatable process automation.
Data & automationAllow PMO administrators to adapt fields, views, templates, rules, and workflows as practices mature.
AdministrationProvide access controls, auditability, protected work, sandboxes, and environment options where required.
Security & governanceGive employees, executives, team members, and viewers access without annual cost increasing for every additional user.
Commercial modelManage client delivery, billable utilization, time, costs, charges, and profitability as an integrated operating model.
Professional servicesVisualize initiatives, dependencies, capabilities, outcomes, and architecture relationships across the enterprise.
Enterprise architectureHow the score works: Meets = 1, Partially meets = 0.5, Does not meet = 0. Mandatory requirements weigh more than Important ones, and Important more than Optional. Read the table. The percentage is a summary of it, not the result.
Altus is built on Dataverse and delivered as model-driven apps. Its technical readiness documentation lists a standalone Power Apps licence as a minimum requirement for every role down to Team Member, and states plainly that the free Power Apps for Office 365 licence does not satisfy it. That is $20 per user per month before Altus charges anything, and it does not appear on the Altus pricing page. Add the Planner and Project Plan 3 licensing a governance layer of this kind normally sits on and the Microsoft side reaches $150,000 a year at 250 users, against a $45,120 Altus bill.
Altus splits its product across three tiers. Portfolio covers program, portfolio, resource and timesheet management. Strategic goal tracking, strategic prioritisation, optimisation and benefit realisation are all in the Strategy tier above it. If your business case is built on scoring the intake queue and modeling investment scenarios, the tier you need is $3,200 per month, not $2,560.
Altus consolidates delivery data from Jira, Azure DevOps, Project, Planner and others, and does it well; that is the core proposition. What the documentation describes is a pull. Dataflows retrieve external data over OData and plugins write it into Altus. Write-back is documented for Microsoft Project Desktop and not for Jira or Azure DevOps, so portfolio decisions do not travel back down into delivery tooling.
A comparison that only lists strengths is a brochure. Check each of these against your own operating model, the integrations you actually need, and how much implementation capacity you have.
Packaged enterprise PPM. One price, no seat count.
PMO product built on Microsoft Dataverse and the Power Platform.
The short version: PPM Express if you want one predictable annual number and unlimited participation. Altus if the portfolio data has to live inside your own Microsoft tenant, you already hold Power Apps and Project licences, and Microsoft Project Desktop is still the scheduling tool of record.
Every figure here is an annual cost. Altus publishes its prices, which is more than most vendors in this category do, and the platform fee bundles ten Manager licences. That fee is not the whole cost. Altus runs on Microsoft Dataverse, and its own technical readiness documentation requires a standalone Power Apps licence for every hands-on user, bought from Microsoft on top of the Altus fee. In practice a product of this kind is deployed as a governance layer over Microsoft Planner and Project rather than instead of them, so the model below also carries Planner and Project Plan 3. The rows below show both sides of that bill.
Pricing was verified from each vendor’s public website on August 23, 2026.
Default summary scenario: 250 users. Official pricing sources: PPM Express [19], Altus [8] and Microsoft [17][18].
Calculation assumption: the Altus Portfolio platform fee is held at its published $2,560 per month at every user count, the ten Manager licences it includes are counted, and every remaining user is priced at the cheapest published seat, the $5 Contributor. So Altus annual cost = $30,720 + (users − 10) × $5 × 12 + users × $50 × 12. That is deliberately generous to Altus on two counts: a real PMO needs Manager seats at $10 rather than Contributor seats for anyone who creates projects or runs reports, and the Strategy tier at $3,200 per month is the one that carries strategic goal tracking, prioritisation, optimisation and benefits realisation. Microsoft list prices read on August 23, 2026 are $20 per user per month for Power Apps Premium, which falls to $12 above 2,000 seats, and $30 for Planner and Project Plan 3. The Power Apps licence is a documented Altus requirement, listed as a minimum for every role down to Team Member. Planner and Project Plan 3 is a modeling choice rather than a vendor requirement: Altus lists Planner and Project licences under optional additional scenarios, but a product of this kind is normally bought as a governance layer over Planner and Project scheduling rather than as a replacement for it, so the model carries the licence that assumption implies. Strip that line if your teams will not schedule in Project. Power BI Pro is deliberately excluded from both sides, because both products report through Power BI and most Microsoft-standardized organizations already hold it. PPM Express Enterprise Ultra remains $24,000 per year with unlimited users and requires no Power Platform licences. Three-year figures assume unchanged list prices and no discounting. Taxes, implementation, migration, support and professional services are excluded on both sides.
Illustrative product image from the PPM Express website. Product interfaces change over time.
Explore PPM ExpressThis is not a bake-off. Nobody loaded the same dataset into both products. What it does check is whether each vendor publicly documents a capability that meets the requirement, and what edition, integration or service you need to get it.
The full method is published. The eighteen requirements, the weightings, the three buyer scenarios, the evidence rules and the limitations are all set out on the comparison methodology page.
Requirement coverage, Power Platform licensing, integrations and published pricing.
For most enterprise PMOs, yes, and the deciding factor is usually commercial and architectural rather than functional. Both cover a lot of the same PPM ground. PPM Express is one annual fee with unlimited users and no Power Platform dependency. Altus is a tiered platform fee plus per-seat pricing plus a Microsoft licence for every person who opens an app or a report. Altus is the stronger answer when the data has to stay in your own tenant.
The Portfolio tier is $2,560 a month, or $30,720 a year, including ten Manager seats. Pricing the remaining 240 people at the cheapest published Contributor seat adds $14,400. On top of that Altus requires a standalone Power Apps licence for every hands-on user, and a deployment of this kind normally sits on Planner and Project Plan 3 as well. At Microsoft list prices that is $150,000 a year for 250 people, so roughly $195,120 all in, against $24,000 for PPM Express Enterprise Ultra.
Yes. Altus is built on Microsoft Dataverse and delivered as model-driven apps, and its technical readiness documentation lists a standalone Power Apps licence as a minimum requirement for every hands-on role, including Team Member. It states explicitly that the free Power Apps for Office 365 licence does not meet that requirement. Since Power Apps per app went end of sale for new customers in January 2026, the licence to budget for is Power Apps Premium at $20 per user per month.
Not as a documented requirement. Altus lists both under optional additional scenarios: a Project Plan 3 or Plan 5 licence for people who schedule in Microsoft Project Desktop or publish task boards and sprints, and Planner Premium scenarios that need a Planner or Project plan. Basic Planner task work is covered by an ordinary Microsoft 365 E1, E3 or E5 subscription. In practice, though, Altus is bought as a governance layer over Planner and Project rather than instead of them, which is why the pricing model on this page carries Planner and Project Plan 3. If your teams genuinely will not schedule in Project, take that line out. The one licence Altus does document as a hard minimum is Power Apps, for every role down to Team Member.
Strategic goal tracking, strategic prioritisation and benefit realisation management, plus the Optimisation feature that models which combination of initiatives maximises strategic value within budget constraints. If your evaluation is built on intake scoring or investment scenario modeling, price the Strategy tier at $3,200 per month rather than the Portfolio tier.
Where funding, scoring, gates and benefits live. Strategic portfolio management
The constraint most portfolios actually fail on. Resource capacity planning and utilization
Test a funding mix before you commit to it. Portfolio what-if scenario planning
All material feature and pricing statements are based on public vendor sources accessed on or before August 21, 2026. Product packaging and functionality may change.
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