A Primavera P6 Alternative for Reading and Re-planning XER Schedules
A P6 schedule usually arrives from somewhere else — a contractor, a client, a consultant — and the person who has to read it often has no P6 licence and no intention of buying one. Ingantt opens XER and PMXML files in the browser and gives you a real CPM schedule back: activities, relationships and lag, calendars, resources, baselines, and the critical path, recalculating when a date moves.
SCHEDULE.XER
What a P6 Schedule Needs From the Tool That Opens It
Reads XER and PMXML Directly
Primavera P6's XER and PMXML exchange formats open in the browser — no P6 licence, no database to attach, no Citrix session. The same import also reads Microsoft Project .MPP, MPT, MPX, and XML, which is what most mixed-contractor projects actually need.
Real CPM, Not a Timeline Strip
Critical Path Method with 4 relationship types (FS, SS, FF, SF), 8 constraint types, elapsed durations, custom calendars and work weeks, and multiple critical paths. Move an activity and the downstream work and the float recalculate.
Resource Leveling and Rate Tables
Work, material, cost, budget, and generic resources. Automatic leveling by priority, slack, or ID, leveling within available slack, rate tables A–E with date-effective rates, time-varying availability, overtime rates, and cost per use.
Baselines and Earned Value
11 baselines (0–10), 10 interim plans, 55 baseline columns plus 5 variance columns, progress lines, and 13 Earned Value columns — BCWS, BCWP, CPI, SPI, EAC, VAC, TCPI — on % Complete or Physical % Complete.
Built for the Schedules Construction Actually Runs
Long activity lists, custom work weeks and non-working days, levelled crews, cost loading, and progress against a baseline. The domain vocabulary is the domain's own, because softening it costs credibility with a planner.
Anyone on the Project Can Open It
Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge, on Mac, Windows, Linux, or a Chromebook. A site engineer, a client-side PM, or a commercial manager can read the programme without a seat on the scheduling software.
See Ingantt for Web in Action
Primavera and Microsoft files on the same page
Mixed projects are the normal case — the client is on P6 and half the subcontractors are on Microsoft Project. Ingantt opens both. It writes back to MS Project XML.
Opens
- Oracle Primavera P6 XER, PMXML
- Microsoft Project MPP, MPT, MPX, XML
- Asta Powerproject
- GanttProject
- ProjectLibre
- FastTrack Schedule
- GNOME Planner
- ConceptDraw
- Phoenix, Synchro, TurboProject, and more
Exports to
- MS Project XML not XER or PMXML
- PNG
- CSV
- YAML
- Markdown
Where Primavera P6 wins, and where this is the better tool
These are not the same product competing on price. P6 is enterprise portfolio management; Ingantt is the schedule. The useful question is which of the two jobs you are actually doing.
Primavera P6 wins on enterprise portfolio management, and it is not close. A multi-project enterprise project structure, a shared enterprise resource pool across programmes, timesheet capture, organisation-wide activity coding standards, portfolio-level reporting and governance — that is what P6 is for, and it is why large contractors and owner organisations standardise on it. If your work is running a programme of many interlinked projects under one governance model, Ingantt is not a replacement and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Ingantt wins when the job is the schedule itself — and specifically when the people who need to read or re-plan it are not the people with the P6 seats. A subcontractor checking whether the programme they have been handed is achievable. A client-side PM reviewing a contractor's monthly update. A commercial manager tracing which activities actually drive the completion date. All of them need real CPM, real float, real baselines, and the file to open on whatever laptop they have. None of them need an enterprise project structure.
The export direction is worth stating plainly before anyone commits. Ingantt opens XER and PMXML, but it exports MS Project XML, PDF, PNG, CSV, YAML, and Markdown — it does not write XER or PMXML back out. So a P6 schedule can come here to be read, analysed, and re-planned, and the result can go to someone on Microsoft Project as XML or to a stakeholder as a PDF. What it cannot do is hand a revised programme back into P6 in P6's own format.
Reach for Primavera P6
- Programmes of many interlinked projects
- Enterprise project structure and activity coding
- Enterprise resource pool across programmes
- Timesheet capture and approval
- Portfolio reporting and governance
- Contractually mandated P6 deliverables revised XER back to the client
Reach for Ingantt
- Reading an XER you were handed
- Re-planning a single schedule properly
- Checking float and the driving path
- Mixed P6 and Microsoft Project files
- People without a scheduling seat
- Mac, Linux, or a Chromebook
- Baseline and Earned Value tracking on one project
Ingantt and Primavera P6, feature by feature
P6 is enterprise portfolio software with a scheduling engine inside it. Ingantt is the scheduling engine without the enterprise programme around it — which is the right trade for some projects and the wrong one for others.
| Feature | Ingantt | Primavera P6 |
|---|---|---|
| Real CPM scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs in the browser | ✓ | ~ |
| Opens .mpp files | ✓ | ~ |
| Opens XER and PMXML | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI plan generation | ✓ | ✕ |
| Resource leveling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Earned Value Management | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google Drive native | ✓ | ✕ |
| 10 project views | ✓ | ✓ |
| No install required | ✓ | ✕ |
| Writes XER or PMXML back out | ✕ | ✓ |
| Enterprise portfolio management | ✕ | ✓ |
| Price | $7.99 / user / mo, or $5.99 billed annually | Contact sales |
Oracle publishes no per-user list price for Primavera P6 — it is quoted through Oracle sales. Checked 26 September 2026; check Oracle's site for current pricing.
Ingantt for Web is $7.99 / user / month billed monthly, or $71.88 / user / year billed annually, which works out at $5.99 / user / month. Oracle does not publish a list price for Primavera P6 on a per-user basis. Two rows are marked against us on purpose: Ingantt reads XER and PMXML but exports MS Project XML rather than writing XER back, and it is a scheduling tool rather than an enterprise portfolio system — no multi-project EPS, no enterprise resource pool, no timesheets, no programme governance.
Also compare Microsoft Project · Smartsheet · monday.com · Project Online
Moving Between Primavera P6 and Ingantt — Questions People Actually Ask
Yes. Ingantt reads Primavera P6's XER and PMXML exchange formats in the browser. Sign in with a Google account, open the file, and the programme renders as an interactive Gantt chart with activities, relationships and lag, calendars, resource assignments, milestones, baselines, and the critical path. There is no P6 licence to buy, no database to attach, and no remote desktop session to book.
It is a scheduling tool, so an opened XER can be re-planned rather than only read — move an activity and the downstream work and the float recalculate, level resources, set and compare baselines, and track progress and cost against them. Where it stops being a P6 alternative is the enterprise layer: no multi-project enterprise project structure, no shared enterprise resource pool, no timesheets, no portfolio governance. For one schedule, it is a full alternative. For a programme, it is not.
Not in P6's own formats. Ingantt exports MS Project XML, PDF, PNG, CSV, YAML, and Markdown — it does not write XER or PMXML. In practice that covers review, analysis, and re-planning, and it covers handing the result to anyone on Microsoft Project or to a stakeholder as a PDF. If your contract requires a revised XER delivered back to the client, that has to come out of P6, and you should plan on that before you start.
This is the kind of schedule the feature set is aimed at. Custom calendars and work weeks for site shutdowns and non-working days, 4 relationship types with lag, 8 constraint types, multiple critical paths, resource leveling by priority, slack, or ID, cost loading with accrual modes, 11 baselines, and 13 Earned Value columns. Views include Tracking Gantt, Network Diagram, Resource Usage, Resource Graph, and Team Planner. The 7-day free trial is the right way to check it against a real programme rather than a sample file.
Oracle does not publish a per-user list price for Primavera P6 — it is a contact-sales product, and what an organisation pays depends on the negotiation. Ingantt for Web is $7.99 per user per month billed monthly, or $71.88 per user per year billed annually, which works out at $5.99 per user per month, with a 7-day full-feature trial and no credit card required. The comparison that matters is usually not licence against licence but how many people on a project need to read the programme and currently cannot.
Yes, and it is a common reason to end up here. Ingantt opens XER and PMXML from Primavera P6 and .MPP, MPT, MPX, and XML from Microsoft Project, plus Asta Powerproject, GanttProject, ProjectLibre, and others. Everything lands in the same scheduling model, so the client's programme and a subcontractor's plan can be read side by side without one party buying the other party's software.
Project files live in your own Google Drive, with Drive's permissions and version history — Ingantt stores no project data on its own servers. Plans are saved in MS Project-compatible XML, so if you stop paying the files are still yours and still open in other tools. For a P6 schedule you imported, the original XER is untouched wherever you keep it.
Open your Primavera P6 schedules in Ingantt
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