Looking for a BigGantt Alternative? Try Simple Gantt (Free)

BigGantt has been around for years and carved out a niche in the Jira Gantt chart space. But with a 2.8 out of 4 rating on the Atlassian Marketplace, a significant number of teams are looking for something different. If you are one of them, here is what to consider.

Why Teams Look for BigGantt Alternatives

The Marketplace reviews tell a consistent story. These are the most common reasons teams move away from BigGantt:

Complexity and Learning Curve

BigGantt is a feature-dense application, and that density comes at a cost. New users often report spending hours figuring out basic configuration. The interface is packed with options, menus, and settings that can overwhelm teams who just want to see their Jira issues on a timeline with dependencies.

Performance Issues

As projects grow, BigGantt can slow down noticeably. Loading large boards with hundreds of issues becomes painful, and the UI responsiveness suffers. For teams working on enterprise-scale projects — exactly the teams that need Gantt charts most — this is a dealbreaker.

Pricing

BigGantt charges approximately $1.52 per user per month. That adds up quickly across an organization, especially when many users only need view access to the chart. For a 100-user Jira instance, you are looking at around $1,800 per year.

Connect Architecture

BigGantt runs on Atlassian’s older Connect platform, which means your data is processed on third-party servers outside of Atlassian’s infrastructure. For teams with strict data residency or security requirements, this can be a compliance concern.

What to Look for in a BigGantt Alternative

Before jumping to any specific tool, here is what matters most in a Jira Gantt chart:

• Dependency support — All four types (FS, SS, FF, SF), not just Finish-to-Start
• Critical path analysis — The core reason to use a Gantt chart at all
• Baseline tracking — Comparing planned vs. actual progress
• Performance — Fast load times even with large projects
• Ease of use — Your team should be productive within minutes, not hours
• Security architecture — Where does your data go?
• Fair pricing — Especially for teams where most users need read access

How Simple Gantt Compares

Here is a direct comparison of the features that matter most:

Feature	BigGantt	Simple Gantt
Dependency types	4 types (FS, SS, FF, SF)	4 types (FS, SS, FF, SF)
Critical path	Yes	Yes
Baselines	Limited	Up to 10 snapshots
Auto-scheduling	Yes	No
What-if scenarios	Yes	No
Project health dashboard	No	Yes (0-100 risk score)
Validation rules	No	15+ automated checks
Change history / audit trail	No	Yes
Sprint overlay	No	Yes
Phases and milestones	Limited	Full support
Architecture	Connect (third-party servers)	Forge (Atlassian infrastructure)
Marketplace rating	2.8/4	—
Free tier	No	Yes

To be fair, BigGantt offers auto-scheduling and what-if scenarios that Simple Gantt does not. If your workflow depends heavily on automatic date recalculation or scenario planning, BigGantt has an edge there. But for most teams, those features go unused while the day-to-day experience suffers.

Features BigGantt Does Not Have

Several capabilities in Simple Gantt address gaps that BigGantt users frequently request:

Project Health Dashboard

Simple Gantt includes a project health dashboard that runs 15+ validation rules against your project and generates an automated risk score from 0 to 100. It flags issues like missing dependencies, date conflicts, tasks without estimates, and scheduling anomalies. Instead of manually reviewing your plan for problems, the dashboard surfaces them automatically.

Change History and Audit Trail

Every change to your Gantt chart is tracked in a change history log. Who moved a date? When was a dependency added? Why did the baseline shift? The audit trail answers these questions, which is critical for teams that need accountability or are subject to process compliance requirements.

Comprehensive Baselines

While BigGantt offers limited baseline functionality, Simple Gantt supports up to 10 baselines per project. Save a baseline at each phase gate, quarterly planning session, or major re-plan, then compare any baseline against current dates to measure schedule variance over time.

Sprint Overlay

For teams running Scrum alongside their Gantt chart, the sprint overlay shows sprint boundaries directly on the timeline. This makes it easy to spot tasks that span sprint boundaries and need to be split or rescheduled.

The Forge-Native Advantage

Simple Gantt is built on Atlassian Forge, Atlassian’s modern app platform. This is a meaningful architectural difference, not just a technical detail:

• Your data stays on Atlassian’s infrastructure. No third-party servers, no external data processing. The app runs in the same environment as Jira itself.
• No server management. Forge apps are serverless by design. There is nothing to host, patch, or scale.
• Automatic security updates. Atlassian manages the runtime environment, so security patches are applied without any action from you or the app vendor.
• Data residency compliance. Because data never leaves Atlassian’s infrastructure, Forge apps align with Atlassian’s data residency commitments.

For teams in regulated industries or organizations with strict security policies, the Forge architecture removes an entire category of compliance questions.

Getting Started

Simple Gantt is free to get started with no credit card required. The migration path from BigGantt is straightforward:

1. Install Simple Gantt from the Atlassian Marketplace — one click, no configuration
2. Create a Gantt project and point it at the same Jira issues you had in BigGantt using a JQL query
3. Add your dependencies — Simple Gantt supports all the same dependency types
4. Save a baseline to start tracking from this point forward
5. Review project health to see if the dashboard catches any issues in your plan

Your Jira data does not change. Simple Gantt reads from the same issues and fields, so you can run both tools side by side during evaluation.

For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see our BigGantt comparison page.