# A HacknPlan alternative when your game lives in its documents.

Checked on 23 October 2026 · [Sources](#sources)

Both serve game teams that document a design and follow its production; they take different routes, and a team can use both. HacknPlan starts from the tasks, with kanban boards, estimates, time tracking and a game design model linked to them. Nodary starts from the documents: design, sheets, dialogue and art on one map, with owners, due dates, reviews and a milestone burn-up.

## In short

### Choose HacknPlan if

- You plan sprints with tasks, user stories, estimates and time tracking.
- You want Gantt and burndown charts (Studio plan) and integrations with Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Discord.
- You want a lower price per seat: €7.50 a month billed yearly on Studio, before VAT.
- You want your data hosted in the EU (Microsoft Azure, Amsterdam).

### Choose Nodary if

- Your design lives in long documents: specs, lore, systems and levels, with spreadsheets and charts inside.
- You want string tables, loot tables, branching dialogue and art review in the same place as the design.
- You want a cut line that shows which scope falls outside a budget in days or points, computed from the documents.
- You want AI agents to read and write the design over MCP, on every plan.

## Feature by feature

Nodary and HacknPlan side by side, checked on 23 October 2026. Prices are as each maker lists them and change over time: each number leads to its source.

| What you compare | Nodary | HacknPlan |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price of the paid plans | Pro: €15 per seat per month, or €12 billed yearly. Studio: €29, or €24 billed yearly. Plus tax where it applies. [2] | Personal Plus: €5.80 a month for a single user; Studio: €7.50 per seat per month; both billed yearly, before VAT. [1] |
| Free plan | 2 members, one project, 10 documents, 50 MB of files and 20 ☄ of Studio AI a month, with no time limit. [2] | Personal: unlimited projects and users per project, 500 MB of storage and 5 MB per file. [1] |
| Game design documentation | Design documents as linked pages on a map, each with an owner, a status, a review and a truth status, and a free nine-document GDD template. [4] | The Game Design Model: a tree of design elements with Markdown descriptions, linked to tasks and progress. [3] |
| Tasks and planning | Each document has an owner, a status, a due date and tags; checklists inside documents; a calendar and a schedule. No task backlog. [5] | Kanban boards with tasks and user stories, a backlog and milestones. [1] |
| Estimates and time | No time tracking and no built-in estimates: a number property can hold days or points, and a cut line shows where scope passes a budget. [5] | Estimates on every plan; time logs on Personal, time tracking from Personal Plus. [1] |
| Schedules and charts | A timeline view, a calendar, a schedule and a burn-up that says whether a milestone lands by its date. No Gantt chart with dependencies. [5] | Gantt and burndown charts on Studio. [1] |
| Integrations | No native Slack, Jira, GitHub or Notion integration: review decisions can post to Slack or Discord, and agents connect over MCP. | Discord on every plan; Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Google Calendar from Personal Plus. [1] |
| API | No general REST API: a read-only feed of a sheet or a string table (JSON, CSV, .po, XLIFF), and the MCP server for agents. | A public API in beta. [6] |
| People outside the team | No guest seats: read-only share links to a document, a branch or a whole workspace, with an end date or none, revocable at any time. | Unlimited read-only guests on Studio. [1] |
| Export | A document as Markdown, JSON, CSV tables or an editable PowerPoint, or printed to PDF; a whole project as a .zip of Markdown with editable sources. | Data export (CSV, metrics, game design model) on Studio. [1] |
| File storage | 50 MB on Free, 5 GB on Pro, 50 GB on Studio (more in 50 GB blocks); up to 50 MB per picture or video, 250 MB per attached file. [2] | 500 MB on Personal, 2 GB on Personal Plus, 5 GB per seat on Studio; 5, 50 or 250 MB per file. [1] |
| Apps and offline use | A web app for desktop and phone browsers, installable from the browser. No offline mode and no native desktop or mobile app. [7] | A cloud web app; a mobile app is planned. [6] |
| Where data is stored | AWS in the United States (us-east-1, Northern Virginia) for the app, the database and files. No EU hosting option. [8] | Microsoft Azure in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. [6] |

## Inside Nodary

### Know whether the milestone lands

A live progress view reads the documents of a milestone: what is finished against scope, the burn-up, the pace you need and a verdict against your target date. A cut line shows what falls outside a budget in days or points.

- Late documents listed first, with who has them
- The same documents as a board, a timeline or a calendar
- One rule decides what is overdue, everywhere
- The owner is notified when a document is due within two days

What it does not do: There is no time tracking, no task dependencies and no Gantt chart with links between tasks.

![A live progress view for a sample milestone: finished against scope, the burn-up, the target date, and what is left with the late documents first and who has them.](https://nodary.ai/marketing/progress-view.webp)

### Owner, status, review and truth on every document

Each document says who has it, by when and where it stands: draft, in review, approved, published, done or blocked. Ask one owner or admin of the workspace or of the document’s project to review it, or ask them all; one of them approves or requests changes with a note, signed with who and when, and the person who asked decides only when nobody else can. Mark it canon, exploration, obsolete or superseded, and agents are told before they read it.

- Six work statuses and four truth statuses
- When two documents disagree, both passages side by side, word for word
- Live views list documents as a table, a board, a timeline or a progress chart
- Review decisions can post to a Slack or Discord channel

What it does not do: A review request names one reviewer, an owner or admin of the workspace or of the document’s project, or asks them all; there is no approval chain with several steps.

![A game pitch open in Nodary’s editor: the outline, status, owner, due date and project properties in the left rail, the key art and the text in the page, and the document’s AI assistant on the right.](https://nodary.ai/marketing/document-pitch.webp)

### Built for game production, nothing to install

The blocks a game team needs are part of the editor: string tables with a state per translation, length and placeholder checks and files for Unity, Unreal and Godot; loot tables read in players, with pity rules; branching dialogue exported to Yarn Spinner; Fountain screenplays.

- String tables export CSV, JSON, gettext .po and XLIFF
- Drop rates: the pull by which nine players in ten have an item
- Branching dialogue played through and read as a graph
- Moodboards, palettes with contrast checks and signed picture decisions

What it does not do: Dialogue conditions are written in brackets, not evaluated, and there is no Final Draft export.

![A string table in Nodary: keys, context and maximum lengths with English, French, German, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese columns, each language’s progress, and warnings on a string that is too long and one that lost its placeholder.](https://nodary.ai/marketing/localisation-table.webp)

### A real spreadsheet inside the document

A sheet lives in the document it explains, with about 60 functions, references to the other sheets of that document, formats, choice lists and validation. Charts are drawn from it live, and teammates edit different cells at the same time.

- XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, INDEX and MATCH, PERCENTILE and more
- Colour past dates, near deadlines, missing values and numbers over a threshold
- Import a CSV or an Excel workbook with a preview of each column’s type
- Read a sheet from your build over HTTP with a read-only key

What it does not do: A sheet cannot yet reference a sheet in another document.

![A balance spreadsheet open full width in Nodary: yields computed by formulas, a total row, a cell note, and the formula of the selected cell reading prices from another sheet.](https://nodary.ai/marketing/sheet-formulas.webp)

## Questions

### Is Nodary a replacement for HacknPlan?

Not for sprint planning: Nodary has no task backlog, no story points and no time tracking. It covers the game design document side: design, sheets, dialogue, localisation and art in linked documents, each with an owner, a status, a due date and a review.

### How does Nodary follow progress without tasks?

Documents are the work items: each one has an owner, a status and a due date. A live progress view gives the burn-up of a milestone against its target date, and a cut line shows what falls outside a budget in days or points.

### Can I bring HacknPlan data into Nodary?

HacknPlan’s Studio plan exports data as CSV (HacknPlan’s pricing page). Nodary imports a CSV as a sheet, with a preview of each column’s type. There is no importer made for HacknPlan’s game design model.

### Which one costs less?

HacknPlan. For a team of five billed yearly, HacknPlan Studio costs €37.50 a month before VAT and Nodary Pro €60 (Nodary Studio €120), checked on 23 October 2026. HacknPlan costs less per seat.

### Where is the data hosted?

HacknPlan states Microsoft Azure in Amsterdam. Nodary is hosted by AWS in the United States (us-east-1).

## Other comparisons

- [Nodary vs Notion](https://nodary.ai/compare/notion): A map of linked documents and game production blocks, against Notion’s databases, apps and integrations.
- [Nodary vs Confluence](https://nodary.ai/compare/confluence): A linked map with reviews and agents for small teams, against Confluence’s spaces, Jira, approvals and administration at scale.
- [Nodary vs Obsidian](https://nodary.ai/compare/obsidian): Real-time co-editing, roles and a shared map for a team, against Obsidian’s local files, free app and plugins.
- [Nodary vs Nuclino](https://nodary.ai/compare/nuclino): Two linked workspaces with a graph, Mermaid and MCP: Nodary adds built-in spreadsheets, reviews and game blocks, Nuclino native apps and SSO.
- [Nodary vs Milanote](https://nodary.ai/compare/milanote): Moodboards and boards inside linked documents, with signed picture decisions, against Milanote’s free canvas, team price and apps.

## Write the game, then follow it on the same map.

Start free and import the free game design document template: nine linked documents that fit the Free plan. [Start free](https://nodary.ai/sign-up)

## Sources

Every fact about HacknPlan comes from HacknPlan’s own pages, read on 23 October 2026 and listed below. Every fact about Nodary comes from the product and its public pages. We compare what a team relies on, including where HacknPlan does more, and we never rate or rank. Prices and features change: check the source before you decide.

1. [HacknPlan: Pricing](https://hacknplan.com/pricing/)
2. [nodary.ai/pricing](https://nodary.ai/pricing)
3. [HacknPlan Documentation: The Game Design Model](https://hacknplan.com/docs/design-model/game-design-model)
4. [nodary.ai/templates/game-design-document](https://nodary.ai/templates/game-design-document)
5. [nodary.ai/game-production](https://nodary.ai/game-production)
6. [HacknPlan: FAQ](https://hacknplan.com/faq)
7. [nodary.ai/game-design-document](https://nodary.ai/game-design-document)
8. [nodary.ai/privacy](https://nodary.ai/privacy)

HacknPlan is a trademark of its owner. Nodary is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by HacknPlan.

Spotted a fact that is out of date? Write to support@nodary.ai and we will correct the page.

The page: https://nodary.ai/compare/hacknplan