The short version
Town Planning Online is a consultancy-backed service selling AI-prepared planning property reports for individual addresses — a free property snapshot, a paid detailed snapshot with clause interpretation, and a paid planning assessment — plus a free AI assistant and custom consultancy work on quote. It covers Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania, and is aimed at property owners, buyers, designers and agents.
PlanSuite is a planning assessment platform rather than a report shop. It reads the Victorian planning scheme and the plans you upload, determines whether a permit is required and why, and produces six types of council-ready statutory reports — Permit, Initial Assessment, Delegate, Subdivision, Town Planning Assessment and Compliance — in editable Word, PDF and HTML, across all 79 Victorian LGAs.
Put simply: Town Planning Online sells you a report about a property; PlanSuite gives planning professionals the platform that does the assessment — proposal in, determination and statutory report out, as many times as the work demands.
Side by side
| PlanSuite | Town Planning Online | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Planning assessment platform for professionals | One-off AI property reports, with consultancy upsell |
| Assesses your proposal | Yes — reads your uploaded plans and assesses the actual proposal against the scheme | Reports are tailored to a stated project intent; plan-checking offered at the top tier |
| Zones & overlays | Determines which actually affect the parcel (matched to the VicPlan report) and interprets them against the proposal | Reported per address with clause citations |
| Reports | Six council-ready statutory reports — Permit, Initial Assessment, Delegate, Subdivision, Town Planning, Compliance — in editable Word, PDF & HTML | Property snapshot (free), detailed snapshot and planning assessment (paid, fixed price) |
| Chat assistant | PlanGPT — answers from the live scheme clause text, with the property's zones and overlays in context | Free AI assistant for planning questions |
| Coverage | Victoria — all 79 LGAs, in depth | Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia & Tasmania |
| Audience | Planners, councils, consultants, developers | Property owners, buyers, designers, agents |
This comparison reflects our opinion, not an independent or impartial assessment. It is based on publicly available information as of June 2026, sourced from townplanning.com.au. Town Planning Online feature and pricing claims are quoted from their website.
Where PlanSuite is different
It's a platform, not a per-report purchase. PlanSuite is built for people who do planning work every day — run as many properties and proposals as the job needs, with the assessment logic working the same way every time.
It reads your plans. Upload the architectural plans and supporting documents and PlanSuite assesses the actual proposal — not just the property — including Clause 54/55 standards, with the reasoning written up.
VicPlan-accurate determinations. PlanSuite works out which overlays actually affect a parcel — built to match the VicPlan property report a Victorian planner verifies against — rather than listing everything in the vicinity.
Statutory reports you can edit. Six council-ready report types exported as editable Word documents — written to be filed, amended and owned by the planner, not a locked PDF.
Victorian depth over multi-state breadth. One state, done properly: all 79 LGAs, live scheme clause text cited in every assessment, and the domain rules a Victorian planner expects.
When Town Planning Online is the better fit
Town Planning Online has a clear lane, and for some jobs it's the right call:
- •You're a homeowner or buyer with a single one-off question and a free or fixed-price snapshot answers it.
- •You ultimately want to hand the job to a human consultant — the same business offers consultancy on quote.
- •Your property is outside Victoria — they cover NSW, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania too.
If you're doing Victorian planning work repeatedly — assessing proposals, writing statutory reports, answering scheme questions — that's the job PlanSuite is built for.
Do the assessment, not just the lookup
Run a Victorian address and a real proposal through PlanSuite and see the determination, the reasoning and the council-ready report.
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