While the notion of need remains largely under-theorized within the literature on post-capitalist economic models, few analyses of needs challenge capitalism or reflect on ways of satisfying them outside this economic system. This article proposes to overcome this gap by bringing the rich literature on needs into dialogue with the literature on democratic economic planning models, in order to shed light on ways to define needs collectively. After a brief overview of studies on needs across various disciplines, Nancy Fraser’s framework of the “struggle over needs” is mobilized to show how needs can be debated in the democratic arena. The articulation of these reflections with various models of economic planning helps to fill in certain gaps concerning the democratic definition of needs.