In response to the changing landscape of planning actors, planning literatures are exploring the implications that the extended presence of consultants have on planning processes. From relying on assumptions about “the primacy of public planners and/or definitions of a public interest” (Raco, 2018: 124), recent attention to planning consultants complicates presumptions about their expanded presence as singlehandedly implying a privatization of urban planning (Inch et al., 2023; Sturzaker and Hickman, 2023). In this paper, we take cue on these works by adding complexity and nuance to the role that planning consultants are playing in planning processes. Through an understanding of expertise as emergent, performed and thus in constant flux (Björkman and Harris, 2018), we ask: how are planning consultants conceiving of their expertise, and how do they situate their expertise in relation to other planning actors?