Abstract The inter-satellite electromagnetic force presents several significant advantages that help to expand its space applications to the multi-satellite missions gradually. For a satellite swarm, whether the electromagnetic force is applied to enable collective maneuver and how to provide a better performance and broader applications for such swarm highlight an important issue. Considering the trajectory planning problem of satellite swarm using inter-satellite electromagnetic force, a behavior-based collective planning scheme is developed by designing the desired velocity of each satellite as the sum of several different behavioral contributions, which are used to represent the internal and external interactions of the swarm. Therefore, the desired configuration is associated with the equilibrium points of the pre-designed kinematical field. Furthermore, the trajectory planning problem could be translated to a parameter optimization problem considering the swarm dynamics with inter-satellite electromagnetic force. Then based on the analysis of the applicability and advantages triggered by integrating the inter-satellite electromagnetic force into such behavior-based planning scheme, the collective trajectory planning problem with sole electromagnetic force actuation and hybrid actuation with thruster are studied respectively. Numerical simulations are carried out to verify the validity of the proposed algorithm, and the satellite swarm performance enhanced by inter-satellite electromagnetic force is discussed at last.