Best Free & Open Source Alternatives to Jira

Kaneo is a lightweight, self-hosted project management tool built for teams that want the core of Jira or Linear without the complexity, pricing tiers, or vendor lock-in. It gives you kanban boards, issue tracking, and project organization in a clean interface that stays out of your way.

Built with TypeScript on a React frontend and a Hono backend, Kaneo is fast and easy to self-host via Docker. All your project data stays on your own infrastructure, with no usage limits, no seat-based pricing, and no telemetry sent to third parties.

Compared to Jira, Kaneo is intentionally minimal — it covers the day-to-day flow of creating, assigning, and moving issues without the configuration overhead. Compared to Linear, it trades the polished SaaS experience for full data ownership. It's a strong fit for small teams, indie developers, and self-hosters who want a functional issue tracker they control.

OpenProject is the leading open-source project management software, empowering teams to achieve great things together. With over a decade of development, it provides a comprehensive suite of tools for planning, scheduling, and tracking projects from start to finish.

OpenProject supports both classic and agile project management, featuring Gantt charts, work packages, sprints, kanban boards, and a built-in wiki. Its time tracking, cost reporting, and budgeting capabilities set it apart from lighter alternatives — making it suitable for enterprises and NGOs managing complex, multi-team projects. The GitHub integration links work packages directly to pull requests for seamless developer workflows.

Available as a self-hosted Community edition (free) or Enterprise cloud/on-premises edition with premium support and add-ons, OpenProject is trusted by organizations worldwide. With features including forums, meeting agendas, bug tracking, and roadmaps, it is one of the most feature-complete open-source alternatives to Jira, Asana, Trello, and Monday.com.

Paca is an AI-native, open-source project management platform designed as a self-hosted alternative to Jira, Trello, ClickUp, and Monday.com. Built for modern Scrum and Kanban teams, Paca enables humans and AI agents to collaborate as equals on the same boards, sprints, and goals. It supports BDD (Behavior-Driven Development), MCP integration, and WASM plugins for full customization. Deploy via Docker or self-host with a PostgreSQL backend.

Plane is a modern, open-source project management platform designed to help teams track issues, manage cycles (sprints), and plan product roadmaps. It is a compelling alternative to Jira, Linear, Monday, and ClickUp — offering a clean, intuitive interface without the typical complexity of project management tools.

At its core, Plane supports work items with a powerful rich text editor, customizable properties, and sub-issues. Teams can organize work into Cycles with built-in burn-down charts, break large projects into manageable Modules, and create custom Views with advanced filters. The Pages feature provides a Notion-like document editor with AI capabilities for capturing ideas and documentation.

Built with TypeScript, React, Python, Django, and PostgreSQL, Plane offers both a free cloud version and a self-hosted option via Docker or Kubernetes. Its analytics dashboard provides real-time insights into project progress, helping teams identify blockers and make data-driven decisions. With a growing community and regular updates, Plane continues to evolve into a comprehensive project management solution.

Huly (built on the Hardcore Engineering platform) is an open source all-in-one productivity suite designed to replace a stack of paid tools with a single self-hostable application. It bundles an issue tracker, project planner, team chat, wiki, CRM, HR, ATS, and even quality management into one cohesive workspace.

It positions itself as a direct alternative to Linear and Jira for engineering teams, while also replacing Notion or Coda for documentation, Slack or Discord for chat, HubSpot for CRM, and Motion for AI scheduling. Because all modules share a single data model, work items, conversations, contacts, and documents stay in sync without glue code or paid integrations.

Huly is built with TypeScript and runs on Node.js and MongoDB, with first-class Docker and Kubernetes support. The community edition is fully open source under EPL-2.0, while a cloud-hosted tier is available for teams that do not want to manage infrastructure.

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted project management tool created by the team behind Mattermost. It serves as a direct alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana, providing a flexible and customizable way to manage tasks, projects, and workflows.

The tool supports multiple views including kanban boards, tables, galleries, and calendars — giving teams the flexibility to visualize their work the way they want. It comes in two editions: a Personal Desktop app for individuals (available on macOS, Windows, and Linux) and a Personal Server for self-hosted team collaboration.

Focalboard features drag-and-drop task management, customizable properties and card templates, markdown support in card descriptions, and a clean, modern interface. Being part of the Mattermost ecosystem, it integrates deeply with Mattermost's messaging platform as the Boards plugin. While development on the standalone version has slowed, the project remains a solid choice for teams seeking a self-hosted project management solution.

4ga Boards is a straightforward, realtime kanban board management system designed for intuitive task tracking and team productivity. Built with a focus on simplicity and elegance, it offers an intuitive UI/UX with a built-in dark mode, advanced markdown editor, and multitasking capabilities that let you simultaneously edit cards while filtering and rearranging boards.

The platform features a multi-level hierarchy (projects → boards → lists → cards → tasks) with collapsible lists and sidebar for easier navigation in complex projects. It supports Google, GitHub, Microsoft, and OIDC SSO for authentication, and offers powerful keyboard shortcuts alongside support for 17 languages. Real-time updates happen without page reloads, and you can export and import boards for portability.

4ga Boards supports Trello import for easy migration and offers flexible deployment options including Docker Compose, Kubernetes, TrueNAS, and manual installation. The tech stack includes React, Redux, Sails.js, and PostgreSQL.

Worklog is a local-first desktop project management application designed for small development teams. Built with Svelte and Tauri, it offers a fast, keyboard-first planning experience with a Kanban workflow and zero cloud dependency for core usage.

The app stores all data locally by default, giving teams full control over their project information. It supports Git integration for contextual task management tied to code changes, making it especially useful for developer workflows.

With its lightweight desktop architecture and minimal resource footprint, Worklog is ideal for teams that want a simple, offline-capable project tracker without the complexity or cost of cloud-based tools like Trello, Jira, or Linear.

Peppermint is an open source, self-hostable help desk and ticket management platform aimed at small support teams. It is positioned as a lightweight alternative to Zendesk, Jira Service Management, and Zoho Desk, focused on a clean UX and easy deployment.

Peppermint provides a shared inbox, ticket pipelines, knowledge base, internal notes, and customer-facing ticket tracking, plus a built-in CRM for managing contacts and organisations. It exposes a REST API for connecting to existing tools, and supports SSO and role-based access control.

The project is built with Next.js, Node.js, and Prisma, runs on PostgreSQL, and is released under a source-available license. It is a strong fit for startups and small businesses that want Zendesk-grade ticketing without per-agent fees.

Scrumboy is a lightweight, self-hosted project management application built for agile teams. It supports full scrum workflows including sprint creation, activation, and closing, alongside customizable Kanban boards with user-defined lanes and "Done" states.

Real-time collaboration is powered by Server-Sent Events (SSE), allowing multiple users to see board updates instantly. Scrumboy also supports anonymous shareable boards — anyone with the URL can access and collaborate without logging in, making it great for demos or external contributors.

It includes role-based access control at both the system and per-project level, TOTP/2FA authentication, an append-only audit trail, and full backup/import support (JSON). The app ships as a single Go binary with an embedded SQLite database, making it easy to self-host via Docker Compose or direct binary deployment.

Tegon is an open source, developer-focused issue tracking and project management tool. It is positioned as a clean, modern alternative to Jira and Linear with an emphasis on fast workflows, keyboard shortcuts, and AI-assisted triage.

Tegon ships with issues, projects, sprints, cycles, and roadmaps out of the box, plus a notification model and integrations designed for engineering teams. The product roadmap also includes AI-driven suggestions for assigning, prioritising, and summarising work, and the codebase is structured so teams can self-host and extend it with their own integrations.

Tegon is released under AGPL-3.0 and is built on TypeScript and React. It is a good fit for small engineering organisations that want a no-per-seat, self-hosted Jira replacement without the operational overhead of running something heavier.