Best Free & Open Source Alternatives to Linear

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.

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.

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.

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.

TaskView is a self-hosted project and task management platform designed for small and growing software teams that want full control over their data. It combines projects, tasks, custom Kanban boards, sprints, time tracking, and developer integrations in a single platform you can run on your own infrastructure — without the complexity of enterprise project management systems.

The platform supports flexible workflows with configurable projects, statuses, boards, roles, and permissions, alongside features like task dependencies, recurring tasks, sprints, and Markdown content. Built-in analytics cover team workload, productivity, billable time, and financial reports. Identity is handled through SAML 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SCIM provisioning, with scoped API tokens and fine-grained permissions for integrations.

TaskView integrates with the tools development teams already use — GitHub, GitLab, signed webhooks, and a TypeScript API client — and ships with an MCP server so AI assistants can search, create, and update tasks through a secure token. Web, iOS, and Android clients are available, and the entire product is distributed under the TaskView Source-Available License, which permits self-hosting and internal use.

Devlane is a modern project management platform built for development teams. It organizes work into workspaces and projects, tracks issues with assignees, labels, priorities, and parent/child links, and groups work into time-boxed cycles (sprints) and modules for clearer scope.

The project positions itself as an open-source alternative to Jira, Linear, Monday, ClickUp, and Plane, focusing on a fast, opinionated workflow rather than feature breadth. It includes lightweight docs (pages), rich-text comments powered by TipTap, activity feeds, saved views, and basic analytics for tracking progress.

The backend is written in Go (Gin + GORM) with PostgreSQL, Redis, and optional RabbitMQ and MinIO for queues and object storage. The web UI is a React + Vite + TypeScript single-page app styled with Tailwind CSS. Devlane can be self-hosted via Docker or run from source, though it requires more infrastructure than lightweight alternatives (PostgreSQL and Redis are mandatory, with RabbitMQ and MinIO for full functionality).

A note on licensing: Devlane is released under a custom Devlane Software License, MIT-style use and modification rights, but selling the software or offering it as a hosted service to third parties is prohibited. This makes the codebase source-available rather than OSI-approved open source.