Best Free & Open Source Alternatives to Monday.com

Kanboard is a free, open source Kanban project management application written in PHP. It focuses on simplicity and a minimalist interface for visualizing work, limiting work-in-progress, and moving tasks across columns via drag-and-drop. The platform is designed to deliver a no-training-required experience for teams that want the core Kanban methodology without feature bloat — a notable contrast to commercial tools that bundle every workflow concept into a single workspace.

The software includes tasks and subtasks, attachments, comments, swimlanes, time tracking, project analytics, and a flexible query language for searching and filtering the board. Event-based automatic actions let you automate repetitive workflows such as moving tasks, changing assignees, or applying categories based on triggers. Kanboard supports LDAP/Active Directory plus OAuth2 providers like Google, GitHub, and GitLab for authentication, ships a JSON-RPC API and webhooks, and is translated into more than 30 languages.

Kanboard is published under the MIT license and self-hosted as a PHP application backed by SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, or PostgreSQL. Docker images and official packages for Debian, Ubuntu, and RHEL are available, and a large plugin ecosystem extends it with notifications, Gantt charts, calendar views, custom themes, importers from Trello and Jira, and dozens of other additions. The core author considers the project in maintenance mode, so new major features come primarily from community contributions and plugins — making the plugin directory the primary way to grow the platform beyond its intentionally lean core.

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 an open-source, AI-native project management platform that brings Work, Wiki, and Plane AI together in one workspace. It is a direct alternative to Jira, Linear, Monday.com, and ClickUp — combining issue tracking, cycles, modules, and roadmaps with built-in documentation and AI assistance, while staying self-hostable and air-gap ready.

Work is organized around projects and work items with rich descriptions, attachments, custom states and properties, sub-issues, and relations. Teams plan in time-boxed cycles with burndown and velocity tracking, group deliverables into modules, align execution to initiatives and epics, and switch between Board, Spreadsheet, List, and Gantt views. Custom views, intake and triage, estimates, workflows with approvals, and real-time dashboards cover the day-to-day of product and engineering teams. Wiki adds a Notion-style knowledge base with collections, nested pages, and inline comments, while Plane AI can summarize, draft, plan, search the web, and hand work off to agents.

Plane ships in three editions: a free Community Edition under AGPL-3.0 for self-hosting, a free Cloud tier, and commercial Cloud and self-managed plans. Self-hosting supports Docker Compose, Kubernetes with Helm, Podman, and one-click platforms, with the Prime CLI handling installs, upgrades, backups, and scaling. Plane runs in the browser, as a desktop app for macOS and Linux, and as an iOS and Android app on commercial editions. It can be extended through a marketplace of integrations (GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Sentry, plus Jira/Linear/Asana/ClickUp importers), an open API, webhooks, OAuth apps, and a native MCP server.

Leantime is an open source project management system designed for people who do not think in traditional PM terms. It is a popular self-hostable alternative to Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp for small teams, agencies, and solo founders who need a calmer, neurodivergent-friendly interface.

Leantime combines goals, projects, tasks, kanban boards, gantt charts, timesheets, and idea boards into a single, opinionated workspace. It supports multiple project methodologies, retrospectives, and reporting, and includes a built-in AI assistant to help with planning and writing.

Released under AGPL-3.0 and built on PHP and MySQL, Leantime is well suited to small organisations that want a thoughtful, accessible Asana-style PM tool without per-seat pricing or vendor lock-in.

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.

Doska is a free, open source kanban board app built around a Markdown editor. Every card is a Markdown document with syntax highlighting, task lists with completion counters, and a slash menu for quick formatting. The app is local-first: your boards live in the browser's IndexedDB, work fully offline, and sync to a destination of your choice — a local folder or a self-hosted server — shortly after every change, so the app never makes you wait on the network.

Boards cover the day-to-day kanban essentials: deadlines, priorities, card sorting, tags, assignees, file and image attachments, a cross-board deadlines view, an always-on-top quick note window, and an activity history. When you connect the sync server, Doska adds multiple user accounts, shared and public boards, live updates across devices, and single sign-on via any OIDC-compatible provider. An integrated MCP server lets AI clients such as Claude read and work with your boards.

Self-hosting is a one-line install script or a docker compose file that bundles the sync server, the web interface, and an optional Postgres database; attachments can be stored on the server or on S3-compatible storage. Unlike Trello, which hosts your boards in Atlassian's cloud and restricts things like attachment size and the number of open boards per workspace on its free plan, Doska keeps everything on hardware you control with no paywalled features — and folder sync means your cards remain plain Markdown files you can open in any editor.

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.