Focalboard vs Pad

Comparing two open source alternatives to Notion and Jira and Linear . Use the comparison below to decide which one fits your needs.

Focalboard

AGPL-3.0

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted project management tool — a free alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana for boards, docs, and team planning.

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Pad

Apache-2.0

Local-first project management for developers and AI agents, with a CLI, web UI, SQLite backend, and native skills for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and more.

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Side-by-side comparison

	Focalboard	Pad
License	AGPL-3.0	Apache-2.0
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
GitHub Stars	26,393	120
Forks	2,579	21
Open Issues	784	20
Last Commit	May 18, 2026	Aug 13, 2026
First Released	Oct 6, 2020	Mar 26, 2026
Categories	Time & Task Management Tools Knowledge Management Tools Collaboration & Communication Tools	Project Management
Tags	#kanban #project management #collaboration #docker #self hosted	#local-first #cli #ai-agents #agent-tools #mcp-server

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