Trello's board model on your own server: Planka is an open-source Kanban project management tool. Boards organize into projects with lists, cards, labels, due dates, checklists, file attachments, and per-card stopwatch time tracking, all managed through drag-and-drop. Updates propagate over WebSockets, so a teammate moving a card or adding a comment appears instantly for everyone without a refresh - a genuine differentiator among self-hosted boards. Card descriptions use a full Markdown editor, custom fields adapt cards to your workflow, and views switch between Kanban, grid, and list layouts. Authentication supports OpenID Connect single sign-on with Google, Azure AD, Okta, or any OIDC provider - a feature Trello reserves for enterprise plans - and notifications reach 100+ channels including Slack, Discord, Telegram, and SMTP via Apprise. A REST API with 50+ webhook events supports custom integrations, and one-click board import eases migration. Built with React and Node.js on PostgreSQL, translated into 35+ languages, deployed via Docker.

What Trello fans wanted Trello to stay: Kan (kan.bn) is a minimalist, frills-free kanban board capturing the original vision before the enterprise pivots - and then adds the things 2025 actually demands. The core is exactly right: drag-and-drop cards across lists, labels and filters to find work fast, comments for discussion on cards, checklists, a detailed activity log tracking every change, and reusable board templates. Workspaces gather your team with member invites and role management, and board visibility controls decide who can view or edit each board. Migration is first-class: a built-in Trello importer brings existing boards over, so switching costs an afternoon, not a quarter. The standout differentiator is the bundled Model Context Protocol server exposing 46 tools across workspaces, boards, lists, cards, comments, checklists, labels, and members - meaning Claude Desktop, Cursor, Copilot, or any MCP client can read and manage your boards in natural language: "move everything assigned to me into Done" becomes a sentence, not a click marathon. The stack is modern TypeScript - Next.js, tRPC, Drizzle ORM over PostgreSQL, Better Auth (credentials or OAuth), Tailwind - with optional SMTP email and S3 file storage. Unlimited boards, lists, and cards; AGPL-licensed.

From the Mattermost team comes Focalboard, an open-source, MIT-licensed project board tool - a self-hosted alternative to Trello, Asana, and Notion databases, written in Go with a React frontend. Every board renders the same card data four ways: Kanban with drag-and-drop columns, a spreadsheet-style table, an image-forward gallery, and a calendar. Cards carry unlimited custom properties - dates, dropdowns, checkboxes, people, URLs - and boards can be grouped, filtered, and sorted by any property combination, with unlimited saved filtered views for quick access. Built-in templates cover the common workflows (meeting agendas, content calendars, project tasks, roadmaps, sprint planning), or you can build fully custom boards from scratch. Collaboration is real: card comments with @mentions, per-board permissions for teams or individuals, file attachments stored on your own infrastructure, and archiving with backup snapshots. Migration tooling imports existing boards from Trello (JSON export), Asana, and Notion, so switching does not mean starting over. It ships in 20+ languages and runs as a lightweight multi-user personal server. Worth knowing before deploying: Mattermost has shifted primary development to the integrated Mattermost Boards plugin, so the standalone edition is community-maintained - stable and functional, but evolving slowly. For teams wanting a free, private Trello without per-user fees, it remains a solid pick.

Scrumboy is a Kanban and sprint management tool that ships as a single Go binary backed by SQLite, deploys in under ten seconds via Docker, and uniquely integrates with AI coding agents through a standards-compliant MCP JSON-RPC endpoint. The dual-mode architecture supports Full mode with bootstrapped authentication, TOTP two-factor auth, OIDC/SSO integration through Keycloak, Authentik, Auth0, or Entra ID, role-based access control across Owner, Admin, User system tiers plus per-project Maintainer, Contributor, and Viewer roles, and Anonymous mode that generates instant shareable boards accessible via unique URLs with zero signup requirement. Custom workflows allow user-defined lane configurations per project including designated "Done" lanes, while sprints with configurable one or two-week cycles include board-level sprint filtering and the ability to disable and re-enable sprint tracking without losing history. Real-time Server-Sent Events power instant multi-user board updates, and outbound webhooks deliver JSON payloads to registered URLs when domain events fire with HMAC signature verification. The MCP endpoint at /mcp/rpc enables native integration with Cursor, Claude Code, and other AI agents through OAuth 2.1 with PKCE authorization, while API access tokens support CLI automation and CI/CD pipelines. Additional capabilities include VoiceFlow voice commands, per-project sticky-note walls, Markdown and Mermaid diagram support in task notes, append-only audit trails, VAPID Web Push notifications, SMTP password reset, Trello import, JSON backup with merge/replace/copy strategies, and 22-language internationalization. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL v3.0 licensed.

With nearly 8,000 GitHub stars since its December 2024 launch, Kaneo has rapidly gained traction as the minimalist alternative to bloated project management platforms like Jira and Linear. Built on TypeScript with React and Hono, the interface strips away complexity to focus on execution — plan in list view, track in kanban board, and schedule on interactive Gantt chart timelines where dragging bar handles adjusts start and due dates with optimistic UI updates. Native GitHub integration synchronizes issues bidirectionally, links pull requests to tasks, and keeps product planning aligned with development execution without context switching. The built-in Model Context Protocol server at /api/mcp enables AI tools like Claude and Cursor to manage tasks, projects, and labels directly, while the official @kaneo/mcp npm package provides stdio access for local MCP clients. Authentication supports password, magic link, GitHub OAuth, and Google sign-in with organization-level access management. Rich text editing for task descriptions and comments, label-based initiative grouping, priority levels, assignee management, and due date tracking provide focused planning without ceremony. Deploy with the drim CLI for automatic HTTPS and database setup, Docker Compose for custom configurations, or Helm charts for Kubernetes clusters — all requiring just 2GB RAM and PostgreSQL. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Winner of the 2015 Most Valued Agile Tool award and cited as a top project management platform by Opensource.com with over 2,100 GitHub stars on the Docker deployment repository alone, Taiga has served an estimated 20 million users worldwide with over 2 million Docker pulls since its creation in 2014 by Kaleidos. The platform delivers a complete agile project management experience through Scrum boards with backlog prioritization, sprint planning, story point estimation configurable per role, burndown charts at both project and sprint levels, and velocity tracking with a project doom-line indicator. Kanban boards offer customizable workflow columns with swimlanes, WIP limits, zoom controls, and the ability to switch between Scrum and Kanban at any point without losing data. The issue tracker supports custom types, priorities, and severities with the ability to promote issues directly to user stories. Team collaboration features include threaded comments, file attachments, email notifications, mentions, a built-in wiki for project documentation, and a team performance dashboard with the Iocane health metric for tracking team sustainability. The platform integrates with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket for version control linking, provides importers for migrating from Trello and Jira, and exposes a REST API for custom integrations. Available in over 20 languages with custom fields, tags, roles, and permissions. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MPL-2.0 licensed.

Paca is a self-hosted project management platform and Scrumban workspace where autonomous artificial intelligence agents collaborate with human software engineers as first-class Scrum teammates instead of external chat assistants. Engineering teams manage sprints, backlogs, and task lifecycles through a shared real-time board powered by Socket.IO where both humans and agents pick up assignments and post progress updates. A native Model Context Protocol server connects external coding assistants such as Claude Desktop and Claude Code directly into projects, tasks, and sprint data without custom scraping scripts. Distributed agents execute in isolated runtime sandboxes powered by the OpenHands software development kit, co-authoring behavior-driven development Gherkin scenarios with product owners and maintaining living system design documents. Visual event-driven automation builders compose multi-branch trigger, condition, and action pipelines that evaluate task dependency gates and cron schedules. A sandboxed WebAssembly plugin runtime allows developers to write custom backend logic and custom board views using Go or Rust. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. Apache 2.0 licensed.

Initiative is a self-hosted, multi-tenant project management platform that organizes projects, tasks, collaborative documents, and schedules into strictly isolated community workspaces without enterprise complexity. Users create distinct communities where data remains strictly partitioned across separate database schemas, allowing agencies, volunteer groups, and gaming guilds to manage multiple client environments from a single deployment. Within each community, initiatives group related projects and documents while interactive drag-and-drop Kanban boards track task progression across custom columns, priorities, and deadlines. Integrated collaborative documents enable team members to co-author notes, project briefs, and meeting minutes in real time with threaded inline discussions and user mentions. Granular role-based permissions let administrators specify exact view and edit privileges down to individual items, while a recoverable trash system prevents accidental deletions from interrupting live operations. Curated marketplace apps supply customizable analytics dashboards, and optional bring-your-own-key artificial intelligence integrations generate task suggestions and summarize lengthy discussion threads. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. GNU AGPLv3 licensed.

A personal to-do list that scales to team project management: Vikunja is an open-source task manager that grows with the work. Every project can be viewed four ways - classic list, drag-and-drop Kanban board, Gantt chart for timeline planning, and a spreadsheet-style table - so a project manager watches the Gantt while developers work the board, on the same data. Tasks carry the full attribute set: labels, priorities, due dates and reminders, recurring schedules, subtasks and task relations, file attachments, assignees, and comments, and Quick Add Magic parses natural-language input like dates and labels typed inline. Projects share with team members or via links, and saved filters slice tasks across projects. Built-in CalDAV support (VTODO) syncs tasks bidirectionally with clients like Thunderbird, DAVx5, and iOS Reminders, and one-click importers migrate from Todoist, Trello, and Microsoft To-Do. Nothing is metered - unlimited projects, tasks, filters, and attachments. A single Go binary with a Vue frontend runs against SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL, exposes a full REST API, and works as an installable PWA on mobile. AGPLv3-licensed.

Open a project in DooTask and your tasks appear as a Kanban board, a list, a Gantt timeline, or a calendar, with team chat and file sharing beside them. Start from a project or task template and set a task to repeat so each new occurrence links back to the original. Mention colleagues in project and task chats, add emoji, and keep messages protected with asymmetric encryption. Files from chats and tasks gather in a Collaboration Files section, and WebDAV lets you manage My Files and Shared Files from Finder or Explorer. Check the dashboard for what is overdue, due today, or coming up, while department heads switch to a team view charting overdue and incomplete tasks per member. Visit the App Store to install official apps for approvals, OKRs, AI assistants, OnlyOffice, Minder mind maps, and Drawio diagrams. Administrators can add custom apps from an archive, a URL, or a GitHub repository. Add an API key for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, or Grok, or point to Ollama or any OpenAI-compatible URL, then type @AI Robot in a project chat to draft tasks. Log in on the web by scanning a QR code with the mobile app, or use an LDAP or Active Directory username. The free Open Source Edition covers three users; paid editions raise that to ten or unlimited. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

The most-starred open-source project management platform on GitHub with over 55,000 stars, Plane delivers what Jira, Linear, Monday, and ClickUp charge thousands per year for — issue tracking, sprint planning, documentation, and AI-powered workflows in one unified workspace that you own and control entirely. Work items feature a rich text editor with file uploads, sub-properties, custom states, priorities, labels, assignees, and cross-referencing, organized across five customizable layout views (list, board, table, spreadsheet, Gantt) with Command-K navigation for instant access to anything. Time-boxed Cycles provide sprint planning with automatic burn-down charts, velocity tracking, and scope change detection, while Modules break complex projects into manageable deliverables with progress aggregation. Built-in Pages combine AI-powered documentation with rich formatting, image embedding, and one-click conversion of notes into actionable work items. The AI layer reads across every project, cycle, document, and thread in the workspace — agents take real assignments, triage incoming requests, assign owners, track blockers, and ship status updates automatically. Native integrations connect GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Sentry, Figma, and 50+ tools with bidirectional issue sync and PR tracking, while import pipelines migrate entire workspaces from Jira, Linear, Asana, ClickUp, or Monday in minutes. The REST API with OAuth 2.0, HMAC-signed webhooks, typed SDKs in Node.js and Python, and a native MCP server enable custom automations. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

Nearly two decades running engineering organizations: Redmine is the veteran open-source project management and issue tracker, a Ruby on Rails application (GPLv2) still in active development. Its core strength is configurability: define your own trackers (bug, feature, task, or anything else), issue statuses, and role-based workflows that control exactly which transitions each role may perform, then extend records with custom fields of every type. Issues support subtasks, relations (blocks, precedes, duplicates), watchers, categories, and full journaled history, with saved custom queries and cross-project filtering for slicing the backlog any way you need. Around the tracker sit Gantt charts and calendars, a roadmap driven by versions, per-project wikis, forums, news, and document repositories, plus time tracking with estimated versus spent hours and activity-based reporting. Multi-project support runs deep - subprojects, per-project modules, and granular role-based permissions - and repository integration (Git, Subversion, Mercurial) links commits to issues automatically. Email notifications, inbound email-to-issue creation, LDAP authentication, a REST API, and a large plugin and theme ecosystem round it out. Recent 6.x releases brought substantial query and rendering optimizations. Self-hosting keeps your entire project history in your own database, free of per-seat licensing.

"As simple as Trello but as feature-rich as Jira" is how the Leantime team frames its goals-focused project management system for non-project managers - built from the ground up with ADHD, autism, and dyslexia in mind, with behavioral science shaping customizable dashboards, time blocking, low-cognitive-load prioritization, and Kanban, list, table, Gantt, and calendar views so each person works the way their brain does. The PHP application (AGPL, Laravel Blade frontend) connects strategy to execution: tasks with unlimited subtasks and dependencies roll up into milestones on a timeline, sprints and retrospectives handle iteration, and strategy-level blueprint boards - Lean Canvas, SWOT, risk analysis, goal and metric tracking - keep the "why" attached to the work. Knowledge lives alongside: wikis and docs, idea boards, comments on everything, file storage on S3 or local disk, even screen and webcam recording. Time tracking with timesheets supports estimation and client billing. Admin features are serious for an OSS tool: per-project permissions, two-factor auth, LDAP and OIDC single sign-on, Slack, Mattermost, and Discord integrations, a plugin system, and an expanding API that now powers a mobile app. Recent releases added multi-collaborator task assignment and low-vision accessibility improvements. Available in 20+ languages.

No external database cluster to babysit, no proprietary cloud lock-in, and no bloated workspace hierarchy: Jotty stores every note, checklist, and Kanban board as plain Markdown and JSON files inside a single folder on your server. Need a quick grocery list with nested categories, progress bars, and drag-and-drop reordering? Spin one up in seconds, or flip any list into a multi-column Kanban project board with custom statuses, due-date calendar views, and a built-in time tracker. Write technical documentation in a TipTap-powered WYSIWYG and Markdown editor featuring syntax-highlighted code blocks, GitHub-flavored callouts, embedded Draw.io and Excalidraw diagrams, and OpenPGP client-side encryption for sensitive records. Connect ideas across your workspace using Obsidian-compatible wikilinks, inline mention suggestions, backlinks, and an interactive 2D and 3D knowledge graph that maps relationships between tasks and notes. Share individual notes or live Kanban boards publicly via customizable read-only links, or start the optional Model Context Protocol (MCP) companion container so AI assistants like Claude and Cursor can query your notes and check off items through your scoped REST API key. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. AGPL-3.0 licensed.

With 27,000 GitHub stars and 349 releases shipping multiple times per week, Huly replaces four separate SaaS subscriptions — Linear for issue tracking, Notion for documents, Slack for team chat, and Motion for time-blocking — with a single self-hosted platform that charges nothing per seat. The issue tracker provides projects, sprints, roadmaps, custom workflows, and Kanban views with bi-directional GitHub and GitLab synchronization that keeps issues and pull requests in lockstep across both systems. Collaborative documents use CRDT-based real-time editing for wikis, meeting notes, and technical specs with nested page hierarchies and rich embedding. Team messaging delivers channels, direct messages, threaded conversations, reactions, and pinned messages in a Slack-equivalent interface that lives alongside your project context. The time-blocking planner schedules tasks into calendar slots with drag-and-drop, integrating directly with your issue backlog so nothing falls through cracks. A virtual office module provides audio and video rooms for standups and pair programming with external guest access. HR features handle team management, office hours, and PTO tracking. The architecture runs 30+ microservices on CockroachDB for ACID-compliant storage, Elasticsearch for full-text search, MinIO for file attachments, and Redpanda for event streaming. Desktop apps ship for macOS, Windows, and Linux alongside mobile apps for iOS and Android. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. EPL-2.0 licensed.