Top 6 Open Source Project Management Software in 2026

The six best open source project management tools in 2026 are Plane, OpenProject, Orangescrum, Leantime, Taiga and Redmine. All six run on your own server under a recognised open source licence, and all six install with Docker. They differ most in three things: whether they track time and budgets, whether the paid tier charges per user, and how actively the code is maintained.

We checked the licence, the public repository and the pricing page of every tool on this list on 9 September 2026, and we name the source of every number at the foot of this article. Orangescrum is our own product. We say so wherever it appears and we score it on the same six criteria as the others.

Open source project management software compared

Tool	Best for	Licence	GitHub stars	Time tracking	Free edition limit	Paid tier
Plane	Product and engineering teams	AGPL v3	59,116	Pro plan	None, self-hosted	$6 per user per month
OpenProject	Programme and portfolio management	GPL v3	16,059	Yes	None	€5.95 per user per month, 25-user minimum
Orangescrum	Tasks, time and budgets in one tool	AGPL v3	7, repo opened Aug 2026	Yes	None	Flat, from $29 per month, unlimited users
Leantime	Small teams that plan by goals	AGPL v3	11,555	Yes	None, self-hosted. No free cloud tier	$8 per user per month, billed yearly
Taiga	Scrum and Kanban teams	MPL 2.0 back end, AGPL v3 front end	849	No, plugin only	1 public and 1 private project on cloud, none self-hosted	Flat, from €5 per month, unlimited users
Redmine	Issue tracking with plugins	GPL v2	6,031	Yes	None	Free. Third-party hosting extra

What counts as open source project management software

Open source project management software is a tool for planning and tracking work whose full source code is published under a licence that lets anyone read, run and modify it. In practice, three tests matter:

• You can read the code. The whole application is in a public repository, not a cut-down demo.
• You can run it without a key. No licence file, no activation call to the vendor.
• You can change it. The licence permits modification, subject to its own conditions.

Five of the six tools here also sell a paid edition. That is normal in 2026 and it is called open core. The question is not “is it free” but what is missing from the free edition, and what does the paid one cost once the team grows.

How we chose these six

We compared every tool against the same six criteria. The number in brackets is the weight we gave each one, out of 100.

1. Open source in practice (20). A recognised licence, the whole application public, and a way to run it with no key.
2. Core project management (25). Tasks, subtasks, Kanban, lists, milestones, timeline, custom workflows, files, comments.
3. Time and money (15). Time logging, timesheets, billable flags, estimates against actuals, budgets.
4. Scale and administration (15). User limits, database, roles, single sign-on, backup, upgrade path.
5. Support and community (15). Documentation, forum or chat, paid support, migration help, release cadence.
6. What users say (10). G2 and Capterra ratings, weighted by review count.

We did not score visual design or the number of integrations. Both matter, and both change too fast to compare fairly.

What changed in open source project management in 2026

Atlassian closed new Jira Data Center sales on 30 March 2026. Renewals and expansions end on 30 March 2028, and support ends on 28 March 2029. Every organisation that needs an on-premise tracker is now shopping, and that is the single biggest reason this category grew this year.

Open core became the default. Every tool on this list except Redmine now sells a paid edition.

Docker became the install. All six run from a compose file. Hand-built PHP or Ruby stacks are no longer the normal path.

One well-known option left the list. Focalboard, an open source Trello alternative with 26,456 stars, moved from Mattermost to the mattermost-community organisation and has had no commit since 18 May 2026. It is not archived, but it is dormant. Do not start new work on it.

1. Plane, best for product and engineering teams

Licence: AGPL v3 · GitHub: 59,116 stars · Hosting: self-hosted or cloud · Rating: 4.4 on G2 from 15 reviews

Plane is the closest open source answer to Linear and Jira Software, and it has the most GitHub stars of the six, 59,116. Plane gives you issues, cycles, modules, views and pages in a fast interface, and it ships a release almost every week.

Key features

• Issues with sub-issues, relations and custom properties
• Cycles for sprints and modules for epics
• Saved views and filters
• Pages for documentation
• Importers for Jira and GitHub
• REST API and webhooks

Pricing. The self-hosted community edition is free with no user cap. Pro is $6 per user per month and adds time tracking, automation and full Jira import. Business is $13 per seat and adds worklog approval. A team of 25 on Pro pays $1,800 a year.

Pros: the best interface of the six, the largest and fastest-moving community, a strong Jira importer.

Cons: time tracking is a paid feature, so the free edition has none, there are no budgets at any tier, pricing is per user on the paid tiers, and there are only 15 G2 reviews so far, so the rating is thin.

Who should not pick Plane: anyone who bills hours or runs client projects on the free edition. Time tracking starts at Pro, $6 per user per month, and there are no budgets at any tier.

2. OpenProject, best for programme and portfolio management

Licence: GPL v3 · GitHub: 16,059 stars · Hosting: self-hosted or cloud, EU data centre · Rating: 4.6 on Capterra from 188 reviews

OpenProject is the most complete classic project management tool in open source, and it holds the highest user rating on this list, 4.6 on Capterra from 188 reviews. OpenProject gives you Gantt charts, work breakdown, budgets, cost reports, agile boards, meetings and a wiki, and it supports hybrid methods. It runs an EU data centre, which is why it appears often on European public sector shortlists.

Key features

• Work packages with hierarchy and relations
• Gantt charts and roadmaps
• Agile boards and backlogs
• Time tracking and cost reports
• Budgets
• Meetings, wiki and documents
• A dedicated edition for construction

Pricing. The community edition is free, and it includes time tracking and budgets. Enterprise cloud starts at €5.95 per user per month on Basic, billed yearly, with a 25-user minimum. Professional is €10.95 and Premium is €15.95 with a 100-user minimum. A team of 25 on Basic pays €1,785 a year, and so does a team of 10, because 25 seats is the smallest purchase.

Pros: the widest feature set here, the highest rating from the largest review base, and a clear enterprise support path with service level agreements.

Cons: heavier to run and to learn, several administration features sit behind the Enterprise add-on, and the interface is functional rather than modern.

Who should not pick OpenProject: a team of five who want a board and a list. It will feel like far too much tool.

3. Orangescrum, best for tasks, time and budgets in one tool

Licence: AGPL v3 · GitHub: 7 stars, repository published August 2026 · Hosting: self-hosted or cloud · Rating: 4.5 on G2 from 25 reviews, 4.3 on Capterra from 105 reviews

Disclosure: Orangescrum publishes this blog. The scoring criteria above were fixed before the review began and applied to all six tools.

Orangescrum ships time logging, timesheets, billable flags and budgets in its free edition, and charges a flat price rather than a per-user price on its paid plans. OpenProject is the only other tool here with time tracking and budgets built in and free. Redmine can also do budgets, through a plugin. Taiga is the only other one with flat pricing. For an agency or any services team that bills hours, that combination is the difference between one tool and three.

The Orangescrum Community Edition needs no licence key and has no limit on users, projects or storage. It runs inside a private network with no outbound connection and joins Active Directory through LDAP or SAML. The licensed self-hosted editions activate offline, which is what an air-gapped site needs.

Key features

• Projects with members, roles and per-project workflows
• Tasks with priorities, due dates, labels, subtasks and task groups
• List, Kanban, calendar and overview views
• Custom statuses and workflows per project
• Time logging and timesheets, billable and non-billable
• Reports and dashboards
• Comments, mentions, attachments, email notifications
• Five roles: Owner, Admin, User, Client, Guest
• An MCP server with more than 70 tools, so Claude, Cursor or VS Code can create and update work

Install

Three commands, with Docker as the only requirement:

git clone https://github.com/Orangescrum/opensource-community-edition.git
cd opensource-community-edition
docker compose up -d --build

Then open http://localhost:8080 and follow the setup wizard. You can also get the build from the Orangescrum Community Edition download page.

Pricing. Community Edition free with unlimited users. Cloud is flat at $29, $69 or $349 a month, every plan with unlimited users. Basic at $29 is limited to 10 projects. Self-hosted licensed editions start at $1,500 a year.

Pros: time and budget tracking in the free edition, flat pricing so cost does not grow with headcount, air-gapped operation with offline activation, and AI assistant access over MCP.

Cons: the public repository opened in August 2026 and has 7 stars, so there is no independent contributor base, no third-party plugin ecosystem and no fork history yet. The open source edition depends on one vendor. Some screens still run an older front end while the rewrite finishes. Reviewers on Capterra who used it before the 2026 rewrite describe the old interface as dated.

Who should not pick Orangescrum: a team that wants a Linear-style tracker with cycles and modules. Plane does that better.

4. Leantime, best for small teams that plan by goals

Licence: AGPL v3 · GitHub: 11,555 stars · Hosting: self-hosted or cloud · Rating: 4.3 on Capterra from 10 reviews

Leantime connects strategy to daily work: goals, milestones and to-dos in one line of sight, designed for people who are not project managers. It also includes time tracking, which most tools in this size class leave out.

Key features

• Goals, milestones and to-dos in one hierarchy
• Kanban, table, calendar and timeline views
• Time tracking and timesheets
• Retrospectives and idea boards
• A plugin marketplace

Pricing. There is no free cloud tier. Leantime removed it in 2026. Pro is $8 per user per month billed yearly, or $10 billed monthly. The self-hosted AGPL v3 build is free and has no user limit. A team of 25 on Pro pays $2,400 a year.

Pros: goal-to-task linking that nothing else here does as well, time tracking included, and a self-hosted build with no user cap.

Cons: the free cloud tier is gone, and at $8 per user per month Leantime is now the most expensive per user of the six. Smaller community, fewer integrations, and only 10 Capterra reviews, so treat the rating as early.

Who should not pick Leantime: teams above about 50 people, or anyone who needs portfolio-level reporting.

5. Taiga, best for Scrum and Kanban teams

Licence: MPL 2.0 on the back end, AGPL v3 on the front end · GitHub: 849 stars on the back end repository · Hosting: self-hosted or cloud · Rating: 4.3 on Capterra from 87 reviews

Taiga is the closest fit for Scrum of the six. Taiga gives you a backlog, sprints, a taskboard, a burndown chart, epics and a Kanban mode. It has been in production since 2014. Its star count understates its use, because every Taiga repository was created in April 2021 during an organisation move, which reset the star history.

Key features

• Backlog and sprint planning
• Scrum taskboard with burndown chart
• Kanban with work-in-progress limits
• Epics and user stories with points
• Wiki and issue tracking
• Importers from Jira, Trello, Asana and GitHub

Pricing. Self-hosted is free with every feature and no user limit. Cloud is flat and billed in euros, with unlimited users on every plan: Gratis free with one public and one private project, Enthusiast €5 a month, Basic €20 a month and Premium €60 a month, or €50, €200 and €600 a year. The plans differ on project count and storage, not on seats, so a team of 25 on Premium pays €600 a year and so does a team of 100.

Pros: the best Scrum fit here, the complete feature set at no cost when self-hosted, flat cloud pricing with unlimited users on every plan, and the widest set of importers.

Cons: Taiga releases less often than Plane and OpenProject, there is no time tracking without a plugin, and the interface has changed little since 2020.

Who should not pick Taiga: teams that do not run agile, or anyone who needs Gantt charts and budgets.

6. Redmine, best for issue tracking with plugins

Licence: GPL v2 · GitHub: 6,031 stars on the mirror · Hosting: self-hosted only · Rating: 4.0 on G2 from 257 reviews, the largest review base here

Redmine is what you choose when you want a tool that will work the same way in ten years. It has been in continuous development since 2006. Issues, trackers, custom fields, roles, Gantt, calendar, wiki, repository integration, and a plugin ecosystem that covers agile boards, time reports and even CRM.

Key features

• Flexible issue tracking with custom trackers and fields
• Multiple projects and subprojects
• Gantt chart and calendar
• Time tracking
• Wiki, forums and news
• Git and Subversion integration
• Hundreds of community plugins

Pricing. Free, with no paid edition and no official cloud. Several third-party vendors sell managed Redmine hosting. Prices vary widely by vendor, instance size and support level, so compare two or three before you commit.

Pros: the most stable and predictable option, time tracking built in, the deepest customisation through plugins, and the largest body of user reviews.

Cons: a dated interface out of the box, no official cloud, and plugin quality varies enough that a bad plugin can block a version upgrade.

Who should not pick Redmine: anyone who expects a modern interface without installing a theme and several plugins.

Feature comparison

Feature	Plane	OpenProject	Orangescrum	Leantime	Taiga	Redmine
Kanban board	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Plugin
List and table	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gantt or timeline	Partial	Yes	Yes	Timeline	No	Yes
Sprints	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Plugin
Milestones or epics	Modules	Yes	Task groups	Milestones	Epics	Versions
Custom workflows	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial	Yes	Yes
Time tracking	Pro plan	Yes	Yes	Yes	Plugin	Yes
Timesheets and approval	Business plan	Partial	Yes	Partial	No	Plugin
Budgets	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	Plugin
Reports and dashboards	Partial	Yes	Yes	Partial	Partial	Partial
Wiki or pages	Yes	Yes	Add-on	Partial	Yes	Yes
API	REST	REST	REST and MCP	REST	REST	REST

Hosting and scale

	Plane	OpenProject	Orangescrum	Leantime	Taiga	Redmine
Install	Docker, Kubernetes	Docker, packages	Docker	Docker	Docker	Manual, Docker
Database	PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL	PostgreSQL 16	MySQL or MariaDB	PostgreSQL	MySQL or PostgreSQL
Cloud edition	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Third party only
Air-gapped	Yes	Yes	Yes, offline activation	Yes	Yes	Yes
Single sign-on	Yes	Enterprise	Yes	Paid	Plugin	Plugin
Free user cap	None	None	None	None, self-hosted only	None	None
Minimum server	2 cores, 4 GB	4 cores, 4 GB	2 cores, 4 GB	1 core, 2 GB	2 cores, 4 GB	1 core, 2 GB

What a team actually pays per year

Team size	Orangescrum, $69 plan	Leantime Pro	Taiga Premium	Plane Pro	OpenProject Basic	Redmine
10 people	$828	$960	€600	$720	€1,785	$0
25 people	$828	$2,400	€600	$1,800	€1,785	$0
100 people	$828	$9,600	€600	$7,200	€7,140	$0

Flat pricing wins as the team grows, but not against everything. The $69 Orangescrum plan costs less than Plane above about 12 people, less than Leantime above about 9, and less than OpenProject at any size, because OpenProject sells a minimum of 25 seats. It never costs less than Taiga, which is also flat priced, and Redmine costs nothing at all if you run it yourself.

How to choose an open source project management tool

1. Count your users in eighteen months, not today. Per-user pricing looks cheap at eight people and expensive at forty.
2. Decide whether hours and money matter. If anyone bills time, Plane charges for it and Taiga needs a plugin. If anyone tracks a budget, cross out Plane, Taiga and Leantime, because only OpenProject and Orangescrum have budgets built in, and Redmine needs a plugin.
3. Install the free edition before you read another review. All six have a Docker path. Look for what is greyed out.
4. Read the licence. For a tool that you run for your own staff only, AGPL, GPL and MPL usually create no duty to publish anything. The AGPL adds one more condition. If you change the code, and then let people outside your organisation use it over a network, you must offer those people the source of your changes. It makes no difference whether you charge them. This is a summary, not legal advice. Take advice before you change the code, or before you open it to people outside your organisation.
5. Look at the last ninety days of commits, not the star count. A quiet repository is a risk whatever its stars say.
6. Test the import. Export a hundred tasks from your current tool and load them. Importer quality tells you what the migration will really cost.

Migrating from Jira, Trello, Asana or monday.com

From Jira Data Center. Plane and OpenProject import from Jira directly. Orangescrum runs a guided migration at no charge for self-hosted licences, inside your own network, and leaves the old instance readable for as long as you need it. Atlassian ends renewals on 30 March 2028, so plan the move for 2027 at the latest.

From Trello or Asana. Taiga imports both natively. Every tool here accepts CSV.

From monday.com or Basecamp. Export to CSV, map the columns to task, assignee, status, due date and estimate, then import.

If your main requirement is running the tool on your own servers rather than the licence itself, read our guide to self-hosted project management software, which covers ten tools including several that are not open source.

Also worth knowing

• Huly, EPL 2.0, 27,614 stars. An all-in-one platform with chat and HR built in. Young and moving fast.
• Wekan, MIT, 21,074 stars. Kanban only, and very light.
• Vikunja, AGPL v3, 5,333 stars. Personal and small-team task management with a Todoist importer.
• GitLab and Tuleap. Lifecycle tools where planning sits beside code and pipelines. The right answer when developers own the process.
• ProjectLibre. Desktop scheduling and a Microsoft Project replacement, not a team tool.
• Focalboard. Moved to the mattermost-community organisation and dormant since May 2026, as noted above. Do not start new work on it.

The short answer

If you bill hours or track budgets, pick Orangescrum or OpenProject, because they are the only two here with time and money built in and no user cap. If you run a product team and do not track time, pick Plane. If you run Scrum and nothing else, pick Taiga. If you want something that will not change for a decade, pick Redmine.

All six install from a compose file. Install two, load a real project into both, and decide in a week. Download the Orangescrum Community Edition, free, with unlimited users.

Sources and dates

GitHub star counts, licences and commit dates from the GitHub API on 9 September 2026. Prices from each vendor’s own pricing page, read on the same date and rechecked on 10 September 2026: plane.so, openproject.org, orangescrum.com, leantime.io and taiga.io. Every price in this article matched the vendor page on both dates. Redmine has no paid edition, and we quote no third-party hosting price. Ratings and review counts are the figures shown on each product’s G2 or Capterra page. We could not open those pages on 9 September 2026, so the ratings carry no check date. Treat them as unconfirmed, and read the product’s page before you rely on one. Jira Data Center dates from Atlassian’s published end-of-sale and end-of-life schedule. If this page has not been updated for six months, treat the star counts, the ratings and the prices as indicative and check the vendor’s page.