Open source alternatives to Jira and Trello: what self-hosting really costs
Yes, a Trello style board can run on a server the team controls. The shortest list of open source tools that do it well is WeKan, Planka, Kanboard, Vikunja and Kan.bn for plain boards, and OpenProject, Plane, Taiga and Redmine when the team also wants Jira style issue tracking. Each one can be installed with Docker on a small virtual server in an afternoon. The harder question is not whether it can be installed, but who keeps it patched, backed up and reachable for the next three years, and whether that work costs more than the subscription it replaces.
This article answers both. It lists the candidates with the facts that were checked on their own sites and repositories on October 8, 2026, then puts numbers on the work that comes after the install, so a small team can decide with the whole bill in view.
Why teams look for a Trello alternative on their own server
Most searches for a self-hosted Trello replacement start from one of four pressures, and it helps to name which one is real before comparing tools, because each points to a different answer.
Board and member limits. Trello's pricing page, checked on October 8, 2026, lists the Free plan as free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace, with up to 10 boards per Workspace. Standard is $5 per user per month billed annually, or $6 billed monthly. Premium is $10 per user per month billed annually, or $12.50 billed monthly. A team that has hit the tenth board or the eleventh person is looking at a per seat bill for the first time.
Data location. Some client contracts, public sector rules and research agreements require that project data stays on a named network or in a named country. Trello has only ever been a hosted service, so this requirement alone rules it out.
The end of Atlassian's self-managed products. Jira was once available as Server and later Data Center, but never under an open license. Atlassian's Data Center end of life page states that new customers could no longer buy Data Center subscriptions after March 30, 2026, existing customers can buy expansions until March 30, 2028, and Data Center products become read-only after March 28, 2029. Teams that run Jira on their own hardware today have a fixed date to plan around.
Lock-in. Some teams simply want to own the database so a future price change cannot hold their history hostage.
If the honest driver is the first one, a self-hosted tool is one answer but not the only one, and the cost section below matters most. If it is the second or third, self-hosting is often the cleanest route and the question becomes which tool. If it is lock-in, export and import paths matter more than where the server sits.
The open source boards that replace Trello
These five tools cover the same ground Trello covers: boards, lists, cards, labels, due dates and comments. They differ mainly in how actively they are developed and what they need to run.
| Tool | License | Stack and install | Status checked October 8, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WeKan | MIT | Meteor app, Docker and Snap packages | Active, very frequent releases, paid private support offered separately |
| Planka | Community edition, with a paid Pro edition | Docker, PostgreSQL | Active, Pro upgrades an existing Community install in place |
| Kanboard | MIT | PHP, SQLite or PostgreSQL | README states the application is in maintenance mode |
| Vikunja | AGPLv3 | Single Go binary or Docker | Active, a paid hosted Vikunja Cloud also exists |
| Kan.bn | AGPL-3.0 | Docker | Active, hosted free plan and a Trello import |
WeKan is the closest copy of the Trello screen, including swimlanes. Its repository describes public support as GitHub issues only, with paid private support sold separately. The release cadence is high, which is good for fixes and means the upgrade routine described below is not optional.
Planka has a clean, fast interface and real-time updates. The project now publishes a Pro edition with calendar, timeline and map views, guest roles, SSO and PDF export, and the README says Pro upgrades a Community install in place rather than requiring a fresh start.
Kanboard is deliberately minimal and enforces work in progress limits by highlighting a column that goes over its cap. Its README says the application is in maintenance mode, meaning it is considered complete and receives releases as community contributions arrive. That is fine for a stable small team and a risk for a team expecting new features.
Vikunja started as a to-do app and now offers list, kanban, Gantt and table views. It is a good fit when the team wants personal task lists and shared boards in one place.
Kan.bn markets itself directly as an open source alternative to Trello, with unlimited boards, lists and cards on its hosted free plan, and documentation for self-hosting and importing Trello boards.
One name that still appears in older lists is Focalboard. Its standalone repository now states that it is currently not maintained, so it is not a sound base for a new install.
When the team needs Jira, not just a board
If the team tracks bugs, sprints and releases rather than only moving cards, a board tool will feel thin within a month. These four cover issue tracking.
OpenProject offers work packages, Gantt charts, boards, time tracking and wikis. The Community edition is free with no minimum users. On the pricing page checked October 8, 2026, the Basic Enterprise tier is €5.95 per user per month with a 25 user minimum, Professional is €10.95 with a 25 user minimum, and Premium is €15.95 with a 100 user minimum. For a team of eight, the cheapest paid support tier still bills for 25 seats, which is €148.75 a month before tax. That is worth knowing before assuming the paid tier is a cheap safety net.
Plane is the most Jira and Linear like of the group, with cycles, modules and estimates. Its pricing page lists a free cloud plan for up to 12 users, Pro at $6 per seat per month on annual billing, and Business at $13. LDAP support sits in the top Enterprise Grid tier, so a team that needs directory sign-in should read the edition table before installing the free build.
Taiga is built around Scrum and kanban for agile teams, with backlogs, sprints and issue tracking, and describes itself as 100% open source.
Redmine is the veteran: released under the GPL, written in Ruby on Rails, with built-in support for Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and CVS repositories, and a long plugin catalog. It looks dated and is extremely stable.
The pattern is clear. Tools closer to Jira bring more configuration and more moving parts, so the upkeep cost in the next section rises with them.
What self-hosting actually costs a small team
The license is free. The running cost is not, and for a team of five to fifteen people the largest item is rarely the server bill.
The server. A small virtual machine with 2 GB to 4 GB of memory runs any of the board tools above. Add a domain, TLS certificates, and off-server storage for backups. This line is usually modest, but it never reaches zero, and a staging copy for testing upgrades doubles it.
Upgrades. Active projects release often. Each release means reading the changelog, taking a backup, pulling the new image, running migrations and checking that attachments and sign-in still work. Thirty to sixty minutes per upgrade is a fair planning figure for a simple Docker install, more when a major version changes the database schema.
Backups that have been restored at least once. A database dump and a copy of the attachments folder, sent off the server on a schedule, plus a restore test every quarter. Until a restore has been done once, nobody knows whether the backup works.
Email and sign-in. Invitations, password resets and notifications need a working mail relay. Single sign-on and directory sync are often in a paid edition, as with Plane's LDAP and Planka Pro's SSO.
Monitoring. An uptime check, a disk space alert and a certificate expiry reminder. Expired certificates and full disks are the two most common reasons small self-hosted tools go down, and both are preventable.
A rough worksheet for an eight person team makes the trade visible. Suppose upkeep takes three hours a month once everything is in place. At a loaded internal cost of $50 an hour, that is $150 a month, or $1,800 a year, before the server. Trello Standard for the same eight people is $40 a month on annual billing, or $480 a year, using the prices checked above. Self-hosting wins on cash only when the team is much larger, when someone already runs servers and the marginal hour is close to free, or when the data location rule makes the hosted option impossible at any price.
Choosing between self-hosted and a hosted tool
Four questions settle most cases faster than any feature comparison.
Who applies the next security update, and on which day? If no name comes to mind, the free license is hiding a cost.
Is there a hard data location requirement? If yes, choose a self-hosted tool and budget the upkeep properly. If no, keep reading.
How many people will use it in a year? Per seat pricing grows with headcount while upkeep grows slowly. At fifty people, self-hosting starts to pay for an administrator's time. At eight, it usually does not.
Is the real worry price or lock-in? If it is price, compare hosted free tiers first. Several tools give small teams every feature at no cost and only charge for more people or more boards. If it is lock-in, check how data gets in and out. A tool that reads a Trello export and keeps cards, checklists, attachments and comments, like the one described on the Trello import page, removes much of the lock-in worry without a server. The side by side comparison with Trello shows how plan limits differ when the boards and members are counted the same way.
There is also a middle path. OpenProject, Plane, Vikunja and Kan.bn all sell or offer hosting built on the same open code. A team can start hosted, keep the option to move the database in-house later, and avoid running a server today.
Moving off Trello without losing the history
Whichever direction the team picks, the move goes better in stages.
Export first. In Trello, the board menu offers an export to JSON. Download it for every board, even the ones nobody plans to migrate. That file is the team's own copy of the history and costs nothing to keep.
Move one live board. Pick a board that is in use this week, import or rebuild it, and run it in the new tool for two weeks. Most of the gaps people notice turn out to be habits rather than missing features.
Decide what not to move. Cards closed two years ago rarely need to be recreated one by one. The JSON export kept as a file covers most reference needs.
Map people, not just cards. Assignees in the export are Trello accounts. Plan who maps to whom in the new tool before the import, so cards do not land unassigned.
Set a switch-off date. Two boards for the same work guarantee that some cards live in the wrong place. Announce a date and make the old board read-only after it.
What to change first
Write down whether the real driver is price, data location or lock-in, and name the person who would own a server. If nobody can own it, try a hosted tool with a genuine free tier before installing anything; Pinateca is free for up to 5 people and 10 boards with kanban, Gantt and chat included, and imports Trello boards from the export file.
Q1. What is the best self-hosted Trello alternative for a small team?
For a plain board, WeKan and Planka are the closest to Trello's layout and are actively developed. Vikunja suits teams that also want personal task lists and a Gantt view. Kanboard is very light but its README says it is in maintenance mode, so expect few new features.
Q2. Is there an open source version of Jira or Trello?
No. Neither has been released under an open source license. Jira was sold as self-managed Server and Data Center editions, and Atlassian has set March 28, 2029 as the date Data Center products become read-only. OpenProject, Plane, Taiga and Redmine cover similar issue tracking needs under open licenses.
Q3. How much server does a self-hosted kanban tool need?
A small virtual machine with 2 GB to 4 GB of memory handles any of the board tools for a team of under twenty people. The larger costs are the hours spent on upgrades, backups and monitoring, not the machine itself.
Q4. Can a team move its Trello boards into a self-hosted tool?
Usually yes. Trello exports each board as a JSON file from the board menu, and several open source tools, including WeKan and Kan.bn, offer a Trello import. Test the import on one live board first and check that checklists, attachments and assignees came across before moving the rest.
Q5. Is self-hosting cheaper than paying for Trello?
For a small team it is often not. At Trello Standard's annual price, eight people cost $480 a year, while three hours a month of upkeep at a modest internal rate costs several times that. Self-hosting pays off for large teams, teams that already run servers, or teams with a strict data location rule.