Plane vs OpenProject

Plane and OpenProject both promise to get you off Jira, but they're built for different shapes of work. Plane is a fast, Linear-style tracker — work items, sprint-style cycles, and modules on a TypeScript · Python · PostgreSQL · Redis stack — aimed at software teams who want a clean board and not much ceremony. OpenProject is a full project-and-portfolio suite — Gantt charts, a Scrum backlog, time tracking, and a project wiki on a Ruby · TypeScript · PostgreSQL stack — aimed at teams that plan work the way a PMI certification teaches, with dependencies, milestones, and a timeline view. Both list a 4 GB RAM floor. From there, the two projects diverge hard.

Work items vs. work packages

Plane organizes everything around work items — issues that live inside cycles (its name for sprints) and modules (its name for epics or feature groupings) — and gives you five ways to look at them: list, board (kanban), calendar, table, and timeline (a Gantt-equivalent view with drag-to-reschedule dependencies), plus saved views for the filtered boards a team checks daily and freeform wiki-style pages for docs that live next to the work. It reads like a self-hosted Linear: fast to click through, opinionated about workflow, light on configuration screens.

OpenProject organizes around work packages — a single hierarchical type that covers tasks, subtasks, features, bugs, and milestones — and surfaces them through the same core view types (Gantt, kanban, list, table), plus two things Plane's free build doesn't have: a Scrum backlog with sprint planning, and built-in time tracking logged directly against work packages. If your team plans by sprint ceremony and bills hours against tasks, OpenProject has that layer built in — Plane's model centers on cycles and modules instead, without a formal backlog or time tracking.

Setup: 3/5 vs. 4/5, and why

Plane rates difficulty 3/5. The official installer is a single script that stands up a Docker Compose stack — Next.js frontend, Python/Django API, PostgreSQL, and Redis — and gets you to a working instance at http://SERVER_IP in one command. The stack is modern and the moving parts are the ones most self-hosters have already stood up for something else.

OpenProject rates difficulty 4/5. It's also Docker Compose, but the official install asks for more manual steps — cloning a separate compose repo, creating an asset volume with the right ownership (chown 1000:1000), generating a SECRET_KEY_BASE, and explicitly disabling HTTPS enforcement until a TLS proxy is in front of it. None of that is exotic, but it's more surface area for a first-time install to go wrong on, and the Ruby-on-Rails core behind it is a heavier, less commonly self-hosted stack than Plane's.

What's actually free

Neither project's Community Edition is the full feature set — the gaps just sit in different places. Plane's self-hosted Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, and some AI features and enterprise capabilities on Plane's paid plans aren't part of it — self-hosting those means moving to Plane's Commercial Edition and buying a Pro or Business licence.

OpenProject's Community Edition is GPL-3.0, and it's more generous than it first appears: TOTP and WebAuthn two-factor authentication ship free, alongside the full work-package/Gantt/Scrum/time-tracking feature set. What's actually locked behind OpenProject's Enterprise add-on is narrower and more specifically aimed at organizations: SSO, LDAP group sync, resource management, and custom branding. A solo self-hoster or small team is unlikely to hit any of those walls; an org that wants to hand accounts to an existing identity provider will.

Which one fits your team

If your team runs sprints, tracks issues, and wants something that feels like Linear without leaving your own server, Plane is the easier build and the lighter mental model — cycles and modules instead of a full PM vocabulary, and a setup that doesn't ask you to hand-manage volume permissions.

If you're managing a project that needs a formal Scrum backlog with sprint planning, or hours logged against tasks for billing — capabilities Plane's free build doesn't have — OpenProject earns its extra difficulty point. Trying to force that workflow onto Plane's cycle-and-module model will feel like fighting the tool; OpenProject was built for exactly this.

Pick Plane if…

• You want a fast, modern tracker for sprints and issues, not full project-portfolio planning.
• You'd rather run a lighter, easier Docker stack (difficulty 3/5).
• You're fine without the AI/enterprise features that need a paid Plane licence, even when self-hosted.

Pick OpenProject if…

• You need a formal Scrum backlog with sprint planning and built-in time tracking — Plane's cycles and modules don't cover either.
• Your team plans work with real dependencies and milestones, not just a backlog.
• Free TOTP/WebAuthn 2FA covers your auth needs, and you don't need SSO, LDAP sync, resource management, or custom branding — those stay Enterprise-only.

The honest trade-off

Plane wins this comparison for the audience this site is built for — a self-hoster or small team standing up their own tracker — because it's the easier install and the more common stack, and it now covers the same core view types (list, kanban, calendar, table, Gantt-equivalent) as OpenProject. But "easier to run" isn't the same as "does more": OpenProject's Scrum backlog and built-in time tracking go beyond Plane's cycles-and-modules scope, and a team that genuinely needs classic project-and-portfolio management will find OpenProject's extra setup step is a fair price for that depth. Pick based on the shape of the work you manage, not just the install script.