PLANKA vs WeKan

PLANKA and WeKan are the two self-hosted kanban boards people usually shortlist as a Trello replacement: projects, boards, lists, cards with labels, due dates, checklists, attachments and comments, updated live for everyone on the board. Both import Trello boards. They differ in three ways that matter before you install: the licence, how much each tries to do, and what sits underneath. PLANKA is a lean React and Sails.js app on PostgreSQL. WeKan is a feature-packed Meteor app that speaks the MongoDB protocol. By default it stores data in SQLite through FerretDB.

Licence first

This decides it for some readers before features do.

WeKan is MIT-licensed. You can run it for anyone, including customers, and charge for it.

PLANKA is source-available, not open source. Since v2 it ships under the PLANKA Community License, a "fair-code" licence its guide says is "based on and extends the 'Sustainable Use License'" from n8n. It allows personal and hobby use, use "internally within your own organization", private hosting for friends and family, and free access for non-profits. It prohibits "operating PLANKA as a hosted service for third parties for any commercial gain", and the guide's examples of what is not allowed include "hosting PLANKA and charging people money to access it" and using PLANKA "to connect your own legal entity with legal entities or persons outside your organization in the context of a commercial relationship". Files marked .pe. (Pro/Enterprise) are under a separate commercial licence.

For an internal team board, both licences work. For client-facing boards at an agency, or a hosted board you sell, WeKan's MIT licence is the one that clearly allows it. With PLANKA you would need a commercial licence.

Features: focused vs. everything

PLANKA v2.2.1 covers the kanban core well. Board views are kanban, grid and list. Cards carry labels, members, due dates, task lists, attachments, comments and custom fields. Descriptions use a Markdown editor. The README highlights real-time updates and notifications "through 100+ providers". On the admin side there are TOTP two-factor login, API keys, webhooks, a Swagger-documented API, and an import step for Trello exports. Attachments can go to S3 instead of the local volume. PLANKA sells a Pro edition; its Pro page lists single sign-on among the paid features, and the v2.2.1 Compose file has no OIDC settings.

WeKan does much more, and its docs are organised by menu because there is so much of it:

• Swimlanes: horizontal bands across a board, each card in one list and one swimlane.
• Rules, which its docs call "WeKan's equivalent of Trello's Butler": a trigger runs an action, such as marking a card complete when it moves to Done.
• Calendar, time tracking, Gantt and board report charts.
• Board templates and outgoing webhooks.
• Login through LDAP, OAuth2, SAML and CAS, with guides for Keycloak, Authelia and Zitadel, plus opt-in TOTP two-factor.
• Imports from Trello, Jira, Kanboard, CSV/TSV and Excel (.xlsx).

If you need swimlanes, automation rules or directory login without paying, WeKan has them. If you want a board that looks and works like Trello and little else, PLANKA is the simpler tool.

What runs underneath

PLANKA's official Compose file runs two containers: the app and postgres:16-alpine. Our snippet pins ghcr.io/plankanban/planka:2.2.1. It creates the first admin from the DEFAULT_ADMIN_* variables. PLANKA publishes no RAM figure. Our 512 MB is an estimate. We measured ~202 MB idle on our GCP e2-standard-2 test box (Ubuntu 26.04, 2026-09-29).

WeKan's default docker-compose.yml for v12.09 runs two containers too: WeKan and a small Debian container that downloads FerretDB, from WeKan's own fork, on first start. FerretDB "speaks the MongoDB wire protocol" and stores everything in SQLite files, with "no separate PostgreSQL or MongoDB server". Note that this FerretDB download follows the newest release of that fork unless you set FERRETDB_RELEASE, even when you pin the WeKan image. Separate Compose files swap the backend for FerretDB on PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB or SAP HANA, or plain MongoDB 7. The README asks for "1 GB RAM minimum free for WeKan" and says a production server "should have minimum total 4 GB RAM". We list it at 2 GB, and measured ~939 MB idle on the same test box (2026-09-29).

Running it day to day

WeKan's README is direct about upkeep. It says to update "very often" because "only newest WeKan ® is supported", to back up the database "once a day minimum", and that "there is no undo yet". It also warns that running out of disk space can corrupt the MongoDB database. Its "first registered user will be admin", so register straight after the first start. WeKan's default Compose file also ships a placeholder MAIL_URL that you must replace or comment out.

PLANKA has less surface to maintain: one Node app and a stock PostgreSQL image that you back up with pg_dump like any other.

Both installs on this site were tested on Ubuntu 26.04. We rate both 2 out of 5 to deploy.

Which to choose

Choose PLANKA if you want a clean, Trello-style board for yourself or your own organisation. It has real-time updates, custom fields and webhooks, runs on PostgreSQL, and measured ~202 MB idle. Check the licence first: it is source-available, and hosting it for third parties for commercial gain needs a paid licence.

Choose WeKan if you need swimlanes, Butler-style rules, calendar and Gantt views, or LDAP, SAML and OAuth2 login without paying for them. It also fits if the MIT licence matters because you host boards for other people. Budget more memory (~939 MB measured idle, 4 GB recommended by upstream for production), and plan to update and back up often.

Choosing between WeKan and PLANKA

Coming from WeKan, PLANKA's appeal is less to operate and a plain PostgreSQL database. Coming from PLANKA, the reasons to switch are WeKan's automation and directory login, or its MIT licence. For task managers with list and Gantt views rather than pure kanban, see Vikunja vs Leantime.