Side-by-side comparison based on expert reviews and community consensus.
Price
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Summary
A free, open-source kanban board you can self-host — no subscriptions, no data sharing, no bloat. Perfect for solo users or small teams who want full control over their data.
The go-to kanban board for individuals and teams who want visual task management without a learning curve. Dead simple, highly visual, and free tier covers most personal and small team needs.
Pros
- Completely free and open-source with no subscription costs
- Self-hosted means full data ownership and privacy
- Clean, minimal interface focused purely on kanban
- Active GitHub community with ongoing development
- Dead simple drag-and-drop interface anyone can learn immediately
- Strong free tier suitable for personal projects and small teams
- Good Slack integration for task capture without leaving chat
- Lightweight enough to not slow down your workflow
Cons
- Requires technical setup and server maintenance
- No cloud-hosted option — you manage your own infrastructure
- Fewer integrations than commercial tools
- Limited advanced features like reporting or time tracking
- Limited advanced project management features for complex teams
- Free plan caps on boards and Power-Ups can feel restrictive
- Not ideal if you need deep reporting or resource management
- Can get messy at scale without strict board discipline
Our take
If you're even slightly technical and care about privacy or cost, Planka is a no-brainer. It does exactly what a kanban board should do and nothing more.
Trello wins because it nails the core kanban experience without burying you in features. If you just need to move cards across columns and get things done, nothing beats it.
Buy
