Trello is a drag-and-drop board of lists and cards, and most open-source alternatives copy that model closely. The differences show up in the details: who can see your boards, whether the project is still maintained, and which license the code actually carries. Wekan and Kanboard are the safest picks if a fully open license matters to you; Planka looks the most like Trello but is not open source.
What Trello actually does
Trello's job is simple: boards made of lists, lists made of cards, and cards you can move between them. Most teams use it for a handful of things:
- A kanban board for a small team's tasks
- Checklists, due dates and labels on each card
- Comments and attachments for discussion
- Power-Ups for calendars, time tracking or automation
A self-hosted replacement only needs to get the board and cards right. The extras, like calendar views, automation and Gantt charts, separate the simple clones from the bigger project-management tools below.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | License | GitHub stars (Oct 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wekan | Closest free Trello clone | MIT | about 21,100 |
| Vikunja | To-do lists and boards together | AGPL-3.0 / GPL-3.0 | about 5,700 |
| Planka | Looks the most like Trello | Fair Use License (not open source) | about 12,600 |
| Kanboard | A lightweight board on PHP | MIT | about 9,900 |
| Plane | A team that has outgrown a simple board | AGPL-3.0 | about 60,700 |
| Kan | A newer Trello clone with board import | AGPL-3.0 | about 5,800 |
| 4ga Boards | A small team that wants dark mode | MIT | about 730 |
Wekan
Wekan is a kanban board with swimlanes, lists, a calendar view, a table view, a timeline and a Gantt chart, all updated in real time as people move cards. Its own project page claims it is used in most countries in the world, with its largest known deployment running 30,000 users inside one company.
It runs on several databases (the default is FerretDB with SQLite, plus PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB and MongoDB versions 6 to 9), ships as a Docker image, a Snap, an AppImage or a Windows and Mac bundle, and is translated into more than 230 locales. Its import and export list covers Trello, Jira, Asana, GitHub, GitLab and more, plus CSV, TSV, Excel and Markdown.
Everything is MIT-licensed, with no paid tier hidden behind a feature. If a board and cards are all you need, and you want the license question settled once and for all, start here.
Vikunja
Vikunja calls itself "the task manager you actually own." It covers more ground than a pure kanban clone: lists, a board view, a calendar and to-do style task management in one app, aimed at a single person or a household as much as a team.
The core app is open source under AGPL-3.0 and GPL-3.0. Vikunja also sells a hosted Pro plan with an admin panel, audit logs and time tracking; the self-hosted app you run yourself stays free and open.
Vikunja is one of the apps in this list you can run with one click: on your own server with Docker, or on a managed host such as blitz.cloud, where Vikunja installs in one click Ad.
Planka
Planka is the one on this list that looks and feels closest to Trello: the same drag-and-drop boards, real-time updates with no page refresh, a markdown card editor, custom fields, due dates, a stopwatch and webhooks.
Read the license before you plan around it. Planka's Community Edition carries the PLANKA Fair Use License, a source-available license, not an open-source one; a separate commercial license covers its Pro and Enterprise tiers. You can read the source and self-host the Community Edition, but it is not the same legal guarantee as an MIT or AGPL project.
With that caveat noted, Planka installs in one click on blitz.cloud Ad as well, or you can run it yourself with Docker.
Kanboard
Kanboard focuses on the Kanban method itself rather than extra features: boards, cards, swimlanes and not much else to learn. It runs on PHP, which makes it light on server resources and easy to host almost anywhere PHP runs.
The project is in maintenance mode: its original developer takes bug fixes and community contributions rather than building new features. For a small team that wants a board that keeps working without updates to track, that stability is a feature, not a warning sign. The MIT license has no paid tier.
Plane
Plane bills itself as an open-source alternative to Jira, Linear and Monday, not just Trello, and the feature list shows it: work items with a rich-text editor, cycles with burn-down charts, modules to break a big project into pieces, saved and shared views, and pages for notes with a rich-text editor.
That is a lot more than a Trello clone needs, and it means a steeper learning curve for a team that only wants a simple board. If a kanban board is outgrowing your needs, with sprints and dashboards next, Plane is the one on this list built for that. It is AGPL-3.0 licensed, with a separate hosted Plane Cloud if you do not want to run it yourself.
Kan
Kan describes itself directly as "the open-source project management alternative to Trello," and it is the newest project here. It supports importing an existing Trello board, plus workspace members, labels, filters, comments and activity history; more integrations are listed as coming.
It runs on Next.js with a Postgres database, deploys with Docker Compose or a one-click Railway button, and is licensed under AGPL-3.0. At around 5,800 stars and under a thousand commits, it is active but young; expect some rough edges compared to the older projects on this list.
4ga Boards
4ga Boards is a smaller, realtime kanban board with a dark mode as one of its headline features, keyboard shortcuts, markdown cards and board import and export. It supports more than a dozen languages.
It is MIT-licensed and deploys with Docker Compose, Kubernetes or a manual install. With under a thousand GitHub stars, it has the smallest community on this list, so expect fewer existing guides and a smaller pool of people to ask when something breaks.
How to choose
- The safest fully open-source Trello clone: Wekan.
- You also want to-do lists and a calendar, not just a board: Vikunja.
- You want the closest look and feel to Trello, and the license is not a dealbreaker: Planka.
- A lightweight board on a server you barely have to maintain: Kanboard.
- You have outgrown a simple board and need cycles, modules and sprints: Plane.
- You are importing an existing Trello board into something new: Kan.
- You want a small, simple board with a good dark mode: 4ga Boards.
Running one
You can run any of these on your own server with Docker Compose; each project's docs have an official setup guide. Put a reverse proxy with HTTPS in front and back up the database as well as any uploaded files. Our self-hosting for beginners guide covers the basics.
If you would rather not manage a server, a managed host such as blitz.cloud runs Vikunja and Planka with one-click installs, HTTPS included, hosted in the EU. Its free plan needs no credit card, and apps sleep after 30 minutes without visitors, which is fine for a board you check a few times a day.
FAQ
Is there a fully open-source Trello alternative?
Yes. Wekan (MIT), Kanboard (MIT), Vikunja (AGPL-3.0 and GPL-3.0), Plane (AGPL-3.0), Kan (AGPL-3.0) and 4ga Boards (MIT) are all open source with no feature locked behind a paid tier. Planka looks the most like Trello but its Community Edition carries a source-available license, not an open-source one.
Can I import my Trello boards?
Kan has a direct Trello import. Wekan's import and export list also includes Trello. Check the import docs of whichever app you pick before you move a board you rely on.
Which one is closest to Trello?
Planka, in look and feel. Wekan is the closest fully open-source match.
Which one works for a bigger team, not just a simple board?
Plane, if you need cycles, modules and sprint-style planning rather than a single board. Vikunja covers more than a board too, with lists and a calendar on top.