Open-source alternatives to Jira

Jira's free plan is generous: up to 10 users, with 2 GB of storage. So why look elsewhere? Usually because the team has grown past 10, or because Jira has grown into something nobody quite enjoys using.

Past 10 users you need a paid plan. Atlassian raised its Cloud list prices on 13 October 2026, and Jira Standard is now $9.70 per user a month for the first 100 users on a monthly plan. That's about £7.35. A team of 20 pays roughly £1,760 a year.

That isn't outrageous. But if most of those 20 people only log in to move a ticket, it's worth knowing what the main open-source options can do. One thing to watch: the $8.48 headline on Jira's pricing page is an average across 300 users, so a small team pays more than that per person.

Vikunja

Vikunja is a task manager rather than a full project suite, and that's why it's my pick. Most small teams don't need sprints and workflows. They need to know who's doing what.

• Four views of the same tasks: list, Kanban board, Gantt chart and table.
• Sharing: share a project with a person or a team, or send a link so someone without an account can see or edit its tasks.
• Calendar sync over CalDAV, so tasks can show up in the calendar you already use.
• Importers for Todoist, Trello and Microsoft To-Do. I couldn't find one for Jira, so expect to start fresh.
• Light to run. Linux packages and Docker images are available, and there's a hosted version at vikunja.cloud if you'd rather not run it.

It isn't Jira. Time tracking, audit logs and the admin panel sit in a paid Pro tier that's still in private beta, so if you need those today, look at OpenProject.

OpenProject

OpenProject is the fuller of the two, and it's still being worked on hard: version 17.9.6 came out on 30 October 2026. It started as a project management tool rather than a developer's issue tracker, and you can tell. It's as happy with a timeline for an office move as with a sprint.

The free Community edition includes:

• Work packages, which are its version of Jira issues, with custom fields and custom workflows.
• Boards: Kanban boards, plus Scrum backlogs and sprint boards.
• Gantt charts and timelines, for when dates matter as much as tickets.
• Time tracking, costs and budgets, built in.
• A wiki, documents and forums, so project notes live beside the work.
• LDAP login, two-factor authentication and an API.

Single sign-on is the big omission. That's a paid Enterprise add-on, as are the team planner, resource management, portfolio management and running several active sprints at once. Enterprise starts at €5.95 per user a month with a 25-user minimum, so a team of 12 wanting single sign-on is paying for 13 empty seats.

To run it, you need at least four CPU cores, 4 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk, which OpenProject says will handle up to 200 users. Docker is the recommended route, with PostgreSQL 16 or later.

There's also a Jira Migrator, but read the small print. It's in beta, OpenProject recommends it for test setups only, and it works with Jira Data Center, not Jira Cloud. If you're on Cloud, which most small firms are, it won't help you yet. It doesn't carry over sprint assignments or workflows yet either.

Redmine

Redmine has been around since 2006 and it's still maintained: versions 7.0.2 and 6.1.5 both came out on 30 September 2026. It looks its age, but a tool that's still getting releases after 20 years has earned some trust.

• Issue tracking with proper workflows. Custom statuses and issue types, with rules set by type and role.
• Multiple projects and subprojects, each with its own roles and its own choice of modules.
• Gantt charts and calendars, generated from issue dates.
• Time tracking at project or issue level, with reports.
• A wiki and forum per project.
• Repository browsing for Git, Subversion and others.
• Creating issues by email and LDAP login.

There are no paid tiers. Everything Redmine does is in the one free version, and the rest comes from community plugins.

That's the catch as well. Kanban and sprint boards aren't on Redmine's own feature list, so if your team works that way you're looking at plugins, and plugins need checking every time you upgrade. It's a Ruby on Rails app, so unless you pick a packaged setup you're looking at managing Ruby versions too.

Moving from Jira means a third-party route. The Redmine plugin directory lists an "Import Jira Tickets" plugin for versions 6.0 and 6.1, but it's a community effort, so test it on a copy of your data first.

Which one?

My pick is Vikunja. For a small team it's simple enough that people might actually open it, which matters more than any feature list.

The main drawback is adoption. A task tool only works if everyone uses it, and that's harder when clients and outside collaborators are involved, because they're probably already on something else. Share links help, but it's still one more place for people to check.

OpenProject is the realistic alternative if you need sprints, time tracking and a wiki in the free edition. Redmine suits technical teams. And if you're 10 users or fewer, Jira's free plan is hard to beat.

The UK angle

For most small firms, this isn't a reason to switch. Jira holds project notes rather than sensitive customer records, and a US-owned tool is fine for most businesses. Atlassian also offers UK data residency on Standard plans and above, using its London region, although user account information sits in a central service that isn't pinned to one country.

Where it matters is when tickets contain personal data, such as customer complaints, HR matters or patient details. Then it's useful to be able to say exactly which server that data sits on, and self-hosting gives you that simple answer. You also own the database outright, so leaving is never a negotiation.

Honest drawbacks

• The marketplace. Jira connects to almost everything. None of these comes close on ready-made add-ons, and this is the one that catches people out.
• Moving is the hard bit. There's no official one-click route from Jira Cloud to any of them today.
• OpenProject's paid features sit behind a 25-user minimum, which is awkward for small teams.
• Redmine looks dated, and getting a modern board means relying on plugins.
• Someone has to run it: updates, backups, and being the person people ring when it's down.

Need it to fit your workflow?

If you need tickets raised from your own systems, or reports Jira never gave you, these tools can be connected through their APIs, and the team at Dev Partners can build and customise that for you.

Sources

• Vikunja on GitHub
• Vikunja features
• Vikunja Pro
• OpenProject on GitHub
• OpenProject system requirements
• OpenProject editions and pricing
• OpenProject: migrating from Jira
• OpenProject release notes
• Redmine home page
• Redmine features
• Redmine installation guide
• Import Jira Tickets plugin for Redmine
• Jira pricing
• Atlassian Cloud list pricing tables
• Atlassian: Jira Cloud plans
• Atlassian: understand data residency