Open-source alternatives to Monday and Asana
The best open-source alternatives to Monday and Asana are Plane and OpenProject. For a small team that wants something modern and simple, I'd pick Plane. If you need time tracking, Gantt charts and budgets in the free version, OpenProject is the better fit.
Last reviewed by Rob Sherwood.
At a glance
| Tool | Licence | Self-hosting difficulty | Who it suits | Strengths |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plane | AGPL-3.0 | Moderate: Docker, with 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory as a minimum, or 8 GB recommended | Small teams who want a clean, modern task board and don't need time tracking | Clean interface, tasks, cycles, modules, pages, estimates, API, no user limit on the Community Edition |
| OpenProject | GPL-3.0 | Moderate: Docker or Linux packages, PostgreSQL, 4 GB of memory and four CPU cores as a minimum | Teams planning real projects with dates, time, costs and budgets | Gantt charts, Kanban and Scrum boards, time and cost tracking, budgets, wiki, two-factor login in the free edition |
- Plane: AGPL-3.0. This covers the Community Edition. Pro and Business features need the closed-source Commercial Edition. Licence checked 31 October 2026.
- OpenProject: GPL-3.0. Enterprise add-ons are sold separately. Licence checked 31 October 2026.
monday.com and Asana both do the same useful thing: they stop work disappearing into email. Neither is expensive for one person. It's the per-seat maths that gets you, and the fact that everybody who needs to see a task ends up needing a seat.
monday.com Standard is £11 per seat a month, billed annually, and plans start from three users. Asana Starter is $10.99 per user a month, billed annually, or about £8.33. So a team of 10 pays around £1,320 a year for monday.com, or about £1,000 for Asana. Both have free plans, but they're capped at two seats, so they're really for trying it out.
The two open-source tools below have no per-seat fees on their free editions. The difference between them is mostly how much planning you want to do.
Plane
Plane is the newer of the two, and its interface is modern and uncluttered, closer to how monday.com and Asana feel. It's a popular project, with over 60,000 stars on GitHub, and version 1.4.3 came out on 28 October 2026.
The free Community Edition gives you:
- Projects and work items with no limit on users.
- Cycles, which are time-boxed batches of work, like sprints.
- Modules for grouping work into bigger chunks.
- Pages for notes that sit beside the work.
- Basic views and estimates, in-app intake and an API.
You'll want to understand the two editions, because this is where people get caught out. Only the Community Edition is open source. Plane's Commercial Edition is a separate, closed-source codebase, and that's where the new features go first. Plane's own docs say Community changes are "deliberate and conservative".
The paid plans start at $6 per seat a month billed annually for Pro, and $13 for Business. Time tracking, a team wiki, dashboards, integrations such as Slack and GitHub, and work item templates all need Pro. Single sign-on needs Business on cloud. Plane's forum also says self-hosted paid plans have had a 10-seat minimum since April 2026, though other Plane pages say otherwise, so check that first.
To run it, the guide asks for 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory, and recommends 8 GB for real use.
OpenProject
OpenProject is the older, heavier option, and it's aimed at people who actually plan projects. The clue is in the name. If your Asana is mainly a to-do list, it's more than you need. If you've been fighting a timeline view in a tool that wasn't quite made for it, it's a relief.
The free Community edition includes:
- Gantt charts and timelines, as standard.
- Kanban and Scrum boards.
- Time tracking, costs and budgets, all built in.
- Custom fields and workflows.
- A wiki, documents and forums.
- LDAP login and two-factor authentication.
Compare that list with Plane's and you'll see the real difference. OpenProject gives away the time tracking and budgets that Plane charges for, but it isn't as easy on the eye.
Paid Enterprise add-ons cover single sign-on, the team planner, resource management and portfolio management. They start at €5.95 per user a month with a 25-user minimum.
It needs four CPU cores, 4 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk as a minimum, with Docker as the recommended install. That's enough for up to 200 users, according to the project.
Which one?
My pick for most small teams moving from monday.com or Asana is Plane. People will actually use something that looks and feels this tidy, and on a project like this, people using it matters more than the feature list.
- Main drawback: time tracking and integrations aren't in the free Community Edition.
- OpenProject instead if you bill by the hour, track budgets, or need proper Gantt charts.
- Stay where you are if your team likes the tool and the bill isn't hurting. Moving a working team is a real cost, and it's not one you see on an invoice.
What it costs
Monday and Asana
Self-hosted, run for you
- No per-user fees. Adding people doesn't add licence costs.
- Setup: a one-off fee to set it up and move your data across.
- Hosting and care: a fixed monthly fee covering every app on your server.
- I'll quote once I know what you need.
Paid tool prices exclude VAT unless stated.
The UK angle
Task lists rarely hold sensitive data, so I wouldn't move for privacy reasons alone. A US-hosted tool is fine for most small firms. monday.com offers an EU data region in Germany, and Asana has a Frankfurt data centre, although full EU-only hosting is tied to their Enterprise plans.
It matters more if tasks contain customer details, staff matters or client documents. Then being able to say "it's on this UK server, and these are the people with access" makes a data protection question short and simple.
Who owns it is the other point. With a self-hosted tool your project history sits in your own database, so nobody can change the terms or move a feature up a pricing tier and leave you stuck.
Honest drawbacks
- Automations are thinner. monday.com and Asana have years of ready-made automations and integrations. On the free editions here, you'll get fewer connections and more of them through the API.
- Bringing your history over needs planning. I couldn't confirm that Plane's importers work in the free Community Edition, so check before you commit. OpenProject's migrator is aimed at Jira, not monday.com or Asana.
- Plane's best work goes into the paid edition, and that's worth weighing if you want to stay fully open source.
- OpenProject looks more serious, which can put off people who just want a list of tasks.
- Someone has to run it: updates, backups and looking after email notifications.
- People get attached to how they plan. You'll need buy-in, or you'll end up with two systems.
Need it to fit how you work?
If you'd like tasks created from your own systems or reports pulled through the API, the team at Dev Partners can build and customise that.
Sources
Want it set up for you?
I set up open-source tools on a UK server, move your data across and look after it, with no per-user fees.