Plane
92 · HealthyIssue tracking with cycles, modules and pages, aimed at software teams.
Directory / Project management
Open source Project management
OpenProject
88 · HealthyProject management suite with Gantt charts, agile boards, time tracking and wikis.
Huly
84 · HealthyAll-in-one workspace combining issue tracking, docs, chat and video calls.
Leantime
83 · HealthyGoal-oriented project management designed with neurodivergent users in mind.
Kanboard
73 · StableMinimal kanban board focused on simplicity and low resource use.
Vikunja
65 · StableTo-do and project app with list, kanban, Gantt and table views.
Focalboard
13 · At riskKanban-style boards for tasks and projects, originally from Mattermost.
Directory / Project management / Focalboard
Focalboard
Kanban-style boards for tasks and projects, originally from Mattermost.
Will it still be around?
Health 13/100 · At risk
Activity, bus factor and issue responsiveness. Breakdown
Can a business use it freely?
Open source (copyleft)
AGPL-3.0 (source) or Mattermost commercial license; MIT for compiled builds. Details
Alternative to
Savings proposal
At 25 users, Trello costs about $125 a month and self-hosting Focalboard about $132, so Trello is cheaper at this size. Self-hosting pays off from 29 users.
List price: Trello Standard, billed annually. Premium is $10 per user. Source, checked 2026-10-07.
Extra cost over 3 years
$732
Pays for itself
Not at this size
Extra cost in year one
$564
Each month
$125 → $132
Show as a table
| Month | Trello | Self-hosted | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | $0 | $480 | −$480 |
| Month 3 | $375 | $876 | −$501 |
| Month 6 | $750 | $1,272 | −$522 |
| Month 9 | $1,125 | $1,668 | −$543 |
| Month 12 | $1,500 | $2,064 | −$564 |
| Month 18 | $2,250 | $2,856 | −$606 |
| Month 24 | $3,000 | $3,648 | −$648 |
| Month 30 | $3,750 | $4,440 | −$690 |
| Month 36 | $4,500 | $5,232 | −$732 |
Assumptions you can change
Self-hosting Focalboard usually means one small container and a database. Hours are for one engineer; the server cost is a typical cloud VPS with backups and grows with the number of people using it.
Not included: paid editions or features of Focalboard (see What's free?), large data migrations, and compliance work. All amounts in US dollars at list price; your negotiated price may differ.
Health score: 13/100
Activity45% weight
0/100
- Last commit 483 days ago (0/100).
- 0 commits in the past 12 months (0/100).
- 0 releases in the past 12 months (0/100).
Bus factor30% weight
0/100
- No human commits in the past 12 months.
Responsiveness25% weight
52/100
- 70% of all issues are closed (732 open, 1716 closed) (67/100).
- 6 of 14 recent issues got a reply or were closed (43/100).
Score v2. How the health score works.
License
AGPL-3.0 (source) or Mattermost commercial license; MIT for compiled builds · Open source (copyleft)
Source is AGPL-3.0 with exceptions, or a commercial license from Mattermost. Admin tools and config files are Apache-2.0.
OSI-approved license that requires sharing changes under the same license when you distribute (AGPL: also when you offer it over a network).
License text checked 2026-10-07: read it.
What's free?
Enterprise features many open-core projects keep for paid plans.
| Feature | Self-hosted, free? |
|---|---|
| SSO (SAML) | Unknown |
| SSO (OIDC) | Unknown |
| SCIM provisioning | Unknown |
| Audit logs | Unknown |
| Role-based access control | Unknown |
| Multi-tenancy | Unknown |
We haven't verified which of these features are free for this project yet.
GitHub metrics
| Stars | 26k | Forks | 2.6k |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last commit | 16 months ago | Commits, 12 months | 0 |
| Releases, 12 months | 0 | Last release | 2.3 years ago |
| Contributors | 243 | Active authors | 0 in last 0 commits |
| Open issues | 732 | Closed issues | 1.7k |
Snapshot from 2026-10-08.