Which self-hosted team tool should you run?
Pick by job, not by star count. Plane replaces Jira or Linear: issues, cycles, modules. Outline replaces Notion or Confluence: a wiki your whole team writes in. Vikunja replaces a personal task app and ships as one binary. Focalboard, the Trello-shaped option people still recommend, carries a "currently not maintained" notice in its own README and has not tagged a release since June 2024.
What this page is not: a feature checklist. Every one of these tools has a kanban board and a dark mode. The decisions that actually cost you money are the licence, the RAM, and whether anyone is still shipping patches.
Which tool does which job?
| If you need… | Run | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Issue tracking, sprints and a roadmap | Plane | Closest thing to Linear or Jira in open source; AGPL-3.0; 59,130 stars |
| A team wiki and docs people will actually edit | Outline | Real-time collaborative editor, 500 MB idle, but read the licence section below |
| A to-do list for yourself or a small team | Vikunja | One binary, SQLite works, AGPL-3.0. The lightest option here by a distance |
| A Trello clone, specifically | Reconsider | Focalboard is unmaintained (below). Plane's board view is the live substitute |
| Bookmarks and read-it-later | Karakeep | Different job entirely; we have no deployment guide for it yet |
Star counts, licences and release tags in this page were read from the GitHub REST API on 2026-09-09.
Changed since the last revision of this page: it listed Plane at "~46k stars." The live count is 59,130. It also described Outline's licence as converting in "2030" without saying that the date moves with every release. Both are fixed below.
How do the four compare?
| Plane | Outline | Vikunja | Focalboard | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Replaces | Jira, Linear | Notion, Confluence | Todoist | Trello |
| GitHub stars (2026-09-09) | 59,130 | 40,509 | 5,333 | 26,457 |
| Licence (GitHub API) | AGPL-3.0 | NOASSERTION — BSL 1.1 | AGPL-3.0 | NOASSERTION |
| Latest release | v1.4.2, 2026-08-23 | v1.10.1, 2026-09-09 | v2.6.0, 2026-08-31 | v8.0.0, 2024-06-13 |
| Last commit pushed | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-09 | 2026-05-18 |
| Stack | 6 app containers + PostgreSQL + Redis + MinIO | Node.js + PostgreSQL + Redis | One binary + SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL | Server + web app |
| Idle RAM we measured | 1.8 GB | 500 MB | Not measured | Not measured |
| Guide here | Plane setup | Outline setup | Not yet | No |
The RAM figures are ours, measured on 2026-05-02 on local Docker with 4 vCPU and 8 GB, against Plane v0.25.0 and Outline v0.79.0. Both projects are a major version ahead of that now, so treat those numbers as a starting estimate and re-check on your own box. We are not publishing footprints for tools we have not run.
Vikunja's own install docs say the API and frontend are "bundled into one single deployable binary (or docker container)" and it runs on SQLite (vikunja.io/docs/installing, read 2026-09-09). That is why it is the one tool here that will be comfortable on a 1 GB box.
Why is Focalboard on this list at all?
Because it still ranks, still gets recommended in threads, and is a dead end for a new deployment.
Focalboard's README opens with: "This repository is currently not maintained. If you're interested in becoming a maintainer please let us know here." Its most recent tagged release is v8.0.0, published 2024-06-13, over two years ago. The repository is not archived and shows a commit pushed on 2026-05-18, so it is not abandoned in the formal sense. It is just not being developed.
The Mattermost plugin is the part that survived. mattermost/mattermost-plugin-boards was pushed on 2026-09-08 and its own description says it "will host plugin only and is independent of Focalboard." If you already run Mattermost, boards are still available to you through that plugin. If you do not, installing Mattermost to get a kanban board is a large price for a small feature.
Standalone Focalboard will keep working on a server you never update. That is a different claim from "safe to build a team's process on today."
What does self-hosting actually cost against the SaaS?
Same workload for every column: ten people, one issue tracker, one wiki, running all month.
| Linear + Notion | Plane + Outline, self-hosted | |
|---|---|---|
| Issue tracker | $10/user/mo (Linear Basic, billed yearly) | $0 |
| Wiki | $10/member/mo (Notion Plus) | $0 |
| Server | Included | $100/mo (Liquid Web 8 GB Managed VPS) |
| Monthly total at 10 users | $200 | $100 |
| Monthly total at 3 users | $60 | $100 |
Prices read on 2026-09-09 from linear.app/pricing, notion.com/pricing and liquidweb.com/vps-hosting/managed-vps. Linear's $10 requires an annual commitment; Notion's $10 is the monthly rate.
The break-even is five people. The SaaS pair costs $20 per user per month and the VPS costs $100 flat, so at five users the two are identical. Below five, the SaaS is cheaper and you should take it. The saving only compounds above that: at 25 users the same VPS is still $100 against $500.
Two things the table does not price. Liquid Web's 8 GB Managed VPS is $50/mo for the first two months and $100/mo at regular renewal, so quote yourself the renewal figure, not the promo. And your own hours are not free. Budget an afternoon for the initial deploy and an hour a month for updates and backup checks.
Can Plane and Outline share one VPS?
Yes, and that is what makes the arithmetic above work.
Plane idled at 1.8 GB and Outline at 500 MB when we measured them separately on 2026-05-02. Run both on one 8 GB box and roughly 2.3 GB is committed at idle, leaving room for the OS, Docker and peaks. Both stacks want PostgreSQL and Redis, and you can either give each its own containers, as both guides do, or point them at one shared PostgreSQL instance with separate databases.
The caveat is the one every measured number on this site carries: those figures predate Plane v1.4.2 and Outline v1.10.1. Provision the 8 GB tier, then watch docker stats for a week before you decide the 4 GB tier would have done.
If you would rather manage both stacks through a UI than raw docker compose commands, Coolify wraps Compose behind a dashboard and runs on the same server. Umami fits alongside them too; it is the lightest thing in the self-hosted catalogue.
What does Outline's BSL licence actually mean for you?
Outline is not open source under the OSI definition, and the date most articles quote is wrong in an interesting way.
The LICENSE file on main today reads: Licensed Work "Outline 1.10.1", Change Date "2030-09-09", Change License "Apache License, Version 2.0", and an Additional Use Grant permitting use "provided that you may not use the Licensed Work for a Document Service" (raw LICENSE on GitHub, read 2026-09-09).
Read the version line. The Change Date is attached to that release, not to the project, and it moves forward every time Outline ships. The version you deploy today converts to Apache-2.0 four years after it was published, and a version you deploy next year converts a year later. There is no single date on which "Outline becomes Apache."
For an internal team wiki this is close to irrelevant: running Outline for your own company is not a Document Service, and that is exactly the use the grant permits. It matters if you plan to resell hosted Outline to third parties. If your legal team refuses source-available terms outright, that decides it, and Plane's AGPL-3.0 or a MediaWiki-class alternative is where to look next.
When should you stay on the SaaS?
- Your team is under five people. The arithmetic above says so plainly. A $100 VPS to avoid a $60 bill is a hobby, not a saving.
- Nobody wants to be on call for a server. Self-hosting moves kernel patches, disk pressure, TLS renewal and database backups onto you. Linear and Notion charge a premium precisely to take that away.
- You need SAML or SCIM. Check each project's open-source edition before you build around it; enterprise identity is the usual carve-out, and Notion and Linear both ship it on paid tiers.
- Mobile matters more than control. Linear's and Notion's native apps are further along than anything in this category, and no amount of self-hosting closes that gap.
- Uptime is contractual. One VPS is one failure domain. If the box dies, your tracker and your wiki die together.
Where to run whichever you pick
Both guides here assume a plain Ubuntu box with Docker Engine and Compose V2, root SSH, and a domain pointed at it.
The obvious objection: a self-managed VPS elsewhere costs a fraction of that. True, and if you are comfortable patching your own kernel, take it. Managed is worth paying for when the server hosts the tools your team plans its work in, and the person who would otherwise get paged is you.
For issue tracking, sprints and roadmaps, yes. Plane is AGPL-3.0 with 59,130 GitHub stars and shipped v1.4.2 on 2026-08-23 (GitHub API, 2026-09-09), and it covers issues, cycles, modules and views. Where it is not equivalent is the ecosystem: Jira's marketplace and Linear's integrations are years ahead, and Plane's stack is heavier to run than either is to buy, at roughly 1.8 GB idle across a nine-service stack.
No, not for a new deployment. Focalboard's README says 'This repository is currently not maintained' and its last tagged release is v8.0.0 from 2024-06-13. The Mattermost plugin at mattermost/mattermost-plugin-boards is still active, pushed 2026-09-08, so boards remain available inside Mattermost. If you want a standalone kanban board on your own server, Plane's board view is the maintained option.
Five. Linear Basic is $10 per user per month billed yearly and Notion Plus is $10 per member per month (both read 2026-09-09), so the pair costs $20 per user. A Liquid Web 8 GB Managed VPS that runs Plane and Outline together is $100 per month at regular renewal and does not change with headcount. Five users is the crossover; below it, the SaaS wins on cost and on effort.
There is no single date. Outline uses Business Source License 1.1, and the LICENSE file on main today names 'Outline 1.10.1' with a Change Date of 2030-09-09 (read 2026-09-09). That date is attached to that release and moves forward with each new one, so every version converts roughly four years after it ships. The Additional Use Grant already permits internal use; what it forbids is running Outline as a Document Service for others.
Plane and Outline can, and we measured them at 1.8 GB and 500 MB idle respectively on 2026-05-02, so budget the 8 GB tier. Vikunja adds very little: its own docs describe a single deployable binary that runs on SQLite. RAM is not the binding constraint here; blast radius is. One server means one outage takes down tracker, wiki and tasks at once, so keep backups off the box.