head to head · open source
Plane vs cobalt
Plane has 59,546 GitHub stars, 5,776 forks, 1,103 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cobalt has 43,316 stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Plane leads on adoption by 37% (59,546 vs 43,316 stars). Plane is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0. Plane has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cobalt 9%. Plane was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Plane | cobalt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 43K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Svelte |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Plane if
- You weight community size — 60K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cobalt if
- You want the cobalt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You evaluated both and cobalt fits your workflow better
About Plane
Plane is an open source project management platform for teams that need to track issues, run cycles, and manage product roadmaps without handing their data to a proprietary SaaS vendor, and it is aimed at engineering, product, and operations teams that would otherwise pay for Jira, Linear, ClickUp, or Asana.
read the full Plane overview →
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Plane or cobalt more popular?
Plane has 59,546 GitHub stars and cobalt has 43,316. Plane has the larger community by that measure.
Are Plane and cobalt free?
Both are open source. Plane is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cobalt under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Plane and cobalt?
Plane is written in TypeScript and cobalt in Svelte. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Plane or cobalt?
Choose Plane if you want the larger community (59,546 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cobalt if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.