head to head · open source
kanboard vs freeplane
kanboard has 9,874 GitHub stars, 1,996 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. freeplane has 4,368 stars, 498 forks, 453 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kanboard leads on adoption by 126% (9,874 vs 4,368 stars). kanboard is written in PHP under MIT; freeplane is written in Java under GPL-2.0. kanboard has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, freeplane 11%. freeplane 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
| kanboard | freeplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.9K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 498 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kanboard if
- You weight community size — 9.9K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick freeplane if
- You want the freeplane feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and freeplane fits your workflow better
About kanboard
Kanboard is MIT licensed, self hosted Kanban project management software written in PHP, aimed at teams and individuals who want to run their own board based task tracking instead of renting a hosted service.
read the full kanboard overview →
About freeplane
Freeplane is a free and open source desktop application for mind mapping, concept mapping and information mapping, written in Java with OSGi and Java Swing. It lives in the Java desktop ecosystem and is distributed under the GPL 2.0 license, with source hosted on GitHub and binary downloads published through SourceForge. The project has been under development for roughly 14 years and sits in the business software category of project and work management tools.
read the full freeplane overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kanboard or freeplane more popular?
kanboard has 9,874 GitHub stars and freeplane has 4,368. kanboard has the larger community by that measure.
Are kanboard and freeplane free?
Both are open source. kanboard is licensed under MIT and freeplane under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kanboard and freeplane?
kanboard is written in PHP and freeplane in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, kanboard or freeplane?
Choose kanboard if you want the larger community (9,874 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose freeplane if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.