head to head · open source
kanboard vs paca
kanboard has 9,938 GitHub stars, 2,017 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. paca has 2,024 stars, 185 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kanboard leads on adoption by 391% (9,938 vs 2,024 stars). kanboard is written in PHP under MIT; paca is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kanboard has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, paca 9%. paca was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (project-management, self-hosted), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | paca | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.9K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-31 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 185 |
| 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 paca if
- You want the paca feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and paca fits your workflow better
About kanboard
Kanboard ======== Kanboard is project management software that focuses on the Kanban methodology. This application is in maintenance mode . What does it mean? Citing Wikipedia: In the world of software development, maintenance mode refers to a point in a computer program's life when it has reached all of its goals and is generally considered to be "complete" and bug free. The term can also refer to the point in a software product's evolution when it is no longer competitive with other products or current with regard to the technology environment it operates within. The author of this application is not actively…
read the full kanboard overview →
About paca
Paca AI native. Free. Lightweight. Open source. The fully customizable alternative to Jira, Trello, ClickUp, and Monday. ✨ Sponsored by Getting Started · MCP Server · Paca Skills · Architecture · Contributing · Roadmap What is Paca? Paca is a self hosted project management platform where AI agents and humans collaborate as equal teammates inside a Scrum team — not as chatbots bolted on the side. Jira gives you a backlog. ClickUp gives you automations. Monday gives you dashboards. Paca gives your AI agents a seat at the table. They join sprint planning, pick up tasks from the board, write BDD specs, and adapt…
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Frequently asked questions
Is kanboard or paca more popular?
kanboard has 9,938 GitHub stars and paca has 2,024. kanboard has the larger community by that measure.
Are kanboard and paca free?
Both are open source. kanboard is licensed under MIT and paca under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kanboard and paca?
kanboard is written in PHP and paca in Go. 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 paca?
Choose kanboard if you want the larger community (9,938 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose paca if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.