head to head · open source
Planka vs kanboard
Planka has 12,666 GitHub stars, 1,397 forks, 425 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. kanboard has 9,938 stars, 2,017 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Planka leads on adoption by 27% (12,666 vs 9,938 stars). Planka is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence; kanboard is written in PHP under MIT. Planka has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, kanboard 20%. Planka was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (kanban, 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
| Planka | kanboard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Planka if
- You weight community size — 13K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kanboard if
- You want the kanboard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and kanboard fits your workflow better
About Planka
PLANKA Project mastering driven by fun Install · Demo · Docs · API · Cloud · Pro version PLANKA Pro When the whole team runs on PLANKA. Phones and tablets · five themes · a dashboard across every project · calendar, timeline and map views · cards on more than one board · templates · guest roles · SSO · PDF export. Self hosted exactly as you host it now, supported by the people who build it. Pro upgrades an existing Community installation in place — your database, your volume, your data. It is a real migration rather than a new image: Pro adds a Valkey service and a one off schema promote. The promote accepts…
read the full Planka overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Planka or kanboard more popular?
Planka has 12,666 GitHub stars and kanboard has 9,938. Planka has the larger community by that measure.
Are Planka and kanboard free?
Both are open source. Planka has no licence declared in this registry, and kanboard is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Planka and kanboard?
Planka is written in JavaScript and kanboard in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Planka or kanboard?
Choose Planka if you want the larger community (12,666 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose kanboard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.