head to head · open source
kanboard vs taskwarrior
kanboard has 9,874 GitHub stars, 1,996 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. taskwarrior has 6,076 stars, 421 forks, 436 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kanboard leads on adoption by 63% (9,874 vs 6,076 stars). kanboard is written in PHP under MIT; taskwarrior is written in C++ under MIT. kanboard has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, taskwarrior 7%. taskwarrior 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 | taskwarrior | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.9K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-11 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 421 |
| 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 taskwarrior if
- You want the taskwarrior feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and taskwarrior 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 taskwarrior
Taskwarrior is a portable, MIT licensed command line task list management utility written in C++ for people who track to dos and projects from a terminal instead of a graphical app.
read the full taskwarrior overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kanboard or taskwarrior more popular?
kanboard has 9,874 GitHub stars and taskwarrior has 6,076. kanboard has the larger community by that measure.
Are kanboard and taskwarrior free?
Both are open source. kanboard is licensed under MIT and taskwarrior under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kanboard and taskwarrior?
kanboard is written in PHP and taskwarrior in C++. 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 taskwarrior?
Choose kanboard if you want the larger community (9,874 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose taskwarrior if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.