head to head · open source
OpenProject vs paca
OpenProject has 16,933 GitHub stars, 3,676 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped yesterday. paca has 2,018 stars, 186 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenProject leads on adoption by 739% (16,933 vs 2,018 stars). OpenProject is written in Ruby under GPL-3.0; paca is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenProject has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, paca 9%. OpenProject was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (jira-alternative), 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
| OpenProject | paca | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.7K | ⑂ 186 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenProject if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- 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 OpenProject
OpenProject We empower teams to achieve great things together for the good of society. OpenProject is a web based open source project management software for teams and organizations that require transparency, flexibility, and data sovereignty. Manage projects, portfolios, products, tasks, bugs, agile workflows, roadmaps, and team collaboration in a single platform. OpenProject can be self hosted and is designed for organizations looking for an open source enterprise ready alternative to tools such as Jira, MS Project, Monday, Asana, YouTrack while maintaining full control over their data and infrastructure…
read the full OpenProject 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 OpenProject or paca more popular?
OpenProject has 16,933 GitHub stars and paca has 2,018. OpenProject has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenProject and paca free?
Both are open source. OpenProject is licensed under GPL-3.0 and paca under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenProject and paca?
OpenProject is written in Ruby 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, OpenProject or paca?
Choose OpenProject if you want the larger community (16,933 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose paca if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.