head to head · open source
Plane vs Campfire
Plane has 59,546 GitHub stars, 5,776 forks, 1,103 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Campfire has 4,629 stars, 792 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Plane leads on adoption by 1,186% (59,546 vs 4,629 stars). Plane is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Campfire is written in Ruby under MIT. Plane has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Campfire 17%. Plane 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
| Plane | Campfire | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 792 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Plane if
- You weight community size — 60K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Campfire if
- You want the Campfire feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Campfire fits your workflow better
About Plane
Plane is an open source project management platform for teams that need to track issues, run cycles, and manage product roadmaps without handing their data to a proprietary SaaS vendor, and it is aimed at engineering, product, and operations teams that would otherwise pay for Jira, Linear, ClickUp, or Asana.
read the full Plane overview →
About Campfire
Campfire is a web based group chat application in the Business Software / Collaboration & Communication category. It is written in Ruby, released under the MIT license, and presented as a self hosted service that avoids recurring subscription fees. The project lives in the Ruby and Docker self hosting ecosystem, with its homepage at https://once.com/campfire and its published Docker image at ghcr.io/basecamp/once campfire:latest.
read the full Campfire overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Plane or Campfire more popular?
Plane has 59,546 GitHub stars and Campfire has 4,629. Plane has the larger community by that measure.
Are Plane and Campfire free?
Both are open source. Plane is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Campfire under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Plane and Campfire?
Plane is written in TypeScript and Campfire in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Plane or Campfire?
Choose Plane if you want the larger community (59,546 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Campfire if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.