head to head · open source
Plane vs chat
Plane has 61,880 GitHub stars, 6,282 forks, 1,103 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chat has 13,547 stars, 2,093 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Plane leads on adoption by 357% (61,880 vs 13,547 stars). Plane is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; chat is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Plane has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, chat 15%. 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 | chat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 62K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Plane if
- You weight community size — 62K 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 chat if
- You want the chat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and chat fits your workflow better
About Plane
Modern project management for all teams Website • Forum • X • Documentation Meet Plane, an open source project management tool to track issues, run sprints cycles, and manage product roadmaps without the chaos of managing the tool itself. 🧘♀️ Plane is evolving every day. Your suggestions, ideas, and reported bugs help us immensely. Do not hesitate to join in the conversation on Forum or raise a GitHub issue. We read everything and respond to most. 🚀 Installation Getting started with Plane is simple. Choose the setup that works best for you: Plane Cloud Sign up for a free account on Plane Cloud—it's the…
read the full Plane overview →
About chat
Tinode Instant Messaging Server Instant messaging full stack. Backend in pure Go (license GPL 3.0), clients for Android (Java), iOS (Swift), and web (ReactJS), as well as gRPC client support for C++, C , Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Objective C, etc (all clients licensed under Apache 2.0). Wire transport is JSON over websocket (long polling is also available) or protobuf with gRPC. This is beta quality software: feature complete and stable but probably with a few bugs or missing features. Follow instructions to install and run or use one of the cloud services below. Read API documentation. Tinode is not…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Plane or chat more popular?
Plane has 61,880 GitHub stars and chat has 13,547. Plane has the larger community by that measure.
Are Plane and chat free?
Both are open source. Plane is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and chat under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Plane and chat?
Plane is written in TypeScript and chat 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, Plane or chat?
Choose Plane if you want the larger community (61,880 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose chat if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.