head to head · open source
Planka vs SparkleShare
Planka has 12,666 GitHub stars, 1,397 forks, 425 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. SparkleShare has 4,999 stars, 569 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Planka leads on adoption by 153% (12,666 vs 4,999 stars). Planka is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence; SparkleShare is written in C# under GPL-3.0. Planka has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, SparkleShare 11%. Planka was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), 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 | SparkleShare | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 569 |
| 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 SparkleShare if
- You want the SparkleShare feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and SparkleShare 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 SparkleShare
SparkleShare [!NOTE] Please read 🌱 issue 2006 for the future of this project. [!IMPORTANT] Hello! Hylke here. I was recently laid off . I'd love to work full time creating apps for Linux and contributing design for FOSS projects . I hope to gather enough monthly sponsors for a minimum wage. Every little helps. Thank you. SparkleShare is a file sharing and collaboration app. It works just like Dropbox, and you can run it on your own server. It's available for Linux distributions, macOS, and Windows. You can support this project through 💕 GitHub Sponsors. How does it work? SparkleShare creates a special folder…
read the full SparkleShare overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Planka or SparkleShare more popular?
Planka has 12,666 GitHub stars and SparkleShare has 4,999. Planka has the larger community by that measure.
Are Planka and SparkleShare free?
Both are open source. Planka has no licence declared in this registry, and SparkleShare is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Planka and SparkleShare?
Planka is written in JavaScript and SparkleShare 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, Planka or SparkleShare?
Choose Planka if you want the larger community (12,666 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose SparkleShare if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.