head to head · open source
vibe-kanban vs kanboard
vibe-kanban has 28,112 GitHub stars, 3,013 forks, 540 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kanboard has 9,873 stars, 1,996 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. vibe-kanban leads on adoption by 185% (28,112 vs 9,873 stars). vibe-kanban is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; kanboard is written in PHP under MIT. vibe-kanban has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, kanboard 20%. vibe-kanban was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kanban), 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
| vibe-kanban | kanboard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vibe-kanban if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kanboard if
- You want the kanboard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and kanboard fits your workflow better
About vibe-kanban
Vibe Kanban is an open source, Apache 2.0 kanban board written in Rust that lets software engineers plan work as issues and hand each issue to a coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or Amp inside an isolated workspace.
read the full vibe-kanban overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vibe-kanban or kanboard more popular?
vibe-kanban has 28,112 GitHub stars and kanboard has 9,873. vibe-kanban has the larger community by that measure.
Are vibe-kanban and kanboard free?
Both are open source. vibe-kanban is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kanboard under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vibe-kanban and kanboard?
vibe-kanban is written in Rust and kanboard in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, vibe-kanban or kanboard?
Choose vibe-kanban if you want the larger community (28,112 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kanboard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.