head to head · open source
vibe-kanban vs obsidian-tasks
vibe-kanban has 28,112 GitHub stars, 3,013 forks, 540 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obsidian-tasks has 4,015 stars, 388 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. vibe-kanban leads on adoption by 600% (28,112 vs 4,015 stars). vibe-kanban is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; obsidian-tasks is written in TypeScript under MIT. vibe-kanban has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, obsidian-tasks 10%. 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 (task-manager), 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 | obsidian-tasks | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 388 |
| 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 obsidian-tasks if
- You want the obsidian-tasks feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and obsidian-tasks 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 obsidian-tasks
Obsidian Tasks is an open source community plugin for the Obsidian knowledge base. It is written in TypeScript and distributed under the MIT license. The plugin adds task management to ordinary Markdown notes, allowing users to create checkbox tasks, query them, and update their completion status inside the vault.
read the full obsidian-tasks overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vibe-kanban or obsidian-tasks more popular?
vibe-kanban has 28,112 GitHub stars and obsidian-tasks has 4,015. vibe-kanban has the larger community by that measure.
Are vibe-kanban and obsidian-tasks free?
Both are open source. vibe-kanban is licensed under Apache-2.0 and obsidian-tasks under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vibe-kanban and obsidian-tasks?
vibe-kanban is written in Rust and obsidian-tasks in TypeScript. 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 obsidian-tasks?
Choose vibe-kanban if you want the larger community (28,112 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose obsidian-tasks if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.