head to head · open source
Wekan vs kanboard
Wekan has 21,089 GitHub stars, 3,000 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kanboard has 9,873 stars, 1,996 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Wekan leads on adoption by 114% (21,089 vs 9,873 stars). Wekan is written in JavaScript under MIT; kanboard is written in PHP under MIT. Wekan has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, kanboard 20%. Wekan 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
| Wekan | kanboard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | 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 Wekan if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- 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 Wekan
Wekan is an open source collaborative kanban board application written in JavaScript and built with Meteor. It is licensed under the MIT license and is positioned as a free and open source alternative to Jira and Monday.com. The project lives in the self hosted business software and project management ecosystem.
read the full Wekan 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 Wekan or kanboard more popular?
Wekan has 21,089 GitHub stars and kanboard has 9,873. Wekan has the larger community by that measure.
Are Wekan and kanboard free?
Both are open source. Wekan is licensed under MIT and kanboard under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Wekan and kanboard?
Wekan is written in JavaScript 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, Wekan or kanboard?
Choose Wekan if you want the larger community (21,089 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kanboard if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.