4ga Boards is an open-source, realtime kanban board system for project and work management that teams self-host from a Docker Compose stack, built for anyone who wants Trello-style boards without handing board data to a third-party service.

What it is

4ga Boards is a web-based kanban and project management application written in JavaScript and React, released under the MIT licence, and distributed primarily as a containerised stack. It organises work through a multi-level hierarchy of projects, boards, lists, cards, and tasks, and it updates boards in realtime without a page reload. The project lives in the JavaScript and Docker ecosystem, carries topics such as agile, collaboration, issue-management, kanban-boards, and real-time, and ships with an English and Polish documentation site alongside interface translations for Czech, Danish, German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Swedish, Uzbek, and Chinese.

The concrete problem it solves is replacing a hosted kanban SaaS with software the team runs itself. Trello users have a direct migration path: 4ga Boards includes an importer, reached by adding a project and clicking Import while creating a new board. Beyond migration, it targets the friction of browser-based boards by keeping edits, filters, and board rearrangement live and concurrent, and by collapsing lists and the sidebar so that complex projects do not lose screen space. It is the self-hosted alternative to paying per-seat for a board tool while still getting realtime collaboration.

Key capabilities

• Realtime board updates without reloading the page, so card moves and edits appear for every connected user.
• Multi-level hierarchy of projects, boards, lists, cards, and tasks for structuring larger bodies of work.
• Multitasking mode that lets a user edit or review cards while simultaneously filtering and rearranging the board, retaining local description changes.
• Single sign-on through Google, GitHub, Microsoft, or OIDC for both login and registration.
• An advanced Markdown editor for card descriptions and content.
• Export and import of boards, plus a built-in import path from Trello.
• Collapsible lists and sidebar, a dark mode, keyboard shortcuts, and a wide-screen layout designed to minimise clutter.

Who uses it and how

• Self-hosting teams that run docker compose up -d against their own docker-compose.yml, set BASE_URL to their domain or IP, and reach the instance on port 3000.
• Agile and product teams that need a board per project, tracking work down to the task level inside the projects, boards, lists, cards, and tasks hierarchy.
• Operators with existing infrastructure, since the README documents Kubernetes and TrueNAS deployment routes alongside the recommended Compose method and a manual Node.js install.
• Organisations with multilingual teams, given interface translations across seventeen language codes and documentation in English and Polish.
• Administrators who need scheduled data handling, using the bundled boards-backup.sh and boards-restore.sh 4gaBoards-backup.tgz scripts to back up and restore instance data.

Getting started

The recommended path is Docker Compose: download docker-compose.yml, set BASE_URL, SECRET_KEY, POSTGRES_PASSWORD, and DATABASE_URL, then run docker compose up -d, which brings up the instance at http://localhost:3000 with the default demo/demo credentials. A hosted option, 4ga Boards Professional Hosting, and a live demo at the project website are available for those who do not want to deploy it themselves.

How it compares

Against 4ga Boards Professional Hosting, the paid managed offering from the same project, the self-hosted edition is MIT-licensed and free to run, with the operator paying only for the infrastructure that hosts it. The trade is operational: the hosted plan removes the need to run Docker, PostgreSQL, and the backup scripts, while self-hosting keeps board data on hardware the team controls. There is no per-seat licence fee either way for the open-source edition, which is the main axis on which it competes with commercial board tools.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster must operate Docker or Kubernetes, a PostgreSQL database, and the environment variables and backup scripts that the README documents, so teams without anyone comfortable running containers should take the professional hosting option instead. The project is active but carries a substantial open issue count, and GitHub two-way sync is still listed as coming soon rather than shipped, so anyone needing tight GitHub integration today should treat that as unavailable. The README is also light on production hardening details, including notification and email configuration, which is worth checking against the documentation site before committing to a production rollout.

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RARgames/4gaBoards/main/docker-compose.yml -o docker-compose.yml

docker compose up -d

./boards-backup.sh

./boards-restore.sh 4gaBoards-backup.tgz

git clone https://github.com/RARgames/4gaBoards.git .

pnpm i

cp server/.env.sample server/.env

pnpm client:build

cp -r client/build server/public

cp client/build/index.html server/views/index.ejs

docker compose -f docker-compose-dev.yml up -d

pnpm server:db:init

pnpm dev