If your team runs on Trello and the per-seat cost is starting to feel hard to justify, Planka is the most direct replacement you can self-host. It is a kanban board, meaning a board-based task management system where columns represent stages like To Do, In Progress, and Done, and cards move between columns as work progresses. You install it on your own server and run it entirely under your own control.
There is no monthly fee for the Community Edition. Your boards, cards, attachments, and member activity all sit in a database on your own machine. The project lives at github.com/plankanban/planka and the hosted demo is at planka.app.
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| What it is | A self-hosted kanban project management board |
| Built by | Daniel Hiller and the Planka open-source community; PLANKA Software GmbH |
| License | Planka Community License (source-available, free for internal organizational use) |
| Platforms | Any server running Docker; Linux, cloud VPS, home server |
| Requires | Docker and Docker Compose; no minimum specs published, but a $5 to $6 VPS handles a small team |
| Install method | Docker Compose; five commands, about fifteen minutes |
| Verdict | The right pick for teams replacing Trello who want zero per-seat fees and full data ownership |
What Planka actually is
Planka is a kanban board built in React (a JavaScript library for building web interfaces) with a Node.js server (a JavaScript-based web server that handles requests from your browser) and PostgreSQL (the database that stores your boards, cards, and member data locally on your server). You get projects that contain boards, boards that contain lists, and lists that contain cards. That structure is identical to Trello.
The feature set matches what most teams actually use in Trello day-to-day. Cards support descriptions written in Markdown (a plain-text formatting system where you type **bold** to get bold text), file attachments, due dates, checklists, labels, and comments. You can assign multiple members to a card. Lists accept a card-limit so you can enforce work-in-progress limits the way lean project teams use them. Boards can be set to public or private.
Beyond the basics, Planka supports OpenID Connect (a single sign-on system that lets members log in with an existing company account rather than a separate password). Notifications go out through more than 100 providers via an integration layer, so your team can get card-move alerts in Slack, email, or wherever they already pay attention. There is also a REST API (a standard way for software and AI agents to communicate with Planka over the web) and webhook support (automatic notifications Planka sends to other tools when a card moves or is updated), which matters if you want to wire Planka into existing workflows or let an AI agent interact with your boards.
The project launched in 2019, released v2.0 in 2025, and has cleared 8 million Docker pulls (the count of times the packaged container has been downloaded and run). It supports 35+ languages. The source code is always visible and self-hosting is explicitly permitted under the Community License.
One important clarification on the license: Planka uses a "fair-code" Community License rather than a traditional open-source license like MIT or Apache. Internal organizational use is free. Running it commercially as a hosted service for paying customers is not. For the vast majority of teams replacing Trello for their own project management, the Community Edition covers everything.
What you get after installing it
The core workflow is boards and cards. You create a project, add boards inside it, drag lists into position, and fill them with cards. Invite team members by email. Assign them to cards. Set due dates. Attach files. Leave comments. That is the day-to-day loop.
Labels and filters work the way Trello power users expect. You create color-coded labels per board and filter the card view to show only what is relevant. Cards with overdue dates surface visually in the board view so nothing slips.
Real-time sync means every change a team member makes appears on everyone else's screen immediately without a manual page refresh. This is meaningful when a distributed team is doing a standup while looking at the same board.
Notifications are more flexible than Trello's built-in alerts. The integration layer connects to Slack, email, Teams, and dozens of other notification providers including self-hosted options. You configure it once at the server level, and members set their own preferences from there.
Attachments go directly into your storage. Files live on your server rather than in a third-party cloud storage bucket you are paying separately for. You control retention, backup, and access.
OpenID Connect means members can sign in with your Google Workspace account, your Okta setup, or any standard SSO provider. This removes the password management burden for teams that already have identity infrastructure.
The REST API and webhook support are the features that set Planka apart for teams already using automation. An AI agent running in Cowork, Claude Code, or ChatGPT Work can create cards, move them between lists, add comments, and query board state through the documented API. The webhook layer fires events to any endpoint you configure, so tools like Zapier or n8n (a self-hosted automation tool) can react to card movements without polling.
What Planka does not have in the Community Edition: calendar view, map view, and recurring cards. Those are in the Pro tier at 36 euros per user per month for self-hosted deployment. For most teams moving from Trello Free or Trello Standard, the Community Edition feature set is sufficient.
The install experience
Planka installs via Docker Compose. Docker is software that packages the app into a container you run on any server. Docker Compose is a tool that orchestrates multiple containers (in Planka's case, the app itself plus a PostgreSQL database) together.
The steps are:
mkdir /opt/planka
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/plankanban/planka/master/docker-compose.yml -o /opt/planka/docker-compose.yml
openssl rand -hex 64
The openssl command generates a secret key. Open the downloaded docker-compose.yml file, paste the key into the SECRET_KEY field, and set BASE_URL to the domain or IP address where your team will access Planka. Then create the first admin account:
docker compose run --rm planka npm run db:create-admin-user
The prompt asks for an email, password, and name. After that:
docker compose up -d
Planka starts. Navigate to the BASE_URL you configured. The setup took about fifteen minutes in testing, including waiting for Docker images to pull on a fresh server.
The setup is more involved than a consumer SaaS product, but it is manageable for anyone who has used a terminal before. The five-step process is well-documented at docs.planka.cloud. The main friction is the manual docker-compose.yml edit. There is no web-based wizard the way some self-hosted tools provide. You are directly editing a configuration file.
One thing worth knowing before you start: Planka does not include a built-in reverse proxy (a traffic router that directs web requests to the right service and handles HTTPS encryption). You will need to put Nginx, Caddy, or a similar proxy in front of it to serve Planka over HTTPS with a proper SSL certificate. This is a standard step for self-hosted web apps but adds about ten minutes if you have not done it before. The documentation covers it.
After setup, adding users is done from the server admin panel. Invitations go out via email if you configure an SMTP server (the outgoing mail service). Without SMTP configured, you create accounts manually and share credentials directly.
Where it fits and what to compare it to
Planka is the most direct Trello replacement in the self-hosted category. It replicates the Trello structure closely enough that team members switch without a learning curve. The core value proposition is the same: boards, lists, cards, drag-and-drop, no seat fees.
Trello itself is the obvious baseline. The free plan caps you at 10 boards per workspace and has no advanced features. The Standard plan runs $5 per user per month. For a ten-person team that is $50 per month, $600 per year. Planka on a $6 VPS replaces that for the cost of the server alone. Trello has a better onboarding experience and a larger ecosystem of power-ups (integrations). If onboarding speed and polished integrations matter more than cost, Trello remains easier to start with.
Wekan is another self-hosted kanban board, older than Planka and MongoDB-based rather than PostgreSQL-based. Wekan's UI is less polished and development pace has slowed. Planka is the more actively maintained option for new deployments.
Nextcloud Deck is a kanban add-on for Nextcloud (a self-hosted file sharing and collaboration platform). If your team already runs Nextcloud, Deck is the low-friction choice because it lives inside the platform you already manage. If you don't have Nextcloud, installing it just to get a kanban board is significant overhead compared to Planka's focused install.
Linear is a hosted project management tool aimed at software teams. It has a richer feature set than Planka (cycles, roadmaps, integrations with GitHub issues, analytics). Linear is the right choice for software development teams that want deep Git integration. It is not free beyond a small team threshold and keeps your data on their servers.
The decision point is straightforward. If your team uses Trello-style boards for task tracking, has someone who can spend fifteen minutes on a server install, and wants to stop paying per-seat fees, Planka is the direct replacement. If nobody on the team is comfortable running a server, Trello's paid tiers or a hosted alternative remain simpler.
Verdict
Planka earns its place as the default Trello replacement for teams that want self-hosted project management. The board structure is familiar, the real-time sync works well, and the webhook and API layer make it automatable. The install requires Docker and a text editor, not a developer, but it does require someone comfortable following a five-step guide in a terminal.
The Community License covers free internal organizational use without restrictions. Commercial resale is off the table unless you buy the Pro license. For most teams that sentence is irrelevant because they are replacing Trello for their own project tracking, not building a product on top of Planka.
The gap between Planka and Trello's paid tiers on raw features is real. You lose the power-ups ecosystem, the polished mobile apps (Planka's mobile experience is a responsive web view, not a native app), and calendar view on the free tier. You gain complete data ownership, no per-seat fee, and a REST API with webhook support that Trello's free tier does not expose.
Eight million Docker pulls is not a number that accumulates from a project teams are abandoning after the first test. Planka has real production deployments behind it. If your team runs meetings around Trello boards and you want to cut the subscription while keeping the same workflow, the fifteen-minute install is worth running this week.