Best Kanban Boards (2026)

Kanboard is a free and open-source Kanban project management tool focused on simplicity and minimalism. Created by Frédéric Guillot and first released in 2014, it offers a clean drag-and-drop board with configurable columns, work-in-progress (WIP) limits, swimlanes, task filtering via a simple query language, subtasks, automatic actions, and a plugin system. It is MIT-licensed and self-hosts on a basic PHP server using SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL.

Wekan is a completely free and open-source collaborative Kanban board, MIT-licensed and built with Meteor. Maintained by Lauri Ojansivu since 2016, it offers boards, lists, cards, swimlanes, drag-and-drop, due dates, task assignments, custom fields, granular permissions, and real-time collaboration with no artificial limits. It self-hosts on your own server or via Docker/Snap and is favored by privacy-focused teams that want a Trello alternative they fully control.

Planka is a Kanban-style project management tool built with React and Node.js as an open alternative to Trello, backed by PostgreSQL and shipped as a single Docker image. It offers unlimited boards and cards, real-time synchronization, markdown card descriptions, file attachments, OIDC single sign-on, and 35+ languages. Its source is publicly available under a custom PLANKA "Fair Use License" (not OSI-approved): a free Community tier covers internal organizational use, while some features require a paid Pro license.

Focalboard is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana, created by Mattermost. It provides board, table, gallery, and calendar views over cards with custom properties, templates, and filtering, available both as a standalone self-hosted server (Personal Server) and bundled into Mattermost as Boards. As of September 2023 Mattermost moved Focalboard to community maintenance; the repository remains active with community commits into 2026 but is no longer a primary Mattermost roadmap item.