At a glance — how these 3 alternatives compare
Our read on each project's adoption, maintenance activity and commercial-use risk, derived from GitHub signals and SPDX license terms rather than star count alone. Sorted by stars. How we score.
| Project | Adoption | Maintenance | Commercial use |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 60,522 · TypeScript AGPL-3.0 | Flagship | Active | High risk Even a hosted/modified deployment can trigger source release |
| ★ 58,356 · Go MIT | Flagship | Active | Low risk Embed in a proprietary product with no copyleft obligation |
| ★ 16,347 · Ruby GPL-3.0 | Mainstream | Active | High risk Distributing a derived work obliges releasing its source |
The alternatives
plane
🔥🔥🔥 Open-source Jira, Linear, Monday, and ClickUp alternative. Plane is a modern project management platform to manage tasks, sprints, docs, and triage.
makeplane/plane Updated 2026-10-07 gitea
Git with a cup of tea! Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD
go-gitea/gitea Updated 2026-10-08 openproject
OpenProject is the leading open source project management software for product, project and portfolio management. A powerful Jira alternative with agile planning, issue tracking, roadmaps, Gantt charts, time tracking, collaboration features, and more. Available on premises or in the cloud. ⭐ Star us on GitHub
opf/openproject Updated 2026-10-08 Editor's take
Yusuke Morinaga · last revisited · star counts quoted in the text (≈) are as of that date; the cards above are refreshed daily
Leaving Jira is less a tool swap than admitting how much of your process lived inside automation rules nobody documented.
When I evaluate Jira alternatives, I start from an uncomfortable question: how much of your team’s workflow is actually in Jira’s automation engine rather than in anyone’s head? That’s the trap. The issues, the sprints, the labels — all of that exports cleanly via CSV or the Cloud Migration Assistant. What doesn’t export is the web of triggers that silently move a ticket from “In Review” to “Done” when a PR merges, or pings a lead when an Epic stalls. None of the OSS options here reproduce that automation layer, and most teams underestimate how much they leaned on it until it’s gone.
So my framing isn’t “what replaces Jira” but “which of Jira’s three faces does this team actually use” — the tracker, the dev-workflow hub, or the cross-team coordination surface.
For a software team that lives in Git, I’d look hardest at Gitea (≈57.8k★, MIT). It’s the most permissively licensed option and the only one that folds issue tracking into the same place as Git hosting, code review, and CI/CD. If your Jira value was mostly “tickets linked to commits and pipelines,” collapsing all of that into one self-hosted binary is a genuine simplification, not just a lateral move.
For teams that want the Jira-shaped product-management experience, Plane (≈58.9k★, AGPL-3.0) is the obvious modern candidate — issues, cycles, modules, roadmaps. It’s the closest thing to a like-for-like console. Two caveats I’d weigh openly: it’s AGPL, so if you plan to build a hosted product on top, read the license terms first; and its JQL-equivalent querying isn’t as expressive as Jira’s, which matters more than people expect once you’ve built dashboards around saved filters.
OpenProject (≈16k★, Ruby, GPL-3.0) is the third card and the one closest to classic Jira-plus-portfolio management: its own description lists agile planning, issue tracking, roadmaps, Gantt charts and time tracking, available on-premises or hosted. It’s the unglamorous choice I wouldn’t dismiss for an ops-heavy or non-engineering org that wants Gantt-and-portfolio structure rather than a developer console; GPL-3.0 has no network clause, so running your own instance is a non-issue.
The thing I’d verify before committing: map your custom fields and write down every automation rule first. Standard fields (assignee, priority, labels) carry over; custom fields and triggers are manual rebuilds. And there’s no OSS substitute for the Jira–Confluence link, so budget for a separate docs strategy rather than pretending it’ll come along for free.
Comparison notes
Three open-source trackers come at Jira from different generations. Plane is the modern one — issues, cycles (sprints), modules, and roadmaps in a self-hostable TypeScript codebase. Gitea folds issue tracking into the same place as Git hosting and code review, and OpenProject is the veteran Ruby option (GPL-3.0), which describes itself as project management software for product, project and team management. Three Jira capabilities are hard to match: Plane has no equivalent to Jira's workflow automation engine, which moves issues between statuses on triggers; JQL's query flexibility outstrips most of these alternatives; and Jira's Confluence link between issues and documentation has no open-source stand-in.
Migration tips
- Export Jira projects as CSV or use the Jira Cloud Migration Assistant for bulk export including issue history
- Map Jira issue types (Story, Bug, Epic, Task) to your OSS tool's issue type schema before importing
- Recreate Jira custom fields in your target tool — standard fields (assignee, priority, labels) transfer cleanly, custom fields require manual setup
- Document Jira workflow automations before migrating — they must be manually recreated in your OSS tool
- Update CI/CD integrations (GitHub Actions, Jenkins) that reference Jira ticket IDs in commit messages or branch names
Which alternative should you pick?
Replacing Jira isn't a single call — it's a trade between license terms, team size, and how much early-stage roughness you can absorb. The 3 projects above split along those lines:
- You want the project with the most GitHub stars in this list → plane. 60,522★ — but gitea is close behind at 58,356★, so treat the two as equals on this signal and decide on license and fit instead.
- You ship commercial software and need to ship modified code without releasing source → gitea. MIT licensed — modify and embed without copyleft obligations.
- You want the project with the most recent push activity → openproject. Last push 2026-10-08 — the freshest activity in this list.
License & commercial-use notes
When replacing Jira, the license usually decides more than the feature list — whether you can modify it, ship it inside a product, or host it as a service. The 3 projects here fall into:
- Permissive (gitea) — MIT / Apache / BSD / ISC — modify and embed inside a commercial product with no copyleft obligation. The safest bucket for shipping in a proprietary codebase.
- Strong copyleft (openproject) — GPL / EPL — distributing a derived work obliges you to release its source under the same terms. Fine for internal use; plan carefully before proprietary distribution.
- Network copyleft (plane) — AGPL / SSPL — the copyleft trigger extends to offering the software over a network, so a hosted deployment of a modified version can oblige you to publish your changes. Read the exact terms before building a paid hosted product on these.
License fields come from the GitHub API's SPDX classification and can lag a relicense. The repository linked on each card is authoritative — confirm its LICENSE file before any license-sensitive deployment.
Maintenance health of these 3 projects
Of the 3 projects listed, 3 shipped at least one commit in the last 12 months. See how we rank for the full criteria and our self-hosting cost reality check, which apply across every comparison on this site.
Frequently asked questions
How do these 3 alternatives compare on maintenance health?
3 of 3 have shipped a commit in the last 12 months. At least one project here has 5,000+ GitHub stars. Always check the last-pushed date in the cards above and read the latest closed issues — those two signals are the fastest public check we know of.
How this page was compiled
- Repository facts (stars, license, language, last push) come straight from the GitHub public API and are linked on each card as the primary source.
- Editorial analysis (the intro, comparison notes and migration tips) is Claude-drafted from Jira's use case and the alternatives' repository metadata — in Claude Code sessions or scheduled routines run under the operator's account. Samples are spot-checked against the upstream repositories; entries are not individually reviewed unless they carry a signature. See what Claude drafts and what the operator writes.
- Editor's take is signed by Yusuke Morinaga. It was drafted in a Claude Code session the operator ran, then read and confirmed by Yusuke Morinaga before publication, and carries the date it was last revised. It is written from each project's README, LICENSE, release history and issue tracker — not from running the project in production; where that distinction matters, the take says so.
- Maintenance signal: 3 of 3 projects shipped a commit in the last 12 months as of the latest rebuild (most recent activity: ).
- Last editorial review: by Yusuke Morinaga.
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