OpenProject is the leading open source project management software.
15.5k
Stars
3.3k
Forks
210
Open issues
30
Contributors
AI Analysis
OpenProject is a web-based, self-hosted open source project management platform designed for teams and organizations requiring transparency, data sovereignty, and flexibility. It serves organizations seeking an open source enterprise alternative to Jira, MS Project, Monday, and Asana, offering capabilities for project/portfolio management, agile workflows (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe), Gantt charts, time tracking, and team collaboration. It benefits enterprises, public institutions, and regulated ind...
Inferred from signals mentioned in the README (tests, CI, type safety) — not a review of the actual code.
AI's overall editorial judgment — not an average of the bars above, can weigh other factors too.
OpenProject: Self-hosted enterprise project management with 13 years of active development
OpenProject is a comprehensive, self-hosted web-based project management platform covering Gantt charts, Kanban/Scrum boards, time tracking, budgeting, bug tracking, wikis, and meeting management. It targets enterprises, public institutions, and regulated industries that need data sovereignty and an open source alternative to Jira, MS Project, or Asana. Backed by OpenProject GmbH, it has a commercial Enterprise tier alongside a free Community edition, giving it sustainable funding. It is one of the most feature-complete open source project management tools available.
Founded in 2012 as a fork of Redmine, OpenProject evolved from a simple issue tracker into a full project/portfolio management suite. OpenProject GmbH, a Berlin-based company, has driven commercial development while maintaining the GPL-licensed core.
Growth appears driven by rising enterprise demand for data-sovereign alternatives to SaaS tools, particularly in European public sector and regulated industries post-GDPR. The 15k+ stars accumulated over 13 years reflect steady, sustained interest rather than viral growth. Weekly star gains (~69/week as of mid-2026) indicate consistent but not explosive momentum, consistent with a mature, enterprise-focused product.
README states it is 'trusted by organizations worldwide, including enterprises, public institutions, and highly regulated industries.' The company offers paid Enterprise cloud and on-premises tiers, implying a paying customer base. A public community instance exists at community.openproject.org. Independent verification of specific customer counts or deployment scale is not available from repository metadata alone, but commercial viability and 13 years of operation strongly suggest real production usage at meaningful scale.
Likely a Rails monolith with Angular/frontend components based on the Ruby primary language and web-based nature described in the README. Appears to support Docker-based and package-based installation. Integrations with Nextcloud, GitHub, GitLab, and XWiki suggest a plugin/module architecture.
README references a CI badge (Github Tests via test-core.yml workflow) indicating an automated test suite exists and runs on the dev branch. Specific coverage percentages are not documented in the README.
Extremely active: last push was 2026-06-28, the same day as evaluation. GitHub commit activity badge is prominently displayed, suggesting consistently high commit frequency. A commercial backer (OpenProject GmbH) with open job listings further supports sustained maintenance. No signs of stagnation.
ADOPT IF: your organization requires self-hosted project management with data sovereignty, needs enterprise features like Gantt charts, portfolio management, time tracking, and budgeting, or operates in regulated industries where SaaS is restricted. AVOID IF: your team is small, technically non-operational, and simply needs a lightweight task board — operational overhead of self-hosting a Rails app may not be justified. MONITOR IF: you are evaluating open source Jira alternatives but are uncertain about the total cost of self-hosting; watch for continued improvements to the UI and cloud pricing competitiveness.
Independent dimensions
Mainstream potential
5/10
Technical importance
7/10
Adoption evidence
7/10
- Self-hosting complexity: requires ongoing infrastructure, database, and upgrade maintenance that may burden small IT teams.
- GPL-3.0 license means some enterprise add-ons are gated behind paid tiers, which can create friction when evaluating the full feature set.
- Ruby on Rails stack may pose hiring/maintenance challenges for organizations without Ruby expertise, especially compared to more widely-staffed Java or Node stacks.
- Market is increasingly competitive with well-funded open source alternatives (Plane, Linear-style tools) that may erode OpenProject's differentiation among developer-centric teams.
- Dependency on OpenProject GmbH: if commercial revenue weakens, the pace of community-edition feature development could slow, as the core team is concentrated in one company.
OpenProject is likely to remain a leading self-hosted option for European enterprises and public sector organizations. Slow but steady growth trajectory expected to continue, with Enterprise revenue sustaining active development through the next 3–5 years.
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Languages
Information
- Website
- https://www.openproject.org
- Language
- Ruby
- License
- GPL-3.0
- Last updated
- 7h ago
- Created
- 166mo ago
- Analyzed with
- anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5
Stars over time
Contributors over time
Top 100 contributors only — repos with more will plateau at 100.
Open issues
No open issues — clean slate.
Top contributors
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Jira is the dominant commercial alternative with a vastly larger ecosystem and plugin marketplace. OpenProject's advantages are self-hosting, data sovereignty, GPL license, and no per-user SaaS pricing at scale. OpenProject lacks Jira's breadth of third-party integrations.
Plane is a newer open source Jira alternative with a more modern UI and faster recent growth. OpenProject has deeper Gantt/portfolio/time-tracking features and a much longer track record in enterprise deployments.
Taiga focuses on agile (Scrum/Kanban) for software teams. OpenProject covers a broader scope including traditional project planning, portfolios, and time/cost reporting, making it more suitable for non-software organizations.
Kanboard (9.6k stars) is a lightweight Kanban-only PHP tool. OpenProject is far more feature-rich but also heavier and more complex to operate. Kanboard suits small teams wanting simplicity; OpenProject suits organizations needing enterprise-grade features.
GanttProject is a desktop app focused solely on Gantt/WBS scheduling. OpenProject is a full web-based collaboration platform. They solve partially overlapping but largely different problems.
