Kanboard is a free, self-hosted, open-source Kanban board for developers and small teams. See features, pricing, pros, cons, and alternatives for 2026.
Kanboard is a lightweight, self-hosted Kanban board built for developers and small teams who want to visualize work without adopting a heavyweight project-management suite. First released in 2014 by French developer Frederic Guillot, it runs on PHP with SQLite as its zero-configuration default database, and can be scaled to MySQL or PostgreSQL for multi-user teams.
Unlike commercial SaaS project trackers, Kanboard has no company behind it selling upgrades or storage tiers. It is released under the MIT License, developed in the open on GitHub with contributions from more than 330 community members, and can be installed on any server you control, giving teams full ownership of their task data.
The project has settled into a stable maintenance rhythm: core functionality is mature and rarely changes, while community pull requests keep the software patched and current. This makes Kanboard a dependable, low-maintenance choice for teams that prioritize stability and self-hosting over a constantly expanding feature list.
Kanboard centers on a single, clean drag-and-drop board per project, with configurable columns and enforceable work-in-progress limits that visually flag when a column is overloaded. Tasks support subtasks, file attachments, Markdown-formatted descriptions and comments, categories, colors, due dates, recurring schedules, and basic time tracking.
A built-in query-language search bar lets users filter tasks by assignee, category, due date, color, or status without needing a separate reporting tool, and Gantt and calendar views give a timeline perspective on the same data. Automatic actions let admins define rules that fire on events, such as moving a card to a new column or reassigning it, removing the need for repetitive manual updates.
For integration, Kanboard exposes a REST/JSON-RPC API, supports LDAP/Active Directory and OAuth2 login (Google, GitHub, GitLab), and ships in more than 30 languages. A community plugin ecosystem extends the base app with Slack notifications, webhooks, two-factor authentication, and custom CSS themes.
Kanboard itself is entirely free and open source; there is no official paid tier, license fee, or usage cap. Anyone can clone the GitHub repository or pull the official Docker image and run it indefinitely at no cost beyond their own server hosting.
For teams that do not want to manage their own infrastructure, third-party managed-hosting providers such as Elestio and Stellar Hosted offer Kanboard-as-a-service, typically starting around 14 dollars per month, which covers server maintenance, backups, and SSL, while the software license itself remains free.
Yes. Kanboard is fully open source under the MIT License with no paid tiers, seat limits, or feature gating; you only pay for whatever server you choose to host it on.
Kanboard was created by French developer Frederic Guillot and first released in 2014. It is now maintained collaboratively by more than 330 open-source contributors on GitHub.
The core project does not sell official cloud hosting, but third-party providers such as Elestio and Stellar Hosted offer managed Kanboard hosting for teams that prefer not to self-host.
It uses SQLite by default for simple, zero-configuration installs, and also supports MySQL and PostgreSQL for larger, multi-user deployments.
Yes. It provides a REST/JSON-RPC API, webhook support via plugins, and OAuth2/LDAP authentication, making it straightforward to connect to Slack, Git platforms, and custom scripts.
Kanboard offers similar drag-and-drop Kanban functionality but is self-hosted, free, and aimed at technical users, whereas Trello is a hosted commercial SaaS product with a broader consumer feature set and paid power-ups.