Kanboard
A minimalist, low-overhead Kanban board for teams who want speed over features.
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sovereigntyKanboard is a lightweight, self-hosted PHP Kanban application focused on simplicity: boards, swimlanes, task automation rules, subtasks, and time tracking, extendable through a plugin system. It runs on very modest hardware (a small VPS is plenty) and has no external database service dependency by default (SQLite works out of the box, with MySQL/PostgreSQL supported for larger installs).
OPEN SOURCEMITSELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseMIT
PricingFree / self-host (paid cloud hosting plans available from the maintainer)
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +Very low resource requirements — runs comfortably on a small, cheap VPS
- +Free MIT license with a genuinely simple, fast interface
- +Built-in automation rules and time tracking without needing plugins
- +Plugin ecosystem covers common gaps (Gantt, LDAP, extra integrations)
Where it falls short
- −Visual design is utilitarian — noticeably plainer than Trello or Wekan
- −Smaller contributor base than Wekan or Vikunja, so feature velocity is slower
- −Fewer native views than richer PM tools (no built-in Gantt or table view without a plugin)
- −Collaboration features (comments, mentions, notifications) are narrower than larger suites
Kanboard as an alternative to
Where Kanboard shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
Kanboard head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.