OpenProject
Shares rank 3 of 8 project management software by recommenders
Free open-source project management tool people self-host as a Jira and Confluence alternative; critics find it heavy and only passable.
Free open-source project management tool people self-host as a Jira and Confluence alternative; critics find it heavy and only passable.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Self-hosted and outside US jurisdiction
“in addition to being outside US jurisdiction their services are available both on-prem/self-hosted and cloud-based”
Comment from 29 Mar 2026 in “Say No to Palantir in Europe” “I self-host OpenProject - free and a little better than Jira.”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story” Alternative to Jira and Confluence
“Together with OpenProject, we've built a setup that covers most Confluence + Jira use cases”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Atlassian Data Center EOL: testing an open-source migration path” “I self-host OpenProject - free and a little better than Jira.”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story” Seen as reputable and entrepreneurial
“it seems like a reputable alternative, which is always welcome”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “XWiki and OpenProject as an open-source alternative to Confluence and Jira” “not looking as entrepreneurial as OpenProject, at first Glance”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Looking 4 open-source knowledge base and project management tool 4 personal use”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy and slower than Jira
“compared to the slowness of Jira, OpenProject and tbh Trello is also slower”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: VS Code Agent Kanban: Task Management for the AI-Assisted Developer” “the heavy enterprise tools like Jira or OpenProject”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Looking 4 open-source knowledge base and project management tool 4 personal use” Only passable, not a standout
“there's the passable https://www.openproject.org/”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Every SaaS business will become a harness around a model”
Other project management software people recommend
The four most recommended other project management software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Projects | 9 | 9 | 50% | 7 | — | — |
| Basecamp | 8 | 8 | 50% | 6 | — | — |
| OpenProjectThis page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 7 | — | — |
| ClickUp | 7 | 23 | 23% | 6 | — | — |
| Redmine | 7 | 1 | 88% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“there's the passable https://www.openproject.org/”
“it seems like a reputable alternative, which is always welcome”
“I self-host OpenProject - free and a little better than Jira.”
“in addition to being outside US jurisdiction their services are available both on-prem/self-hosted and cloud-based”
“compared to the slowness of Jira, OpenProject and tbh Trello is also slower”
“not looking as entrepreneurial as OpenProject, at first Glance”
“the heavy enterprise tools like Jira or OpenProject”
“Together with OpenProject, we've built a setup that covers most Confluence + Jira use cases”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.