Every team has a wall. It was cork and index cards, then it became a browser tab, and somewhere along the way the tab started charging for every person who looked at it.
Plane exists because a few people decided the wall should belong to the team standing in front of it.
The best open source ClickUp alternative for most teams is Plane: AGPL-3.0, free to self-host with Docker or Kubernetes, free on Plane Cloud for up to 12 users, and $6 per user a month billed annually on Pro (checked Oct 30, 2026). OpenProject is the pick if you need Gantt charts and budgets, Huly if you want issues, chat and docs in one place at a flat price, Vikunja if you want a task manager you own outright, and Leantime if nobody on the team calls themselves a project manager.
What changed at ClickUp
ClickUp's pricing page on Oct 30, 2026 sells Core at $9 per user a month billed yearly, Business at $17 and a new top plan called MAX at $100, each beside a struck-out “regular price” of $12, $25 and $120. Every paid plan bundles pooled AI credits, from 1,000 per user a month on Core to 10,000 on MAX, and extra “AI Super Credits” cost $10 per 10,000. The pricing tracker PricingSaaS recorded this lineup as a test layout shown to part of ClickUp's visitors, with Core at $8 on Oct 12 and $9 on Oct 19, and lists the standard plans, Unlimited at $7 and Business at $12, as unchanged on that date. The sticker now depends on which page ClickUp shows you, and the direction of travel is up.
The rest of the shelf is in the same mood. Asana Starter is $10.99 per user a month billed annually ($13.49 monthly) with “50K credits” of AI Studio, and the free Personal plan stops at 2 users. monday.com Basic is €9 a seat a month billed annually with “1,000 AI credits / month”. Trello Standard is $5 per user a month billed annually, the one incumbent that kept its number small (all checked Oct 30, 2026).
Every incumbent task board now ships two meters: a price per seat and a pool of AI credits. The open source boards ship neither.
The open source ClickUp alternatives
Of the 1,256 project management tools in the AppClap catalog (Oct 30, 2026), 149 are open source and 243 can be self-hosted.
Plane
Plane is an issue tracker with cycles, modules and pages that calls itself an “Open-source Jira, Linear, Monday, and ClickUp alternative.” Plane Cloud is free for up to 12 users; Pro is $6 per user a month billed annually ($8 monthly) and Business is $13 annually ($15 monthly) (checked Oct 30, 2026). The licence is AGPL-3.0, the repo has about sixty-two thousand stars, version 1.4.3 shipped on October 28, and self-hosting is free with the project's Docker and Kubernetes guides (repo). It is best for a product team that wants the same shape of tool it is leaving. The drawback is that SAML and OIDC single sign-on sit in paid tiers on self-hosted installs too, at prices the page does not publish.
OpenProject
OpenProject is the classic: work packages, Gantt charts, time tracking and budgets, under GPL-3.0, with about seventeen thousand stars and version 17.9.5 released on October 30 (repo). The Community edition is free with “No minimum users”. Paid editions start at €5.95 per user a month for Basic and €10.95 for Professional, both with a 25-user minimum, and €15.95 for Premium from 100 users, on cloud or on-premises (checked Oct 30, 2026). It is best for teams that need Gantt and an audit trail. The drawback is that minimum: a 6-person team runs Community or pays for 25 seats.
Huly
Huly puts issues, documents, chat and video calls in one self-hosted app, under EPL-2.0, with about twenty-eight thousand stars (repo). Huly's cloud is priced flat, not per seat: the Common plan is $0 a month for unlimited users and 10 GB of storage, Rare is $19.99 a month for 100 GB, and Epic is $99.99 for 1 TB (checked Oct 30, 2026). It is best for a small company that wants to drop Slack and Notion in the same move. The drawback is maturity: the last tagged release is v0.7.426 from July 5, 2026, and AI features are listed as “TBD” on every plan.
Vikunja
Vikunja is “The task manager you actually own”: lists, kanban and Gantt with CalDAV sync, under AGPL-3.0, with about five thousand nine hundred stars and version 2.7.1 released on October 20 (repo). Self-hosting is free. Vikunja Cloud has no free tier: Personal is 4€ a month, Family 10€ for up to 5 users, Organization 5€ per user (checked Oct 30, 2026). It is best for a small team that needs tasks and deadlines, not a work operating system. The drawback is exactly that: no docs, no chat, no time tracking.
Leantime
Leantime is a goals-first project tool “for non-project managers”, under AGPL-3.0, with about twelve thousand stars and version 3.12.0 released on October 15 (repo). The Community Edition is free to self-host. Leantime Pro, the hosted plan, is $8 per user a month billed annually or $10 monthly, and the page says the company has “chosen to eliminate our limited free SaaS tier” (checked Oct 30, 2026). It is best for a team whose problem is focus, not sprints. The drawback is a free path that is self-host only.
Taiga
Taiga is the agile veteran: backlogs, sprints, Scrum and Kanban boards, licensed MPL-2.0 and still receiving commits on October 30 (repo). Taiga Cloud is priced flat with an “Unlimited number of users”: Free for 1 public and 1 private project, Enthusiast 5€ a month, Basic 20€ a month for unlimited projects, Premium 60€ (checked Oct 30, 2026). It is best for a Scrum team that wants the ceremonies built in. The drawback is a free cloud tier that is a trial by another name.
| Tool | Licence | Free tier | Cheapest paid | Billed per |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ClickUp | Proprietary | Unlimited members, 60 MB | $9/user/mo Core yearly (test page); $7 Unlimited (standard) | Seat plus AI credits |
| Plane | AGPL-3.0 | Cloud, 12 users | $6/user/mo yearly | Seat |
| OpenProject | GPL-3.0 | Community, any size | €5.95/user/mo, 25 minimum | Seat |
| Huly | EPL-2.0 | Unlimited users, 10 GB | $19.99/mo flat | Storage |
| Vikunja | AGPL-3.0 | Self-host only | 4€/mo Personal | Person |
| Leantime | AGPL-3.0 | Self-host only | $8/user/mo yearly | Seat |
| Taiga | MPL-2.0 | 1 private project | 5€/mo flat | Projects |
Plane vs OpenProject
Plane is the Linear-shaped tool and OpenProject is the Gantt-shaped one, and the price gap is mostly about minimums: Plane Cloud is free to 12 users and $6 a seat after that, while OpenProject's first paid seat costs €5.95 times 25 (checked Oct 30, 2026). Plane wins on speed and a cloud a team can join this afternoon. OpenProject wins on Gantt, budgets, time sheets and LDAP.
Is ClickUp free?
Yes, for unlimited people. ClickUp's Free Forever plan on Oct 30, 2026 includes unlimited tasks and members, 60 MB of storage, 5 Spaces, 100 automation actions a month and a 500-credit AI trial. What it lacks is room: 60 MB and 100 automations run out inside a busy team's first quarter, and the next step up is a seat price that depends on which pricing page you are shown.
What you actually take on
ClickUp's paid plans buy things a self-hosted board does not do for you: docs, whiteboards, dashboards, integrations and a support team, with nobody on your team on call for it. Asana and monday.com sell the same deal: polish, and someone else's uptime.
The free path has its own bill. Plane, OpenProject and Huly each need a server, a database and a backup you have actually tested. Vikunja and Leantime have no free cloud, so free means your own machine. And moving a whole board is a week nobody budgets for.
- 1Do you have someone comfortable running a Linux server and a Postgres backup?
- 2Is your team under 12 people, where Plane Cloud is still free?
- 3Are you using ClickUp's whiteboards, docs and dashboards, or only the task board?
- 4Does it bother you that the price of your task board changed depending on who loaded the page?
This series keeps walking down a hallway of paid-app doors: dictation and meeting notes, the deploy platform and the inbox, the CRM, the login, the mailbox, the visitor book, the back office, the shop window, the appointment book, the workbench. This one is the wall in the team room, and it just started quoting two prices for the same seat. We keep writing these at AppClap because the search for software should put the tool you can own next to the famous one. Our ClickUp alternatives, Asana alternatives, monday.com alternatives and Trello alternatives pages list what we track, or describe it in your own words: a project board my team can self-host without paying per seat. The next time the board quotes you a new seat price, do you want to negotiate, or pin it to your own wall?
