Open source alternatives to Jira

What Jira does

Jira tracks work as issues on Scrum and Kanban boards, backlogs, lists, timelines and calendars. Teams configure their own workflows, fields and permissions, measure cycle time, burndown and capacity, and automate routine steps with rules. Its appeal for software teams comes from integrations with thousands of tools, including Confluence, Slack and GitHub. Atlassian sells it as Jira Cloud on Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise plans.

Why people look for an alternative

• The end of self-managed Jira. Atlassian ended support for its Server products on 15 February 2024. It stopped selling new Data Center subscriptions to new customers on 30 March 2026, existing customers can buy expansions until 30 March 2028, and Data Center reaches end of life on 28 March 2029, when expired instances become read-only. Organizations that must keep project data on their own infrastructure need another route.
• Free plan limits. Jira Free is capped at 10 users and 2 GB of storage, with a small automation allowance and without advanced permissions or audit logs.
• Per-user cost. Paid plans are billed per user, and on the lower tiers single sign-on and user provisioning need a separate Atlassian Guard subscription.
• Complexity. Many small teams find the configuration of workflows, schemes and fields heavier than their work requires.

What to compare in an alternative

1. Agile features. Sprints or cycles, backlogs, epics, story points, and burndown or velocity reports.
2. Configurability. Custom workflows, issue types, fields and permissions.
3. Migration. Whether there is a Jira importer and what it carries over: issues, comments, links, attachments and users.
4. Developer integrations. Links between issues and GitHub or GitLab commits and pull requests.
5. Editions and hosting. What the open source edition includes, what is paid, and what running it yourself involves.

Which one to choose

OpenProject is the broadest replacement: work packages with configurable workflows, Scrum backlogs, Gantt charts, time and cost tracking, and a Jira Migrator in beta for Data Center users, though several enterprise features need a paid token. Plane is the closest to modern Jira and Linear for software teams, with cycles, modules and several layouts; its paid features live in a separate closed-source edition. Taiga focuses on Scrum and Kanban with epics, user stories and issues. Redmine is the long-established choice for issue tracking with Gantt, time tracking and repository links, extended by plugins. Teams that want something lighter than Jira, with board, list, calendar and Gantt layouts, a Jira importer and Git automations, can look at Kaneo, which has no sprints.