Leantime

What Leantime does

Leantime describes itself as project management for people who are not project managers. It links strategy, planning and day-to-day tasks, and says it is designed with ADHD, dyslexia and autism in mind. Each user starts from a “My Work” dashboard that shows their tasks, goals and schedule. Projects hold tasks with subtasks and dependencies, shown on a kanban board, a Gantt timeline, a table, a list or a calendar. Milestones, sprints and timesheets cover planning and time reporting.

What sets it apart is the planning layer above the tasks. Goals with metrics, Lean and Business Model canvases, SWOT and risk analysis boards, idea boards and retrospectives live in the same tool, next to wikis and comments on every item. That suits small companies and non-technical teams who would otherwise use Asana or Trello for tasks and a separate tool for planning documents. The README says every feature in its feature table is in the open source version.

Plugins and paid extras

The core is AGPL-3.0, but the license includes an exception for the plugins directory: plugins there may be under other licenses, including Leantime’s enterprise license. The official marketplace sells plugins for self-hosted and cloud users. Among them are custom fields for tasks, whiteboards, scheduled stand-up and report generation, and an MCP server for AI assistants. If you rely on custom fields, budget for that plugin or choose another tool.

Self-hosting Leantime

Leantime is a PHP application (8.2 or later, built on Laravel components) that needs MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+ and Apache or Nginx, plus a list of common PHP extensions. You can upload the release zip to a web server and run the web installer, or use the official Docker image with the Compose file from the docker-leantime repository. That file pairs it with MySQL 8.4. Files are stored locally or on S3-compatible storage. In Docker, mount the plugins folder as a volume, otherwise installed plugins are removed on restart.

The sample configuration turns telemetry on by default: Leantime sends a daily anonymous usage summary of counts and versions to telemetry.leantime.io. Setting LEAN_ALLOW_TELEMETRY to false stops it. The project does not support unofficial packages on platforms such as Cloudron, Elestio or Turnkey.

Hosted version

The developers offer a SaaS version with a 14-day trial, as well as managed hosting plans and a paid installation service for your own servers. We did not find a free hosted plan.

Limitations

There are no direct importers from Jira, Asana or Trello, only CSV import. Custom fields and whiteboards cost extra. It runs only on MySQL or MariaDB, and telemetry has to be switched off by hand. Teams doing software development with complex workflows may find it less suited than issue trackers such as Plane or Redmine.

Who it suits

Leantime fits small businesses, agencies and non-technical teams that want tasks, time tracking and planning tools such as goals and canvases in one place, on a plain PHP and MySQL stack. People who find conventional project tools overwhelming may also like its focus on clarity and accessibility. For a simpler kanban-only tool, compare Kanboard or WeKan.