OpenProject

What OpenProject does

OpenProject is a project management application for organizations that run several projects at once and need both classic and agile planning. The basic unit is the work package, which can be a task, a bug, a feature or a milestone, with its own type, status workflow and custom fields. Work packages appear in tables, on a Gantt chart for scheduling, and on agile boards. Scrum teams get backlogs and sprints, and product teams can plan releases with versions and a roadmap.

Around that core, the Community edition includes time tracking with cost reports and budgets, a wiki, forums, news and documents for each project, and a meetings module for agendas and minutes. That breadth is why the project presents itself as an alternative to Jira, MS Project and Asana. The README names public institutions and highly regulated industries among its users.

Editions and licensing

The whole repository is under GPL-3.0. OpenProject descends from ChiliProject, which was itself a fork of Redmine. Paid Enterprise plans do not run on a separate codebase. Instead, an administrator pastes an Enterprise token into a Community install, and the add-ons for that plan switch on. Since version 16.0 the add-ons come in four tiers. The lower tiers include the team planner, custom action buttons, hierarchical custom fields and multiple active sprints. Higher tiers add single sign-on via OIDC or SAML, sharing work packages with external users, LDAP group sync, portfolio and resource management, and the OneDrive, SharePoint and XWiki integrations. Check the feature comparison before you assume a feature is free.

Migrating from Jira and other tools

OpenProject has a built-in Jira Migrator. It imports projects, issues with their history, comments and attachments, users, statuses, types and some custom fields. In the current release it is a beta for test setups only, and it supports Jira Data Center 10.x and 11.x but not Jira Cloud or Jira Server. Issue relations and sprint assignments are not migrated yet. For Trello and MS Project, the documentation suggests exporting to Excel and using the Excel synchronization.

Self-hosting OpenProject

The documentation recommends Docker Compose for smaller instances and the Helm chart for larger ones. DEB/RPM packages for supported Linux distributions and a single all-in-one container are also available. The application is Ruby on Rails with an Angular and Hotwire frontend. It needs PostgreSQL, officially version 16 or later, and the Compose setup adds memcached and a proxy. The minimum for up to 200 users is a quad-core CPU, 4 GB of RAM and 20 GB of disk. The sizing table goes up to 16 cores and 16 GB for about 1,500 users.

Hosted version

OpenProject GmbH runs an Enterprise cloud in a data center in the European Union, with a 14-day trial. There is no free hosted plan. The free Community edition is self-hosted only.

Limitations

The interface and the configuration options are extensive, so it takes longer to set up than a simple kanban tool. Some features that larger teams expect, especially SSO and LDAP group sync, need a paid Enterprise plan. The Jira Migrator is still a beta, and there is no direct importer for Trello or Asana.

Who it suits

OpenProject suits organizations that want one self-hosted tool for portfolios, Gantt planning, agile teams and time tracking, especially in the public sector or other settings that care about data sovereignty. For a software team that only needs issues and sprints, Plane or Taiga are lighter.