Huly vs Plane vs Focalboard (2026)

The Open Source Project Management Landscape

Linear costs $8/user/month ($96/user/year) and doesn't offer self-hosting. Jira charges $7.75-$15.25/user/month with enterprise pricing scaling further. Monday.com runs $9-24/user/month.

For engineering teams, the open source alternatives have caught up significantly. Plane (46K+ stars) mirrors Linear's interface and workflow. Huly (25K+ stars) adds Notion-style docs and Slack-like messaging to project management. Focalboard (22K+ stars) provides simple Kanban without the complexity — though its development has slowed.

TL;DR

• Plane (46K+ stars): Best Linear/Jira replacement. Issues, sprints, cycles, modules. Modern interface, fastest-growing open source PM tool.
• Huly (25K+ stars): Best all-in-one platform — project management + docs + team chat in one. Replaces Linear + Notion + Slack for technical teams.
• Focalboard (22K+ stars): Best simple Kanban. Trello/Asana-like, minimal complexity. Note: development has slowed significantly.

Quick Comparison

Feature	Huly	Plane	Focalboard
GitHub Stars	25K+	46K+	22K+
Issues/Tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sprint/Cycle tracking	Yes	Yes	No
Kanban	Yes	Yes	Yes
Calendar view	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gantt/Roadmap	Yes	Yes	No
Built-in docs/wiki	Yes (Notion-like)	Limited	No
Team chat	Yes (Slack-like)	No	No
HR/Vacation tracking	Yes	No	No
Self-hosting	Easy	Easy	Easy
License	EPL-2.0	AGPL-3.0	MIT

Plane — Best Linear Alternative

Plane is the most direct open source replacement for Linear. The interface is clean and modern, the workflow (issues → cycles/sprints → modules/epics) maps closely to Linear, and the development pace is fast.

What Makes It Stand Out

Linear-like interface: If you're migrating from Linear, Plane's interface feels immediately familiar. Issues with priorities, labels, assignees, and status. Cycles for time-boxed sprints. Modules for feature groupings.

Multiple views: Switch between list view, board view (Kanban), spreadsheet, calendar, and Gantt — all showing the same data.

Workspace and project structure: Organize by workspace (organization) → projects → issues. Team members have workspace-level and project-level roles.

Inbox: A triage inbox for incoming issues before they're assigned to projects — similar to Linear's triage feature.

Pages: Basic document creation (wiki-style) within projects. Less powerful than Notion but included for documentation.

Integrations: GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Jira import.

Self-Hosting

git clone https://github.com/makeplane/plane
cd plane/deploy/selfhost
cp plane.bak.env .env
# Edit .env with your settings
./setup.sh start

Plane's self-hosted deployment uses Docker Compose with approximately 8 containers (web, API, worker, beat-worker, PostgreSQL, Redis, MinIO for file storage). The setup script handles most configuration.

Admin panel for user management, project settings, and instance configuration is included.

Plane Cloud: Also available as a managed cloud service with a free tier (up to 12 members, unlimited projects).

Best for: Engineering and product teams migrating from Linear or looking for a Linear-like experience with full data control.

Huly — Best All-In-One Team Platform

Huly positions itself as a complete team operating system — not just project management, but the collaboration hub that replaces multiple tools. Think of it as Linear + Notion + Slack in one self-hosted application.

What Makes It Stand Out

Unified platform: One application for:

• Project management: Issues, milestones, sprints, roadmaps
• Documents: Notion-like collaborative docs with rich text and inline databases
• Team chat: Slack-like messaging with channels and direct messages
• HR features: Vacation tracking, time-off requests, team calendar

For small to medium teams, this consolidation reduces the tool stack significantly.

Modern UX: Huly has one of the cleanest interfaces of any open source project management tool. Real-time collaboration is smooth.

Developers first: Version control integration, code review context, and developer workflow integration.

Performance: Built with Svelte, Huly is noticeably faster than most web-based PM tools.

Self-Hosting

git clone https://github.com/hcengineering/huly-selfhost
cd huly-selfhost
cp .env.template .env
# Configure settings
docker compose up -d

Huly's self-hosted deployment requires approximately 10+ Docker containers (frontend, backend, various services, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, MinIO). More complex than Plane but manageable.

Best for: Teams who want to consolidate project management + docs + team chat into one self-hosted platform, avoiding separate subscriptions for each.

Focalboard — Best Simple Kanban

Focalboard is a simple, Trello-like project management tool originally built by Mattermost. It provides Kanban boards, table views, calendar views, and basic properties (status, priority, dates) without the complexity of Plane or Huly.

Current Status: Development Concerns

An important caveat for 2026: Focalboard's active development has slowed significantly. Mattermost shifted focus, and the community edition is not receiving the same development investment it once did. The project is functional and stable, but new features are rare.

This matters for your decision:

• Fine for: Solo developers, hobby projects, teams comfortable forking/maintaining their own deployment
• Risky for: Teams who need continued feature development or security patches over years

What It Still Does Well

Simple Kanban: Create boards, drag cards between columns, add properties. The core Kanban experience is solid and doesn't need active development to work.

Multiple views: Board, table (spreadsheet-like), calendar, and gallery views for the same data.

Embeds in Mattermost: If you're already running Mattermost for team chat, Focalboard integrates directly — one deployment, two tools.

Standalone mode: Run Focalboard without Mattermost as its own application.

Self-Hosting

docker run -d \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v focalboard:/opt/focalboard/data \
  mattermost/focalboard

Single container. The simplest deployment of the three.

Best for: Solo developers, very small teams with simple needs, or teams already on Mattermost who want integrated Kanban without additional infrastructure.

Feature Deep-Dive: Issue Management

The core feature of any PM tool — issue creation, tracking, and management:

Plane

• Issues with 20+ properties (priority, state, label, assignee, dates, estimate, cycle, module)
• Sub-issues for breaking down complex tasks
• Issue relationships (blocking, duplicate, related)
• Bulk operations — update multiple issues simultaneously
• Customizable workflow states per project

Huly

• Issues with milestones, priorities, and custom properties
• Member-tagged comments
• Time tracking on issues
• Sub-tasks
• Sprint/iteration planning

Focalboard

• Cards with custom properties
• Status, priority, date fields
• File attachments
• Comments
• No sub-issues or relationships

Migration from Commercial Tools

From Linear to Plane

Plane has a built-in Jira import. For Linear:

1. Export issues from Linear (CSV)
2. Use Plane's import feature or the community Linear→Plane migration scripts
3. Configure workflows to match Linear's structure

From Jira to Huly

Huly focuses on engineering workflows similar to Jira. Direct migration tools are limited — plan for a manual migration of active issues and reconfigure your workflow in Huly.

Cost Savings

Linear (10 Users, Annual)

$8/user/month × 10 × 12 = $960/year

Self-Hosted Alternative

Tool	Server	Annual
Plane (Hetzner CPX21)	$6.50/mo	$78
Huly (Hetzner CPX31 8GB)	$10/mo	$120
Focalboard (Hetzner CAX11)	$4/mo	$48

Savings vs Linear: $840-912/year for a 10-person team. For 50 users (Linear at $4,800/year), savings are dramatic.

Choose Your Tool

Use Plane if: You want the closest Linear experience, you need sprint/cycle management, and you want the most active development community.

Use Huly if: You want to consolidate PM + docs + team chat into one self-hosted tool, and you're okay with a larger deployment.

Use Focalboard if: You have simple Kanban needs, you're already on Mattermost, or you're a solo developer who wants the lightest-weight option.

Real-Time Collaboration: Architecture Differences

The way each tool handles real-time collaboration differs fundamentally, and these differences have practical implications for self-hosted deployments.

Huly's collaborative editing is built on the Huly platform's own CRDT (Conflict-free Replicated Data Type) implementation, running through a custom protocol that synchronizes state across connected clients. This means Huly's real-time features — simultaneous document editing, live Kanban board updates, presence awareness — are deeply integrated into every part of the application. The tradeoff is deployment complexity: Huly's Docker Compose setup includes multiple services (the main application, a collaboration server, a transactor service for state management, and additional infrastructure). The memory footprint for a production Huly instance is 4–8 GB, which is substantially more than Plane or Focalboard.

Plane's real-time features use WebSocket connections for presence and live updates, but the document editing model is not fully CRDT-based — simultaneous editing is supported but uses operational transformation that's less sophisticated than Huly's implementation. Plane's Docker stack is leaner: six containers, 2–4 GB RAM minimum. The tradeoff is that Plane's real-time collaboration is good for most team use cases (seeing when someone is editing an issue, live updates to boards) but not designed for simultaneous dense document co-editing.

Focalboard has the simplest collaboration model: it uses WebSockets for board state synchronization (card moves, property updates) but lacks real-time co-editing of card descriptions and comments at the level that Huly and Plane offer. As a Mattermost plugin, Focalboard's collaboration model is actually the host Mattermost instance's infrastructure — the Mattermost WebSocket connection handles update propagation. This means Focalboard's real-time behavior is reliable because it inherits a mature WebSocket implementation, but it's also the least flexible — it only works well when embedded in Mattermost.

For self-hosted deployments prioritizing real-time collaboration quality over infrastructure simplicity, Huly's architecture is the strongest option. For teams that want a good-enough collaboration experience with minimal operational overhead, Plane's model covers most scenarios. See How to Self-Host Plane 2026 for a detailed Plane deployment guide.

Cost Analysis: Self-Hosted vs Cloud Pricing

All three tools offer cloud-hosted tiers alongside their self-hosted open source versions. Understanding the cost math helps make the build-vs-buy decision concrete.

Linear (the proprietary inspiration for this category) charges $8/user/month for the Standard plan — $960/year for a 10-person team. Jira Software charges $8.15/user/month at comparable feature tiers. These are the benchmarks against which self-hosted alternatives compete.

Plane Cloud starts free for unlimited users with basic features. The Pro plan is $7/user/month — close to Linear pricing. The cloud offering funds Plane's development. Self-hosting Plane on a $12/month VPS costs $144/year for a 10-person team (server cost only) — roughly 85% less than Plane Cloud Pro, and 85% less than Linear. If your team is already running other services on a server, Plane's incremental cost is essentially zero.

Huly Cloud is free during its current growth phase, but the product is newer and cloud pricing structures may change. Self-hosting Huly requires a more capable server (4–8 GB RAM) compared to Plane, which increases infrastructure cost to roughly $20–30/month on Hetzner or similar. Still dramatically cheaper than SaaS equivalents.

Focalboard is effectively zero cost in both scenarios — it's either a Mattermost plugin (bundled with Mattermost server which you're already paying for in infrastructure) or a standalone server (minimal footprint, runs on a $4–6/month VPS). For teams already self-hosting Mattermost, Focalboard adds no meaningful infrastructure cost.

For a broader comparison including Wekan, see Wekan vs Focalboard 2026, and for Plane's comparison against Linear specifically, see Plane vs Linear 2026.

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