Project management
Open-source alternatives to Jira, priced
2 open-source tools that can replace Jira, each shown with what it would actually cost to run for a team of 10 people. Jira on the Standard tier costs $0.00 a month at that size.
The cheapest way to replace Jira here is Plane, at $237 a month against $0.00, with your own time already counted.
Start here
Jira's Free plan covers teams of up to 10 users. Inside that limit there is no licence cost, so self-hosting a replacement saves nothing.
| Tool | Server only | With your time | vs Jira | Operational weight | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plane | $12.07 | $237 | -$9,735 | hard | AGPL-3.0 |
| OpenProject | $12.07 | $237 | -$9,735 | hard | GPL-3.0 |
The final column is the 36-month difference: positive means self-hosting is cheaper.
Which one to pick
Plane 59,255 stars
Django API, web and space frontends, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ and MinIO. A genuine Jira substitute and priced like one in RAM terms.
At 10 people it needs 5.2 GB of memory and 27 GB of disk, which fits the CX33 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $10.06 a month. Setting it up is roughly 16 hours of work, then 3 hours a month to keep it healthy.
Full Jira versus Plane breakdown · Plane at every team size
OpenProject 16,084 stars
Rails monolith with PostgreSQL and Memcached. Carries classical project management, including baselines and earned value, which the newer tools omit.
At 10 people it needs 5.3 GB of memory and 27 GB of disk, which fits the CX33 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud for $10.06 a month. Setting it up is roughly 16 hours of work, then 3 hours a month to keep it healthy.
Full Jira versus OpenProject breakdown · OpenProject at every team size
How the pricing was established
Jira pricing was read from its own pricing page on 2026-09-14. Server prices come from the providers listed on the hosting page. The sizing model and the cost of your time are set out in full on the methodology page.
Related
- All project management compared
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- Alternatives to Asana
- Alternatives to monday.com
- Alternatives to Trello
- Where to host it
What you would be running
| Tool | Licence | Written in | Setup | Upkeep | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plane | GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 | TypeScript | 16 h | 3 h a month | 59,255 |
| OpenProject | GNU General Public License v3.0 | Ruby | 16 h | 3 h a month | 16,084 |
Questions people actually ask
Is there a free open-source alternative to Jira?
There are 2 on this page, and every one of them is free of licence cost: they are published under AGPL-3.0, GPL-3.0. Running one is not free, though. The cheapest of them, Plane, costs $237 a month at 10 people once the server, backups and the time to look after it are counted.
How much does Jira cost?
Jira Standard costs $0.00 a month at 10 people: USD 9.05 per seat up to 100 users, USD 8.21 per seat above that, per month; free for up to 10 users. That figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-14.
What does it cost to self-host Plane?
$237 a month at 10 people. That is $10.06 for the CX33 (cost-optimized) at Hetzner Cloud, plus backups, plus 3 hours a month of your own time priced at the published hourly rate.
How long before Plane is cheaper than Jira?
Never, counting $1,200 of first-time setup. Over 36 months the difference is $9,735.
Which Jira alternative is the easiest to run?
Plane, rated hard: about 16 hours to set up and 3 hours afterwards.