Project management
Open-source alternatives to monday.com, priced
3 open-source tools that can replace monday.com, each shown with what it would actually cost to run for a team of 10 people. monday.com on the Standard tier costs $134 a month at that size.
The cheapest way to replace monday.com here is Vikunja, at $42.30 a month against $134, with your own time already counted.
| Tool | Server only | With your time | vs monday.com | Operational weight | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vikunja | $4.80 | $42.30 | +$3,163 | easy | AGPL-3.0 |
| Plane | $12.07 | $237 | -$4,899 | hard | AGPL-3.0 |
| OpenProject | $12.07 | $237 | -$4,899 | hard | GPL-3.0 |
The final column is the 36-month difference: positive means self-hosting is cheaper.
Which one to pick
Vikunja 5,364 stars
A single Go binary with SQLite, PostgreSQL or MySQL. Kanban, list and Gantt views without the operational weight of Plane.
At 10 people it needs 0.7 GB of memory and 6 GB of disk, which fits the Basic at Kamatera for $4.00 a month. Setting it up is roughly 2 hours of work, then 0.5 hours a month to keep it healthy.
Full monday.com versus Vikunja breakdown · Vikunja at every team size
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 monday.com 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 monday.com versus OpenProject breakdown · OpenProject at every team size
How the pricing was established
monday.com pricing was read from its own pricing page on 2026-09-14, quoted in euros and converted at 1.1193 dollars to the euro, the Frankfurter, European Central Bank reference rates rate for 2026-10-23. 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
- Alternatives to Jira
- Alternatives to Linear
- Alternatives to Asana
- Alternatives to Trello
- Where to host it
What you would be running
| Tool | Licence | Written in | Setup | Upkeep | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vikunja | GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 | Go | 2 h | 0.5 h a month | 5,364 |
| 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 monday.com?
There are 3 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, Vikunja, costs $42.30 a month at 10 people once the server, backups and the time to look after it are counted.
How much does monday.com cost?
Monday.com Standard costs $134 a month at 10 people: EUR 12.00 per seat per month. That figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-14.
What does it cost to self-host Vikunja?
$42.30 a month at 10 people. That is $4.00 for the Basic at Kamatera, plus backups, plus 0.5 hours a month of your own time priced at the published hourly rate.
How long before Vikunja is cheaper than monday.com?
About a month, counting $150 of first-time setup. Over 36 months the difference is $3,163.
Which monday.com alternative is the easiest to run?
Vikunja, rated easy: about 2 hours to set up and 0.5 hours afterwards.