Most teams do not leave Jira because a feature is missing. They leave because of the weight.
Permission schemes, issue-type schemes, screen schemes, field configurations, and a workflow editor that quietly becomes somebody's part-time job. Jira is built so a 500-person organisation can encode its process in software. If you are eight people trying to ship, that same machinery is a tax you pay every week.
The other two reasons are hosting and price. Atlassian ended new Jira Server licence sales, so running Jira on hardware you control now means Jira Data Center, sold as an annual subscription sized by user tier. And Jira Cloud is free up to 10 users, then per user, with SAML single sign-on requiring an Atlassian Guard subscription or the Enterprise tier that includes it.
This is a comparison of the 11 tools that genuinely replace Jira for a small or mid-sized team, including the ones you can self-host for free. Prices were checked in August 2026. Vendors change tiers often, so confirm on their pricing page before you commit.
TL;DR: the 11 best Jira alternatives
- Kaneo for teams who want boards, backlog, and workflows with nothing to administer. MIT licensed and free to self-host.
- Linear for product teams who want the most polished cloud tracker and do not need to host it.
- Plane for teams who want a Linear-shaped product they can run themselves.
- OpenProject for organisations that actually used Jira's structure, including Gantt charts and budgets.
- Redmine for teams who want a mature tracker and are comfortable assembling plugins.
- Taiga for teams running Scrum properly, with sprints, story points, and burndowns.
- Asana for cross-team coordination, portfolios, and goals rather than engineering tickets.
- ClickUp for teams who genuinely want docs, whiteboards, chat, and tasks in one place.
- Shortcut for software teams who want epics and iterations without Jira's configuration layer.
- YouTrack for teams already living in JetBrains tools who want a powerful query language.
- Azure DevOps Boards for organisations already standardised on Microsoft Entra and Azure Repos.
Why teams look for a Jira alternative
Three patterns come up again and again.
Administration overhead. Jira's flexibility is real, but it is front-loaded. Someone has to own the schemes, and that person becomes a bottleneck for every process change. Teams that leave usually describe the same relief: they can now change a workflow without filing a ticket with the Jira admin.
Hosting. For teams whose reason to self-host is cost, sovereignty, or an air-gapped network, Data Center pricing points the wrong way. A tool that runs on a single VPS under an open licence solves the same problem for the price of the server.
The single sign-on line. SAML on Jira Cloud means Atlassian Guard or Enterprise. Single sign-on is how you offboard someone in one place and enforce MFA, so charging a premium for it means the least-resourced teams get the weakest security defaults. It is common enough across the industry that there is a public list tracking it, and it is worth checking on any tool you shortlist. We wrote up which project management tools include SSO for free separately.
Jira alternatives compared
| Tool | Open source | Self-host | SSO included | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kaneo | Yes (MIT) | Yes | Yes, on every plan | Cloud from $4/mo, self-host free |
| Linear | No | No | Paid plans | Per user, cloud only |
| Plane | Community edition (AGPL-3.0) | Yes | Pro tier and above | $0 Community, paid cloud tiers |
| OpenProject | Community edition (GPLv3) | Yes | Enterprise add-on | $0 Community, Enterprise priced separately |
| Redmine | Yes (GPLv2) | Yes | Via plugin | $0 |
| Taiga | Yes (MPL-2.0) | Yes | Yes | $0 self-hosted |
| Asana | No | No | Enterprise tier | From $10.99 per user / month |
| ClickUp | No | No | Business tier and above | From $7 per user / month |
| Shortcut | No | No | Enterprise tier | Free up to 10 users, then per user |
| YouTrack | No | Paid licence past free tier | Yes | Free up to 10 users, then per user |
| Azure DevOps Boards | No | Server edition | Via Microsoft Entra | Free for 5 users, then $6 per user / month |
| Jira (for reference) | No | Data Center only | Atlassian Guard or Enterprise | Free up to 10 users, then per user |
How we evaluated these tools
We are the team behind Kaneo, which is one of the tools on this list. Rather than pretend otherwise, here is exactly what we measured, so you can check the claims yourself.
- Licence. Is it open source, source-available, or proprietary? Which licence specifically, since AGPL and MIT have very different implications if you plan to modify it.
- Self-hosting. Can you run it yourself, and is that free? An "open core" edition that withholds authentication is not the same as a complete free build.
- Single sign-on. Included, paid tier, or plugin. This is the most commonly paywalled feature in the category.
- Deployment weight. One container plus a database, or a multi-service platform with a broker and workers.
- What it actually does. Boards, backlog, workflows, roles, time tracking, and whether reporting exists.
- Data portability. Export, import, and a documented public API, so you are not locked in a second time.
- Pricing shape. Per user, flat rate, seat minimums, and where the cliff is.
- Who it is genuinely better for than Kaneo. Every entry below has a section saying so.
The 11 best Jira alternatives in 2026
1. Kaneo
Kaneo covers the parts of Jira that teams actually use every day: boards, backlog planning, configurable workflow columns, labels, priorities, task relations, comments, attachments, time tracking, and workspace roles. It deliberately leaves out the configuration layer that turns Jira into somebody's part-time job.
Most teams run it on Kaneo Cloud, which is hosted in the EU and starts at $4 a month, with automatic backups, automatic updates, single sign-on, and email support. Kaneo is also open source under the MIT licence, which matters less for how you use it day to day and more for what happens if you ever want out: you can export everything or move the whole thing onto your own server, so the switching cost that keeps teams stuck on Jira does not apply here.
Key features
- Kanban boards and list views with realtime updates
- Backlog planning and configurable workflow columns per project
- Workspace roles and permissions, labels, priorities, and task relations
- Time tracking, comments, and attachments
- Single sign-on with Google, GitHub, Discord, or any OIDC provider, on every plan
- Automatic backups, updates, and email support on Kaneo Cloud
- Documented public REST API, API keys, webhooks, and an MCP server for AI agents
- GitHub, Gitea, Slack, Discord, and Telegram integrations
- Per-project JSON export and import
Pros: Nothing to administer, single sign-on on every plan rather than an Enterprise line item, EU hosting with backups and updates handled for you, pricing by exact headcount with no seat blocks, and an open-source escape hatch if you ever want to leave.
Cons: No Gantt charts, no sprints with story points, no marketplace, no service desk. It is deliberately smaller than Jira.
Pricing: Kaneo Cloud is $4 a month for a single user and $5 per user a month for teams, billed on exact headcount, with a 14-day trial and no credit card required. Annual billing works out at $3.33 and $4.17 a month. Self-hosting under MIT is available if you would rather run it yourself.
Best for: Small and mid-sized teams who want to plan and ship work without administering a tool.
Why choose it over Jira: A ten-person team is $50 a month on Kaneo Cloud, against Jira's per-user pricing plus an Atlassian Guard subscription to get single sign-on, and there is no admin console for anyone to own. You keep the board, the backlog, the workflows, and the roles, and lose the schemes.
2. Linear
Linear is the cloud tracker that set the current bar for speed and polish. Cycles, triage, keyboard-first navigation, and an interface that never gets in the way. If your objection to Jira is the experience rather than the hosting model, Linear is the strongest answer.
Key features: Cycles, triage inbox, projects and initiatives, insights, keyboard-driven navigation, deep GitHub and Slack integrations.
Pros: Best-in-class polish and speed, excellent product-team workflow, strong integrations.
Cons: Cloud only, proprietary, no self-hosting, SSO on paid plans. You cannot own the data.
Pricing: Per user, cloud only. Check Linear's pricing page for current tiers.
Best for: Product and engineering teams committed to SaaS who want the most refined tracker available.
Why choose it over Jira: It is dramatically faster to use and requires no administration. See our Kaneo vs Linear comparison if you want the same feel but self-hosted.
3. Plane
Plane is the closest open-source product to Linear in shape. Cycles, modules, intake, and pages, with a polished interface and a well-funded team shipping quickly. The Community edition is AGPL-3.0 and free, with a separate Commercial edition and paid cloud tiers.
Key features: Cycles, modules, intake, pages, issue hierarchy, self-hosted Community edition.
Pros: Feature-complete tracker, actively developed, genuinely good interface, free Community edition.
Cons: AGPL-3.0 has real implications if you plan to modify and distribute it. Single sign-on starts at the Pro tier, with LDAP and group sync on Enterprise Grid. The self-hosted stack is larger than a single container.
Pricing: Community edition free to self-host. Paid cloud and commercial tiers, see Plane's pricing.
Best for: Teams who want a Linear-shaped product they can host, and do not mind a bigger install.
Why choose it over Jira: Same modern tracker experience, without Jira's admin console, and you can run it yourself. Full breakdown in our Kaneo vs Plane comparison.
4. OpenProject
OpenProject is the closest thing on this list to Jira in scope. Work-package hierarchies, Gantt charts, baselines, budgets, cost reporting, and BIM support, backed by a company with a long track record and real commercial support.
Key features: Gantt charts and baselines, work-package hierarchies, budgets and cost reporting, agile boards, time and cost tracking, commercial support.
Pros: The most complete open-source option for classical project management, mature, well documented.
Cons: The Community edition is GPLv3 and keeps single sign-on, custom branding, and several other features for the Enterprise add-on. Cloud Enterprise plans start at a 25-user minimum. It is a platform, not a small app.
Pricing: Community edition free to self-host. Enterprise add-on priced separately.
Best for: Organisations that genuinely used Jira's structure and need Gantt charts, budgets, and cost reporting.
Why choose it over Jira: You get comparable structure under an open licence, on your own servers, with no Data Center subscription. See Kaneo vs OpenProject for the lighter side of that trade.
5. Redmine
Redmine is a Rails application from 2006 that is still maintained and still everywhere. Anything Jira does, some Redmine plugin approximates. That is both the appeal and the catch.
Key features: Issue tracking, subprojects, roles and permissions, time tracking, wikis, forums, and an enormous plugin ecosystem.
Pros: Battle-tested, endlessly extensible, GPLv2, free, with a plugin for almost anything.
Cons: The interface is dated. Kanban boards, OIDC login, and most modern conveniences come from third-party plugins, which are pinned to versions and maintained by volunteers.
Pricing: Free, GPLv2.
Best for: Teams comfortable assembling and maintaining a plugin stack, or anyone already running it.
Why choose it over Jira: Zero licence cost, complete control, and two decades of ecosystem. Our modern Redmine alternative page covers what you give up in exchange for less maintenance.
6. Taiga
Taiga is MPL-2.0, self-hostable, and organised around agile ceremonies. If your team runs Scrum properly rather than aspirationally, it supports that better than anything else on this list.
Key features: Sprints, story points, burndown charts, epics, kanban and Scrum boards, issue tracking.
Pros: Proper sprint management, free to self-host under MPL-2.0, well established.
Cons: The methodology is baked in. If you do not run Scrum, much of it is overhead.
Pricing: Free to self-host.
Best for: Teams committed to Scrum who want sprint mechanics as first-class features.
Why choose it over Jira: Jira's agile features come wrapped in configuration. Taiga's do not. See Kaneo vs Taiga if you want the board without adopting a methodology first.
7. Asana
Asana is not an engineering tracker and does not pretend to be. It is built for cross-team coordination: portfolios, goals, workload balancing, and approval flows across marketing, operations, and program management.
Key features: Portfolios, goals, workload views, approval flows, timeline, forms, automation rules.
Pros: Genuinely strong at rolling many projects into one status view, polished, widely adopted.
Cons: Cloud only, proprietary, per-user pricing from $10.99 a month, SAML single sign-on reserved for the Enterprise tier. The free tier is limited to a small number of collaborators.
Pricing: From $10.99 per user a month. See Asana's pricing.
Best for: Program managers who need fifty projects to roll up into one view.
Why choose it over Jira: Far less configuration and a much better fit for non-engineering work. Compare with Kaneo vs Asana.
8. ClickUp
ClickUp is the maximalist option: docs, whiteboards, chat, dashboards, goals, and tasks in one product. If you want one tool to replace four, and you have someone willing to configure it properly, it is remarkably capable.
Key features: Tasks, docs, whiteboards, chat, dashboards, goals, time tracking, automations, dozens of views.
Pros: Enormous feature surface, generous free tier, one subscription instead of several.
Cons: Cloud only, proprietary, and the breadth is genuinely overwhelming for a small team. SAML single sign-on sits on the Business tier and above.
Pricing: Paid tiers from $7 per user a month. See ClickUp's pricing.
Best for: Teams who actually want the docs, whiteboards, and chat, not just the tasks.
Why choose it over Jira: More capability for less money, and no admin console. Compare with Kaneo vs ClickUp if the breadth is the part you would turn off.
9. Shortcut
Shortcut is built for software teams who want a board, a backlog, and epics rolling up to milestones, without Jira's ceremony. The reporting layer is the part engineering managers tend to keep.
Key features: Stories, epics, milestones, iterations, workflows, reporting, GitHub and GitLab integrations.
Pros: Purpose-built for software teams, clean, a more developed product-team workflow than most lightweight trackers.
Cons: Cloud only, free only up to 10 users, single sign-on on the Enterprise tier.
Pricing: Free up to 10 users, then per user.
Best for: Software teams who want epics and iterations plus reporting, and are happy in the cloud.
Why choose it over Jira: Same shape of workflow with a fraction of the configuration. See Kaneo vs Shortcut for the self-hosted comparison.
10. YouTrack
JetBrains YouTrack is a serious issue tracker with an excellent query language, powerful workflow scripting, and tight integration with the rest of the JetBrains toolchain.
Key features: Query language, workflow scripting, agile boards, time tracking, knowledge base, JetBrains IDE integration.
Pros: Genuinely deep, excellent search and automation, free for small teams.
Cons: Proprietary. Free for up to 10 users in cloud and server form, then per-user cloud pricing or a paid annual server licence.
Pricing: Free up to 10 users, then per user in cloud or a paid annual server licence.
Best for: Teams already living in JetBrains IDEs who want that depth.
Why choose it over Jira: Comparable power with a much better query and automation story, at a lower price for small teams. See Kaneo vs YouTrack.
11. Azure DevOps Boards
If your organisation is already on Microsoft Entra and uses Azure Repos, Pipelines, and Test Plans, keeping work items in the same place is the sensible choice.
Key features: Work items, boards and backlogs, queries, dashboards, and native integration with Azure Repos, Pipelines, and Test Plans.
Pros: Included in an existing Microsoft estate, strong traceability from work item to build to release, free for the first five users.
Cons: Proprietary, tied to a Microsoft Entra tenant, and only sensible as part of the wider suite. Standalone it is an awkward fit.
Pricing: Free for the first 5 users, then $6 per user a month.
Best for: Organisations already standardised on Microsoft.
Why choose it over Jira: One vendor, one identity provider, and traceability across the whole delivery pipeline. See Kaneo vs Azure DevOps Boards if you want a tracker with no tenant requirement.
How to choose
A short decision guide, since eleven options is a lot.
- You want the least to administer. Kaneo, Linear, or Shortcut.
- You must self-host. Kaneo, Plane, OpenProject, Redmine, or Taiga.
- You need Gantt charts and budgets. OpenProject. Nothing else here does it properly.
- You run Scrum with story points. Taiga.
- Single sign-on without an Enterprise contract. Kaneo includes it on every plan. Taiga and Redmine (with a plugin) also manage it. Check our free SSO guide before committing.
- Your work is not engineering work. Asana or ClickUp.
- You are already deep in a vendor ecosystem. Azure DevOps if Microsoft, YouTrack if JetBrains.
One thing worth checking before you migrate: whether the tool has a documented export. Leaving Jira only to lock yourself into the next tool is the most common way this goes wrong.
What you give up when you leave Jira
Being honest about this saves you a painful quarter.
Jira Service Management has no real equivalent on this list. If you run a customer-facing service desk with SLAs, keep it or move to a dedicated help desk.
The Atlassian Marketplace is the other genuine loss. Test management, capacity planning, and compliance tooling are usually a plugin away in Jira and a project of their own elsewhere.
Advanced permission and workflow schemes go too. Most teams consider this a feature of leaving, but if you have compliance requirements encoded in Jira workflows, confirm the alternative can express them before you commit.
Migrating off Jira
Jira exports issues to CSV and has a well-documented REST API, so a scripted migration is realistic for anything up to a few thousand issues. The parts that hurt are attachments, comment history with author attribution, and issue links.
Do a dry run into a scratch project first, check that assignees resolve by email address, and keep the Jira instance readable for a quarter rather than cancelling it the same week. Kaneo has a public API and per-project JSON import, and we are happy to help with a migration script if you open an issue on GitHub.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free alternative to Jira?
If you want to run it yourself, Kaneo is MIT licensed and self-hostable, OpenProject's Community edition is the better choice when you need Gantt charts, and Taiga is the one to pick for Scrum. Worth being honest about the trade: "free" means you take on the server, the upgrades, and the backups. Kaneo Cloud starts at $4 a month and hands all of that back to us, which is why most teams end up there.
Can Jira be self-hosted for free?
No. Atlassian ended new Jira Server licence sales, so on-premise means Jira Data Center, sold as an annual subscription sized by user tier. Small teams that want an on-premise tracker generally have to pay Data Center pricing or move to a different tool.
Is there an open-source Jira alternative?
Several. Kaneo (MIT), Plane (AGPL-3.0 Community edition), OpenProject (GPLv3 Community edition), Redmine (GPLv2), and Taiga (MPL-2.0) are all open source and self-hostable. They differ mostly in scope and in what the free build withholds. We go deeper in our guide to open-source Jira alternatives.
Which Jira alternatives include SSO for free?
Kaneo, Taiga, and Redmine (through a plugin) include single sign-on without a paid tier. OpenProject reserves it for the Enterprise add-on, and Plane starts it at the Pro tier. Among hosted tools it is almost always an Enterprise-tier feature.
How much cheaper are Jira alternatives?
Hosted alternatives mostly sit in the $5 to $11 per user a month range, so a ten-person team pays roughly $50 to $110 a month. Kaneo Cloud is at the bottom of that range at $5 per user a month with single sign-on included, where Jira would add an Atlassian Guard subscription on top to get the same thing. Self-hosting an open-source option costs the price of a small VPS, plus the time someone spends keeping it running.
Do I need to move everything at once?
No, and you probably should not. Move one active project first, keep Jira readable, and give the team a few weeks in the new tool before migrating the archive. Most migration regret comes from cancelling the old subscription too early.
The short version
If you need Jira's full scope, keep Jira. It earns its complexity at the scale it was designed for.
If you are a team of five to fifty who wants a board, a backlog, workflows you can change yourself, and single sign-on that is not a separate line item, most of that complexity is working against you.
Kaneo Cloud gives you all of that, hosted in the EU from $4 a month, with backups and updates handled and nothing for anyone to administer. There is a 14-day trial and no credit card, and because Kaneo is open source you can export everything or move it onto your own server whenever you like.
Last updated 20 August 2026.