Kaneo vs Huly
The focused Huly alternative
Huly puts tracking, chat, documents, HR, and CRM in one workspace. Kaneo does the tracking part, in one container, under the MIT license.
Short answer: is Kaneo a good Huly alternative?
Kaneo and Huly are both open source and self-hostable, but they differ in ambition. Huly is an all-in-one workspace under EPL-2.0 covering project tracking, chat, documents, HR, and CRM, with a correspondingly large deployment. Kaneo is MIT licensed and does project tracking only, as a single container plus PostgreSQL.
- License
- MIT, versus EPL-2.0 for Huly
- Hosting
- Both self-host. Kaneo is one container, Huly is a multi-service platform
- Single sign-on
- Free on every Kaneo build
- Pricing
- $0 self-hosted, cloud from $4 / month
Huly details checked on 19 August 2026. Huly pricing, Kaneo pricing.
Why teams choose Kaneo
One job, done properly
Kaneo is a tracker. There is no chat to migrate onto, no HR module to keep current, and nothing to disable before your team can start.
Realistic to self-host
A container and a database, with Docker Compose and a Helm chart. Huly's self-hosted platform has many more services to run and update.
MIT licensing
Kaneo is MIT throughout, which keeps forking and commercial use uncomplicated compared with EPL-2.0's file-level copyleft.
When Huly is the better choice
Huly is ambitious in a way that is genuinely appealing: virtual office, chat, documents, and tracking in one place, and it is free to self-host. If replacing several tools at once is the goal, Kaneo is not trying to compete with that.
Kaneo vs Huly, answered
Is Huly open source?
Yes. The Huly platform is published under EPL-2.0 and can be self-hosted for free, alongside a hosted cloud with a free tier and paid plans.
Huly or Kaneo?
Huly if you want one workspace covering chat, documents, HR, and tracking. Kaneo if you want a small, fast tracker you can run and understand, and you already have tools for the rest.
How hard is each to self-host?
Kaneo is one container plus PostgreSQL, with an official Helm chart. Huly's self-hosted deployment runs a considerably larger set of services and expects more operational attention.
Does Kaneo have chat or documents?
No. Kaneo has task comments, notifications, and integrations with Slack, Discord, and Telegram. Documents and chat are deliberately out of scope.