Manage projects for free with the best online task trackers, kanban boards, and Gantt chart tools. Compare features, limits, and which is best for your team size.
Project management software is a $10 billion industry, and most of it is priced like it. Jira charges $8.15/user/month. Monday.com starts at $9/seat/month. Asana's premium is $10.99/user/month. For a 10-person team, you're looking at $1,000–$1,300 per year — just to move cards across columns and assign due dates.
Here's the thing: every major project management tool has a free tier. And in 2026, those free tiers are genuinely useful. Some give you unlimited projects. Some give you unlimited users. A few even give you Gantt charts and time tracking at no cost.
But "free" always comes with asterisks. The trick is knowing which asterisks matter for your specific team, workflow, and project size. I've spent the last three months testing every notable free project management tool across real projects — a software development sprint, a marketing content calendar, and a freelance client workflow — to find out exactly where each free tier breaks down and where it shines.
This is the honest comparison.
Every tool was tested against the same five criteria:
I ignored mobile apps entirely. If a tool's web version is good, the mobile app is a bonus. If the web version is bad, no mobile app saves it.
Before the deep dives, here's the overview:
| Tool | Free User Limit | Free Project Limit | Kanban | Gantt | Scrum | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trello | Unlimited | 10 boards/workspace | Yes | No | No | Simple visual task management |
| Notion | Unlimited (blocks limit) | Unlimited | Yes | Yes (via databases) | Partial | All-in-one workspace |
| ClickUp | Unlimited | Unlimited | Yes | No (paid) | Yes | Feature-rich free tier |
| Taiga | Unlimited | 1 private, unlimited public | Yes | No | Yes | Open-source Scrum teams |
| Plane | Unlimited | Unlimited | Yes | No | Yes | Jira alternative (open source) |
| Todoist | 5 active projects | 5 projects | Board view | No | No | Personal task management |
| Vikunja | Unlimited (self-hosted) | Unlimited | Yes | Yes | No | Self-hosted privacy-first |
| WeKan | Unlimited (self-hosted) | Unlimited | Yes | No | No | Self-hosted Kanban purists |
| Focalboard | Unlimited (self-hosted) | Unlimited | Yes | No | No | Mattermost users, Trello replacement |
| GitHub Projects | Unlimited | Unlimited | Yes | Yes (roadmap) | Partial | Developer teams already on GitHub |
| Linear | Up to 250 issues | Unlimited | Yes | Yes (roadmap) | Yes | Fast-moving dev teams |
| Teamwork (free) | 5 users | 2 projects | Yes | Yes | No | Client-facing project delivery |
Free tier: Unlimited members, 10 boards per workspace, 250 workspace commands/month, custom fields and power-ups limited.
Trello is the Toyota Corolla of project management. It's not exciting. It doesn't have a hundred features. But it starts instantly, everyone understands it within 30 seconds, and it just works.
The free tier gives you unlimited members, which is generous. The 10-board limit per workspace is the real constraint. For a small team running 2-3 projects, that's plenty. For an agency managing 15 clients, you'll hit it fast.
What works well for free: Drag-and-drop Kanban, checklists, due dates, labels, member assignment, mobile app. Butler automation (250 commands/month) is enough for basic workflow rules like "when a card is moved to Done, mark the due date as complete."
What's locked behind the paywall: Unlimited boards, calendar and timeline views (essentially a Gantt substitute), advanced checklists with due dates, custom fields across boards, and most critically — dashboard views that aggregate data across multiple boards.
Honest take: If your project management needs start and end with "move cards from To Do to In Progress to Done," Trello's free tier is probably all you'll ever need. The moment you need reporting, cross-board visibility, or timeline planning, you're reaching for your wallet.
Free tier: Unlimited pages, unlimited members for the free plan (as of late 2025), 5 MB file upload limit, 7-day page history.
Notion is not a project management tool. It's a workspace that can become a project management tool through databases, views, relations, and templates. This is both its greatest strength and its biggest friction point.
You can build a Kanban board in Notion in about two minutes. You can build a Gantt chart using a timeline database view. You can build a sprint board with story points, velocity tracking, and burndown charts — if you're willing to spend an afternoon setting it up or finding a community template.
What works well for free: Unlimited projects (they're just pages), database views (table, board, timeline, calendar, gallery), relations between databases, basic formulas, templates. The recent change to allow unlimited members on the free plan makes this extremely competitive for teams.
What's locked behind the paywall: File uploads above 5 MB, page history beyond 7 days, bulk export, advanced permissions, and the API's rate limits are more restrictive on free plans.
Honest take: Notion is the best free tier if you want Kanban + Gantt + docs + wiki in one place and you don't mind building things yourself. It's the worst choice if you want something that works out of the box with zero configuration. The learning curve is real but the ceiling is very high.
Free tier: Unlimited members, unlimited tasks, unlimited projects, 100 MB storage. No Gantt chart on free tier (major limitation).
ClickUp markets itself as "one app to replace them all," and the free tier is shockingly full-featured. You get Kanban boards, list views, calendar views, docs, whiteboards, and even basic time tracking — all at no cost. Unlimited members and unlimited tasks is genuinely rare.
The catch? The Gantt view is paywalled. So is the timeline view. And advanced reporting. And custom fields (limited to basic types). And automations (limited to 100/month).
What works well for free: Everything related to task management. Creating tasks, assigning them, setting priorities and due dates, adding subtasks, building Kanban boards across multiple spaces and projects. The hierarchy model (Workspace > Space > Folder > List > Task) is flexible enough for complex project structures.
What's locked behind the paywall: Gantt charts, timeline view, goals, portfolios, advanced custom fields, workload view, and anything related to resource management.
Honest take: If your team needs a feature-rich task manager and can live without Gantt charts, ClickUp's free tier is arguably the most generous in the market. But the product is also famously complex — new users regularly report feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of options, toggles, and views.
Free tier: Unlimited members, 1 private project, unlimited public projects.
Taiga is what you get when people who actually practice Scrum build a Scrum tool. It has proper epics, user stories with story points, sprint planning, burndown charts, and a velocity tracker — all free. It also has a Kanban mode for teams that don't want the Scrum ceremony.
Being open source means you can self-host it with no limits at all. The hosted version at taiga.io gives you one free private project, which is limiting for teams but fine for a single product.
What works well for free: Full Scrum implementation (backlog grooming, sprint planning, burndown), Kanban boards, issue tracking, wiki. The UX is clean and focused — it doesn't try to be a docs platform or a CRM.
What's locked behind the paywall (hosted): More than 1 private project. That's essentially it. Self-hosted removes all limits.
Honest take: If your team runs Scrum and you want a tool that understands Scrum natively rather than bolting it on as an afterthought, Taiga is the best free option. The self-hosted route removes every limitation. If you want to explore the open-source project management landscape more broadly, the open source alternatives directory on akousa.net catalogs 481 open-source projects across 15 categories — including several PM tools.
Free tier (cloud): Unlimited members, unlimited projects, unlimited issues. Self-hosted: completely free.
Plane launched in 2023 as an open-source alternative to Jira and Linear, and it has matured remarkably fast. The interface is clean, fast, and modern. It supports issues, cycles (their version of sprints), modules (for grouping related issues), and views with custom filters.
What works well for free: Issue tracking with properties (priority, labels, assignees, due dates), Kanban and spreadsheet views, cycles, modules, and a surprisingly good API. The GitHub and GitLab integrations work on the free tier.
What's locked behind the paywall: Analytics, page history beyond 30 days, custom workflows, and advanced integrations. But again — self-hosting removes all these gates.
Honest take: For development teams that want a Jira-class experience without paying Jira prices, Plane is the most promising option in 2026. It's younger than the competition, so you'll occasionally hit rough edges, but the velocity of improvement is impressive. The self-hosted version is legitimately free with no feature gates.
Free tier: Unlimited projects, unlimited collaborators, unlimited items. Free for all GitHub users.
If your team already lives in GitHub, Projects (the v2 version, not the deprecated classic Projects) is surprisingly capable. It gives you table views, board views (Kanban), and roadmap views (a basic Gantt alternative). Custom fields, grouping, filtering, and automations via workflows are all free.
What works well for free: Deep integration with issues and pull requests (cards auto-update when PRs merge), roadmap view for timeline planning, custom fields (text, number, date, single select, iteration), saved views, and GitHub Actions integration for automations.
What's locked behind the paywall: Nothing, really. GitHub Projects is fully free. The limitation is that it only works within the GitHub ecosystem, so non-developers on your team may struggle with the interface.
Honest take: For open-source projects and dev teams already on GitHub, this is a no-brainer. For cross-functional teams that include designers, marketers, and clients, the GitHub-centric UX is a deal-breaker.
Free tier: Completely free when self-hosted. No user or project limits.
Vikunja is an open-source task management tool that you host yourself. It supports Kanban boards, Gantt charts, calendar views, recurring tasks, labels, priorities, assignees, and file attachments. It runs on modest hardware — a $5/month VPS handles it easily.
What works well: Everything. There's no paywall because there's no hosted service trying to upsell you. Gantt charts, Kanban, list views, CalDAV sync, API access, webhooks, and OIDC authentication are all included.
The trade-off: You're responsible for hosting, backups, updates, and SSL. If "self-hosted" sounds exhausting, this isn't for you.
Honest take: The best option for privacy-conscious teams who don't want their project data on someone else's servers. The Gantt chart implementation is genuinely good — better than several paid tools I tested.
Different teams work differently. Here's what to pick based on how you manage work:
Kanban is the simplest project management methodology: columns represent stages, cards represent tasks, you move cards left to right. Almost every tool supports it, but the best free Kanban experiences are:
Scrum requires sprints, story points, burndown charts, and velocity tracking. Most free tools bolt Scrum on as an afterthought. The ones that don't:
Gantt charts show task dependencies and timelines. This is where free tiers get stingy — timeline views are premium features in most tools. The exceptions:
You don't need collaboration features. You need fast task capture, due dates, and a clear overview of what's on your plate:
After testing all of these tools across real projects, I noticed that the features that determine day-to-day productivity aren't the ones in the marketing comparison tables. Here's what actually matters:
If you're managing 50+ tasks, clicking through menus is misery. Tools with good keyboard shortcuts (ClickUp, Linear, Notion, Plane) are dramatically faster to use than tools that require mouse-heavy interaction (Trello, basic Teamwork).
How many clicks does it take to create a task with a title, assignee, and due date? In Linear, it's one keyboard shortcut and three Tab presses. In some tools, it's a modal with six required fields. This difference compounds across hundreds of tasks.
Free tiers almost never mention offline support, but it matters. Notion has offline mode. Trello caches boards for offline viewing. Most web-only tools show you a blank screen when your WiFi drops in a coffee shop.
For software teams, the tool's integration with GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket is often more important than its project management features. Plane and GitHub Projects win here by default since they're built into the dev ecosystem.
This is the hidden cost of free tiers. Some tools let you export everything as JSON or CSV. Others make exporting a paid feature. Always check this before committing your team's data to a platform. Notion, ClickUp, and all the open-source tools (Taiga, Plane, Vikunja, WeKan) offer full data export on free tiers.
If you've noticed a pattern in this article, it's that self-hosted open-source tools consistently offer the best "free" experience because there's no company behind them trying to convert you to a paid plan.
The trade-off is real: you need a server, basic sysadmin skills, and the discipline to keep things updated. But for teams that care about data privacy, have no budget, or simply refuse to be locked into a vendor's ecosystem, self-hosting is the most honest "free."
The main contenders for self-hosted project management in 2026:
For teams evaluating open-source software more broadly — not just PM tools but alternatives to Slack, Figma, Google Analytics, and more — the alternatives directory on akousa.net is worth browsing. It covers 481 open-source projects with GitHub stats across 15 categories, so you can compare activity, stars, and community size before committing to a tool.
Mistake 1: Picking the tool with the most features. More features means more complexity. If your team uses 5% of ClickUp's features, you're paying the complexity tax on the other 95% every time you interact with the tool.
Mistake 2: Ignoring the upgrade path. Free tiers are designed to get you hooked. Check what the paid tier costs before you invest weeks of setup. If the jump from free to paid is $50/user/month, that's a different calculation than $5/user/month.
Mistake 3: Not testing with real work. Demo projects with fake tasks tell you nothing. Run a real one-week sprint in the tool before deciding. You'll discover friction points that no feature comparison table reveals.
Mistake 4: Choosing based on what other companies use. Your 5-person startup doesn't need the tool that Spotify's 200-person engineering org uses. Match the tool to your team size, not your aspirations.
For small teams (under 10 people), ClickUp offers the most generous free tier with unlimited members, tasks, and projects. If your team prefers simplicity over features, Trello is easier to adopt. For developer teams, Plane or GitHub Projects provide the best experience at no cost. The right choice depends on whether you value feature depth (ClickUp), simplicity (Trello), or dev-tool integration (Plane/GitHub).
Most Kanban tools require an account, but several open-source options like WeKan and Focalboard can be self-hosted with no signup requirements for users you invite. For cloud-based options, Trello lets you create a board with just an email, and GitHub Projects works with your existing GitHub account. If you need a quick, disposable Kanban board with zero friction, browser-based tools that use local storage exist but lack collaboration features.
Most project management tools lock Gantt charts behind paid plans. The free exceptions are: Vikunja (self-hosted, full Gantt with dependencies), Notion (timeline database view works as a basic Gantt), GitHub Projects (roadmap view for timeline visualization), and TeamGantt (free for 1 project, 3 users). For unlimited free Gantt charts with no restrictions, self-hosted Vikunja is the strongest option.
Yes. Trello's free tier in 2026 includes unlimited members, 10 boards per workspace, unlimited cards, checklists, due dates, labels, and 250 Butler automation commands per month. The main limitations are the 10-board cap and the absence of timeline/calendar views, dashboard, and advanced custom fields. For teams with fewer than 10 active boards, the free tier covers most use cases.
Plane is the most direct open-source alternative to Jira in 2026. It offers issues, cycles (sprints), modules, custom properties, and Git integrations in a modern interface. Taiga is the better choice if your team follows strict Scrum methodology, as its sprint planning, burndown charts, and velocity tracking are more mature. Both can be self-hosted for a completely free experience with no feature limitations.
The best free project management tool is the one your team will actually use consistently. That's not a cop-out — it's the most expensive lesson in project management. I've seen teams adopt a powerful tool, build elaborate workflows, and abandon it within three months because the daily friction was too high.
Start with the simplest tool that covers your core methodology. If you do Kanban, start with Trello. If you do Scrum, start with Taiga. If you need everything, try Notion or ClickUp. If you value privacy and have someone who can manage a server, go self-hosted with Plane or Vikunja.
Give it a real two-week trial with actual work. If it sticks, great. If it doesn't, your data export should be painless enough to try the next option.
The goal is shipping projects, not perfecting your project management setup.
Akousa