Kanboard
by Kanboard · Free, open source, self-hosted Kanban project management
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Kanboard
Homepage
Overview
Kanboard is a self-hosted Kanban project management tool. Tasks are dragged between columns you can add, rename or remove, and each task supports subtasks, attachments, comments, Markdown descriptions, categories, assignees and due dates. Automatic actions change fields such as assignee, colour or category based on events.
- Best for
- Small teams that want a self-hosted, deliberately minimal Kanban board for project tracking.
- Pricing
- No prices are shown; the software is free and open source under the MIT License and is self-hosted.
- Runs on
- Self-hostedCLI
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Free and open source under the permissive MIT License
- Work-in-progress limits highlight columns that are over the limit
- Query language and custom filters applied directly on the board
- LDAP/Active Directory and OAuth2 authentication backends
Trade-offs
- Self-hosted only — you handle installation, hosting and upkeep
- Feature set is deliberately limited and the interface is plain
- Mainly written by one developer, with community contributions
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Kanboard’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
This doesn’t look right — report a problem with Kanboard’s score
Where this comes from
The Kanboard pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
Alternatives in Project & Work Management
Ranked 1
86.9 — BenchRank score out of 100DevClocked
devclocked · Time and token tracking for human and AI-agent engineering work
Best for: Solo developers, teams and agencies who need time, agent-run and token data tied to shipped work.
Ranked 2
80.8 — BenchRank score out of 100Plane
Plane · Project management, wiki and AI agents in one workspace
Best for: Teams leaving Jira or Linear that want projects, docs and AI agents in one self-hostable tool
Ranked 3
80.5 — BenchRank score out of 100GitLab
GitLab · DevSecOps platform with AI agents across planning, code, CI/CD and security
Best for: Teams that want planning, source control, CI/CD and security scanning in one platform.
Is this your product?
Claim Kanboard to manage its profile. Claiming lets you suggest edits to the descriptive fields — it never changes scores or rankings.