Alternatives to Focalboard
Open source Notion-boards from Mattermost
Focalboard ranks #23 of 24 in Project management, with an Alt Score of 16. It is licensed under AGPL-3.0, free and available on Windows, macOS, Linux and Web. 1 of 14 checklist rows are verified against a public source.
Individuals and teams who want a self-hosted, open-source alternative to Trello, Notion, or Asana for organizing and tracking work, including Mattermost users who want project management alongside their team chat.
Boards with cards that can be viewed as kanban, table, gallery, or calendar layouts, with drag-and-drop and real-time sync across views. Cards support unlimited custom properties (text, number, date, select, multi-select, person), plus comments and @mentions for collaboration. Boards can be filtered and shared with specific people or the whole team via permissions. It ships as a single-user desktop app, a multi-user personal server, or as the Boards plugin inside Mattermost.
Create a board, add cards to it, and attach custom properties to track status, owner, dates, and other fields. Switch between kanban, table, gallery, or calendar views to work with the same cards in different layouts, and use filters or saved views to focus on specific subsets.
Why people leave Focalboard
Dashed reasons are sourced facts; the rest are opinions. Vendors can dispute.
Sign in to add a reason — new reasons go through moderation before appearing.
Ranked alternatives
Ordered by Alt Score. Click any score to see the breakdown.
Feature comparison
How Focalboard compares with its alternatives, feature by feature.
| Project management checklist | Focalboard | ClickUp | Monday.com | Plane | YouTrack | Teamwork |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | ||||||
| Starts at | ||||||
| License | ||||||
| Platforms | ||||||
| Kanban boards | ||||||
| Gantt / timeline | ||||||
| Calendar view | ||||||
| Custom fields | ||||||
| Dependencies | ||||||
| Time tracking built in | ||||||
| Automations / rules | ||||||
| Forms intake | ||||||
| Workload view | ||||||
| Guest access | ||||||
| Free tier user limit | ||||||
| Agile features (sprints, story points) | ||||||
| Docs / wiki built in | ||||||
| Reporting dashboards |
Every fact and feature listed for Focalboard is verified against its own pages. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.
-
Pricing model Free verified 2026-07-12
Focalboard is an open source, multilingual, self-hosted project management tool that's an alternative to Trello, Notion, and Asana.
https://github.com/mattermost-community/focalboard/blob/main/README.md -
License AGPL-3.0 verified 2026-07-12
You may be licensed to use source code to create compiled versions not produced by Mattermost, Inc. in one of two ways: 1. Under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU AGPL v.3.0, subject to the exception
https://github.com/mattermost-community/focalboard/blob/main/LICENSE.txt -
Platforms Windows, macOS, Linux, Web verified 2026-07-12
**Personal Desktop**: A standalone, single-user macOS, Windows, or Linux desktop app for your own todos and personal projects. * **Personal Server**: A standalone, multi-user server for development an
https://github.com/mattermost-community/focalboard/blob/main/README.md -
Status maintenance verified 2026-07-30
This repository is currently not maintained. If you're interested in becoming a maintainer please let us know here.
https://github.com/mattermost-community/focalboard/blob/main/README.md -
Kanban boards Yes verified 2026-07-12
kanban-board
https://github.com/mattermost-community/focalboard
FAQ
Yes. ClickUp, Monday.com and YouTrack have a free tier or are fully free. Free-tier limits in the comparison table are verified and dated.
Plane, OpenProject and Leantime — every license claim links its source.