Full project management with time tracking, budgets, and a client portal, source code on GitHub under AGPL-3.0. Run it on our cloud or on your own servers with Docker.
No credit card required. Free forever plan available
Most open source project tools were built for developers tracking issues. Worklenz was built for teams delivering client work, so time, money, and client communication are first-class features, not plugins you hope someone maintains.
Clone the repo, run the quick-setup script, and the full platform comes up on your own hardware: React frontend, TypeScript backend, PostgreSQL, Redis, and MinIO storage. No user limits, no license keys, no phone-home.
Boards, timelines, time tracking, budgets, resource scheduling, analytics, invoicing, and a client portal ship in the open source core. The features proprietary tools reserve for enterprise tiers are just there.
Agencies
Projects delivered
Billable hours captured
See what our customers have to say about their experience with Worklenz.
We are working with Trello until we have discovered Worklenz. The boards is better than Trello bzz you can view % of tasks completed and also the roadmap is more attractive than others. We are waiting the new features that make possible importer boards and projects from other platforms to migrate and centralize all project's information in one site.
Product Manager (EdTech) and Agile Coach at The Bridge
Amaizing product which is very simple and easy to use. Worklenz has revolutionized our workflow. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, task management is a breeze. Time tracking, insightful analytics, and seamless integrations make it a must-have for any team serious about productivity. Highly recommended!
Founder & Leadership at Loons Lab
Worklenz has revolutionized our workflow. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, task management is a breeze. Time tracking, insightful analytics, and seamless integrations make it a must-have for any team serious about productivity. Highly recommended!
Founder and CEO at LONGWApps (Pvt) Ltd
This is an excellent product. We practically experienced how productivity can increase after fully integrating this with our daily task schedule
Senior Lecturer at Sabaragamuwa University, Sri Lanka
We are working with Trello until we have discovered Worklenz. The boards is better than Trello bzz you can view % of tasks completed and also the roadmap is more attractive than others. We are waiting the new features that make possible importer boards and projects from other platforms to migrate and centralize all project's information in one site.
Product Manager (EdTech) and Agile Coach at The Bridge
Amaizing product which is very simple and easy to use. Worklenz has revolutionized our workflow. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, task management is a breeze. Time tracking, insightful analytics, and seamless integrations make it a must-have for any team serious about productivity. Highly recommended!
Founder & Leadership at Loons Lab
Worklenz has revolutionized our workflow. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, task management is a breeze. Time tracking, insightful analytics, and seamless integrations make it a must-have for any team serious about productivity. Highly recommended!
Founder and CEO at LONGWApps (Pvt) Ltd
This is an excellent product. We practically experienced how productivity can increase after fully integrating this with our daily task schedule
Senior Lecturer at Sabaragamuwa University, Sri Lanka
Per-seat SaaS pricing punishes growth. Open source turns project management into infrastructure you own.
Add your whole company, contractors included. Self-hosted Community is free at any headcount, so the tool stops being a budget line that scales against you.
Client contracts, budgets, and hours stay in your PostgreSQL database on your servers. Compliance reviews get much shorter when the answer is "it never leaves our infrastructure."
If we disappear tomorrow, your deployment keeps running and the code stays yours under AGPL-3.0. Export paths and a public schema mean your data is never hostage.
Audit the code your team runs, patch what bothers you, and contribute fixes upstream. The issue tracker is public and the maintainers ship regularly.
Capacity planning across projects, included in Community.
Native invoicing from tracked time. No paid plugin required.
Attachments stored in MinIO, S3, or Azure Blob, your choice.
Project and task templates for repeatable delivery.
Structure long projects into stages everyone can follow.
Configurable email summaries from your own SMTP.
Open source project management software publishes its full source code under a license that lets you run, inspect, modify, and redistribute it. Worklenz uses AGPL-3.0, a copyleft license: you can self-host and modify freely, and if you offer a modified version as a public service, you must publish those modifications too. That keeps improvements flowing back to the community.
This is different from "free tier" SaaS. A free plan is a pricing decision the vendor can reverse; an open source license is permanent. The Worklenz code on GitHub today stays available under those terms regardless of what any company decides later.
The strongest open source alternatives each have a distinct center of gravity. OpenProject is the enterprise classic, deep on Gantt charts and process, heavier to run. Plane is a fast-moving issue tracker with a modern interface, aimed squarely at software teams, and its free self-hosted edition caps workspaces at 12 users. Taiga is a focused Scrum tool. Redmine is the reliable veteran that shows its age. Leantime targets solo founders and small teams.
Worklenz differs in scope: it includes the business layer that surrounds the tasks. Time tracking, timesheets, project budgets, profitability, resource utilization, invoicing, and a client portal are all part of the core product. For agencies and services firms, those are usually the features that forced them into expensive proprietary tools; here they come with the open source license.
For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison of nine tools, see our guide to open source project management tools.
Not every team wants to run servers. Worklenz Cloud has a free plan with unlimited users and up to 3 active projects, and paid plans from $9.99 per user per month. It is the same codebase as the open source release, so you can start in the cloud and migrate to self-hosted later without changing tools.
Self-hosting suits teams with compliance requirements, existing infrastructure, or simple cost math: the Community edition is free with unlimited users and unlimited projects, and paid self-hosted plans ($99/month Business, $499/month Enterprise) add SSO, custom branding, backups, and support with no per-user fees.
The short version of how the main open source options differ.
| Worklenz | Plane / OpenProject / Taiga / Redmine | |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0, GPL v3, GPL v2 |
| Primary audience | Agencies and client-services teams | Software and IT teams |
| Time tracking & timesheets | Built in | OpenProject and Redmine partial; Plane and Taiga no |
| Budgets & profitability | Built in | OpenProject partial; others no |
| Invoicing | Built in | Not available |
| Client portal | Built in | Not available |
| Self-hosted user limits | Unlimited (Community) | Plane CE capped at 12 users; others unlimited |
Feature availability as of mid-2026; check each project's documentation for current details.
Common questions about open source Worklenz
AGPL-3.0 (GNU Affero General Public License v3.0). You can self-host, modify, and redistribute it. If you run a modified version as a public service, the AGPL requires you to publish your modifications under the same license.
Yes. The Community edition is free with unlimited users and unlimited projects. Paid self-hosted plans exist for teams that want more: Business ($99/month) adds SSO, custom branding, advanced reporting, and backups; Enterprise ($499/month) adds white-labeling, custom development, and 24/7 support. Neither charges per user.
React with Ant Design on the frontend, TypeScript and Express.js on the backend, PostgreSQL for data, Redis for caching, MinIO (or S3/Azure Blob) for file storage, behind Nginx. Deployment is Docker-based: clone the GitHub repo and run ./quick-setup.sh.
Plane and OpenProject are excellent for software and process-driven teams. Worklenz targets client-services work, so it ships time tracking, budgets, profitability, invoicing, and a client portal in the core, features the developer-focused tools do not cover. Plane's free self-hosted edition also caps workspaces at 12 users; Worklenz Community has no user limit.
Yes. Cloud and self-hosted run the same codebase, so teams commonly start on the free cloud plan and move to their own infrastructure when compliance or scale makes it worthwhile.
Worklenz is actively developed in the open at github.com/Worklenz/worklenz, with a public issue tracker and regular releases. The changelog on this site tracks each version.
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