Plane

A Jira alternative your whole team can actually open

Plane is an open source project tracking application published by Plane Software, Inc. It is built around the way software and delivery teams actually work.

Issues carry states, priorities, assignees, labels, estimates, attachments and sub-issues. Cycles are time-boxed sprints with burn-down, so a team can see what it committed to and what it finished. Modules group larger deliverables that span cycles, which is where epics and workstreams live. The same backlog is viewed as a list, a board, a calendar, a spreadsheet or a Gantt chart, so the planner and the developer can each look at it the way they prefer.

Around that sit pages: collaborative rich-text documents for specifications, notes and retrospectives, edited in real time and linked to the issues they describe. An analytics view reports on throughput and workload, and a REST API covers automation.

What we host, and what we do not

We host the Community edition, the AGPL-licensed open source product, and we are specific about the edges before you buy.

Single sign-on is not in it. Plane ships SSO only in the vendor's paid Commercial edition, which is a separate closed codebase. We do not resell it. Access to your workspace is protected by the node.uk sign-in in front of the application instead, and the accounts inside Plane are local to it. Removing a person from your workspace stops them reaching Plane immediately, which is the property that matters when somebody leaves, but it is two steps rather than one and we will not call it SSO.

That gate has two consequences worth knowing before you integrate. Plane's personal API tokens and its published "public" share links work only for signed-in members of your workspace, because every request passes the same front door. And the vendor's mobile app does not support the self-hosted Community edition at all, so Plane here is a browser application: it behaves well on a phone browser, but there is no app to install.

None of that is a defect we introduced. It is what the open edition of this product is, described plainly so the decision is yours.

Why Hosting for Plane with Node

No per-user licence - Jira, Linear and Asana bill by the seat, so the cost of tracking work rises with every person doing it. Plane has no per-user fee. You pay a flat managed platform cost, billed hourly against our published rate card.

Your roadmap stays yours - issues, customer names in tickets, specifications and delivery history sit on UK infrastructure you control, in a database you can export, under an Article 28 data processing agreement.

A stack we run, not one you assemble - Plane is several services (an API, background workers, a realtime server, the web front ends and object storage for attachments). Deploying it properly is real work, and it is our work: you get the application, not a docker-compose file and a weekend.

Run by named engineers - Chris Evans and Matt Collier deploy it, patch it, upgrade it and answer support. The people who run the platform are the people you talk to.

How it fits with the rest of your platform

Plane sits alongside the other applications in your Node workspace. Code and pull requests stay in Gitea, longer-form documentation in BookStack or Outline, customer conversations in Zammad, and every application is reached through the same Keycloak workspace sign-in. The platform is monitored by our Zabbix and Grafana stack and backed up nightly.

If you plan work on a schedule rather than in sprints, look at OpenProject as well: it is the Gantt-first tool in the same category, with a different set of trade-offs that we set out on its own page.

Open source alternative to Jira, Linear and Asana

Consideration	Jira / Linear / Asana	Hosting for Plane
Cost model	Per-user monthly subscription that grows with headcount	No per-user licence, flat managed platform fee
Data location	Vendor cloud, commonly outside the UK	UK infrastructure you control, or your own environment
Sprints and epics	Included, named differently per vendor	Cycles and modules, included
Single sign-on	Included, often on a higher tier	Vendor's paid Commercial edition only; we gate access with the node.uk workspace sign-in instead
Mobile app	Yes	No app for the self-hosted edition; browser only
Lock-in	Export within the vendor's terms	Open source, your database, exportable whenever you choose

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Open source provenance

Plane is AGPL-3.0-only software maintained upstream (source, ref v1.4.2). Node provides managed hosting, configuration and support. We are not the publisher.

• Hosting for paying customers: permitted under this licence.
• Source code offer (AGPL §13): https://github.com/makeplane/plane/tree/v1.4.2 — we run the stock upstream image unmodified.
• Trademark: "Plane" is a mark of Plane Software, Inc. We describe the product as "Hosting for Plane" and we are not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Plane Software, Inc.

Read more about how we work with the open source projects we host. Licence register last synced 2026-08-28.

Frequently asked questions

What is Plane?

Plane is open source project tracking software, published by Plane Software, Inc. Work is tracked as issues with states, priorities, labels, estimates and sub-issues, grouped into cycles (time-boxed sprints) and modules (larger deliverables), viewed as lists, boards, calendars, spreadsheets or Gantt charts. Alongside them sit collaborative pages for specifications and notes, an analytics view, and a REST API. It can be self-hosted, which is why it is in our catalogue.

Which edition do you host, and what is not included?

We host the Community edition, which is the AGPL-licensed open source product. Plane's single sign-on ships only in the vendor's paid Commercial edition, which is a separate closed codebase we do not resell. Everything the Community edition includes, including issues, cycles, modules, pages, views, analytics and the API, is yours in full.

How do people sign in if Plane's single sign-on is a paid feature?

Access to your workspace is protected by the node.uk sign-in, which sits in front of Plane: somebody who is not a member of your workspace group never reaches the application. The accounts inside Plane are local to it, so your team signs in to the workspace and then holds a Plane login behind that door, and removing a person from your workspace cuts their access immediately. That is a real access control, and it is not the same thing as the vendor's single sign-on, so we describe it as what it is.

What does that workspace sign-in change about how Plane behaves?

Two things, and both matter if you are planning an integration. Plane's personal API tokens and its published, so-called public share links only work for people who are signed in as members of your workspace, because every request passes the same gate. And the vendor's mobile app does not support the self-hosted Community edition at all, so Plane is a browser application here (it works well on a phone browser, but there is no app to install).

Is Plane a good alternative to Jira, Linear or Asana?

For product and delivery teams that work in sprints it is a close fit: cycles map onto sprints, modules onto epics or workstreams, and the board, list and spreadsheet views cover how most teams want to look at the same backlog. The honest caveats are the ones above: the sign-on story is our workspace gate rather than the vendor's SSO, and there is no mobile app for the self-hosted edition. Everything else is the product you can try upstream.

Can we migrate from Jira or Linear?

Yes, with planning rather than a button. Plane has a complete REST API, so we build and validate the import from your existing export: projects, issues, states, labels, comments and attachments. We scope it honestly, run both systems in parallel during the transition, and only cut over when the new one is proven.

Where does the data live, and who runs it?

On Node's UK infrastructure by default, or in your own environment when that is the engagement, with an Article 28 data processing agreement. Node Digital is Chris Evans and Matt Collier: we deploy it, upgrade it, back it up, monitor it and answer support ourselves.

Talk to us about issue tracking.

Tell us how your team plans and ships work, and an engineer will tell you honestly whether Hosting for Plane fits or whether something else in the catalogue suits you better.

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