Which open-source alternative to Monday.com fits your team
If your team needs timelines, Gantt-style planning and dependency-driven work packages, OpenProject is the stronger starting point. If your team runs mostly on boards, sprints and issue-style tasks, Plane is the closer match. Most monday.com accounts mix both patterns, so the practical first step is to inventory which boards carry schedule-critical work and which carry day-to-day task flow, then pilot each candidate against a representative subset of those boards before deciding on one platform or a split. Renewal pressure, a pricing change or a data residency requirement is usually what starts this review, so set the decision date against your contract end and allow time for a parallel run before you switch off the old workspace.
Teams look at open source for three reasons: cost control over time, the ability to host the platform inside their own cloud account or data center, and freedom from a single vendor's roadmap and terms. The licensing matters here. OpenProject is licensed GPL-3.0, and its free Community edition can be self-hosted. Plane's Community Edition is licensed AGPL-3.0, which carries network-use obligations if you modify the code and offer it to users over a network, so your legal team should review that condition before any customization. Neither license removes the cost of running the platform. Your own staff, or a partner, will handle installation, upgrades, backups, identity integration and security hardening, and those costs recur for as long as the platform runs.
Before you commit, confirm the features your teams depend on in each editor's current documentation rather than assuming parity. OpenProject lists SSO, LDAP synchronization, SCIM provisioning and portfolio and resource management in its paid Enterprise plans, so if your identity and access model depends on those, budget for an Enterprise plan from the start. Plane offers importers for several tools on its Commercial Edition, so check whether your required import path is available in the edition you plan to run. Ask each vendor for written confirmation of the edition, feature list and support terms that match your requirements, and request a quote that separates license fees, hosting, implementation, migration and ongoing support.
OpenProject and Plane as self-hosted monday.com options
Teams leaving monday.com usually need boards, timelines and task ownership without a per-seat SaaS dependency. OpenProject and Plane cover most of that surface when self-hosted, but they differ in license, edition gating and how much of a monday.com workflow they reproduce without rework.
OpenProject for planning and Gantt views
OpenProject is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ships as a free Community edition, with Enterprise on-premises and Enterprise cloud plans above it. Its work packages and Gantt charts map well to timeline-heavy monday.com boards, especially for teams that plan dependencies and portfolios. The trade-off is edition gating: SSO, LDAP synchronization, SCIM provisioning and portfolio and resource management sit in paid Enterprise plans, so confirm which identity features your rollout needs before you pick an edition.
Plane for boards and cycles
Plane is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and is built around issues, boards and cycles, which is the closest structural match to monday.com's kanban-style work. It offers importers for Asana, Jira, Linear, Notion, Confluence, ClickUp and CSV, but on the self-hosted side the importers are available on the Commercial Edition, so check which edition you will run. The AGPL-3.0 license also carries network-use obligations for modified code that your legal team should review before any internal customization.
Redmine for a classic Gantt tracker
Redmine is a GPL v2 tracker built on Ruby on Rails, with issue tracking, Gantt charts, wikis, time tracking and LDAP authentication. It suits teams that want a conservative, form-driven tracker and do not need monday.com-style visual boards. Expect to rebuild dashboards and automations with plugins or configuration, and test the plugin versions against your Redmine release before upgrading.
Extracting monday.com board data
monday.com's GraphQL platform API lets you read boards, items, column values, users and workspaces, which is the documented route for pulling data out before migration. Plan for a script that walks each board, maps column types to target fields and records item history separately, since the export does not preserve every automation or view. Ask your monday.com account owner which data classes your plan exposes through the API before you commit to a target.
Which open-source option covers each monday.com capability
This table maps the main monday.com capabilities to OpenProject and Plane, the two self-hosted options covered on this page. Read each row as a starting point for a fit check, since feature availability varies by edition and release, and confirm every item against the current release before planning a migration. The main takeaway is that boards, timelines and tasks map reasonably well, while automation recipes, no-code formulas and dashboards usually need rebuilding.
| Capability | OpenProject | Plane |
|---|---|---|
| Boards and item views | Work packages with board, list and table views; confirm board configuration in your release | Work items with list, board and kanban-style views; confirm grouping options in your release |
| Column types and custom fields | Custom fields of several types; complex column types such as formula or mirror columns need checking | Custom properties for common field types; confirm which monday.com column types have direct equivalents |
| Timelines and Gantt views | Gantt charts built into project planning; confirm dependency handling and baseline features | Cycles and timeline-style views; confirm whether Gantt-style scheduling meets your needs |
| Dependencies | Relations between work packages, including precedence types; confirm types against your current release | Blocking and related work item links; confirm whether dependency-driven rescheduling is supported |
| Subitems and hierarchy | Parent and child work packages with nested hierarchy | Sub-work items under a parent item |
| Automations | Limited native automation; recipes usually need rebuilding with workflows or scripting | Limited native automation; recipes usually need rebuilding with webhooks or scripting |
| Dashboards and reporting | Work package reports and portfolio views in paid Enterprise plans; confirm report types | Analytics views for work items; confirm chart types and export options |
| Users, roles and workspaces | Projects, roles and groups; SSO, LDAP synchronization and SCIM provisioning sit in paid Enterprise plans | Workspaces, projects and roles; confirm SSO and provisioning options for self-hosted editions |
| Integrations | Integration with common developer tools; confirm connectors your teams need | Importers for several tools and webhooks; confirm connectors that replace monday.com integrations |
| API access | REST API for projects, work packages and users; confirm endpoints against your release | REST API for projects and work items; confirm endpoints and rate limits in your release |
Which option fits by situation
When the main driver is where board data lives, the first option to evaluate is OpenProject, because its Community edition is licensed GPL-3.0 and can run entirely inside your own servers, cloud accounts or data center. Plane is the second candidate, since its Community Edition is licensed AGPL-3.0 and is also self-hosted. Both keep boards, items and attachments in infrastructure you control, but the hosting work moves to your team.
- Deployment target: Confirm which database, object storage and reverse proxy the platform expects in your environment and whether they fit your residency rules.
- Enterprise identity: SSO, LDAP synchronization and SCIM provisioning sit in paid OpenProject Enterprise plans, so check whether residency work also requires directory integration.
- Plane editions: Importers for monday.com are not listed in the supplied facts, so confirm with the Plane team which edition and import path you would use.
- Backups and logs: Decide where backups, audit logs and exports are stored, since monday.com exports will also sit in your environment.
Before committing, ask each vendor in writing where any telemetry, update checks or license validation traffic goes in a self-hosted install.
When the main driver is the recurring subscription, start by separating license cost from operating cost. Community editions of OpenProject and Plane carry no license fee, but you pay for hosting, administration, upgrades and support. OpenProject's paid Enterprise plans are a separate line item, and they are the place where SSO, LDAP, SCIM and portfolio features are sold.
- Free tier scope: Confirm which features you need that sit only in paid tiers, such as SSO, LDAP synchronization, SCIM provisioning or portfolio and resource management.
- Hosting cost: Estimate compute, storage and backup needs for your user count with your infrastructure team, since no hosting figures are supplied here.
- Administration effort: Account for the internal time needed to patch, upgrade and monitor the platform each release cycle.
- Support contracts: Ask vendors what support is included at each tier and whether a partner can be retained for upgrades.
- Migration effort: One-time work includes data extraction, mapping fields and retraining users, and it is often the largest early cost.
Ask for a quote that lists one-time migration work separately from recurring hosting, licensing and support.
When the main driver is avoiding dependence on a single vendor's data model or API, look first at the export path before choosing a target. monday.com's GraphQL platform API lets you read boards, items, column values, users and workspaces, which is the documented route for pulling your data out in a structured form. Target platforms with open licenses and documented import tools reduce how much your history depends on one company's roadmap.
- Export coverage: Test the GraphQL API on a sample board and check that item history, comments, attachments and column types arrive intact.
- Column mapping: Map monday.com column types to target fields before migration, since custom formulas and automations are unlikely to transfer directly.
- License terms: Compare GPL-3.0 for OpenProject with AGPL-3.0 for Plane, and confirm what each license requires if you modify and host the software.
- Importers: Plane lists importers for several tools, but monday.com is not among those named in the supplied facts, so confirm with the vendor.
- Parallel running: Keep monday.com read access for a defined period so you can verify migrated data.
Confirm with each vendor whether they will support a CSV or API-based migration path if no native importer exists.
When the main driver is a regulatory requirement, such as a bank, healthcare provider or public body, the choice depends on identity controls, audit evidence and whether the platform can run in a segregated network. OpenProject's Enterprise plans include SSO, LDAP synchronization and SCIM provisioning, which map to access management expectations in many control frameworks. DeployOpen can prepare systems, controls and evidence for an assessment, but independent auditors issue any report or certification.
- Identity controls: Confirm that SSO, LDAP and SCIM are available on the plan you need and that deprovisioning works as your policy requires.
- Audit trail: Verify which actions are logged, how long logs are retained and whether they can be exported to your SIEM.
- Network isolation: Check whether the platform can run in an isolated or air-gapped network with no outbound calls.
- Vulnerability management: Ask each vendor for its security advisory process and how quickly patches are released.
- Assessment scope: Agree with your auditor which controls the migrated system must evidence before go-live.
Ask each vendor for written confirmation of which controls its Enterprise plan covers and which remain your responsibility.
How to extract monday.com board data through the GraphQL API
The documented route for getting data out of monday.com is its GraphQL platform API, which lets an application read boards, items, column values, users and workspaces inside an account. Before you write any script, decide what you need to carry over, because the API returns what you ask for and nothing more. For a migration to OpenProject or Plane, capture four things: board structure (groups and their order), column definitions (names, types and allowed values for status and dropdown columns), item values per column, and users with their workspace membership so assignees can be matched later. Updates (the comment threads on items) and file assets are separate objects in the API and need their own queries if you want them preserved.
Create the API token from a dedicated service user rather than a personal administrator account, and give that user access only to the boards in scope. The token's permissions determine what the export can see, so a board the user cannot open will silently come back incomplete. Confirm the current token types, scopes and per-minute or per-day complexity limits in the monday.com developer documentation, starting with the API basics page, since limits change and a large account can hit them. Also confirm how items are paginated (cursor-based fetching of items per board) so your script does not assume a single response covers a whole board.
Plan for transformation before import. monday.com stores column values as typed JSON objects that differ by column type, so people, status and date columns each need mapping to the target's fields, and status labels need a translation table to the target's statuses. Map monday.com item hierarchies (subitems) to parent-child work packages or issues explicitly, and validate a sample board end to end on a test instance first. Expect to rerun the export at cutover to pick up changes made after the first pull, and keep the raw JSON responses as an archive, since they are your only complete record of the source configuration.
What a monday.com replacement costs over several years
This table lists each cost component of moving from monday.com to a self-hosted platform, who gets paid for it, whether it is one-time or recurring, and what drives it up or down. Read it as a checklist for building a multi-year comparison from your own invoices and written quotes, because no figures for these components are published here.
| Cost component | Who is paid or who bears it | One-time or recurring | What drives the cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| monday.com subscription | monday.com, from your current invoices | Recurring until cancellation | Seat count, plan tier, add-ons and any overlap during the parallel run |
| Self-hosted infrastructure | Your cloud provider or data center | Recurring | Number of users, storage for attachments, high availability and backup retention |
| OpenProject Enterprise license | OpenProject, if SSO, LDAP or SCIM is required | Recurring, by plan | Whether identity integration is needed and which Enterprise plan tier you select; confirm current terms on the pricing page |
| Data mapping and board export | Internal staff or implementation partner | One-time | Number of boards, custom columns, automations and linked items that must be translated into work packages or issues |
| Implementation and integration | DeployOpen or another implementation partner, under a written scope | One-time | Identity integration, custom fields, notification rules and reporting requirements; request a fixed-scope quote |
| Pilot and parallel run | Internal teams, plus any partner time | One-time, with overlapping subscription cost | Length of the parallel run and how many teams participate; the monday.com subscription continues during this period |
| Internal administration and training | Your own platform and project staff | Mostly one-time, with ongoing admin time | Team size, number of workflow changes and how many administrators you assign |
| Upgrades, backups and support | Your staff, or a retainer with a partner | Recurring | Release cadence of the chosen platform, backup scope, testing before upgrades and support hours agreed in writing |
What you give up when leaving monday.com and how to work around it
Moving a board-based work system off monday.com is rarely a one-to-one swap. The gaps below cluster around automation, reporting, integrations, access models and hosting, and each needs a decision before cutover. Test every item against your real boards in a pilot, not against a feature list.
No-code automations and recipes
monday.com automations trigger status changes, notifications and assignments when columns change, and teams often forget these rules until they stop working. Self-hosted tools generally expose their own workflow rules, webhooks and APIs, but the built-in rule set will differ. Inventory every automation, document its trigger and action, and rebuild each one as a workflow rule, a scheduled script or a webhook handler. Confirm the target platform's webhook events cover your triggers, and test failure handling, since a broken automation may fail silently.
Dashboard widgets and reporting views
Executives often read portfolio dashboards built from chart and summary widgets rather than from the boards themselves. Open-source trackers usually offer saved queries, Gantt views and reports, but not always the same widget set. Decide early whether dashboards will be rebuilt in the tool, exported to a separate BI product, or fed from the database through SQL. Pilot with the three dashboards your leadership reads most, and confirm each metric can be reproduced with the same numbers.
Third-party marketplace integrations
Many monday.com teams depend on marketplace apps for Slack, Google Drive, time tracking or CRM sync. Each app is a separate contract, a separate token and a separate failure point. Map every connected app to its owner and purpose, then decide whether the open-source platform offers a native connector, a maintained plugin or a custom integration through its API. Ask the vendor or community which connectors are maintained, and test authentication and sync conflicts during the pilot.
Formula and calculated columns
Formula columns on monday.com often carry budget totals, risk scores or status roll-ups that other teams rely on. These calculations rarely transfer as formulas. Move them into custom fields with defined calculation logic, into database views, or into a reporting layer, and record the formula logic in version control so it can be reviewed. Compare results for a sample of items before and after migration, because rounding, empty-value handling and date arithmetic often differ.
Guest and view-only access patterns
monday.com guest access and view-only seats let clients or executives see boards without editing them. Self-hosted platforms model external users, roles and read-only permissions differently, and some restrict these features to paid editions. Write down each external audience, the boards they see and the actions they need. Then confirm in the target edition that project-level roles can hide fields and comments, and that SSO and directory provisioning apply to guests as well as employees.
Vendor-hosted uptime and support
Moving to self-hosting shifts uptime, patching, backups and incident response from the vendor to your team or your implementation partner. A Monday-hosted service carries the vendor's operations and support commitments, and a self-hosted deployment carries whatever you agree to provide. Define recovery objectives, backup schedules, upgrade windows and on-call ownership in writing before cutover. Test a full restore from backup, not only the backup job, and confirm who applies security patches and how quickly.
Moving off monday.com in seven phases
This sequence turns monday.com boards into a documented inventory, a validated export, and a working open-source workspace that a team has used before the old account is retired. Each phase produces a record you can check before moving to the next.
Inventory boards, automations and integrations
List every board, workspace, dashboard and automation in use, and note the owner, active user count and any connected apps or webhooks that write data into boards. Mark which boards are live operational tools and which are archived, because archived boards often never need migrating. Decide with the team leads which automations must be rebuilt as workflow rules and which are no longer needed. The step is done when each board has a named owner and a keep, migrate or retire decision recorded in a shared document.
Export board data through the GraphQL API
Use monday.com's GraphQL platform API, which lets apps read boards, items, column values, users and workspaces in an account, to pull each board to JSON on a machine you control. Create a scoped API token with read access, store it in a secrets manager, and script the export so it can be rerun. Confirm with monday.com which API version and rate limits apply to your plan before scripting at volume. The step is done when every in-scope board has a complete JSON file and a row count that matches what the board shows in the interface.
Map columns and statuses to work packages or issues
Build a mapping table that connects each monday.com column type and status value to a target field, status or type in OpenProject or Plane. Status labels, people columns, timeline columns and dependencies rarely map one to one, so decide how each is handled and who signs off the decision. Flag columns that hold formulas, mirrored data or subitem logic, since these will need manual rebuilding. The step is done when the mapping table is approved by the board owners and every column has a target or an explicit retire decision.
Pilot with one team
Choose one team with a bounded set of boards and load the exported data into a test instance of OpenProject or Plane, using a staging server in your own infrastructure. The team works in the new tool for a fixed period agreed in advance, and the pilot records every gap, missing field, broken link and permission issue. Confirm whether your edition includes the importer or SSO features you need before relying on them, since these can sit in paid tiers. The step is done when the pilot team signs off that their core work can be done without going back to monday.com.
Run in parallel and reconcile records
Keep monday.com available as the system of record for the migrated teams while the open-source instance receives new work. Reconcile counts of items, owners and due dates between the two systems on a regular schedule, and log discrepancies with the person responsible for each board. Document any integration that still writes to monday.com so it can be redirected at cutover. The step is done when reconciliation shows no unexplained differences for two consecutive checks agreed by the project owner.
Cut over and freeze monday.com edits
Set a cutover date with each team, run a final incremental export, and load it into the new platform. Make monday.com boards read-only or remove edit rights so that no work is written to two places, and repoint integrations, notifications and user access to the new system. Brief users on where work now lives and where to report problems. The step is done when the final export has been loaded, integrations point to the new system, and no team is still entering work in monday.com.
Decommission the monday.com account after final export
Before closing the account, confirm with monday.com in writing how long your data is retained after cancellation and how to request a copy if one is needed later. Store the final JSON exports, attachments and the mapping table in your retention location, with access controls and a documented owner. Remove API tokens and third-party app authorizations, then cancel the subscription and record the date. The step is done when the retention terms are on file, the archive has been verified by opening sample records, and the account is closed with the decision recorded.
Questions buyers ask before moving off monday.com
How long does a migration off monday.com take?
The duration depends mainly on how many boards, items and integrations you have and how much of your workflow lives in automations and dashboards that must be rebuilt by hand. Plain boards with a few columns move quickly, while boards tied to automations, formulas, cross-board links and external apps take longer because none of those travel automatically. Ask any implementation partner for a written scope that lists boards, column types, integrations and users before agreeing a timeline. A fixed-scope agreement makes the timeline and deliverables explicit before work starts.
Can our team migrate from monday.com without outside help?
A small team with one administrator and a simple set of boards can often do it internally, especially for a pilot project. Teams with many workspaces, sensitive data, audit requirements or custom automations usually need help designing the target structure, scripting the data export and validating the results. Decide early which parts you will own, such as user accounts, permissions and reporting, and which parts you will hand to a specialist. Ask for a written list of deliverables so both sides know what is done at handover.
What does a migration need from admins and API owners?
Admins need to export a complete list of workspaces, boards, users, roles and guest access, and to decide how each workspace maps to a project or work package structure in the new platform. API owners need a token with read access to the boards they plan to extract, which is created through monday.com's GraphQL platform API. Check with your monday.com administrator that the token's permissions follow your access policy, and rotate or revoke it when the export finishes. Plan a window where the source boards are frozen so that no changes are lost between extraction and cutover.
Can Plane or OpenProject import directly from monday.com?
The importers documented for Plane cover Jira, Linear, Asana, ClickUp, Notion, Confluence, Flatfile and CSV, and OpenProject's documented Jira Migrator targets Jira Data Center only. Neither list names monday.com, so do not assume a direct importer exists. Confirm the current options with each vendor before you commit. In practice, teams usually export monday.com boards to CSV or JSON through the API and map the columns to the target fields, which is a scripted step that needs review.
What do Enterprise features cost in effort terms?
OpenProject lists SSO, LDAP synchronization, SCIM provisioning and portfolio and resource management in its paid Enterprise plans, so teams that need those controls must budget for a subscription as well as the setup work. The effort to configure them depends on your identity provider, directory structure and provisioning rules. Ask the vendor which plan includes each feature you need, and ask your implementation partner to estimate configuration and testing separately from licensing. Recurring subscription fees and one-time configuration work should appear as separate lines in any quote.
How do we keep migrated data inside our own infrastructure?
Self-hosting keeps the platform and its database inside your cloud account, data center or air-gapped network, so the data does not leave the environment you control. The export step still matters, because the JSON or CSV files extracted from monday.com will exist temporarily on someone's workstation or in a pipeline, so define where they are stored, who can read them and when they are deleted. Use encrypted storage, least-privilege accounts and documented retention for the exports. Ask your partner to include those controls, and the evidence for them, in the written scope.
What breaks after cutover and how do we check it?
Common breakages include automations, dashboards, integrations with other tools, user notifications and saved views, because these rarely migrate as data. Build a test list from your current boards and run it against the new platform with real users before the old workspace is closed. Keep the monday.com account readable for a defined period so teams can check historical records. Record what was validated, by whom and when, so the cutover can be audited later.
How DeployOpen scopes, migrates and supports the replacement
DeployOpen plans, implements, customizes, integrates, hardens, backs up, upgrades, documents and supports self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks. For a move away from monday.com, that means the replacement runs where your data and controls already sit, with the board export, configuration and users handled under a written scope.
How we scope
- Most engagements are fixed-scope, with scope, deliverables and timelines agreed in writing before work starts.
- The written scope lists which boards, items, column types, users and workspaces move, and which are retired.
- Scope also names what is rebuilt by hand, such as automations, dashboards and integrations, so nothing is assumed to carry over.
How we build
- We deploy the chosen platform, such as OpenProject or Plane, inside your environment and configure projects, statuses and roles.
- We script the extraction of board data through monday.com's GraphQL API and test the import on a copy before any cutover.
- We integrate single sign-on and identity provisioning where your chosen edition supports them, and confirm that with the vendor first.
How we hand over
- Each deliverable is documented, including configuration, data mapping decisions and a record of what was not migrated.
- Your team receives runbooks for backups, upgrades and access management, written for the people who will operate the system.
- Acceptance is checked against the written scope, with open gaps listed so you know what remains after handover.
How we support
- Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as retainers after handover.
- Retainers can cover scheduled platform upgrades, backup verification and security testing of the deployed system.
- Ask for the retainer terms in writing, including response expectations, before you choose a support model.
