Is self-hosted OpenProject cheaper than Wrike for a PMO?
OpenProject's Community edition has no licence fee, but a PMO that needs single sign-on, LDAP group synchronization or portfolio and resource management will be on Enterprise on-premises plans. Those are priced per named user per month: Basic at 5.95 euros, Professional at 10.95 euros with a 25-user minimum, and Premium at 15.95 euros with a 100-user minimum. Corporate is quoted on request for 250 or more users. Wrike's plan prices are not part of this comparison, so take your per-seat rate, term length and add-ons from your own order form and renewal notice before you model anything. Check the minimums as well, because a small team on Professional may pay for seats it does not use.
The licence line is only one of several costs. Hosting is recurring: OpenProject's sizing guide suggests 4 cores and 4 GB RAM for up to 200 users, 8 cores and 8 GB for about 500 users, and 16 cores and 16 GB for about 1,500 users, before you add PostgreSQL 16, backups, monitoring and a staging environment. Administration is also recurring, covering upgrades, security patches and restore tests. The main one-time cost is the move itself: rebuilding projects, custom fields and workflows from Wrike exports, which are limited to 65,000 rows, and agreeing what history you keep. Ask any implementation partner for a fixed-scope written quote that separates these items, so you can compare it with your Wrike renewal over the same period.
Self-hosting tends to win on licence cost at scale only when internal skills and hosting are already in place. If your platform team already runs PostgreSQL, container platforms and backup tooling, the marginal cost of OpenProject can be low. If they do not, the savings on seats can be consumed by staff time and outside support. Build a three-year comparison that includes the Enterprise tier you actually need, the infrastructure, administration time and migration, then test it against the Wrike terms in your contract.
Which cost components sit on each side, and which are one-time or recurring
This table sets Wrike's commercial cost components beside the self-hosted OpenProject components, row by row, so you can see who is paid for what. Read the one-time or recurring column first, then check which drivers move each cost up or down before asking vendors for a quote.
| Cost component | Wrike (commercial side) | Self-hosted OpenProject side | One-time or recurring |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription or license | Per-user subscription on Team, Business, Pinnacle or Apex, with features gated by plan | Free Community edition, or Enterprise on-premises billed per named user per month, with SSO and LDAP sync in paid tiers | Recurring |
| Hosting and infrastructure | Included in the subscription; Wrike hosts the data | Servers or cloud instances, storage, network and load balancing in your own or a chosen provider's environment | Recurring |
| Database and backups | Vendor-managed; exports and full account backups depend on plan | PostgreSQL 16 or later with required extensions, plus your own backup jobs and restore tests | Recurring |
| Implementation and configuration | Mostly internal setup of workspaces, folders, request forms and custom fields | Installation, roles, workflows, custom fields, SSO integration and hardening, by internal staff or a partner under written scope | One-time, with later changes recurring |
| Data migration from Excel exports | Excel export on every plan, subject to a row limit, without comments or attachments by default | Staff time to clean exports, map columns and rebuild dependencies; confirm the Excel import path for your data set | One-time |
| Attachments and history | Full account backup on eligible plans; confirm what is included on your plan | Attachments and comments must be moved separately if the export omits them; confirm scope before migrating | One-time |
| Training | Vendor learning resources and internal onboarding time | Internal onboarding time and admin training, plus materials you write for your own workflows | One-time, with new hires recurring |
| Support | Included support tiers set by the Wrike plan | Community forums without a contract, or Enterprise support under the plan you buy; confirm response terms | Recurring |
| Upgrades and patching | Handled by the vendor on the cloud service | Your team applies releases on your schedule, such as the 17.x line, plus testing in a non-production copy | Recurring |
| Internal administration | Admin time for users, permissions and plan features | Admin time for servers, identity integration, monitoring, capacity planning and audits, often the largest recurring line | Recurring |
How the OpenProject Enterprise per-user prices add up
OpenProject Enterprise on-premises is priced per named user per month, so the annual cost is a multiplication of headcount, plan rate and twelve months. The method is: users times monthly price times 12. Using the euro list prices from the OpenProject pricing page as an illustrative example, 30 named users on Professional at 10.95 euros per user per month would be 30 times 10.95 times 12, or 3,942 euros per year before any tax or discount. That same 30 users would not fit Premium, because Premium has a 100-user minimum, and Professional has a 25-user minimum, so a team of 20 would need to be quoted differently or stay on Community. Corporate is quoted on request for 250 or more users, so the reader should ask for a written quote rather than computing it. Confirm with OpenProject whether the minimums apply to the purchased seat count and whether pricing changes at renewal.
Count named users honestly before you multiply. Wrike's per-user pricing may have counted different seats than OpenProject will, including guests, viewers, service accounts and integration users, so map each Wrike seat to an OpenProject role and decide which accounts need a paid named seat. Ask the vendor how inactive and read-only users are treated, and whether the minimum applies to the first purchase only. The bill also grows with headcount, so plan for seat changes each year.
The Community edition is free, but it does not include single sign-on, LDAP group synchronization or SCIM provisioning, which OpenProject lists as Enterprise features. Teams that rely on directory-driven access control will need an Enterprise plan to avoid manual account administration. The Jira Migrator also sits under Enterprise plans from Basic upward, so a Jira-to-OpenProject migration in a Community-only budget is not covered by the supplied pricing information. Before you commit, confirm the exact feature list for each tier, the license terms for on-premises use, and whether support hours or upgrade assistance are included in the quote.
What moves the comparison most
Six drivers decide whether a self-hosted OpenProject deployment costs less than staying on Wrike. Most of them are set by your own headcount, data and workflows, so measure them before you request a quote or a scope.
Named users and minimums
OpenProject Enterprise on-premises is priced per named user per month, and the tiers carry minimums. Professional requires 25 users and Premium requires 100, so a small team may pay for seats it does not use. Count named users, not licensed Wrike seats, and separate active editors from occasional viewers. Ask the vendor how the tier and minimum apply to your exact headcount, because the per-user figure alone does not give the annual total.
Enterprise features you require
The Community edition is free, but single sign-on, LDAP group synchronization and custom branding sit in paid Enterprise tiers. SCIM provisioning and portfolio and resource management are also paid features. List which of these your identity model, audit rules and PMO reporting need, then price only the tier that covers them. Teams that need no Enterprise features may run Community with community support instead.
Data volume and attachments
Storage, backup size and migration effort grow with attachments and history. Wrike's Excel export has a 65,000-row limit and omits comments and attachments, so attachments may need a separate full account backup on eligible plans. Estimate total attachment volume per year, since it drives disk, backup copies and retention. Confirm which storage and backup tooling your provider charges for and what it costs to restore a large project.
Availability and backup expectations
A self-hosted OpenProject instance becomes your responsibility for uptime, patching, backups and restore tests. Wrike's hosted service carries those duties for you, so the recurring cost moves to your team or a retainer partner. Define the recovery point and recovery time your PMO expects, then confirm whether that needs a high-availability layout, scheduled database snapshots or an off-site copy. These choices change hosting spend more than license fees do.
Linux and PostgreSQL skills
OpenProject runs on Docker or packaged Linux installs and needs PostgreSQL 16 or later with the pg_trgm, btree_gist and unaccent extensions. Sizing guidance starts at 4 cores and 4 GB RAM for up to 200 users and grows with headcount. If your team lacks these skills, budget for either staff training or an external operator. Ask who will apply upgrades, and whether that person can run database maintenance without vendor help.
Workflows and custom fields to rebuild
Every Wrike workflow, custom field, request form and automation you must recreate adds one-time migration effort. The Excel import carries tasks, dependencies, assignees and dates, but rebuilding statuses, custom fields and approval paths is manual work. Inventory these items per project and mark which ones the PMO still uses. A short list of active templates usually costs far less to rebuild than a full export of years of archived projects.
How to build the comparison with your own numbers
This sequence turns the Wrike bill and the OpenProject price list into a three-year comparison that uses your user counts, features and infrastructure, so the result reflects your organization rather than a generic estimate.
Collect your current Wrike contract and invoices
Procurement or finance pulls the active Wrike order form, the plan tier (Team, Business, Pinnacle or Apex), the renewal date and the last twelve months of invoices. Note every add-on, overage charge and any multi-year discount written into the contract. The output is a single sheet showing what you pay today and which terms can change at renewal. Confirm the figures with your Wrike account representative, since invoices can include tax, currency conversion or one-off services that the list price does not show.
Count named users and seasonal peaks
The PMO or the Wrike administrator exports the user list and separates active named users from guests, inactive accounts and shared logins. Record the monthly peak, such as quarter-end or release periods, because OpenProject Enterprise on-premises is priced per named user and tiers have minimum user counts. The output is a count of active named users for each month of the last year, with the peak marked. Ask your team to confirm which accounts are still needed before you use the count in any calculation.
List the features each team relies on
Each team lead lists the Wrike features they use day to day, such as Gantt charts, request forms, workload views, custom fields, approvals, integrations and reporting. Mark which features are core to the workflow and which are occasional. Compare that list with OpenProject's Community features and its Enterprise features, including single sign-on, LDAP group synchronization and portfolio and resource management. The output is a feature matrix that shows which OpenProject edition each team needs. Any feature you cannot confirm in OpenProject should go to the vendor as a written question.
Price the matching OpenProject edition
Using the feature matrix and the user count, identify the OpenProject edition. The Community edition is free and includes work packages, Gantt charts, agile boards, time tracking and dashboards, with community support. If you need single sign-on, LDAP group synchronization or the Jira Migrator, the Enterprise on-premises tiers apply, priced per named user per month with minimum user counts on the pricing page. Multiply the monthly per-user rate by your user count and by twelve, and note the currency and the edition. The output is an annual license line for each edition you are considering.
Size the infrastructure against the sizing guide
Your infrastructure or platform team maps the user count to the OpenProject sizing guide, which suggests 4 cores and 4 GB RAM for up to 200 users, 8 cores and 8 GB for about 500 users, and 16 cores and 16 GB for about 1,500 users. Add the PostgreSQL 16 or later database, backups, storage for attachments, a staging environment and the load balancer. Obtain cloud or data center prices for those resources from your provider. The output is a monthly or annual infrastructure cost line with the sizing tier named, and the assumptions written beside it.
Estimate migration and administration effort
Your PMO and internal IT estimate the work to export Wrike projects, tasks, dependencies and attachments, rebuild workflows and custom fields, test the result and train users, then estimate ongoing administration such as upgrades, backups, patching and user provisioning. Record the hours and the role for each task, and mark which items are one-time and which recur each year. The output is a labeled effort table that you fill in with your own estimates. Where you engage an implementation partner, request a fixed-scope written proposal that lists deliverables and exclusions before you add it to the model.
Run three-year totals for both sides
Build one sheet with two columns: the current Wrike cost and the self-hosted OpenProject cost. For Wrike, carry the current annual spend forward and apply only renewal changes stated in your contract. For OpenProject, add the license, infrastructure, one-time migration and recurring administration for each year. Show the totals, the difference and the assumptions behind each cell. The output is a three-year comparison that a finance reviewer can trace line by line.
Request written quotes for every external line
Before you present the model, collect written quotes for every line that comes from outside your organization: Wrike renewal pricing, OpenProject Enterprise licenses, cloud or hosting services, and any implementation or support partner. Compare each quote with the figure in your model and update the totals. The output is a model where every external number is backed by a quote with a date, a currency and a stated scope. DeployOpen provides a quote from a written scope, so ask for one only after the scope is agreed.
What rebuilding projects from Excel exports really costs in time
The effort starts with the export route itself, so estimate it before anything else. Wrike's Excel export is limited to 65,000 rows, which means a large portfolio may need several export batches. The export also leaves out comments and attachments. Attachments come only from a full account backup, and that option depends on your plan, so confirm your tier with Wrike before planning. Count rows per project rather than per account, and note which projects have long comment threads, since those discussions must be carried over by hand or archived as reference files. Every project split across more than one batch adds reconciliation work that a single-file estimate will miss.
The core work is mapping. Each Wrike task becomes an OpenProject work package, and the mapping must carry dependencies, assignees, start and due dates, and the parent-child structure that Gantt charts depend on. Assignees only resolve if matching user accounts already exist in OpenProject, so build the user list first. Each custom field needs its own line in the plan: name, field type, allowed values and source column. A single-select field in Wrike may need to become a list or a text field in OpenProject. Workflows and statuses do not travel with the data, so the target status set and transitions must be designed by hand. Use OpenProject's Excel synchronization on one pilot project to test these mappings before you scale.
OpenProject's Jira Migrator does not apply to Wrike. It is in beta, reads only Jira Data Center 10.x and 11.x, does not support Jira Cloud, and its OpenProject's Jira migration documentation advises test setups only, so Wrike work has no vendor importer to rely on. Estimate effort per project and per custom field, and ask for that breakdown in writing: number of projects, rows, custom fields, workflows and users, plus the rework expected after the pilot. Separate one-time costs (mapping, scripts, validation, account setup) from recurring ones (administration, upgrades and any Enterprise features you need). Confirm with OpenProject and Wrike which fields your tenant's export actually contains, because every number in the estimate depends on it.
Frequently asked questions about Wrike and self-hosted OpenProject costs
How much effort does a Wrike to OpenProject migration take?
The effort depends mainly on how much structured data you need to carry over and how many workflows and custom fields must be rebuilt. Teams usually export tasks, dependencies, assignees and dates from Wrike to Excel, respecting the 65,000-row export limit, then load them into OpenProject. Attachments and comments need a separate path, since the Excel export does not carry them. Ask Wrike which export your plan includes and ask OpenProject how its Excel synchronization handles your field types. Ask any partner to size the work from a sample of your real projects, not from a headline figure.
Can an internal team run OpenProject without an outside partner?
Yes, many internal teams run OpenProject themselves, provided someone owns installation, upgrades, backups, user administration and the database. The Docker-based installation is the recommended route, and OpenProject publishes system requirements and release notes that your team can follow. The harder questions are whether you have the skills to operate PostgreSQL, the time to apply releases such as 17.9.2, and the capacity to rebuild workflows during cutover. An outside partner can take on any of these as a fixed-scope piece, while your team keeps the rest.
How long does rebuilding Wrike projects in OpenProject take?
The time to rebuild projects depends on the number of projects, the depth of dependencies, the number of custom fields and how much of your Wrike structure needs an exact equivalent. Simple task lists move faster than portfolios with request forms, workload views and approval steps. No supplied figure gives a duration, so ask any provider for a schedule built from an inventory of your Wrike spaces, folders, custom fields and automations, and confirm that inventory with your own admins before work starts.
Is OpenProject Community enough, or do I need Enterprise for SSO and LDAP?
The Community edition is free and covers work packages, Gantt charts, agile boards, time tracking and dashboards, but it comes with community support only. Single sign-on through SAML, OIDC, CAS, Kerberos or Okta, LDAP group synchronization and custom branding are listed among the Enterprise features. SCIM provisioning and portfolio and resource management also sit in paid Enterprise plans. If your identity provider must control access, Enterprise is the relevant tier. Confirm the current feature list on the OpenProject pricing page before you decide.
What does ongoing administration of self-hosted OpenProject require?
Ongoing administration covers applying releases, maintaining the PostgreSQL database with the pg_trgm, btree_gist and unaccent extensions, monitoring capacity, managing user accounts and taking backups that you have tested. OpenProject officially supports PostgreSQL 16 or later, and its sizing guide scales from 4 cores and 4 GB RAM for up to 200 users to 16 cores and 16 GB RAM for about 1,500 users. Each of these tasks is recurring, so budget for staff time or a support retainer for the life of the system, not only for the cutover.
What should a fixed-scope quote for this engagement include?
A fixed-scope quote should list the systems in scope, the Wrike plans and data sets being moved, the OpenProject edition and hosting target, and the deliverables for each phase. It should state what is excluded, such as attachments from an unsupported export or custom integrations, and what you must provide, such as admin access and a sample dataset. Ask for the acceptance criteria, the handover documentation and whether ongoing support is priced separately as a retainer. DeployOpen agrees scope, deliverables and timelines in writing before work starts and does not publish a price list, so the quote follows from that written scope.
Can OpenProject import Wrike data directly, or do I need Excel?
The supplied OpenProject material documents an Excel synchronization route for Wrike-style task data, while its Jira Migrator is a separate beta tool that only reads Jira Data Center 10.x and 11.x. It does not read Wrike. Plan on Excel exports for tasks, dates, dependencies and assignees, and confirm with OpenProject how its Excel synchronization handles your columns, user mapping and custom fields. Attachments and comments need a separate handling step.
When to start the comparison before the renewal date
Start the cost model early enough that a pilot with a subset of projects finishes before Wrike's renewal decision is due. The renewal date is the hard deadline, and it is set by the terms in your current Wrike order form, not by any migration plan. Pull the renewal notice period, the auto-renewal clause and any price-increase language from your contract now, and ask your Wrike account team to confirm them in writing. Work backward from those dates to set the timeline, using your own renewal and migration plan rather than an estimate from this page.
A pilot is the cheapest way to test the model. Choose a handful of active projects with a mix of dependencies, recurring tasks and attachments, export them from Wrike, and rebuild them in a non-production OpenProject instance. Measure the hours spent on mapping, cleanup and user training, and record which custom fields and workflows did not carry over. Those measurements replace assumptions in the per-user Enterprise calculation and show what the hosting and administration line really needs. Keep the pilot inside a written scope so the work does not drift into a full migration before the decision is made.
Plan the OpenProject side against its release cadence. Confirm the cadence from the OpenProject release notes, and check which release you intend to deploy, since the pilot and production instances should run the same version. Fold upgrade windows into the plan so a major release does not land during your cutover. Ask any implementation partner to quote the pilot, the production build and the upgrade work as separate line items, so you can see which costs are one-time and which recur.
How DeployOpen scopes a fixed-price OpenProject implementation
DeployOpen plans, implements, integrates, hardens, backs up and documents self-hosted open-source platforms inside your own cloud accounts, data centers or air-gapped networks. For a Wrike replacement, we start from a written scope that separates the OpenProject setup, the data move from Wrike exports and the administration you will carry after handover.
How we scope
- Inventory which Wrike plans, spaces, folders, request forms and Gantt plans are in use today
- Confirm which export routes you can use, including the Excel export and any full account backup
- Agree in writing which OpenProject edition, hosting model and Enterprise features are in scope
- Define the users, workflows and custom fields to rebuild, and those to retire
How we build
- Deploy OpenProject with Docker or packaged installs on your chosen Linux distribution and database
- Configure projects, work package types, statuses, custom fields and Gantt baselines to match the agreed scope
- Load exported Wrike data into a test instance and check dates, dependencies, assignees and attachments
- Set up SSO, backups and access controls where they are included in the written scope
How we hand over
- Document the architecture, configuration, upgrade steps and the data mapping used for the move
- Run a supervised cutover with a rollback plan agreed before work starts
- Train administrators on user management, backups and routine maintenance tasks
- Provide a list of open items, including any Wrike data that could not be carried across
How we support
- Offer ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing as a retainer after handover
- Plan OpenProject version upgrades against the release notes before each change window
- Keep backup and restore tests on a schedule your team can review
- Ask for a quote built from the written scope, with recurring and one-time items shown separately
