In my day job, we use Jira to manage our software development projects. For various things at home, I would also like to use a ticket system, And while I wholeheartedly hate Jira, compared to the open source alternatives I found, it is still the best system.
Is anyone aware of a good alternative that provides a good backlog view, a Kanban board, and the possibility to group tickets together in epics and sagas?
I think Request Tracker is the closest thing to Jira, whether it’s good or bad is an open question (for me).
Redmine is the top self-hosted alternative to Jira
Yep, I agree, UI looks a bit old but reacts quickly so it’s nice to use. You need to add plugins for some features like kanban IIRC.
I self-host Forgejo and use its issues for this purpose, though it’s probably too simplistic based on your description.
OpenProject is what you’re looking for.
When JIRA practically stopped supporting self-hosted installations we migrated to YouTrack and it worked quite well. Not as powerful, but the simplicity also comes as an advantage.
Also running youtrack here and I’m quite happy about it. It lacks some features though that seem quite basic to me. E.g. you can’t sort knowledge base articles alphabetically and in the Gantt chart you can’t show the due date of an issue
Also the android app crashes all the time
The knowledge base really could use a lot of improvement. The basic ticketing and agile board system works quite well though.
Taiga looks interesting, I will give it a spin!
Wanted to look at Taiga a bit and then saw this:

That’s a no for me, dawg.
EDIT: Nah the downvoters are right, Halliburton is one of the “most agile” companies in the world, and has a stellar reputation I should flaunt on my homepage /s
I mean, technically they could have hyper agile teams that use taiga there?
When they say agile they don’t mean that the company is flexible and adjusts to new situations quickly.
They mean that those companies are some of the most proficient in Agile software development methodology.
To be fair I see how people can get them confused. But in the context of work tracking they clearly mean the latter. They even use the capital “A” in “Agile”.
You can learn more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development
Huly is worth checking out. We’ve been on it for about a year. They’re in super active developments so features are coming rapidly, sometimes breaking or requiring migrations.
They have both a SaaS version and self-hosted version.
They seem to be in bed with livekit.io and OpenAI. They’re also still using Telegram and X. That means Huly isn’t a fit replacement for anything.
That project looks great. If they ever move their code out of Github I would contribute.
wekan and Jotty are very lightweight and flexible.
TIL Jira isn’t selfhosted anymore?
…and their SAAS version is a terrible pain to use
They require an “data center” subscription now, and they will end support for that in 2029. So self hosting jira is basically not an option anymore.
Comically, the organization with the worst history for virtualization now doubled-down on SAAS. This is certainly going well.
Check out OpenPeoject if you’re wanting something like Jira. Personally, for home/personal tasks, I like the Deck software that comes pre installed with NextCloud. It’s more basic, but I don’t need too many features for my personal stuff; just a kanban board.
I tried Open project, but it was kind of weird. Also, for quite a lot of features, they require you to purchase a license. The community edition feels quite crippled.
It’s strictly a ticket system without any pm/kanban, but I really like RT request tracker.
Trac has backlog and milestones (for epics and sagas) and plugins offer kanbans. It’s been OK when I’ve used it, including hosting one.
God no




