Plane

Plane is an open-source project management platform built for engineering, product, and operations teams. It brings issue tracking, sprint cycles, wikis, and AI-powered workflows into a single workspace. We rate it 79/100 — an excellent choice for teams that want Linear-quality UX with the flexibility of self-hosting and a far lower total cost of ownership.

What is Plane?

Plane was founded by Vihar Kurama and the team at Plane Powers, launching publicly in 2022 as an open-source alternative to Jira and ClickUp. It's licensed under AGPL-3.0, meaning the core product is free to inspect, fork, and self-host. By early 2026, the GitHub repo at makeplane/plane has accumulated over 32,000 stars, making it one of the most popular open-source project management tools available.

Where Plane differentiates itself from competitors like Linear is in its breadth: it bundles a collaborative wiki (Plane Pages), intake forms, time tracking, and AI agents natively — features that would otherwise require Confluence, Notion, or separate add-ons. For teams tired of paying for four different tools, Plane's all-in-one approach is genuinely compelling.

Key Features of Plane

• Issues & Cycles: Create, triage, and prioritize work items with customizable states, labels, priorities, and due dates. Cycles function like sprints — you define a time-boxed iteration, drag issues in, and track velocity across runs.
• Plane Pages (Wiki): A built-in collaborative document editor that integrates directly with your work items. Unlike Linear, which has no native docs, Plane Pages lets teams maintain runbooks, specs, and RFCs alongside the work itself.
• AI Agents (Plane AI): The AI layer can auto-triage incoming issues, suggest assignees based on past patterns, generate sub-tasks from a description, and summarize long issue threads. AI credits are bundled into every paid plan.
• Self-hosting in under 5 minutes: Plane's Docker-based installer is legitimately fast. Multiple reviewers on Product Hunt and Reddit confirm setup takes under 10 minutes on a standard VPS.
• Native integrations: GitHub, GitLab, Slack, and Sentry ship out of the box. Slack integration supports creating work items from messages and syncing comments bidirectionally.
• Custom Work Item Types: Unlike Linear's fixed issue model, Plane (on Pro+) lets you define your own item types — Bugs, Features, Incidents, Customer Requests — each with its own fields and workflows.

What Users Say About Plane

Sentiment across G2, Product Hunt, and Reddit's r/projectmanagement is broadly positive, particularly around UI quality and value. On G2, recurring praise focuses on Plane's speed ("switching between hundreds of tasks without lag"), the clean interface, and the self-hosting capability. On Product Hunt, the open-source angle resonates strongly with developers who resent vendor lock-in.

The most common complaints: analytics are basic on lower tiers, the mobile apps lag behind the web experience, and some advanced reporting features available in Jira or ClickUp simply don't exist yet. A Reddit thread from early 2026 also noted that the AI features, while promising, still feel like "v1" — useful for simple triage but not yet reliable enough to replace human judgment on complex prioritization.

Plane Pricing

Plane's pricing is refreshingly transparent and consistent — cloud and self-hosted users pay identical rates.

Plan	Price	Key Limits / Inclusions
Free	$0/seat/month	Up to 12 seats, core features, 500 AI credits/seat/mo
Pro	$6/seat/month (annual) / $8/month	Unlimited seats, wiki, time tracking, epics, SSO, 1,000 AI credits/seat/mo
Business	$13/seat/month (annual) / $15/month	Recurring items, intake forms, workflows, nested pages, 2,000 AI credits/seat/mo
Enterprise	Custom	Private deployments, LDAP, audit logs, flexible AI credit pool

For a 10-seat team, Plane Pro costs $720/year — roughly 40% less than Linear's Basic plan at $1,200/year for equivalent functionality.

Who Should Use Plane?

Best for: Engineering and product teams of 5–100 people who want a modern, fast issue tracker without SaaS vendor lock-in. Particularly strong for teams already self-hosting other infrastructure, teams migrating off Jira Server, and budget-conscious startups that need Linear-quality UX at a lower price.

Not ideal for: Large enterprises with complex PMO requirements — resource management, portfolio-level reporting, and Gantt charts are still underdeveloped. Also not a great fit for non-technical teams expecting Asana-style simplicity out of the box.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Genuinely fast UI — no perceptible lag even with large backlogs
• Self-hostable with Docker in under 10 minutes (confirmed across multiple independent reviews)
• Built-in wiki eliminates the need for a separate Confluence/Notion subscription
• 40% lower total cost of ownership vs. Linear for small teams
• Active open-source development with frequent releases

Cons:

• Mobile apps (iOS/Android) feel less polished than the web app
• Analytics and reporting are basic on Free and Pro tiers
• AI features are promising but still early — not yet reliable for complex triage
• Custom work item types require at least the Pro plan

Alternatives to Plane

Linear is the closest direct competitor — beautiful, opinionated, and beloved by product teams, but entirely cloud-only and more expensive. Jira remains the enterprise standard with unmatched integrations but comes with significant setup overhead and cost. ClickUp offers more features per dollar but has a reputation for UI complexity that teams either love or despise.

Verdict: Is Plane Worth It?

Plane earns a 79/100. It's one of the best open-source project management tools available today — fast, genuinely full-featured, and priced fairly. The ability to self-host at zero additional cost is a genuine differentiator for teams with data residency requirements or infrastructure already in place. The main caveat is that some advanced features (reporting, analytics, mobile polish) still trail the commercial leaders. If you're a 5–50 person engineering team evaluating Linear, Jira, or ClickUp, Plane deserves a serious look before you sign anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Plane free?

Yes. Plane's Free plan supports up to 12 seats with core issue tracking, cycles, and 500 AI credits/seat/month — no credit card required. Paid plans start at $6/seat/month (annual).

Is Plane open source?

Yes. Plane's core is licensed under AGPL-3.0. The full source code is available at github.com/makeplane/plane.

Can I self-host Plane?

Yes — Plane offers a Docker-based self-hosting installer and charges the same per-seat pricing for cloud and self-hosted deployments. Setup takes under 10 minutes on a standard VPS.

How does Plane compare to Linear?

Linear is faster to set up and has a more opinionated, refined UX. Plane offers self-hosting, a built-in wiki, and is significantly cheaper — a 10-seat team pays ~40% less on Plane Pro vs. Linear Basic. Linear is cloud-only; Plane gives you a choice.

What platforms does Plane support?

Plane runs on Web, macOS, Windows, Linux (desktop apps), iOS, and Android. The web and desktop apps are the most polished.