Kan

What is Kan?

Kan is an open source kanban board that organizes work into boards, lists, and cards you drag between columns. It is a Trello alternative you can self-host for free under the AGPL-3.0 license, or use through the hosted cloud at kan.bn. The stack is TypeScript, Next.js, tRPC, and PostgreSQL.

What is Kan best for?

Kan fits makers, freelancers, and small teams who want the clean Trello experience — visual boards, quick cards, drag-and-drop — without a subscription or their data sitting on someone else’s server. It is a strong pick if you are leaving Trello: the built-in importer pulls your existing boards straight in, so the switch takes minutes rather than a manual rebuild.

What can Kan do?

• Kanban boards — organize work into boards, lists, and cards with drag-and-drop.
• Trello import — migrate existing Trello boards directly into Kan.
• Board visibility control — set who can view and edit each board, with workspace member invites.
• Labels and filters — tag cards and filter boards to find work fast.
• Card comments — discuss work in-thread on each card.
• Reusable templates — save custom board layouts and spin up new boards from them.
• Activity log — a detailed history of every change made to a card.
• Trello-style checklists — break cards into sub-tasks.

Where does Kan fall short?

Integrations are the clearest gap. Kan focuses on doing boards, lists, and cards well, and connections to other tools are listed as a future roadmap item rather than something shipping today — so if your workflow depends on Slack notifications, calendar sync, or automation triggers, Kan does not cover that yet.

It is also deliberately lightweight. There are no sprints, no timeline or Gantt views, and no resource-planning features, so teams that outgrew Trello because they needed those will find Kan just as limited — tools like Plane or OpenProject are a better fit there. Kan is young, so expect the feature set to still be filling in.

Is Kan free?

Yes — self-hosting Kan is completely free under the AGPL-3.0 license. You run it with Docker and your own PostgreSQL database, and there are no seat limits or paywalled features. The hosted cloud at kan.bn has a free plan (one user, unlimited boards, cards, templates, and checklists) and a paid Teams plan at $8 per user per month for collaboration features.

What does Kan replace?

Kan is a direct Trello alternative — the same board-list-card model, with a one-click importer for existing Trello boards. For lightweight task tracking it can also stand in for simpler uses of Asana, Monday.com, and Jira, though it does not match their sprint, timeline, or reporting depth.

FAQ

Is Kan open source? Yes. Kan is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and developed in the open on GitHub, so you can read, run, and modify the full codebase.

Can I self-host Kan for free? Yes. Self-hosting is free with no seat or feature limits. It ships with Docker Compose and a Railway one-click deploy; you provide a PostgreSQL database and, optionally, SMTP for email invites.

Is Kan a good Trello alternative? For core kanban — boards, lists, cards, labels, comments, and templates — yes, and the Trello importer makes migrating painless. If you need heavy integrations or sprint planning, it is not there yet.

What do I need to run Kan? A PostgreSQL database and a Node.js environment (or the provided Docker setup). Redis is optional for rate limiting, and an SMTP server is needed if you want email invitations.