Leantime

What is Leantime?

Leantime is an open source project management platform designed for teams and individuals without a dedicated project manager. It combines execution tools — Kanban, Gantt, task lists, and time tracking — with strategy tools like goals, milestones, and idea boards, and puts accessibility for neurodivergent users at the center of its design.

What is Leantime best for?

Leantime fits small teams, agencies, startups, and solo operators who want structure without the ceremony of a heavyweight tool like Jira. It’s a strong pick if you value a low-friction, calm interface — especially teams with ADHD, dyslexic, or autistic members, since reduced cognitive load and accessibility are explicit design goals rather than afterthoughts.

What can Leantime do?

• Track work across multiple views — Kanban board, table, list, calendar, and Gantt timeline.
• Plan strategy with goals, milestones, sprints, idea/“parking lot” boards, and Lean Canvas and SWOT templates.
• Log time and generate timesheets for billing and reporting, plus burndown and status reports.
• Keep a personal “My Work” dashboard that pulls tasks and time blocks across every project.
• Store knowledge in built-in wikis, documents, and whiteboards.
• Connect to Slack, Mattermost, and Discord, and automate via a JSON-RPC API and plugin system.
• Secure access with two-factor authentication, LDAP, and OIDC single sign-on, in 20+ languages.

Where does Leantime fall short?

Leantime is a PHP application with a fairly demanding server profile — it needs PHP 8.2+, MySQL 8 or MariaDB 10.6+, and a long list of PHP extensions — so it’s heavier to self-host than a single-binary Go or Node tool.

Some advanced capabilities and its AI features live behind paid plugins in the marketplace or the paid cloud, so the free self-hosted edition is not quite feature-for-feature with the hosted plan. And its breadth — strategy, canvases, retrospectives, and task management in one app — can feel like more surface area than a team that just wants a shared board needs; a lighter Kanban tool may fit better there.

Is Leantime free?

Yes — Leantime is free and open source under the AGPLv3 license, and you can self-host the full core product at no cost. The company also sells an optional managed cloud at $10 per user/month (or $8 billed annually) with AI credits included, plus paid plugins for teams that want extras without running their own server.

What does Leantime replace?

Leantime stands in for paid, per-seat project management SaaS. It’s positioned as a self-hostable alternative to Jira (including Jira Data Center), Asana, Monday.com, and ClickUp — covering task boards, timelines, goals, and reporting without a per-user bill. Teams that want a heavier, enterprise-grade open source option often compare it with OpenProject.

FAQ

Is Leantime open source? Yes. Leantime is licensed under AGPLv3, with the source available on GitHub. Plugins in the /app/Plugins directory carry their own license terms.

Can I self-host Leantime for free? Yes. The self-hosted edition is free and includes the core functionality. You provide the server; a paid cloud and optional paid plugins exist but aren’t required.

Is Leantime a good Jira alternative? For small teams that find Jira heavy, yes — it covers boards, sprints, milestones, and Gantt charts with a calmer interface, and markets itself as a Jira Data Center alternative. Very large enterprises with deep Jira workflows may still find it lighter than they need.

What do I need to run Leantime? A server with PHP 8.2+, MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.6+, a web server (Apache or Nginx), and several PHP extensions. An official Docker image is available for a simpler setup.