Vikunja costs nothing to use, as long as you own the server

Vikunja scores 61, in our Usable band, and the two pillars pull hard in opposite directions. Freedom at 78 is near the top of the category: AGPL-3.0, a public repository, no seat cap, no branding, no quota, no account with anybody. Generosity at 66 reflects one free route rather than two, since there is nothing to sign up for.

Feature depth at 48 is the honest counterweight and the lowest of any maintained tool here except Focalboard. Vikunja does list, kanban, table and Gantt views with labels, reminders and relations between tasks. It does not do automations, sprints or reporting, and its integrations amount to CalDAV and an API. Measured against ClickUp's free sprints or Taiga's free burndown charts, that is light, which is a fair description of the project's own ambitions rather than a criticism of its execution.

Start with the one that decides everything. There is no free hosted Vikunja (as of July 2026). Cloud Personal is 4 euros a month for one user with 10GB of storage (40 euros a year), Cloud Organization is 5 euros per user per month with 50GB shared, and each comes with a 14-day trial rather than a free tier underneath it.

Self-hosting is free and carries the usual bill in time:

• A server and its upkeep, though this one is genuinely small; a cheap VPS or a Raspberry Pi is enough
• Your backups, since nobody else holds a copy of your tasks
• Updates, applied by you

Two product limits are worth knowing before you install anything. There are no built-in automations, sprints or reporting, so this is task management rather than an agile suite. And the mobile app is community-maintained and trails the web app, which matters if phone use is how you actually check a list.

One more that catches people out: a paid add-on covers admin panels and time tracking even on self-hosted installs. Free self-hosting is not the same as every feature free.

The cloud ladder is short and cheap. Personal at 4 euros a month covers one user with 10GB of storage, which works out at 40 euros a year and is close to the least expensive hosted project tool we cover. Organization is 5 euros per user per month with 50GB shared and priority email support.

What that money buys is hosting and support, not capability, which is the same structure OpenProject uses and a fair one. The comparison worth making is not free against paid, it is 40 euros a year against a small server you administer. If you already run a homelab or a VPS for something else, the marginal cost of Vikunja is close to zero and the decision is easy. If you do not, 4 euros a month is cheaper than the hour you would spend setting one up.

The paid add-on for admin panels and time tracking sits outside that ladder and applies to self-hosted installs too, so budget for it separately if either matters to you.

Yes, within limits, and the limit is a prerequisite rather than a ceiling. Nothing about the self-hosted build is metered: no user cap, no task cap, no branding, no quota, no account with anyone. What you cannot do is use Vikunja for free without running it, because the cloud has no free plan at all.

Who this genuinely works for: a homelab owner adding task management next to their other self-hosted apps, a family sharing lists, a small team that needs boards, due dates and Gantt views and does not need automations or sprint ceremonies. Who it does not: anyone expecting a hosted free account, anyone who needs reporting or automations, and anyone who relies on their phone, given a community-maintained mobile app that lags the web version.

If a free hosted plan is the requirement, free Vikunja alternatives covers the tools that offer one, and ClickUp's free plan is the hosted option with no seat cap. The category ranking is at best free project management tools.