OpenProject review 2026: open-source project management features, Gantt charts, agile boards, pricing tiers, pros, cons and top alternatives compared.
OpenProject is an open-source project management platform headquartered in Berlin, Germany, tracing back to a 2012 fork of the earlier ChiliProject tool. It has grown into one of the most widely deployed self-hostable project management systems, particularly popular with government agencies, universities, and EU-based enterprises that need to keep project data on their own infrastructure.
Unlike SaaS-only competitors, OpenProject can run entirely on-premises, in a customer's own cloud, or on OpenProject's hosted cloud, giving IT and public-sector buyers a compliant middle ground between free open-source tools and closed commercial SaaS platforms.
OpenProject combines classic project planning with agile workflows: interactive Gantt chart scheduling sits alongside Scrum and Kanban boards, backlog and sprint planning, and roadmap views, letting teams mix waterfall and agile methods in the same workspace.
It also includes time and cost tracking, a wiki, meeting management, budgeting tools, and native Building Information Modeling (BIM) support, an uncommon feature among general-purpose project management tools that makes it popular with construction and engineering teams.
The Community edition is free, open source under GPLv3, and can be self-hosted with no user limit, though support is community-based. Paid cloud or on-premises plans start with Basic at about EUR 5.95/user/month, Professional at about EUR 10.95/user/month, and Premium at about EUR 15.95/user/month, each requiring minimum user counts of 25 to 100.
A custom-quoted Corporate tier is available for organizations with 250 or more users, adding a dedicated support engineer and integration with Germany's openDesk suite. BIM features can be added to any paid plan for roughly EUR 1 per user per month.
Yes, the Community edition is free and open source under GPLv3 and can be self-hosted with no user limit, though support is community-based rather than commercial.
Yes. OpenProject can run fully on-premises, in a private cloud, or on OpenProject's own hosted cloud service.
Yes, OpenProject includes native Building Information Modeling support, which can be added to any paid plan for roughly EUR 1 per user per month.
Basic and Professional plans require a 25-user minimum, Premium requires 100 users, and Corporate requires 250 users.
OpenProject offers a free, self-hostable open-source option that Jira does not, but has a smaller third-party integration ecosystem than Jira.
OpenProject is developed by OpenProject GmbH, headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
OpenProject offers trial access to its paid cloud plans; exact trial terms should be confirmed on openproject.org since they can change.