Plane vs Vikunja: Task Management Tools Compared

Quick Verdict

Plane and Vikunja solve different problems. Plane is a full-blown project management platform built for software development teams that want to ditch Jira or Linear. Vikunja is a lightweight personal task manager that replaces Todoist or Trello. If you’re managing sprints, issues, and dev cycles, pick Plane. If you want a fast, low-resource task list with Kanban boards and CalDAV sync, pick Vikunja.

Overview

Plane is an open-source project management tool written in TypeScript (Next.js frontend, Django backend). It targets software teams with features like issue tracking, cycles (sprints), modules, custom views, and a pages/wiki system. Think of it as self-hosted Linear. It requires PostgreSQL, Redis, and multiple containers to run — this is enterprise-grade tooling with enterprise-grade resource demands.

Vikunja is a Go-based task management app with a Vue.js frontend. It ships as a single container that handles everything. It supports Kanban boards, Gantt charts, CalDAV integration, and works with SQLite out of the box. It’s closer to a self-hosted Todoist — fast to deploy, light on resources, and focused on getting things done rather than managing complex workflows.

The fundamental difference: Plane is a team-scale project management platform. Vikunja is a personal or small-team task manager. They share a category but serve different audiences.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Plane	Vikunja
Primary use case	Software project management	Personal/small team task management
Issue/task tracking	Full issue tracker with labels, priorities, assignments	Tasks with labels, priorities, assignees, relations
Kanban boards	Yes	Yes
Gantt charts	Yes (timeline view)	Yes
Sprint/cycle management	Yes (Cycles)	No
Modules (epics/groups)	Yes	No (uses namespaces and projects)
CalDAV support	No	Yes — sync with any CalDAV client
REST API	Yes	Yes
Mobile app	No native app (responsive web)	No native app (responsive web + CalDAV clients)
Wiki/pages	Yes (built-in Pages)	No
Views/filters	Custom views with saved filters	Saved filters per project
Integrations	GitHub, Slack (growing)	CalDAV, webhooks, API-based
Authentication	Email, Google, GitHub SSO	OpenID Connect, email
Multi-user support	Yes, with workspaces and roles	Yes, with teams and project sharing
License	AGPL-3.0	AGPL-3.0
Tech stack	TypeScript (Next.js) + Python (Django)	Go + Vue.js
Database	PostgreSQL (required)	SQLite, PostgreSQL, or MySQL
Container count	4+ (frontend, backend, space, worker, db, redis)	1 (single binary)

Docker Compose: Plane

Plane requires multiple services. This is the complete setup with PostgreSQL and Redis included.

Create a docker-compose.yml:

services:
  plane-web:
    image: makeplane/plane-frontend:v0.23.2
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - plane-api
    environment:
      - NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL=http://plane-api:8000
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    networks:
      - plane-network

  plane-space:
    image: makeplane/plane-space:v0.23.2
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - plane-api
    environment:
      - NEXT_PUBLIC_API_BASE_URL=http://plane-api:8000
    ports:
      - "3001:3000"
    networks:
      - plane-network

  plane-api:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:v0.23.2
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - plane-db
      - plane-redis
    environment:
      # Core settings -- change SECRET_KEY to a random string
      - SECRET_KEY=replace-with-a-strong-random-secret-key
      - DEBUG=0
      - DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=plane.settings.production
      # Database connection
      - DATABASE_URL=postgresql://plane:plane_db_password@plane-db:5432/plane
      # Redis connection
      - REDIS_URL=redis://plane-redis:6379/
      # Email (optional -- configure for notifications)
      - EMAIL_HOST=
      - EMAIL_PORT=587
      - EMAIL_HOST_USER=
      - EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD=
      - EMAIL_USE_TLS=1
      - [email protected]
      # File storage
      - USE_MINIO=0
      - AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME=uploads
      - FILE_SIZE_LIMIT=5242880
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    volumes:
      - plane-uploads:/code/plane/uploads
    networks:
      - plane-network

  plane-worker:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:v0.23.2
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - plane-api
      - plane-db
      - plane-redis
    environment:
      - SECRET_KEY=replace-with-a-strong-random-secret-key
      - DATABASE_URL=postgresql://plane:plane_db_password@plane-db:5432/plane
      - REDIS_URL=redis://plane-redis:6379/
    command: ./bin/worker
    networks:
      - plane-network

  plane-beat-worker:
    image: makeplane/plane-backend:v0.23.2
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - plane-api
      - plane-db
      - plane-redis
    environment:
      - SECRET_KEY=replace-with-a-strong-random-secret-key
      - DATABASE_URL=postgresql://plane:plane_db_password@plane-db:5432/plane
      - REDIS_URL=redis://plane-redis:6379/
    command: ./bin/beat
    networks:
      - plane-network

  plane-db:
    image: postgres:15.6-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # Change this password -- must match DATABASE_URL above
      - POSTGRES_USER=plane
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=plane_db_password
      - POSTGRES_DB=plane
    volumes:
      - plane-db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - plane-network

  plane-redis:
    image: redis:7.2-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - plane-redis-data:/data
    networks:
      - plane-network

volumes:
  plane-db-data:
  plane-redis-data:
  plane-uploads:

networks:
  plane-network:
    driver: bridge

Start it:

docker compose up -d

Access the web UI at http://your-server:3000. The first user to register becomes the admin. Change the SECRET_KEY and POSTGRES_PASSWORD values before deploying — use openssl rand -hex 32 to generate a strong secret.

Docker Compose: Vikunja

Vikunja runs as a single container. This setup uses SQLite for zero-dependency simplicity.

Create a docker-compose.yml:

services:
  vikunja:
    image: vikunja/vikunja:0.24.6
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      # Service URL -- change to your domain
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_PUBLICURL=http://localhost:3456
      # JWT secret -- change this to a random string
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET=replace-with-a-strong-random-secret
      # Database -- SQLite by default, no external DB needed
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_TYPE=sqlite
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_PATH=/db/vikunja.db
      # Registration -- set to false to disable after creating your account
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION=true
      # Timezone
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_TIMEZONE=UTC
      # Email notifications (optional)
      - VIKUNJA_MAILER_ENABLED=false
      - VIKUNJA_MAILER_HOST=
      - VIKUNJA_MAILER_PORT=587
      - VIKUNJA_MAILER_USERNAME=
      - VIKUNJA_MAILER_PASSWORD=
    ports:
      - "3456:3456"
    volumes:
      # SQLite database
      - vikunja-db:/db
      # File attachments
      - vikunja-files:/app/vikunja/files

volumes:
  vikunja-db:
  vikunja-files:

Start it:

docker compose up -d

Access the web UI at http://your-server:3456. Create an account and start adding tasks. That’s it — no database to configure, no workers to manage, no Redis to tune.

For PostgreSQL instead of SQLite (recommended for multi-user setups), add a database service and change the environment variables:

services:
  vikunja:
    image: vikunja/vikunja:0.24.6
    restart: unless-stopped
    depends_on:
      - vikunja-db
    environment:
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_PUBLICURL=http://localhost:3456
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET=replace-with-a-strong-random-secret
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_TYPE=postgres
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_HOST=vikunja-db
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_DATABASE=vikunja
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_USER=vikunja
      - VIKUNJA_DATABASE_PASSWORD=vikunja_db_password
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_ENABLEREGISTRATION=true
      - VIKUNJA_SERVICE_TIMEZONE=UTC
    ports:
      - "3456:3456"
    volumes:
      - vikunja-files:/app/vikunja/files
    networks:
      - vikunja-network

  vikunja-db:
    image: postgres:15.6-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=vikunja
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=vikunja_db_password
      - POSTGRES_DB=vikunja
    volumes:
      - vikunja-db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    networks:
      - vikunja-network

volumes:
  vikunja-files:
  vikunja-db-data:

networks:
  vikunja-network:
    driver: bridge

Installation Complexity

This is where the two tools diverge most sharply.

Vikunja is about as simple as self-hosted software gets. One container, one port, SQLite by default. You can go from zero to a working task manager in under two minutes. The configuration is straightforward environment variables, and the defaults are sane. Even switching to PostgreSQL only adds one more container.

Plane requires a minimum of six containers: frontend, space (public board sharing), API, worker, beat worker, PostgreSQL, and Redis. The setup demands coordinated environment variables across multiple services, and the resource overhead is substantial. It’s not hard to deploy if you’re comfortable with Docker Compose, but it’s meaningfully more complex than Vikunja.

Performance and Resource Usage

Resource	Plane	Vikunja
RAM (idle)	~1.0-1.5 GB (all services combined)	~80-100 MB
RAM (under load)	~2-3 GB	~150-200 MB
CPU (idle)	Low-moderate (multiple processes)	Minimal
CPU (under load)	Moderate-high	Low
Disk (application)	~2 GB (images + database)	~50 MB (binary + database)
Disk (data)	Scales with usage	Scales with usage
Container count	6-7	1 (or 2 with PostgreSQL)
Startup time	30-60 seconds (migrations + all services)	2-3 seconds

Vikunja uses roughly 10x less RAM than Plane. If you’re running a Raspberry Pi or a small VPS, Vikunja is the obvious choice. Plane needs a server with at least 2 GB of free RAM to run comfortably — 4 GB recommended if you’re running other services alongside it.

Community and Support

Plane has strong momentum. Over 30,000 GitHub stars, active development with frequent releases, a commercial cloud offering that funds the open-source version, and a growing Discord community. Documentation is solid but occasionally lags behind the latest release. The project is backed by a funded startup, which is both a strength (active development) and a risk (priorities may shift toward the commercial offering).

Vikunja has a smaller but dedicated community. Around 3,000 GitHub stars, steady development from a core maintainer, and a helpful community on Matrix. Documentation is thorough and well-maintained. Being a smaller project, development moves slower, but it’s also more focused — no feature bloat, no commercial distractions.

Use Cases

Choose Plane If…

• You’re a software development team managing sprints, issues, and releases
• You want a self-hosted Jira or Linear replacement with similar workflows
• You need cycle/sprint management with burndown tracking
• You want built-in wiki/pages alongside your project management
• You need workspace-level organization with multiple projects and teams
• You have a server with 2+ GB of RAM to spare
• You want GitHub integration for linking commits to issues

Choose Vikunja If…

• You want a personal task manager to replace Todoist, Trello, or TickTick
• You need CalDAV support to sync tasks with your phone or calendar app
• You’re running on limited hardware (Raspberry Pi, small VPS)
• You want the simplest possible deployment — one container, done
• You manage tasks across personal projects, not software development cycles
• You want Kanban boards and Gantt charts without the overhead of a full project management suite
• You need a shared family/household task list

Final Verdict

These tools aren’t really competitors — they serve different audiences with different needs.

For software development teams: Plane is the right choice. It provides the sprint cycles, issue tracking, module organization, and team collaboration features that development workflows demand. The heavier resource footprint is justified by the depth of functionality. If your team currently uses Jira, Linear, or Shortcut and you want to self-host, Plane is the closest equivalent.

For everyone else: Vikunja wins. It’s lighter, faster to deploy, easier to maintain, and covers personal and small-team task management better than Plane does. The CalDAV support alone makes it more practical for personal use — sync your tasks to any calendar app on your phone without installing a dedicated client. You get Kanban boards, Gantt charts, labels, priorities, and sharing without needing a gigabyte of RAM to run it.

If you’re unsure which you need, start with Vikunja. You can have it running in two minutes, and if it doesn’t meet your needs, you’ll know exactly which features you’re missing when you evaluate Plane.

Related

• How to Self-Host Plane
• How to Self-Host Vikunja
• Best Self-Hosted Task Management Tools
• Docker Compose Basics
• Reverse Proxy Setup