Plane
Open-source project management with issues, cycles and roadmaps, self-hostable.
why this verdict
Keep paying — Anthropic has not replaced it
Anthropic's version overlaps, but does not finish the project mgmt job, so this one still earns its $8/mo.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Linear's design lead and Jira's enterprise entrenchment squeezing from both directions. Anthropic, August 12, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 3 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Linear, Jira and Huly.
- What the call is worth $96/yr
- $8/mo at the entry paid tier — $96 a year per seat.
- Threatened by
- Anthropic
- Since
- August 12, 2025
- List price
- $8/mo
- Per year
- $96
The backstory
Plane is the open-source answer to Linear, offering issues, cycles, modules and roadmaps with the option to run it entirely on your own infrastructure. Competing on polish with Linear is not winnable, and competing on enterprise depth with Jira is not either. The lane that exists is organisations who want a modern issue tracker and cannot use a hosted service, which is a real and underserved group, and open source is the only way to serve it.
Escape hatches
Substantially more polished, hosted only
linear.app open_in_newEnterprise standard with the deepest configurability
atlassian.com open_in_newOpen-source all-in-one project and team platform
huly.io open_in_new3 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.