Choose PLANKA for multilingual self-hosted kanban. Choose Kanera for connected project operations with one feature set everywhere.
Already looking to move? Read the case for Kanera as a PLANKA alternative
PLANKA includes multilingual UI, OIDC role mapping, and notifications through more than 100 documented providers via Apprise. Calendar, map, guest roles, recurring cards, and branding sit in the paid Pro edition.
Kanera adds Home, shared workspace structure, Table view, Global Work, Portfolio reporting, nested notes, automation, per-workspace notification rules, native chat destinations, managed webhooks, MCP, and deeper Trello migration, with the same feature set hosted or self-hosted.
Try the complete Pro product for 30 days, then choose Free or one full-featured hosted plan.
Both support operator control. Kanera goes beyond kanban with connected structure, execution views, reporting, notes, automation, webhooks, and MCP, and does not gate features behind a second edition.
| Feature | PLANKA Self-hosted kanban |  Kanera |
|---|---|---|
| Views & Planning | ||
| Board view | Included. Collaborative kanban boards with lists, cards, drag and drop, and realtime updates are the product core. | Included. Kanban boards with drag-and-drop cards, collapsible lists, per-list sorting, list icons and colours, and card covers. |
| Table view | Not available. PLANKA documents kanban boards rather than a Kanera-style editable reporting table. | Included. An editable table on boards and across Global Work, with filtering, grouping, custom columns, Sum and Avg calculations, second-dimension breakdowns, saved setup, and Excel or JSON export. |
| Calendar view | Partial or plan-gated. Calendar and Map views are Pro-edition features; the free Community edition does not include them. | Included. A calendar for dated cards with month and week ranges, Today navigation, filtering, due-time slots, and card actions in place, on boards and across Global Work. |
| Overview, health, and cross-project visibility | Not available. The public docs focus on boards and projects rather than Kanera-style Home, Global Work, Portfolio, or completion-history rollups. | Included. Home covers daily focus. Every board adds automatic overdue, unassigned, inactive, due-soon, and per-list signals with card drill-downs. Global Work adds My Cards, Team Cards, Portfolio, and Work Done across accessible boards. |
| Personal and team priority queues | Not available. Card position and labels can express order inside boards, but PLANKA's public documentation does not describe a personal cross-project priority queue or team queue management view. | Included. Up next keeps one ranked order across boards. Open your drawer anywhere, add, reorder, complete, or remove assigned cards in My Cards, filter to queued work, and manage permitted teammate queues from a focused dock or Team Cards grid and table views. |
| Cards & Work | ||
| Work item detail | Included. Cards include rich Markdown, comments, attachments, labels, members, dates, stopwatches, and activity. | Included. Cards hold markdown descriptions with change diffs, due dates and time slots, assignees, labels, custom fields, attachments, covers, comments, checklists, watchers, and attributed activity. |
| Custom fields | Included. Custom field groups add structured fields to boards and cards. | Included. Text, number, checkbox, date, URL, select, and user fields, with multi-value select and user fields, owned by one board or shared across a workspace. |
| Checklists | Included. Cards support tasks and checklist-style work inside the card. | Included. Reusable checklist templates with item assignees, due dates, descriptions, and one level of sub-checklists. Assigned items surface in Home, My Cards, and focused Team Cards. |
| Bulk editing | Not available. The public docs do not document a broad multi-card bulk editor comparable to Kanera. | Included. Selected cards can change dates, labels, assignees, custom fields, completion, location, copies, or archive state together. |
| Structure & Workflow | ||
| Independent projects | Included. Projects and boards are independently organised with members and roles. | Included. Standalone boards keep their own lists, labels, fields, templates, automations, permissions, and settings. |
| Shared structure | Not available. PLANKA groups boards in projects but does not document shared lists, fields, templates, and automations across boards. | Included. Workspace boards can reuse lists, labels, fields, checklist templates, automations, and reporting. |
| Automation | Partial or plan-gated. The docs cover recurring cards on Pro plus integrations and notifications, rather than a Kanera-style trigger and action rule builder. | Included. Six card triggers drive ordered actions across labels, assignees, checklist templates, due dates, custom field writes, moves, and completion, at board or workspace level. |
| Reporting | Not available. The public feature overview does not document Kanera-style Table calculations, Portfolio drill-downs, or Work Done reporting. | Included. Table calculations and breakdowns, Portfolio rollups and drill-downs, Work Done history, saved Global Work views, and Excel or JSON export cover operational reporting. |
| One-way board syncing | Not available. The public feature overview does not document native one-way card or list syncing between boards. | Included. Selected source lists can feed linked copies on another board, keeping shared card content and mapped workflow context current one way. |
| Collaboration & Access | ||
| Collaboration | Included. Realtime collaboration, comments, mentions, rich Markdown, attachments, and activity are core capabilities. | Included. Comments with mentions, quote replies, and thumbs-up acknowledgement, plus attachments, realtime updates, presence, and an attributed activity history beside the work. |
| External access | Partial or plan-gated. Guest and Worker roles for external collaborators are Pro-edition features; Community access uses project and board roles. | Partial or plan-gated. Pro keeps guests board-scoped: the first board is free, while a second or later board uses one purchased seat in total. Hosted Free has no guests, and self-hosted has no seat gate. |
| Notes and context | Not available. Rich card descriptions carry context, but the docs do not show a separate nested personal and shared notes tree. | Included. Scratchpad keeps autosaved work in progress private to one person. Personal and shared Notes add nested trees, attachments, search, and card backlinks for durable context. |
| Notifications | Included. Apprise integration supports more than 100 notification providers for operator-defined delivery. | Included. An in-app drawer plus per-type delivery to email, browser push, ntfy, Gotify, or your own signed webhook, with per-workspace pause and scoping rules, card and board watching, mentions, assignments, and due dates. The drawer, email, push, and rules are on every plan; ntfy, Gotify, and personal webhooks need Pro or self-hosted. |
| Data & Migration | ||
| API and webhooks | Included. A documented REST API supports custom integrations. | Included. Scoped API keys, a REST API, event-selective webhooks, and built-in Slack, Discord, Telegram, and Zulip chat destinations, all with delivery history, retries, pausing, and secret rotation. Included in Pro and self-hosted; hosted Free has none of them. |
| AI integration | Not available. The public docs do not document a native MCP server or built-in AI integration layer. | Partial or plan-gated. A native MCP server with OAuth gives compatible AI clients scoped access to live Kanera context and documentation search; AI is not built into the app. |
| Deployment | Included. Self-hosting is central, with Docker deployment and documented OIDC configuration. Community is free under PLANKA's Fair Use License, while branding, calendar and map views, guest roles, recurring cards, and cross-company use need a paid Pro licence. | Included. Hosted plans, or a source-available Docker Compose deployment under Elastic License 2.0 with full feature parity and no Kanera per-seat self-hosting fee. |
| Import and export | Partial or plan-gated. Trello JSON import is supported, but the docs state users and attachments are not imported and only one checklist per card is handled. | Partial or plan-gated. Reviewable Trello JSON, CSV, and Kanera archive import; Excel and JSON export; plus APIs for custom migrations. |
| Where each tool draws the line | ||
| Timeline, Gantt, and dependencies | Not available. The documentation does not describe Gantt or dependency planning. | Not available. Not included. Kanera plans with due dates, Calendar, and Table. There are no Gantt bars, baselines, or dependency links between cards. |
| Time tracking and workload | Partial or plan-gated. Card stopwatches record elapsed time; the docs do not describe workload or capacity planning. | Not available. No timer and no capacity planning. Numeric custom fields hold estimates or hours, and Table can sum or average them by group. |
| Request forms | Not available. The documentation does not describe a form builder. | Not available. No form builder. Intake arrives through cards, one-way board syncing, or the REST API. |
| Sign-in and provisioning | Included. OpenID Connect single sign-on is documented, including role mapping. | Partial or plan-gated. Email and password sign-in with organisation, workspace, and board roles. No SAML, OIDC, or SCIM for user accounts yet; AI clients authenticate to MCP with OAuth. |
| Apps and offline use | Not available. Browser-based; the docs do not list native app-store builds. | Partial or plan-gated. Installable PWA on desktop, iOS, and Android with offline board browsing, push notifications, and share-to-card. No native app-store builds. |
| Interface languages | Included. PLANKA lists 35+ interface languages with full internationalisation. | Not available. English only today. |
Competitor details checked August 11, 2026. PLANKA repository, PLANKA documentation, PLANKA pricing. Features and packaging can change.
Work Done shows a 60-day daily history of created, moved, and completed cards plus finished checklist items.
Use Home for today, per-board health for local risk, My Cards and Team Cards for execution, and Portfolio for cross-board drill-downs.
Open one keyboard palette to create a card, navigate, change theme, or search cards, notes, comments, and attachment names.
Use Scratchpad for private work in progress, then move durable material into personal or team Notes.
Keep boards fully independent, or reuse lists, labels, fields, checklist templates, and automations across a workspace.
Map source lists into another board so an internal team gets working copies, with local assignees and dates and no custom API bridge.
Use scoped API keys, managed webhooks, and MCP, and export reports to Excel or JSON. Self-host the same product when deployment control matters.
Start with CSV when the available export can be shaped into card rows. Use the API or a planned migration for data that is not represented there.
Both offer collaborative kanban boards, real-time updates, self-hosting, custom fields, APIs, and Trello import.
Both are source-available rather than permissively open source: PLANKA Community uses its Fair Use License and Kanera uses Elastic License 2.0. Neither can be resold to third parties as a hosted service.
PLANKA documents OpenID Connect single sign-on with role mapping and 35+ interface languages. Kanera has neither today. PLANKA also reaches a much longer list of notification providers through Apprise.
Kanera covers the common destinations directly instead: email, browser push, ntfy, Gotify, and personal signed webhooks per person, plus built-in Slack, Discord, Telegram, and Zulip chat destinations per workspace.
PLANKA also splits capability across editions: calendar and map views, guest and worker roles, recurring cards, custom branding, and cross-company use require a paid Pro licence.
PLANKA lists calendar and map views, recurring cards, guest and worker roles for external collaborators, custom branding, and cross-company use as Pro-edition features, with Pro sold per month for self-hosted or hosted deployments.
Kanera self-hosting has full feature parity with hosted Kanera and no Kanera per-seat fee, so calendar, guests, and everything else are included.
Kanera adds standalone or shared board structure, Table reporting with Excel export, ranked Up next queues across My Cards and Team Cards, Home, Portfolio, Work Done, nested notes, a trigger-and-action automation builder, managed webhooks, MCP, and more complete Trello attachment migration.
Use CSV when the available data can be shaped into card rows, or use the documented APIs for a richer migration.
Try the full product for 30 days. No card required.
No card required, 30-day Pro trial, free plan available