Kanboard

Kanboard is the minimalist option in this category by design: a single kanban board with WIP (work-in-progress) limits enforced per column, task filtering, subtasks, and time tracking, wrapped in a PHP app light enough to run comfortably on a $5/mo VPS with SQLite and no separate database server. Frédéric Guillot started the project with its first commit in January 2014, and over a decade later it remains one of the smallest-footprint self-hosted project tools available.

The WIP-limit enforcement is worth calling out specifically — it's a core tenet of Kanban methodology that most "kanban-style" tools treat as cosmetic, while Kanboard actually blocks you from overloading a column past its configured limit. Beyond the board itself, it has a genuinely extensive plugin system and a full REST/JSON-RPC API, plus two-factor auth, LDAP, and OAuth login (Google, GitLab) for teams that need real authentication controls on a lightweight tool.

The honest state of the project: Kanboard is now in maintenance mode. Development has shifted to bug fixes and community-contributed patches rather than new features, and it hasn't meaningfully expanded its scope since around 2023 — there's no Gantt view, no sprints, and no goals hierarchy, and none are coming. For teams that want exactly that — a single lightweight, MIT-licensed board that will keep working with minimal upkeep — that stability is a feature. Teams that want active feature development or multi-project reporting should look at Plane, Huly, or OpenProject instead.