Workboard vs Leantime
The MIT-licensed Leantime alternative
Leantime wraps goals, research boards, and strategy around your tasks. Workboard is the tracker underneath, without the strategy layer, and it is MIT licensed.
Short answer: is Workboard a good Leantime alternative?
Workboard and Leantime are both open-source and self-hostable. Leantime is AGPLv3, aimed at non-project-managers, and layers goals, ideas, and retrospectives on top of task management. Workboard is MIT licensed and stays a focused tracker with boards, backlog, workflow rules, roles, and time tracking.
- License
- MIT, versus AGPLv3 for the Leantime community edition
- Hosting
- Both self-host. Workboard is Docker plus PostgreSQL, Leantime is PHP plus MySQL
- Single sign-on
- Free on every Workboard build
- Pricing
- $0 self-hosted for both, Workboard Cloud from $4 / month
Leantime details checked on 19 August 2026. Leantime pricing, Workboard pricing.
Why teams choose Workboard
A tracker, not a framework
Leantime asks you to define goals, ideas, and research before the work. Workboard assumes you know what needs doing and want somewhere to do it.
Permissive licence
MIT rather than AGPLv3, so forking Workboard or building a product around it stays simple.
Modern stack, small footprint
Workboard is one container plus PostgreSQL with realtime board updates, an official Helm chart, and a documented public API.
When Leantime is the better choice
Leantime is thoughtfully designed for people who do not think in tickets, and it was built with ADHD, autism, and dyslexia explicitly in mind. Its goals, ideas, and retrospective boards give small teams a structure Workboard simply does not have. If that framing is what your team needs, Leantime is the better tool.
Workboard vs Leantime, answered
Is Leantime free?
The self-hosted community edition is free and open source under AGPLv3, and matches the features of the hosted Core plan. Leantime's cloud is priced per user.
Leantime or Workboard?
Leantime if you want goal setting, idea boards, and retrospectives around your tasks. Workboard if you want a fast board and backlog with roles, time tracking, and integrations, under a permissive licence.
What does Workboard run on?
A single container running the Hono API and React front end, plus PostgreSQL. Redis is optional and only needed to coordinate realtime delivery across several API instances.
Does Workboard have retrospectives or goal tracking?
No. Workboard has projects, boards, backlog, labels, priorities, task relations, comments, and time entries. Goals and retrospectives are outside its scope by design.