Leantime

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 796 words

Leantime is the project manager for teams that keep abandoning project managers. It puts the goal above the task list: you write a strategy, attach milestones to it, and only then create the to-dos, so the "why are we doing this" survives contact with week 3. The people it was built for are non-technical small businesses and neurodivergent workers, and it shows in the interface, which is calmer and more opinionated than the blank-board tools it replaces. With 11,445 stars, AGPL-3.0 and a PHP stack that runs on 512 MB, it is a reasonable self-hosted answer to Asana or Notion for a team of 3 to 20. It is not a Jira replacement and does not try to be.

Goals first is a workflow, not a feature

Most tools bolt "objectives" on as a plugin. Leantime's hierarchy is strategy, goals with measurable targets, milestones on a timeline, and to-dos under those, with ideas and research boards sitting beside the whole thing for the pre-project phase. The "My Work" view is the daily landing page: it pulls today's tasks across projects, shows what is blocked, and includes a Pomodoro-style focus timer, which sounds gimmicky until you watch someone with ADHD actually use it. Time tracking is built in and rolls up to a timesheet per user, so agencies get billable hours without a second tool.

Views are the usual set: kanban, table, gantt, calendar. The gantt is functional rather than beautiful. Where Leantime is unusual is that nothing forces a rigid methodology on you; sprints exist if you want them and vanish if you do not.

The Docker setup needs MariaDB and one secret

services:
  leantime:
    image: leantime/leantime:latest
    environment:
      LEAN_DB_HOST: db
      LEAN_DB_USER: leantime
      LEAN_DB_PASSWORD: change-me
      LEAN_DB_DATABASE: leantime
      LEAN_SESSION_PASSWORD: a-long-random-string
      LEAN_APP_URL: https://pm.example.com
    ports:
      - "8081:80"
    volumes:
      - ./userfiles:/var/www/html/userfiles
      - ./public-userfiles:/var/www/html/public/userfiles
    depends_on:
      - db
    restart: unless-stopped
  db:
    image: mariadb:10.6
    environment:
      MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD: change-me-too
      MARIADB_DATABASE: leantime
      MARIADB_USER: leantime
      MARIADB_PASSWORD: change-me
    volumes:
      - ./db:/var/lib/mysql
    restart: unless-stopped

First visit runs the installer, which creates the schema and the admin user. LEAN_APP_URL must match the public address or emailed links and OAuth callbacks break; LEAN_SESSION_PASSWORD should be a genuinely random string because it signs sessions. Put a reverse proxy in front for TLS, and set the SMTP variables (LEAN_EMAIL_*) so invitations and reminders actually send, because a project tool nobody gets nudged by is a wiki with extra steps. Back up the MariaDB volume and both userfiles directories; attachments live in the second.

Where it beats OpenProject, Vikunja and Notion

OpenProject is the heavyweight: work packages, agile boards, baseline comparison, proper resource planning, and a Ruby stack that wants 4 GB and a Postgres you tend. For a construction firm or a 50-person engineering department it wins outright; for a 6-person studio it is a lot of software. Vikunja is the lightweight: fast, pretty, tasks and lists and a kanban, but with no concept of goals, time tracking or client-facing reporting. Leantime sits in the gap, and its differentiator is the strategy layer plus accessibility work that neither rival has invested in.

Against Notion, the comparison is a category error in both directions. Notion is a document database you can bend into project tracking; Leantime is project tracking with light docs. Teams that live in Notion pages will miss the free-form databases. Teams that built a Notion "system" and watched it rot will find Leantime's structure a relief.

The rough edges

"Less known" in the catalogue translates to fewer integrations and fewer answers on forums; the community is active but small, and the plugin marketplace mixes free and paid entries, some of which gate features like advanced reporting. Upgrades occasionally ship a migration that takes a minute against a large database, so snapshot first. The mobile experience is a responsive web app, not a native client, and the API is usable for scripting but thinly documented. None of this is disqualifying; all of it is the price of a smaller project.

What I'd do

For a team under 20 that has bounced off Asana, Trello and a homemade Notion board, Leantime in Docker with MariaDB, a proxy in front, SMTP configured on day one, nightly database dumps. Start with one goal and three milestones rather than importing a 400-task backlog, because the goal layer is the point and it needs to be filled in to be useful. If the team is bigger, more technical, or needs resource planning, take OpenProject from the project management category and accept the heavier stack.