Planka

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 801 words

Moving a 6-person team off Trello onto Planka took me one evening, and most of that was waiting for people to log in. The compose file is 2 services, the Trello importer takes the JSON export and keeps lists, cards, labels and descriptions, and the interface is close enough to Trello that nobody needed a walkthrough. What you give up is Power-Ups, automation rules and the dozen views Atlassian added over the years. If your team used Trello as a board of cards with labels and due dates, which is most teams, Planka is the closest free replacement that exists, and it idles under the 256 MB the listing quotes.

The compose: Planka plus Postgres, and one URL that must be right

services:
  planka:
    image: ghcr.io/plankanban/planka:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3000:1337"
    environment:
      BASE_URL: https://kanban.example.com
      DATABASE_URL: postgresql://postgres@postgres/planka
      SECRET_KEY: replace-with-openssl-rand-hex-64-output
      DEFAULT_ADMIN_EMAIL: [email protected]
      DEFAULT_ADMIN_PASSWORD: replace-me-then-remove
      DEFAULT_ADMIN_NAME: Admin
      DEFAULT_ADMIN_USERNAME: admin
    depends_on:
      - postgres
  postgres:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: planka
      POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD: trust
    volumes:
      - ./db-data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

BASE_URL has to be the exact address users type, scheme included, or the real-time socket and attachment links break in ways that look like random flakiness. Generate SECRET_KEY with openssl rand -hex 64. Add the upload volumes from the project's example compose (user avatars, background images, attachments), because cards with screenshots are the whole point and a container rebuild without those volumes deletes them. Put Caddy or Traefik in front for TLS; Planka's websockets need a proxy that forwards Upgrade headers, which both do without extra configuration. If Planka starts before Postgres is ready it exits and Docker restarts it; restart: unless-stopped covers that, and a healthcheck on the Postgres service removes the noise from the logs.

Import from Trello, then take the admin password out of the file

Trello exports each board as JSON from the board menu. In Planka, create a project, pick "Import" when adding a board, and hand it the file: lists, cards, labels and descriptions arrive, with members mapped where usernames match. Do one board first and check what came across for checklists, comments and attachments before bulk-importing the rest, because those depend on what Trello put in the export. Once the admin account exists, remove the DEFAULT_ADMIN_* lines and restart; they are for bootstrap, not for living in a file.

Real-time is the feature that makes it feel like Trello

Planka pushes every change over a websocket, so two people dragging cards on the same board see each other's moves instantly, no refresh. That is the difference between a kanban board people use and one they abandon, and it is why I recommend Planka over older tools that poll. The card itself has the Trello set: description in Markdown, labels, due date, members, checklist, attachments, comments, a basic stopwatch and an activity log; boards get filters and search. Boards live inside projects, and a project holds several boards with their own members, which is the Trello workspace idea without per-seat pricing.

What is missing, honestly

No automation rules (Butler in Trello), no calendar or timeline view, no typed custom fields, no time tracking beyond that stopwatch, no public boards, and a permission model that stops at project manager, board editor and viewer. If any of those is a daily need, Vikunja is the next step up with list, Gantt and Kanban views of the same tasks, and OpenProject is where you go when a board is not enough. The project management category has the full set. Planka's bet is that the missing features were the reason your Trello boards became cluttered, and for the teams I have moved that bet has held.

OIDC, and users who never need a password

Planka supports OpenID Connect out of the box: point OIDC_ISSUER, OIDC_CLIENT_ID and OIDC_CLIENT_SECRET at Authentik or any provider, and users are created on first login, with the option to turn off local passwords entirely. For a 6-person team this is a luxury; for 30 it is the difference between "onboarding" and "send them the link".

What I'd do

Planka and Postgres on one compose file, behind Caddy, BASE_URL set to the public address, uploads on named volumes, a nightly pg_dump plus a tarball of the attachments directory. Import the Trello boards on a Friday, make Trello read-only on Monday, delete it after a month. Add OIDC only if you already run an identity provider. It is a 12,500-star, AGPL, single-purpose board that does 90 percent of what Trello does for the users who never touched the other 10.