Plane vs The Lounge

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
FeaturePlaneThe Lounge
CategoryProject Management & TasksChat & Communication
LicenseAGPL-3.0MIT
LanguageTypeScriptTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM2,048 MB256 MB
Deploymentdockerdocker, binary, source
GitHub stars★ 55,704★ 6,309
First released20232014
ReplacesJira, Linear, AsanaIRCCloud, Slack

Why pick each one

Choose Plane if…

  • Polished modern interface
  • Good for product teams
  • Active development
Plane details

Choose The Lounge if…

  • Great IRC experience in the browser
  • Multi-user support
The Lounge details

Frequently asked questions

Is Plane or The Lounge better?

Neither is universally better. Plane has the larger community, while The Lounge is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Plane and The Lounge free and open-source?

Yes. Plane is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and The Lounge under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Plane and The Lounge with Docker?

Plane: yes. The Lounge: yes.

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