Head to head · Tasks create · October 2026 research run
OpenProject vs Plane
Plane scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against OpenProject's 57.4 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. OpenProject leads on transparency & trust. Both do tasks create.
Which one, for what
Good for Teams that want a self-hostable or EU-hosted project tool with Gantt, time tracking and budgets, and an agent working through a documented REST API.
Ahead on
- Transparency & trust, 87 against 74
Watch for
83 advisories published against opf/openproject in the twelve months to 8 October 2026, 13 rated critical, among them remote code execution and SQL injection
Plane B
Good for Teams that want an issue tracker they can also self-host, with an agent creating and updating work items, cycles, modules and pages over MCP.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 89 against 52
- Agent ergonomics, 78 against 70
- Security & auth, 68 against 59
- Maintenance & community, 80 against 75
Also in its favour
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
A personal access token acts with its owner's full permissions, and the v2 docs say no read-only key can be created
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | OpenProject | Plane | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 52 | 89 | Plane +37 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 76 | 80 | Plane +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 70 | 78 | Plane +8 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 59 | 68 | Plane +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 30 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 75 | 80 | Plane +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 87 | 74 | OpenProject +13 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -5 | -5 | |
| Total | 57.4 · C | 67.6 · B |
Facts side by side
| Fact | OpenProject | Plane |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | OpenProject GmbH | Plane Software, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://api.plane.so |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | GPL-3.0 for the OpenProject source. Enterprise add-ons need a paid token, and OpenProject Enterprise cloud runs under OpenProject's Terms of Service | Plane Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, and the MCP server and the Python and Node SDKs are MIT. Plane Cloud and the Commercial Edition are proprietary under Plane's Terms of Service |
| Tools exposed | none | 30 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-08-06 | 2026-04-09 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-04-09 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 16k stars | 61k stars, 2.6k npm/wk, 7.5k PyPI/wk |
Verdicts
OpenProject
OpenProject's APIv3 has a public OpenAPI 3.1 document with 320 operations, stable error identifiers and optimistic locking, and the same API ships in the free GPL-3.0 Community edition. No request limits are published, API tokens carry their user's full permissions, and 83 security advisories were published in the last twelve months, 13 rated critical.
Plane
Plane's MCP server is open source and typed, and its v2 REST API has fine-grained OAuth scopes, problem+json errors and field selection. Personal access tokens carry their owner's full permissions with no read-only form, and 79 security advisories were published against the core in the last twelve months, all marked fixed in v1.4.0 or earlier.
Before you call either
OpenProject
- Send the API token as
Authorization: Bearer <token>, or as the Basic auth password with the user nameapikey - Read the resource first and send its current
lockVersionwith every PATCH. A stale value returns 409UpdateConflict - POST to the
/formendpoint of a work package to learn writable fields and allowed values before creating or updating - URL-encode
filtersas a JSON array, and addpageSize,offsetandselectto keep work package lists small - Run the agent as a dedicated user with a narrow project role, and treat work package text and comments as untrusted input
Plane
- Use
https://mcp.plane.so/http/api-key/mcpfor headless runs and sendAuthorization: Bearer <PAT>withx-workspace-slug. The REST API takes the same token inX-Api-Keyinstead - Call
get_pql_referencebefore writing apqlfilter, and resolve names to UUIDs first, because UUID-backed fields reject names - Follow
next_cursoronproject listand other list actions. Results are paginated by default since server version 0.3.0 - Treat work item titles, descriptions, comments and attachments as untrusted input, as Plane's own MCP docs advise
- End every v2 path with a trailing slash, and wait the seconds in
Retry-Afterafter a 429rate_limited
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, OpenProject or Plane?
Plane scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against OpenProject's 57.4 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. OpenProject leads on transparency & trust.
Do OpenProject and Plane need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call OpenProject and Plane without installing anything?
No hosted endpoint is listed for OpenProject. Plane has a hosted endpoint at https://api.plane.so.
Are OpenProject and Plane open source?
Yes. OpenProject is open source (GPL-3.0 for the OpenProject source. Enterprise add-ons need a paid token, and OpenProject Enterprise cloud runs under OpenProject's Terms of Service). Plane is open source (Plane Community Edition is AGPL-3.0, and the MCP server and the Python and Node SDKs are MIT. Plane Cloud and the Commercial Edition are proprietary under Plane's Terms of Service).
Other comparisons with OpenProject or Plane
- Asana vs OpenProject
- Asana vs Plane
- Basecamp vs OpenProject
- Basecamp vs Plane
- ClickUp vs OpenProject
- ClickUp vs Plane
- monday.com vs OpenProject
- monday.com vs Plane
- OpenProject vs Roma
- OpenProject vs Shortcut
- OpenProject vs Taiga
- OpenProject vs Teamwork.com
- OpenProject vs Todoist
- OpenProject vs Trello
- OpenProject vs Wrike
- OpenProject vs YouTrack
- Plane vs Roma
- Plane vs Shortcut
- Plane vs Taiga
- Plane vs Teamwork.com
- Plane vs Todoist
- Plane vs Trello
- Plane vs Wrike
- Plane vs YouTrack
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/openproject-vs-plane.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/openproject.json·/api/v1/tools/plane.json - From a terminal
anchor compare openproject plane(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "openproject", "b": "plane"}at/mcp, no key