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

OpenProject C

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

CategoryWeight this runOpenProjectPlaneEdge
Reliability16%205289Plane +37
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27680Plane +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.27078Plane +8
Security & auth14%17.55968Plane +9
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87580Plane +5
Transparency & trust7%8.88774OpenProject +13
Negative events≤15-5-5
Total57.4 · C67.6 · B

Facts side by side

FactOpenProjectPlane
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorOpenProject GmbHPlane Software, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.plane.so
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceGPL-3.0 for the OpenProject source. Enterprise add-ons need a paid token, and OpenProject Enterprise cloud runs under OpenProject's Terms of ServicePlane 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 exposednone30
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-012026-10-08
Terms last updated2026-08-062026-04-09
Privacy policy last updatedno date given2026-04-09
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity16k stars61k 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

  1. Send the API token as Authorization: Bearer <token>, or as the Basic auth password with the user name apikey
  2. Read the resource first and send its current lockVersion with every PATCH. A stale value returns 409 UpdateConflict
  3. POST to the /form endpoint of a work package to learn writable fields and allowed values before creating or updating
  4. URL-encode filters as a JSON array, and add pageSize, offset and select to keep work package lists small
  5. Run the agent as a dedicated user with a narrow project role, and treat work package text and comments as untrusted input

Plane

  1. Use https://mcp.plane.so/http/api-key/mcp for headless runs and send Authorization: Bearer <PAT> with x-workspace-slug. The REST API takes the same token in X-Api-Key instead
  2. Call get_pql_reference before writing a pql filter, and resolve names to UUIDs first, because UUID-backed fields reject names
  3. Follow next_cursor on project list and other list actions. Results are paginated by default since server version 0.3.0
  4. Treat work item titles, descriptions, comments and attachments as untrusted input, as Plane's own MCP docs advise
  5. End every v2 path with a trailing slash, and wait the seconds in Retry-After after a 429 rate_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

Machine-readable

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