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It's a split decision.
Pick Redmine if you want free, self-hosted software with no licensing limits on users or projects, and can manage hosting yourself. Choose OpenProject if you want a project hub for classic, agile, or hybrid work, including Gantt charts, agile boards, Team Planner, or optional cloud hosting. OpenProject Community is also free and self-managed; paid Enterprise pricing starts at €5.95 per user monthly on annual billing, with a 25-user minimum for Basic. Redmine has no hosted plan listed.
01Side by side
| OpenProject | Redmine | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free Community; paid plans from €5.95/user/month annually | Free to download and self-host |
| Free plan | Community, self-managed, with no minimum users | Free GPL v2; no user or project licensing limits |
| Best for | Classic, agile, or hybrid teams wanting cloud or self-hosting | Teams wanting flexible, free, self-hosted project management |
| Core strength | Gantt charts, agile boards, and Team Planner | Issue tracking, custom fields, and SCM integrations |
| Learning curve | Review ease-of-use score: 6 | Review ease-of-use score: 5 |
| Integrations and data | Self-hosting or Enterprise Cloud in the EU or Germany | Cross-platform and cross-database, with five SCM integrations |
| Team and seat costs | Enterprise starts at 25 users; Community has no minimum | No licensing limits on users or projects |
| Support | Email, phone, remote hands, or dedicated engineer by tier | Support details not published on the vendor's site |
OpenProject Choose OpenProject if
- Choose OpenProject if you need cloud hosting or Enterprise support tiers.
- Choose OpenProject if your team uses agile boards or Team Planner.
- Choose OpenProject if you want classic, agile, or hybrid project planning.
Redmine Choose Redmine if
- Choose Redmine if you want free software with no user licensing limits.
- Choose Redmine if you can self-host and maintain your own installation.
- Choose Redmine if you need issue tracking and multiple SCM integrations.
02Pricing compared
Redmine costs nothing to download and self-host; its GNU GPL v2 software has no licensing limits on users or projects. There is no paid monthly or annual plan listed, but hosting and administration are yours to handle.
OpenProject also has a free self-managed Community edition. Its paid Enterprise plans start at €5.95 per user monthly on annual billing, according to the published pricing information. Basic has a 25-user minimum; the listed monthly equivalent is €6.95, and one-month billing is available only for Cloud Basic. Professional is €10.95 annually billed with a 25-user minimum; Premium is €15.95 with a 100-user minimum. A 14-day trial is listed. So OpenProject’s entry price is not a small-team price: a team below 25 can use Community, but cannot meet the Basic minimum.
03Features and depth
Both cover core project tracking, but they approach it differently. Redmine’s feature set centers on multiple projects, issue tracking with custom fields, role-based access control, Gantt charts and a calendar. It also includes per-project wikis and forums, news, documents and file management, plus integrations with Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and CVS.
OpenProject is positioned for classic, agile or hybrid project work. Its listed tools include Gantt charts, Scrum and Kanban boards, and Team Planner for assigning tasks in weekly or bi-weekly calendars. It also offers self-managed installation or Enterprise Cloud hosting, with servers in the EU or Germany. Security controls listed include HTTPS encryption, password security, two-factor authentication and session runtime settings.
Choose based on workflow, not feature count. Redmine’s SCM integrations and project collaboration tools may matter more to teams already managing code and issues. OpenProject is the clearer fit if you need agile boards or workload planning alongside project schedules.
04Ease of use and learning curve
Neither option removes the work of setting up a project system. Redmine is self-hosted, so your team is responsible for hosting it; the review published describes its experience as less polished and gives ease of use a score of 5 out of 10. Its flexible configuration may suit teams willing to manage that trade-off, but the available material does not specify setup requirements or support channels.
OpenProject offers a managed Cloud option as well as self-managed Community and Enterprise choices. That gives teams a route away from running the software themselves, though paid Basic starts at 25 users. The published review rates ease of use 6 out of 10. We would not treat that one-point difference as proof it is simpler: the practical choice is whether you want to administer hosting or pay for an Enterprise option.
Questions people ask
Does anyone still use Redmine?
The information here does not include current user counts or adoption data, so we can’t quantify how many teams still use it. Redmine remains available as free, open-source software for teams that want to self-host project management, with no licensing limits on users or projects.
What are some good alternatives to OpenProject?
Redmine is one alternative in this comparison if free self-hosting is the priority and your team can manage hosting. It includes issue tracking, Gantt charts, a calendar and project collaboration tools. If you need OpenProject’s listed agile boards, Team Planner or optional cloud hosting, check whether your alternative includes those before switching.
What are the top 3 project management tools?
We can’t rank three tools from the published information: it covers only OpenProject and Redmine, with no common benchmark or broader comparison set. Between these two, Redmine prioritizes free self-hosting; OpenProject adds listed agile boards, Team Planner and a cloud-hosted option.
Is Redmine like Jira?
The published information supports a limited comparison: Redmine is a project management application with issue tracking, custom issue fields, role-based access control, Gantt charts and a calendar. It does not provide Jira feature or pricing details, so we can’t make a reliable feature-by-feature comparison.