OpenProject
Headquarters
Berlin, GermanyFounded
2012CEO / Founder
Jan Schulz-HofenEmployees
51-200Funding
BootstrappedProducts
1 product listedAvg. AI Score
7.9/10Website
openproject.org/
Profile updated
About OpenProject
OpenProject is a developer of open source project management software, founded in 2012 by Jan Schulz-Hofen. The company is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, and operates a North American subsidiary, OpenProject North America, Inc., based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The company's core product, also named OpenProject, provides tools for project planning, task management, Gantt charts, agile boards, time tracking, and bug tracking. It is available as a free community edition under the GNU General Public License, as well as paid Cloud and Enterprise on-premises editions with additional features such as backups, priority support, and premium integrations. OpenProject is used by organizations in sectors including government, education, and engineering that require self-hosted or data-sovereign project management solutions.
OpenProject has grown primarily through its open source community and paid subscription offerings rather than external venture funding. The company positions itself as an alternative to proprietary project management tools such as Jira and Microsoft Project, emphasizing data privacy and on-premises deployment options for enterprises and public sector organizations, particularly within Europe.
Specialties
Products by OpenProject
All products by OpenProject reviewed by our AI panel of experts.
How Our Review Panel Scores OpenProject
Six independent reviewer personalities assessed OpenProject's product on their own terms. They landed within 0.6 points of each other, an unusually strong consensus.
Averaged across 1 reviewed product in our catalog. Scores are out of 10.
Competitive Landscape
Who OpenProject competes with, and how they differ.
Jira and Confluence are proprietary, primarily cloud-hosted tools with no open-source on-premises option; OpenProject competes on self-hosted deployment and data sovereignty, explicitly positioning against Atlassian ahead of Data Center's March 2029 end-of-life.
2 products reviewed on TopReviewed
Trello is a Kanban-only board tool on cloud-only (AWS) hosting with no Gantt charts or cost tracking; OpenProject covers full classic/agile/hybrid project management with a self-hosted, GDPR-compliant deployment option.
Asana is a proprietary, cloud-only work-management SaaS aimed at general team simplicity; OpenProject is open-source, offers on-premises deployment, and targets organizations needing self-hosted infrastructure and code-level customization.
monday.com is closed-source and cloud-only; OpenProject is open-source with source available on GitHub, ships a free self-hosted Community edition, and targets buyers with GDPR/data-sovereignty requirements.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewed
Taiga is an open-source tool focused mainly on agile/Scrum and Kanban workflows, with its self-hosted tier aimed at teams of 25+; OpenProject covers classic, agile, and hybrid project management (Gantt charts, cost tracking, meetings) with an unlimited-user free Community edition.
1 product reviewed on TopReviewedRedmine is the Ruby-on-Rails project-management tool OpenProject forked from (via ChiliProject) starting in 2010; it keeps an older interface and needs third-party plugins for features like team planners and Nextcloud integration that OpenProject ships natively.
Company Timeline
Key milestones in OpenProject's history, with sources.
- Partnership
OpenProject and XWiki launch integrated European alternative to Atlassian Jira/Confluence
The companies shipped a bidirectional integration: OpenProject work packages embedded in XWiki pages, and a new Wiki tab inside OpenProject work packages (OpenProject 17.6, released July 8, 2026), positioning the pairing as a sovereign alternative to Atlassian ahead of Jira/Confluence Data Center's March 2029 end-of-life.
openproject.org - Partnership
OpenProject and msg sign public-sector digital-sovereignty partnership
Announced at the 12th Zukunftskongress Staat & Verwaltung in Berlin, OpenProject GmbH and German IT consultancy msg agreed to jointly offer strategic assessment, technical integration, legacy-system migration (including from Jira), and hosting/support for public-sector customers.
openproject.org - Milestone
BWI signs 7-year framework contract to deploy openDesk (incl. OpenProject) across the Bundeswehr
Germany's military IT provider BWI signed a seven-year framework agreement with ZenDiS covering sovereign collaboration software, including openDesk's project-management module built on OpenProject, for rollout across the Bundeswehr.
heise.de - Milestone
OpenProject becomes founding component of Germany's openDesk open-source suite
openDesk 1.0, a Microsoft 365 alternative for German public administration built by Germany's Center for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS), launched at Smart Country Convention Berlin bundling OpenProject with seven other open-source vendors (Collabora, Element, Nextcloud, Nordeck, Open-Xchange, Univention, XWiki) for project-management functionality.
openproject.org - Milestone
German state premiers' conference adopts openDesk (including OpenProject) at Leipzig meeting
The Conference of Minister Presidents, representing all 16 German federal states, deployed openDesk, including its OpenProject-based project-management module, at an October 2024 meeting in Leipzig, one week after the platform's official launch, for secure document sharing and policy coordination.
openproject.org - Milestone
Berlin software company formally renamed OpenProject GmbH
The Berlin-registered entity behind the product (incorporated 2005 in Stuttgart as e-learning firm Schule-im-Netz.de SiN GmbH, relocated to Berlin and renamed Finn GmbH in 2009) changed its legal name to OpenProject GmbH via a shareholder resolution amending its Gesellschaftsvertrag, formalizing the brand as the company name (HRB 117935 B, Amtsgericht Charlottenburg).
northdata.de - Founded
OpenProject 1.0 released as an open-source fork of ChiliProject/Redmine
Development began in 2010 as a fork of ChiliProject (itself derived from Redmine); the OpenProject Foundation was established and version 1.0 shipped on October 4, 2012, with the OpenProject trademark registered the same year by predecessor entity Finn GmbH.
en.wikipedia.org
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