15 Free Kanban Software Options in 2023

We have collected a definitive list of free Kanban software. You will find a well-structured post with pros, cons, pricing options, and links to free kanban boards. To make it even more convenient, we have created a comparison table for all overviewed free kanban tools.

All free Kanban boards are in the productivity category. We try to elect the best free Kanban board. Also, we list which Kanban features are available per tool.

Best free kanban Tools Summary

1. Teamhood

Capterra score: 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Best free Kanban software in 2023

Why Teamhood is the best free Kanban Board out there?

1. Modern and intuitive interface
2. A unique approach to Kanban project management
3. Has Swimlanes and also sub-swimlanes
4. WIP Limits
5. Classes of service
6. Statuses and sub-statuses
7. Commitment points
8. Actionable Agile metrics
9. Powerful dependencies management
10. Supports Agile, Waterfall, Hybrid, and Kanban methods
11. Integrated workload management for human and machinery resources

Teamhood is the better way to manage projects and teamwork. It has a new approach towards kanban project management and we consider it to be the best kanban board free priced. The best part is that Teamhood does not push users to use a specific methodology and it is very easy to change from one to another. That is probably why so many positive reviews are found on review sites such as Capterra or G2.

Teamhood helps reduce complexity by structuring your project data in neat kanban boards. Teamhood offers a design that enables fitting more actionable information into one screen than any other software out there. For clarification, you can compare it to alternative free kanban board tools such as Monday, Asana, or Trello. Teamhood offers fundamental and advanced collaboration features aimed at hybrid or even fully remote teams to foster asynchronous collaboration.

Teamhood’s free kanban boards have features such as custom statuses, status groups, rows, and downstream sub-workflows allowing you to visualize both high-level and lower-level processes in a single board. Swimlanes or sub-workflows can be added to major process stages to unfold sub-tasks as standalone kanban cards. Such a flexible structure can be called a three-dimensional or even an advanced Kanban board.

The next major advantage of Teamhood as a free kanban board is that it has professional project management features such as Gantt, task dependencies, Timeline, and time tracking. A single coherent system for the full project lifecycle. Everything is native and integrated, bringing the best user experience.

The biggest challenge always is to choose the right tool for your type and size of the company. Best tools usually are flexible enough to be adapted, and so is Teamhood. You have numerous options on how to divide teams, departments, or projects among workspaces and kanban boards while management can use reports to collect data from relevant parts and present it conveniently in a single view. Teamhood offers standard kanban lead and cycle times metrics, burndown charts, dashboards, and a few more neat reporting features. 

Teamhood is a fully functional free Kanban tool. It is the new standard of kanban-driven project management and collaboration.  

Pros: Fully featured free Kanban board, flexible and customizable task boards. Intuitive and easy daily collaboration features. Task dependencies, synchronized items, time tracking.

Cons:  Integrates to many tools, but via Zapier, it means you will need extra time to set up your integrations.

Website: https://teamhood.com

Price: Free or $9/month per user for the pro plan.

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2. Trello

Capterra score: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Trello is a popular simple kanban board. Many small teams or individuals choose Trello to work in simple to-do type kanban. It is basic in kanban features so not that suited for professional work management. Trello cards can store various data like description, comments, and attachments. The most famous Trello feature is card cover images. Trello has a powerup ecosystem where users can purchase additional add-ons. Though this means the cost of the tool can grow rapidly.

Pros: Easy to use simple Kanban.

Cons: Lacks professional project management features, and does not suit larger teams.

Price: Free or $17.50 user/month for the enterprise package.

Website: https://trello.com/

3. Asana

Capterra score: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Asana is the older task management solution that has been present in the market for quite some time. Still used by many teams as a kanban board. It helps collaborate and visualize project work. Teams can create standard column-only kanban boards in Asana. Asana offers a free option for small teams. It is a good option for those looking to use something that is mature and polished but do not expect modern productivity features. Also, Asana is quite expensive if you decide to go for paid plan eventually. It is not a full kanban system, just the board. Can be used by multiple teams. Has enterprise plan and features.

Cons: Limited Kanban board with no proper Kanban features.

Price: Free or $24.50 per user/month for a business plan.

Website: https://asana.com/

4. Monday.com

Capterra score: 4.6/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Monday is famous for its automation and list view. If you want to use Kanban briefly, then you could consider Monday as an option. Though it has no kanban system features and its kanban board is very limited. You should pick a free kanban board based on capabilities and monday.com lacks here.

Monday’s list view is far more useful and flexible. You can integrate with many tools and automate tedious daily tasks. But do not expect to find kanban swimlanes, reports or WIP limits. Monday makes kanban free only with its limited max 2 users plan. So it means the free version is just a marketing thing, you most definitely will need to pay eventually.

Pros: Good list view and integrated work automation.

Cons: Limited Kanban view, no proper Kanban features.

Website: https://monday.com/

Price: Free for max 2 users or €16 per user/month for the Pro plan.

5. Wrike 

Capterra score: 4.3/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Enterprise-focused PM tool, which has a Kanban board. If your company is project-first, then it could be a good option. Kanban features are not that developed though. The main users of Wrike are from the marketing and engineering industries. You can add WIP limits to Kanban columns in Wrike which is at least a good starting point. No swimlanes or metrics though.
You should pick Wrike as a project task visualization tool.

If you are looking for a more thorough free kanban software consider other alternatives.

Pros: Enterprise PM tool with various features.

Cons: Basic Kanban board view, no proper Kanban features or metrics.

Website: https://www.wrike.com/

Price: Free or $24.80 user/month for a business plan.

6. Jira 

Capterra score: 4.4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Jira is the defacto choice for IT teams who want to work in an Agile approach. It is a task management and project management solution aimed at Agile practitioners, who are usually tech companies, financial institutions such as banks, and similar. Jira offers a variety of features making it easier for dev teams to track work. All Jira features are focused on the IT process. Jira aims to allow users to plan, execute and release products/projects as well as track issues. Kanban boards in Jira are used to visualize tasks that are being planned, in progress, or finished. Jira offers kanban columns with wip limits and some standard metrics can be added via purchased add-ons. The biggest downside of Jira is its complexity and many configuration options. Teams who need something easy and lightweight might want to consider other options than Jira.

Jira is a complex tool that supports free Kanban boards and it aims at IT organizations.

Pros: Feature-rich solution for tech companies, Kanban features available.

Cons: Complicated configuration and time-consuming to set up. Can be hard to scale outside the IT organization.

Website: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

Price: Free or $14 user/month for the Premium plan.

7. Kanban tool 

Capterra score: 4.8/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

One of the older generation free kanban tools, it’s kanban board free and straightforward. Has columns and sub-columns also rows/swimlanes. Its collaboration features are quite basic and many modern options are missing. So if you need a kanban board to structure something for temporary use – the kanban tool can be a good option. If you were to collaborate with a team on projects, it will be quite limited. The Kanban tool can be used as a starting point when transitioning from a physical kanban board to a digital one.

Editing Kanban cards in the kanban tool is a bit clunky because of its outdated user interface and user experience solutions.

Pros: Free, simple kanban board with good structure.

Cons: Archaic and lacking in many collaboration features.

Website: https://kanbantool.com/

Price: Free or €9 user/month for the Enterprise plan.

8. Teamwork

Capterra score: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Teamwork is a kanban board tool focused on collaboration and digital content creation projects. Meaning its most targeted audience is marketers or marketing agencies. Good collaboration features for content editing, commenting and attaching materials. On the kanban side it does have a simple column-only board, though proper kanban features are not present so should be taken into consideration whether you want to use a true kanban system or just a kanban columns tool.

Pros: Optimized for marketing agencies with decent collaboration features.

Cons: Not the strongest Kanban implementation because of missing features such as swimlanes, WIP limits, metrics.

Website: https://www.teamwork.com/

Price: Free or €13 per user/month.

9. Redmine 

Capterra score: 4.1/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Redmine is an older-generation PM tool that merges traditional and Agile approaches. Redmine offers some standard Kanban features such as columns only board, work in progress limits. It also offers sprints and agile ways of working built into the system. Alongside agile, Redmine does offer classical risk management, earned value management and project management features in one setup. It is a complicated tool suitable for larger enterprises. Kanban is not their main feature and this can be easily recognized, though it can be used as a free kanban software.

Pros:  For larger companies or more complicated project management workflows.

Cons:  Kanban is just a sub-feature which limited possibilities.

Website: https://www.easyredmine.com/

Price: Free or €19 per user/month.

10. Miro 

Capterra score: 4.7/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Miro is a visual whiteboard with a loose structure of graphical forms. But we have decided to include it in our best free kanban software list because it has a dedicated figure for Kanban. Apart from columns and kanban cards, there is nothing more, but still can be used for quick brainstorming sessions to map out work progress. Miro is recognized for its real-time collaboration capabilities and is used by many remote teams across the world. The biggest tradeoff will be not having a strict kanban structure and kanban metrics.

Pros: Easy whiteboard interface with real-time collaboration.

Cons: Almost no kanban features, just columns, and cards.

Website: https://miro.com/

Price: Free or $16 user/month for businesses.

11. Jetbrains Youtrack 

Capterra score: 4.4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Youtrack by Jetbrains offers an issue tracker which is also a free kanban software option. The tool focuses on bug tracking, and issue logging so your team can ensure the quality of products or services once they are launched. It is targeting IT teams due to techie features. Kanban board has simple columns and rows structure. It has a nice feature to calculate time in status. It also has a cumulative flow diagram as the main kanban report.

If you are in a tech team and you need issue tracking visualized as a free kanban tool – YouTrack is an option.

Pros: Flexible task board with free Kanban board features.

Cons: Limited outside the IT industry, can take time to configure.

Website: https://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/

Price: Free or 5$ user/month for the business plan.

12. Swift Kanban 

Capterra score: 4.4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

SwitfKanban is one of the kanban pm tools targeted for small to medium enterprises. This tool is a free kanban software that is also a kanban system. Many free kanban boards have just a few features related to kanban method but this one has more. Swiftkanban supports columns and column groups, has WIP limits, and can breakdown work into subtasks as smaller pieces. It is not suitable for enterprise companies but mainly for remote collaborating teams. This tool’s reporting capabilities are not developed enough as well as graphical user interface is already outdated. Yet, it still stands among free kanban tools firmly.

Pros: Nicely featured Kanban board.

Cons: Not suitable for medium or larger teams, graphical user interface is outdated

Website: https://www.digite.com/swiftkanban/

Price: Free or $7 user/month.

13. KanbanFlow 

Capterra score: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Kanbanflow combines good kanban board free features as well as integrated time tracking. For those who work on an hourly basis or track their time spent, KanbanFlow can be a good choice. Easy to modify task board, time tracker, estimates, subtasks, and wip limits. It is not as modern as other alternatives but still a valid contender in the best free kanban software list.

We believe KanbanFlow is best suited for small teams or organizations starting with kanban and requiring a time tracking feature on top.

Pros: Kanban reports and time tracker.

Cons: Suited only to small teams and already outdated design.

Website: https://kanbanflow.com/

Price: Free or $5 user/month.

14. Taskworld 

Capterra score: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Taskworld is one of the options for visual task management and it uses the kanban board as its task view. You can manage tasks, collaborate on initiatives and write comments on each card. Taskworld offers fundamental kanban board features like columns and task cards. But apart from that it is quite a limited kanban solution. Kanban cards can display checklist style subtasks right on the card itself. Also, you can assign more than one user to a card.

Pros: Good task management tool, the closest alternative to MS Planner.

Cons: Only basic Kanban board, best for small teams or individuals.

Website: https://taskworld.com/

Price: Free or $22 user/month for a business plan.

15. Taiga

Capterra score: 4.4/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Taiga is an open-source PM tool for agile practitioners. It is easy to use and has a basic interface for the kanban board – columns and kanban cards. It also offers sprints and wip limits. It is more of a scrum tool than kanban but nonetheless can belong to the free kanban tools list.

Pros: Focused on Agile methodologies.

Cons: Becomes slow to use when many tasks are added. Old design and UX.

Website: https://www.taiga.io/

Price: Free or 5 $ user/month

Best Kanban Tools Summary 

Each solution has its pros and cons as you see, so one must choose based on their organization size and business. You will most likely find a free kanban board for your needs in this list. Yet, for those looking for the most versatile and adaptable solution which is a true kanban system, Teamhood is the clear winner based on the comparison table.

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Teamhood

• Modern project and teamwork management the free Kanban way
• Flexible board structure, board zooming, Swimlanes, WIP Limits, Classes of service, Commitment points,
• Modern and unique data visualization, built for speed
• Customizable work item details and fields
• Kanban Metrics, Agile metrics, customizable dashboards
• Time tracking 
• Prepared Kanban templates

Register for Teamhood today for free!

Vidas Vasiliauskas

Website

2019 - Present Co-founder and CEO @ Teamhood.
2015-2019 Head of software engineering department at Danske Bank.
2017-2018 Partner Associate Professor at Vilnius University. Lecturer of Software Architecture course
2011 - 2015 Managed numerous smaller IT teams at Prewise.
Co-founder of RaveIT, Eylean, No Brakes Games

Certified Agile product owner and practitioner. Managed large scale enterprise projects as well as launch of small startup products.
MSc of Software Engineering at Vilnius University.

Hobbies: Racing, MTB cycling, Windsurfing