Kanba Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Kanba is an open-source, deliberately minimal Kanban tool for makers and indie hackers, pitched as a no-AI alternative to Trello. You can self-host it free or use the hosted version. Best for: indie hackers who want a clean board without bloat. Price: Free plan, Pro from $4.90/mo, self-host free. Rating: 7.6/10.

What is Kanba?

Kanba is a lightweight, open-source Kanban tool that bills itself as a Trello alternative for makers and indie hackers. You create projects, manage tasks on drag-and-drop boards, and keep notes and bookmarks alongside them. The whole product is built around restraint: it markets itself as a space to build, not configure, and it pointedly ships without AI features at a time when nearly every rival is bolting them on.

We dug into the project and found it is built by a solo indie developer, Abbas, under the Kanba-co organization, and released as open source under the MIT license. It launched on Product Hunt and Hacker News around mid-2025 and is still labeled beta. The repo has roughly 600 stars and is built on a modern stack (Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, Supabase, and Stripe), and it is fully self-hostable, which matters for anyone who wants to own their data.

The timing of its no-AI stance is the interesting part. In 2026, nearly every project management tool is racing to add AI summaries, AI task generation, and AI assistants, often whether users asked for them or not. Kanba goes the other way on purpose, marketing itself as a calm, fast place to organize work without any of that. For a slice of makers who feel their tools have gotten heavier and noisier, that restraint is the entire pitch, and it is a refreshing one even if it limits the audience.

What Are Kanba’s Key Features?

Unlimited Kanban boards

The core is a clean Kanban board with unlimited projects and drag-and-drop tasks moving between stages. There is no per-board cap to wrestle with, and the interface is fast and uncluttered. This is the part Kanba does well: it gets you to a working board quickly without a setup wizard or a wall of options.

Self-hosting and data ownership

Because Kanba is MIT-licensed, you can run it on your own server for free with no vendor lock-in and full local control of your data. The stack is Vercel-ready and uses Supabase for storage, so a technically comfortable maker can stand up their own instance. For privacy-minded users, this is a real advantage over closed SaaS boards.

Notes and bookmarks

An August 2025 release added instant note-taking and bookmarks, so your scratch ideas and saved links live next to your tasks instead of in a separate app. Combined with dark and light modes, it nudges Kanba slightly past a pure task board toward a light personal workspace, without losing its minimal feel. For a solo maker, keeping the half-formed idea and the link you want to act on in the same place as the board you are working from removes one more app from the daily juggle, which fits the tool’s whole keep-it-simple philosophy.

Lightweight collaboration

You can invite members and assign tasks for small-team work, with updates in real time. It is not built for large org structures or complex permissions, and the roadmap still lists calendar, timeline, meeting planner, and automation as future work. For a solo maker or a tiny team, the current collaboration is enough; for anything bigger, it is thin.

Deliberately no AI

Kanba’s most distinctive feature is what it refuses to add. While rivals stuff in AI assistants, Kanba markets itself as a board with no AI, framed as a space to build rather than configure. That is not just branding: it keeps the interface fast and the mental model simple, with no surprise suggestions or autogenerated clutter. If you have grown tired of tools nudging you with machine-generated text, this is a genuine selling point. If you actually want AI help, this is plainly the wrong tool.

How Much Does Kanba Cost?

Kanba starts free. There is a free-forever plan, and because the code is MIT-licensed, self-hosting the whole thing costs nothing beyond your own server. The hosted Pro plan starts at $4.90/mo and adds unlimited projects, extra features, and priority support. One honest caveat: the exact limits of the hosted free tier are not clearly published, so check them in-app before you rely on it.

At $4.90/mo, the hosted version is cheap for the category. Trello has a free plan but charges $5/user/mo for Standard (billed annually) and $10/user/mo for Premium. Kan.bn, the closest open-source rival, is free for individuals but $7.50/seat/mo for teams. Kanba’s flat, low hosted price plus a free self-host route makes it one of the more affordable ways to run boards.

The value math is simple for the target user. A solo maker can self-host for free forever, and someone who just wants a managed board pays less than a single Trello seat. The trade-off is maturity, not money, since you are paying a small fee for an early-stage tool. If you are comfortable running your own instance, the practical cost over a year is effectively zero, and if you are not, $4.90 a month is low enough that it is rarely the thing standing between you and just using it.

Who is Kanba Best For?

Use Kanba if you are a solo maker, indie hacker, freelancer, or small team that wants a fast, clean Kanban board and is actively turned off by feature bloat and forced AI. The self-host option makes it a strong pick for anyone who wants to own their data, and the price is hard to argue with.

Skip Kanba if you need calendars, timelines, Gantt views, automation, or deep permissions today, because those are still on the roadmap rather than shipped. It is also a one-person beta, so teams that need guaranteed support and long-term stability for mission-critical work should lean on a more established tool for now.

• Use it if: you want a minimal, cheap or free, self-hostable Kanban board.
• Skip it if: you need calendars, automation, or enterprise-grade reliability.

Best Kanba Alternatives

Trello

Trello is the mainstream Kanban leader and the tool Kanba is explicitly built against. It is more polished, with a huge ecosystem of Power-Ups and integrations. It has a free plan, with Standard at $5/user/mo and Premium at $10/user/mo on annual billing. If you want maturity, integrations, and team features now, Trello is the safer bet, just with more bloat than Kanba’s fans want.

Kan.bn

Kan.bn is the other open-source Trello alternative and the closest like-for-like rival. It is free for individuals with unlimited boards, lists, and cards, with a Team plan at $7.50/seat/mo. It is a touch more featured than Kanba in places, so if you want an open-source board with a slightly more developed team tier, it is worth comparing directly.

Kanboard

Kanboard is the minimalist self-hosted benchmark: completely free, open source, with no paid tier at all, and it runs on tiny resources. It is older and more utilitarian than Kanba, with a dated interface, but for a purely free, self-hosted board with zero cost ever, it is the option to beat.

Final Verdict: Is Kanba Worth It?

Kanba is a likeable, focused tool that knows exactly what it is. It nails the basics of a Kanban board, stays out of your way, and makes a clear stand against the AI-everything trend. The free self-host route and a $4.90/mo hosted plan make it genuinely cheap, and for solo makers and indie hackers that combination is hard to beat.

It earns a 7.6 because the execution and value are strong even though it is early. The honest knocks are that it is still beta, key views like calendar and timeline are not shipped, and it is a one-person project with no independent reviews yet. Those are reasons to keep expectations grounded, not reasons to dismiss it, because what is shipped works well and the price is fair.

Our recommendation: if you are an indie hacker or solo maker who just needs a clean board to track what you are building, start on the free plan or self-host it, and upgrade to the $4.90/mo Pro tier only if you want the managed version. The no-AI, no-bloat focus is exactly right for that audience. If you are running a larger team that needs timelines, automation, and guaranteed support, stick with Trello or wait for Kanba’s roadmap to fill in. For its target user, though, Kanba is one of the better small project tools we have looked at.