Free and open-source issue trackers for teams with AI agents (2026)

The best free issue tracker for most teams is GitHub Issues if your code is on GitHub: it costs $0 with no published cap on issues or collaborators, and it has an official MCP server and CLI for agents. The best free Jira alternative is Jira's own Free plan for up to 10 users, or Plane's cloud Free plan for up to 12. The best free Linear alternative is Linear Free, if 250 issues is enough; past that, Plane or GitHub Issues. The best open-source issue tracker for AI agents is Gitea, the only self-hosted tracker here with both an official MCP server and an official CLI. Self-hosting is free to license but not free to run: on our base assumptions, a small server plus admin time costs about $1,500 to $2,000 in year one, and $840 to $3,360 across our low and high admin-time scenarios. That cost is mostly fixed: it does not grow much with the team.

Radial is not free and not open source, and it cannot be self-hosted. It costs $50 per user per year, agents cost $0, and there is no server to run. For a 10-person team that is $500 a year, against roughly $1,500 to self-host on our base assumptions.

Every fact below comes from the vendor's pricing page, docs or official repository, checked on Nov 2, 2026, linked inline. Where a vendor does not say, we write "not published". The tables are also published as data: free tiers CSV, agent support CSV and self-hosting costs JSON, each with a source URL and a checked date.

#Free tiers and their limits

Taiga deserves a note: its cloud plans are flat per workspace with unlimited users. Enthusiast is €50 a year for 5 private projects and 100 MB; Basic is €200 a year for unlimited projects and 500 MB, cheaper than any per-seat tracker here once a team passes 5 people. The catch is the storage cap and no MCP server or CLI for agents.

The free tiers table as CSV: free-and-open-source-issue-trackers-free-tiers.csv.

#Agent and MCP support

An agent works through an issue tracker in one of three ways: an MCP server, a CLI, or the tracker's API. Every tracker here has an API: Linear's is GraphQL, GitHub offers REST and GraphQL, and the rest are REST. The table shows which ship an official MCP server and an official CLI, and whether an agent costs a seat.

So the best open-source issue tracker for AI agents, by tooling, is Gitea: an official MCP server and an official CLI, both maintained by the project. Plane is second, with an official MCP server and no issue CLI. OpenProject has an MCP server only on paid Enterprise plans. Forgejo, Redmine and Taiga leave agents on the REST API or community tools.

The agent support table as CSV: free-and-open-source-issue-trackers-agent-support.csv.

#The true cost of self-hosting

Self-hosted trackers cost $0 to license and do not bill agents. The cost is the server and the time someone spends keeping it running.

The chart shows year-one cost for a 10-person team with agents, on our base admin-time assumption: GitHub Free, Jira Free and Plane cloud Free at $0, Radial at $500, self-hosting on a 2 GB 1 vCPU server at $1,507, self-hosting Gitea on a 2 vCPU server at $1,594, and self-hosting on a 4 GB server at $1,680.

Assumptions:

• Server: DigitalOcean Basic Droplets at $12 (2 GB, 1 vCPU), $18 (2 GB, 2 vCPUs, for Gitea's "2 CPU cores"), $24 (4 GB) and $48 (8 GB, 4 vCPUs) a month, plus weekly backups at "20 % (Weekly) ... of Droplet cost" (Droplet pricing). Cheaper hosts exist: Hetzner lists a 4 GB CX23 at €5.99 a month before VAT, marked "not available" when we checked on Nov 2, 2026 (Hetzner). The database runs on the same server.
• Admin time: our assumption, not a vendor figure, and the number that moves the result most. Base: 4 hours to install, then 2 hours a month for upgrades, backup checks, TLS renewal and OS patches: 28 hours in year one, 24 after. Low: 2 hours to install and 1 a month (14 hours, then 12). High: 8 hours to install and 4 a month (56 hours, then 48). No vendor publishes an admin-hours figure.
• Hourly rate: $47.66, the 2025 median wage for network and computer systems administrators (BLS). The 2025 median for software developers, quality assurance analysts and testers combined is $64.44 an hour, and for software developers alone $135,980 a year (BLS), so if a developer does the work, the time costs more.
• Arithmetic: year one = server x 1.2 x 12 + 28 x $47.66. For Forgejo: $12 x 1.2 x 12 = $172.80, plus $1,334.48 = $1,507.28.
• Not included: your own hours on a bad upgrade or a restore, a staging server, SSO, email delivery, and tax.

Both self-hosting tables are in free-and-open-source-self-hosting-costs.json, with the assumptions and a source URL for every price.

Admin time is 66% to 89% of the year-one bill in the base scenario. If running the server costs you nothing (it is your hobby, or a platform team already runs one), self-hosting costs $172.80 to $691.20 a year. That beats Radial from 4 people on a $12 server ($172.80 against $200), from 7 on Plane's $24 server and from 14 on OpenProject's. It never beats a free tier that fits: GitHub Free stays at $0, and Radial costs $50 to $150 for 1 to 3 people.

The chart shows year-one cost by team size, base scenario. At 5 people: Radial $250, self-hosting on a 4 GB server $1,680, Jira Standard $582, Linear Basic $600. At 10: Radial $500, self-hosting $1,680, Jira $950, Linear $1,200. At 25: Radial $1,250, self-hosting $1,680, Jira $2,450, Linear $3,000. At 50: Radial $2,500, self-hosting $1,680, Jira $4,850, Linear $6,000.

Self-hosting is a fixed cost, so it gets cheaper per person as the team grows. In the base scenario, Radial costs less than self-hosting Plane in year one up to 33 people ($1,650 against $1,680.08), and up to 29 people from year two ($1,450 against $1,489.44). In the low scenario the year-one break-even falls to 20 people ($1,000 against $1,012.84); in the high scenario it rises to 60 ($3,000 against $3,014.56). Above the break-even, self-hosting costs less in money and admin time combined.

Radial's own admin time is not zero either: someone adds and removes members, mints and revokes API keys for agents, and runs the migration. We have not measured those hours, so the comparison above counts them as $0, which flatters Radial.

#The best free Jira alternative

Start with Jira Free if you have 10 users or fewer: it is Jira, at $0, and agents can use the Rovo MCP server at up to 500 calls an hour or acli. If you want to leave Jira, the free options that fit a small team are:

• Plane cloud Free for up to 12 users, with an official MCP server. Plane plans work in cycles on boards, close to how Jira teams work, and you can move to the self-hosted Community Edition later with no user limit.
• GitHub Issues if your code is on GitHub and a list of issues with labels, milestones and Projects boards is enough.
• OpenProject Community if you need Gantt charts and are willing to run a quad-core server.

For a paid comparison, see Radial vs Jira.

#The best free Linear alternative

Linear Free has unlimited members but stops at 250 issues and 2 teams. A team with coding agents can file 250 issues in weeks. Past that limit:

• Plane is the closest in feel: cycles, a keyboard-driven web app, and an official MCP server. Free in the cloud for 12 users, or self-hosted with no user limit.
• GitHub Issues has no published issue cap on GitHub Free, plus an official MCP server and gh.
• Gitea if you self-host and want agent tooling: an official MCP server and the gt CLI.

For a paid comparison, see Radial vs Linear.

#Where Radial fits: near-free, not free

Radial is a paid, hosted, closed-source issue tracker. We list it here because it is the near-free option for a team that runs agents and does not want to run a server:

• $50 per user per year, flat. One plan, billed yearly, no free tier and no monthly plan.
• Agents cost $0. Agent members never count as seats, and nothing is metered: no credits, no rate-limited free plan.
• No self-hosting work, and no self-hosting option. No server, backups or upgrades to run, but also no way to move Radial onto your own servers. Your data is stored in the United States, primarily in an AWS US region. The exit is radial export, JSON or CSV: issues, comments, teams, statuses, labels, projects, cycles and members (attachment files, relations and build records are fetched separately).
• Built for agents. A first-party CLI (radial), a hosted MCP server and a REST API.

What is open: the rd-* agent skills, which drive Radial from Claude Code and other agents, are MIT-licensed in a public repository, github.com/BrainGridAI/radial, which also hosts the CLI's releases. The Radial app is not open source, and Radial cannot be self-hosted.

Where Radial is not the cheapest:

• Free tiers cost $0. GitHub Free, Jira Free (10 users), Plane cloud Free (12 users) and Linear Free (250 issues) beat any paid plan if they fit.
• Taiga cloud Basic is €200 a year for unlimited users, cheaper than Radial past 5 people, if you can work without an MCP server or CLI.
• Self-hosting wins past about 30 people on our base assumptions (20 to 60 across the low and high scenarios). If admin time is free to you, it wins from 4 to 14 people, depending on the server.
• GitHub Team is $48 per user per year against Radial's $50.

For the full paid comparison across eight trackers, read what a cost-effective issue tracker is. For Radial's plan, see Radial pricing.

#How we compared

We compared from docs. On Nov 2, 2026, we read each vendor's pricing page, docs and official repositories, and recorded every figure with its URL and a short quote. "Official" MCP servers and CLIs are ones the vendor or project builds or maintains; community tools are named as such. Self-hosting costs use DigitalOcean list prices and the BLS median wage, with admin hours as our stated assumption and the arithmetic in the table. We did not install or load-test any tracker. Our agent-capability scores for Jira and Linear, and how we scored them, are in the methodology sections of Radial vs Jira and Radial vs Linear; the raw runs are not published.

#FAQ

#What is the best free issue tracker?

GitHub Issues, if your code is on GitHub: $0 on GitHub Free with no published cap on issues or collaborators, an official MCP server and the gh CLI. If you are not on GitHub, Plane's cloud Free plan covers 12 users and Jira Free covers 10. If you will run a server, Gitea, Plane Community Edition and OpenProject Community are free with no user limits.

#What is the best open-source issue tracker for AI agents?

Gitea, as of Nov 2, 2026: it has an official MCP server (gitea-mcp) and an official CLI (gt). Plane has an official MCP server but no CLI for issues. OpenProject's MCP server is an Enterprise add-on, not in the free Community edition. Forgejo, Redmine and Taiga have no official MCP server, so agents use their REST APIs.

#What is the best free Jira alternative?

For 10 users or fewer, Jira Free itself. To leave Jira, Plane is the closest in structure: free in the cloud for 12 users, or self-hosted with no user limit, with an official MCP server. GitHub Issues is free if your code is on GitHub. OpenProject Community is free to self-host if you need Gantt charts.

#What is the best free Linear alternative?

Linear Free, until you pass 250 issues or 2 teams. After that, Plane is the closest in feel and is free for 12 users in the cloud or unlimited users self-hosted. GitHub Issues has no published issue cap on GitHub Free.

#How much does it cost to self-host an issue tracker?

On our base assumptions, about $1,500 to $2,000 in year one and $1,300 to $1,850 a year after; $840 to $3,360 in year one across our low and high admin-time scenarios. The server costs $172.80 to $691.20 a year on DigitalOcean with weekly backups; the rest is admin time (28 hours in year one in the base case) at $47.66 an hour, the BLS median wage for systems administrators. If the admin time costs you nothing, it is only the server.

#Do free issue trackers charge for AI agents?

Self-hosted trackers have no seats, so an agent account costs nothing beyond the server. Linear says agents are not billable seats, and Jira does not bill service accounts (5 free). GitHub does not publish a rule for agent accounts, though GitHub Apps are not billed users. Jira's enriched Rovo MCP calls draw Rovo credits on paid plans, and Copilot's cloud agent needs a paid Copilot plan.

#Is Radial free or open source?

No. Radial costs $50 per user per year, flat, with agents free and nothing metered, and it is hosted only: it cannot be self-hosted. Its rd-* agent skills are MIT-licensed in a public GitHub repository; the app is closed source.