What's the difference between the Community and Commercial editions?

Plane offers two self-hosted editions: the Community Edition, which is free and open-source, and the Commercial Edition, which has a free plan with the option to upgrade to paid plans. Here's how to decide which one is right for you.

Community Edition

The Community Edition is completely free, forever, and is governed by the AGPL v3.0 license. It's fully open-source, meaning you can audit the code, modify it, and contribute to the repo.

In terms of features, it's at par with the Free plan on Cloud. There are no hard seat limits, though performance may decline beyond around 50 users without infrastructure upgrades.

Best for teams who want to try Plane, audit the code for security, or run it as-is without needing paid features.

Things to know before choosing Community:

• No upgrade path. If you ever need paid features like SSO, advanced permissions, or priority support, you'll need to migrate your data to the Commercial Edition.

• No mobile or Desktop app.

• No native importers.

Commercial Edition

The Commercial Edition is a proprietary, closed-source edition designed for teams that want governance, compliance, and privacy controls. It comes with a free plan and lets you upgrade seamlessly to Pro or Business whenever you're ready.

The free plan includes 12 member seats and matches the Cloud Free plan in features. Upgrading is straightforward and doesn't require any data migration.

Best for teams planning to grow, needing paid features eventually, or wanting mobile access from day one.

What you get on Commercial that Community doesn't have:

• Mobile and Desktop apps available on all plans

• Importers to migrate data from Jira, ClickUp, Confluence, and more

• Seamless upgrade to paid plans anytime

• 12 seats on the Free plan

Can I switch from Community to Commercial later?

Yes, but it requires backing up your data and restoring it on a fresh Commercial installation. It's doable but involves some effort. If you're unsure which to start with, we recommend starting with the Commercial Edition. The free plan gives you the same starting point as Community, and upgrading later is just a few clicks away.

Here's the migration guide if you need it.

What about the Airgapped Edition?

The Airgapped Edition extends the Commercial Edition to completely isolated environments with no internet connectivity. It's designed for organizations with strict security and compliance requirements. It's available on the Enterprise Grid plan with a minimum of 100 seats. Reach out to us at sales@plane.so if that's relevant for your setup.

Quick comparison

A note on the 12 free seats

The 12 seats on the free plan are included at no cost, but they're not a permanent free allocation that carries over when you upgrade. When you upgrade to Pro or Business, you pay per seat for all members with paid roles (Owner, Admin, Member) in your workspace. The 12-seat free plan is simply the starting point before you upgrade.

For example, if you have 15 members and upgrade to Pro, you pay for all 15 seats at the Pro rate, not just the 3 above the free limit.