How we rank these tools — 4-step process
-
1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
-
2
Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
-
3
Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
-
4
Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
7 European Alternatives to Trello
OpenProject
Board view included in open-source PM suite
Zenkit
Kanban boards with flexible collection views
Vikunja
A European alternative to Todoist, Trello, Asana
Tenzu
French open-source agile PM, the Taiga successor
Key takeaways
- Trello stores content in US regions by default, and EU residency is an Enterprise feature with a fee. Jira gives residency away on Standard.
- Atlassian has been a Delaware corporation since October 2022, so residency does not settle the disclosure question either way.
- MeisterTask is the closest like-for-like: the same ease, on German servers, with ISO 27001 behind it.
- If your Trello grew into eight boards and three Power-Ups, OpenProject is the replacement and it will feel heavier.
- Zenkit is the one that keeps the board and adds a table, a calendar and a mind map over the same cards.
Why people leave Trello
Trello is the easiest board anyone ever handed a team, and that is not a small thing. People leave it for two reasons that have nothing to do with how the cards work.
The first is where the cards live. Trello content sits in US AWS regions by default, and pinning it to the EU is an Enterprise feature with a price attached. That is a meaningfully worse position than Jira, where data residency comes free on Standard and above. On top of it, Atlassian Corporation has been incorporated in Delaware since October 2022, so the CLOUD Act reaches the company holding the boards.
The second is that Trello stops. It is deliberately simple, and simplicity has an edge: the moment you need dependencies, a real timeline, workload across people, or a board that is also a table, you are buying Power-Ups or leaving.
- The data is American unless you pay for it not to be This is the difference that matters and it is easy to miss, because Trello sits under the same brand as Jira. Jira Cloud offers data residency on Standard, Premium and Enterprise at no extra cost. Trello keeps content in US regions by default, and moving it to the EU, Germany or Switzerland is an Enterprise-plan feature with a fee. A team on Trello Standard has no European option at all.
- And residency would not settle it anyway Even on Enterprise, pinning boards to Frankfurt changes where the data rests and not who can be ordered to produce it. Atlassian redomiciled to Delaware in October 2022, so a valid US order reaches the company wherever the servers are. For an organisation whose concern is disclosure rather than storage, the Enterprise upgrade buys the wrong thing.
- Power-Ups are how the price arrives The board is free and stays free for a long time. Then someone needs a Gantt view, someone else needs time tracking, and a third person needs a form to collect requests. Each is a Power-Up, several are separate subscriptions with their own vendors and their own privacy policies, and the tidy free tool has quietly become four suppliers.
- It was never meant to scale past a team Trello holds one team's work beautifully and has no answer for the next question: what is everyone working on. There is no portfolio view, no cross-board reporting worth the name, and no capacity picture. Teams do not outgrow Trello because it got worse; they outgrow it because the organisation got bigger.
What you have to replace, not just match
Work out which Trello you are leaving, because there are two and they need different replacements.
The first is the personal or small-team board: a to-do list with columns that anyone can use without training. If that is yours, almost anything here works, and the deciding factor is how little setup it demands.
The second is the Trello that grew. Eight boards, a Butler rule nobody understands, three Power-Ups on the invoice and someone asking for a report across all of it. That one needs a real project tool, and the honest answer is that moving will feel like more software rather than less.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | MeisterTask | Munich area, Germany | Free tier / from about €6.50/user/month | EU (Germany) |
| #2 | Taiga | Madrid, Spain | Free self-hosted / cloud from about €5/user/month | EU (Spain) |
| #3 | OpenProject | Berlin, Germany | Free Community Edition / Cloud from about €5.95/user/month | EU (Germany) |
| #4 | Zenkit | Karlsruhe, Germany | Free plan / from about €9/user/month | EU (Germany) |
| #5 | Vikunja | Lübeck, Germany | Free self-hosted / €4 per month personal, €5/user/month for an organisation | EU (Germany) |
| #6 | factro | Bochum, Germany | Free for up to 10 users / from about €7.99/user/month | EU (Germany) |
| #7 | Tenzu | France | Free self-hosted / cloud on a pay-what-you-want model | EU (France) |
How each alternative compares to Trello
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany (Frankfurt).
- Source code. Closed source, as Trello is.
- Independently checked. ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA.
Best for: Teams who like Trello and need the data in Europe
MeisterTask is the only tool on this page that competes with Trello on its own ground: a board people use without being asked twice. It is built by MeisterLabs GmbH near Munich, hosted on servers in Frankfurt, and holds ISO 27001 alongside GDPR and CCPA compliance.
Against Trello, the fact that matters is that European storage is not an upgrade. Trello keeps content in US regions unless you are on Enterprise and pay for residency; MeisterTask is in Frankfurt on every plan, including the free one.
What you get beyond that is modest, which is the point. Automations for stage transitions, time tracking and a MindMeister link that turns a planning session into a board. If you were hoping the move would also solve portfolio reporting, it will not.
What MeisterTask does better than Trello
- Hosted in Frankfurt on every plan, where Trello needs an Enterprise upgrade to leave US regions
- German operating company, so no US parent and no CLOUD Act exposure
- ISO 27001 certified with regular external audit, which no other board here can claim
- Time tracking and stage automations are included rather than bought as Power-Ups
- The learning curve for a Trello user is measured in minutes, so adoption does not become the risk
Where MeisterTask is a step down from Trello
- The free tier caps at three members per project, where Trello's free plan is famously generous
- Timeline views need a paid plan
- No self-hosting option at all
- Nothing like Trello's Power-Up catalogue, so a niche integration may simply not exist
Standout against Trello. It is the only board here with an externally audited security certification and a named German data centre, which is exactly the pair Trello asks you to buy Enterprise for.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Spain). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Europe (cloud) or self-hosted anywhere.
- Source code. Open source, where Trello is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Development teams whose Trello has sprints and story points bolted on
Taiga comes from Kaleidos Ventures SL in Madrid, is licensed MPL 2.0, and can be self-hosted for free or run on their European cloud. It does Scrum and Kanban properly, with backlogs, sprints, epics and issues, rather than approximating them with lists and labels.
The comparison with Trello is about honesty rather than power. Plenty of development teams run a sprint on Trello by naming a list "Sprint 14" and moving cards into it. Taiga makes the sprint an object with a start, an end and a burndown, and that stops the board from being a thing you maintain alongside the real process.
For anyone whose Trello is not software, this is the wrong tool on this page, and MeisterTask or Zenkit is the answer instead.
What Taiga does better than Trello
- Sprints, backlogs and burndowns as real objects rather than lists named after them
- Open source under MPL 2.0, so you can read the code and host it yourself
- Spanish company with EU hosting, or your own servers, with no residency upgrade to buy
- Free to self-host, and free on the hosted plan for open-source projects and non-profits
Where Taiga is a step down from Trello
- Built for software teams, so a marketing or operations board will fit badly
- Less immediately obvious than Trello on first opening
- Reporting beyond the sprint is thin
- A small company and a small ecosystem next to Atlassian
Standout against Trello. It is the only tool here that treats a sprint as a first-class thing. If your Trello has a list called "Sprint 14", this is what you were approximating.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany (EU) or self-hosted.
- Source code. Open source, where Trello is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Organisations whose boards multiplied and now need reporting across them
OpenProject is AGPL-licensed software from OpenProject GmbH in Berlin, free as a Community Edition on your own servers or hosted from Germany. It is by some distance the most capable tool on this page and by some distance the least like Trello.
It answers the question Trello has no answer to: what is everybody working on. Work packages across projects, Gantt charts, baselines, budgets, and time and cost tracking are native, and there is a real permissions model underneath them.
The cost is obvious and should be said clearly. A team that loved Trello because it required no thought will not love this. Choose it when the organisation has outgrown the board, not because it scores higher on a list.
What OpenProject does better than Trello
- Reporting across projects, which Trello has never had in any useful form
- Gantt charts, budgets and cost tracking built in rather than assembled from Power-Ups
- Self-hostable under AGPL, so the data need never leave your own network
- German company and German hosting with no residency surcharge
- A real permissions model, where Trello's is board-shaped
Where OpenProject is a step down from Trello
- Far heavier than Trello, and adoption is the risk that sinks migrations like this
- Someone has to run the installation if you self-host
- Setup is a project in itself rather than an afternoon
- The board experience is competent rather than delightful
Standout against Trello. It is the only tool here that can tell you what the whole organisation is doing. That is precisely the report people start asking for right before they leave Trello.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany (EU).
- Source code. Closed source, as Trello is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Teams where half the people wanted a spreadsheet instead
Zenkit is built by Axonic Informationssysteme GmbH in Karlsruhe and hosted in Germany. Its premise is that a board is one view of your data rather than the shape of your data, so the same cards can also be a table, a calendar, a mind map or a hierarchy.
Against Trello that is the difference worth paying for. Most Trello boards have at least one person keeping a parallel spreadsheet because the board cannot show them what they need. Zenkit removes the second file rather than the argument.
It sits below MeisterTask here because it asks a little more of a new user, and above OpenProject because the team leaving Trello usually wants something they will actually open.
What Zenkit does better than Trello
- The same cards as a board, table, calendar, mind map or hierarchy, where Trello gives you a board and a calendar Power-Up
- German company and German hosting on every plan, with no Enterprise upgrade for residency
- A free plan, so the move off Trello need not start with an invoice
- Part of a suite, so notes and databases live beside the projects rather than in another subscription
Where Zenkit is a step down from Trello
- More to learn on the first day than Trello or MeisterTask
- No self-hosting
- No ISO 27001, where MeisterTask has one
- Portfolio reporting is lighter than OpenProject's
Standout against Trello. It is the only tool here that ends the spreadsheet argument. The person who wanted rows and the person who wanted columns are looking at the same records.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. EU for the hosted version, or wherever you run it.
- Source code. Open source, where Trello is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Groups who want a shared board without a supplier at all
Vikunja is AGPLv3 task management you can run on a spare machine for nothing, with a hosted EU option at about four euros a month if you would rather not. Lists, kanban, a calendar, labels, filters and an API, and then it stops.
Against Trello that is the closest match in spirit on this page. Both are a board people use without training. The difference is where the board lives: Trello keeps content in US regions unless you buy Enterprise, and Vikunja keeps it wherever you put it, including a machine in your own building.
The thing to know is the company. The imprint names Konrad Langenberg Software in Luebeck, a sole proprietorship rather than a firm. For a volunteer group or a small team that is fine; for a procurement department it is a question that deserves the honest answer up front.
What Vikunja does better than Trello
- Free self-hosted with no seat limit, where Trello's free plan caps boards per workspace
- AGPLv3, so you can read the code and keep the data on your own machine
- No US region to escape from and no Enterprise upgrade to buy for European storage
- Gantt and filters included, where Trello sells timeline views as Power-Ups
Where Vikunja is a step down from Trello
- A one-person business, which is a continuity risk Trello does not have
- Nothing like the Power-Up catalogue, so a niche integration will not exist
- Self-hosting means someone owns the backups and the upgrades
- Less polished than Trello on the first morning
Standout against Trello. It is the only board here you can run with no provider in the picture at all, which answers the Trello data question rather than relocating it to a friendlier country.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Germany). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Germany (exclusively).
- Source code. Closed source, as Trello is.
- Independently checked. GDPR.
Best for: Teams whose Trello has dependencies hiding in the card descriptions
factro comes from Schuchert Managementberatung in Bochum, is hosted exclusively in Germany and is free for up to ten users. It is classical project management: a work breakdown structure, Gantt charts, responsibilities and deadlines that relate to each other.
The reason it belongs on a Trello page is the failure mode Trello has. A board works until the work has an order, and then people start writing "blocked by the card in Design" into descriptions and keeping the real plan in a spreadsheet. factro makes that order part of the tool.
It is a heavier thing than Trello and does not pretend otherwise. If your board is a to-do list that happens to have columns, this is more structure than you asked for.
What factro does better than Trello
- Real dependencies and a Gantt chart, where Trello has neither without Power-Ups
- German company and German hosting on every plan, with no Enterprise tier for European storage
- Free for up to ten users, which is a real team rather than a trial
- A project tree, so work that has phases stops living in card descriptions
Where factro is a step down from Trello
- Much heavier than Trello, and adoption is the risk when leaving a tool people liked
- Strongest in German-speaking markets
- A modest integration catalogue next to the Power-Up store
- No self-hosting
Standout against Trello. It has the structure Trello refuses to add, which is exactly what the person keeping a parallel spreadsheet has been missing.
- Which law reaches it. EU (France). Atlassian Corporation is incorporated in Delaware, United States, and run from Sydney, Australia, so the CLOUD Act obliges the provider to hand over data on a valid order regardless of which country the servers are in.
- Where the data sits. Europe (cloud) or self-hosted anywhere.
- Source code. Open source, where Trello is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Teams running two-week cycles in a list called "This Sprint"
Tenzu is built by BIRU, a French worker cooperative, under AGPLv3, free to self-host and pay-what-you-want on their cloud. It does scrum and kanban as real concepts rather than as columns you have agreed to treat as a process.
Against Trello it fixes a specific pretence. A lot of teams run sprints on Trello by making a list called "Sprint 12" and dragging cards into it, which works until somebody asks what got finished last cycle and nobody can answer without counting by hand.
For a team whose board is genuinely just a board, this is the wrong tool on the page and Vikunja or MeisterTask above it fits better.
What Tenzu does better than Trello
- Sprints and backlogs as objects with a start, an end and a result, rather than lists named after them
- Owned by a worker cooperative, so no investor decides the product's future
- AGPLv3 and free to self-host, with European hosting on the cloud version
- European company with no US region to opt out of
Where Tenzu is a step down from Trello
- Built for software teams, so most Trello boards are not the audience
- Founded in 2024, the shortest track record here
- No Power-Up equivalent and a small ecosystem
- Reporting outside the sprint is thin
Standout against Trello. It measures what a cycle actually delivered, which is the question that eventually exposes a Trello list pretending to be a sprint.
What actually breaks when you switch
The cards are the easy part. Trello exports to JSON and CSV, and everything here imports CSV, so lists, descriptions, due dates and members arrive intact. Attachments usually need re-uploading and comments sometimes lose their authors.
Butler is where the work is. Automation rules do not export, and every tool here has its own syntax, so the rules have to be rewritten by someone who knows why each one exists. That person is often not the person doing the migration.
And then there is adoption, which is the risk specific to leaving Trello. Trello's value was that people used it without being told to. A heavier tool that gets opened half as often is a worse outcome than the compliance problem you were solving, so weigh the move toward the tool your team will actually open.
Can I keep Trello and just move the data to Europe?
Only on Enterprise, and only for a fee. Atlassian's data residency programme covers Trello as an Enterprise option with regions including the EU, Germany and Switzerland; outside that plan, content stays in US regions.
That is a different answer from Jira, which offers residency on Standard, Premium and Enterprise at no extra cost, and it is worth knowing before you assume the Atlassian brand means one policy.
And residency answers the storage question, not the jurisdiction one. Atlassian is a Delaware corporation, so the provider remains reachable by a US order regardless of region.
Is anything here as easy as Trello?
MeisterTask is, and that is the reason it ranks first on this page. The board is genuinely well designed rather than merely present, and a team that liked Trello will recognise it on the first afternoon.
Zenkit is close, with a wrinkle in its favour: the same cards can be a board, a table, a calendar or a mind map, so the person who wanted a spreadsheet and the person who wanted a board stop arguing.
OpenProject is not, and does not try to be. It is a full project management system, and choosing it means accepting a setup cost in exchange for everything Trello never did.
What happens to my Power-Ups?
They do not come with you, and that is either a saving or a problem depending on which ones you use. Time tracking, custom fields and calendar views are native in most of the tools here, so those Power-Ups simply stop being a line item.
The awkward ones are the integrations into other systems: a CRM, an invoicing tool, a support desk. Check those before you commit, because replacing a board is easy and replacing a connection into your finance system is not.
Butler rules are a third category. Every tool here has automation, none of it in Butler's syntax, so the rules have to be rebuilt rather than exported.
Will my team actually move?
This is the real risk with Trello and it is worth naming. Trello's adoption is its whole value: people use it without being asked twice. A replacement that is more capable but heavier will be opened less often, and a project tool nobody opens is worse than a simple board everyone does.
That is the case for MeisterTask or Zenkit over OpenProject for most teams leaving Trello, even though OpenProject is the more powerful product.
If the move is being made for compliance reasons rather than by the team's own choice, budget for a week of somebody sitting with them. It is the cheapest part of the migration and the part most often skipped.
Which one to pick
For most teams leaving Trello, MeisterTask is the answer: the same ease, Frankfurt hosting on every plan, and an ISO 27001 certificate behind it. It is the smallest change that fixes the actual problem.
If the team keeps asking for a table or a calendar over the same records, Zenkit is the better fit and costs nothing to try.
If your Trello has turned into project management with eight boards and a reporting request, OpenProject is the honest recommendation even though it will feel like a step up in weight, because the thing you now need is a thing Trello never had.
And if the board is a software backlog with a list called "Sprint 14", stop approximating and use Taiga.
Frequently Asked Questions
MeisterTask if you want the same feeling with European hosting, which is most people. Zenkit if the team keeps asking for a table or a calendar over the same cards. OpenProject if your Trello quietly turned into project management and you are ready for a real tool. Taiga if the board is a software backlog and you run sprints.
In US regions of AWS by default. Atlassian offers data residency for Trello as an Enterprise-plan option with an additional fee, covering regions including the EU, Germany and Switzerland. On the Free, Standard and Premium plans there is no European storage option for Trello content.
It can be used compliantly: Atlassian provides a data processing agreement and the transfer mechanisms the GDPR requires. Two things it cannot do are keep your boards in the EU below the Enterprise plan, and stop being a US company. Atlassian Corporation has been incorporated in Delaware since October 2022, which places it under the CLOUD Act.
Cards, lists, descriptions, due dates and members move across without much trouble; Trello exports to JSON and CSV, and the tools here import CSV. Attachments usually need to be re-uploaded, comments sometimes arrive without their authors, and Butler automation does not transfer at all. Plan on rebuilding the rules by hand.
Close enough that the difference is not what decides it. The board behaves the way a Trello user expects, automations handle stage transitions, and the learning curve is measured in minutes. What it adds is ISO 27001 certification and hosting in Frankfurt, which is the entire reason to make the move.
Yes, several. MeisterTask has a free tier that covers unlimited projects with up to three members per project. Zenkit has a free plan. Taiga and OpenProject are free to self-host with no seat limit, where the cost is an administrator rather than a licence. None of them matches Trello's free plan for sheer generosity to small teams.
Two things worth naming. The Power-Up ecosystem is larger than anything here, so a niche integration you rely on may simply not exist elsewhere. And Trello's free tier is more generous than any of these, which matters if you are a volunteer group rather than a company.
No. Jira Server left support on 15 February 2024, which is a separate product and a separate decision; Trello is a cloud product and is not going anywhere. If your reason for looking is a fear that it will disappear, that is not a reason. Where the data sits and who can compel it are.
For one team with a handful of boards, an afternoon including the import and a walkthrough. For an organisation with dozens of boards, Butler rules and Power-Ups wired into other systems, plan a few weeks, and spend most of it on the automations and the integrations rather than the cards.
Who worked on this review
Explore More European Alternatives
Discover privacy-focused European alternatives to other popular US tech services.