Tenzu

Tenzu is a lightweight open-source agile project management tool and the official successor to Taiga. It is developed by BIRU, a French worker cooperative (SCOP), and aims to deliver a modern, healthy approach to project management while staying simple, resource-efficient, and easy to deploy. For teams looking for a genuinely European, values-driven alternative to Jira, Trello, and Asana, Tenzu is one of the most principled options available.

The Official Successor to Taiga

In mid-2024, Kaleidos, the Spanish company behind Taiga, entrusted the future of its project management software to a dedicated team who took over the project then known as "Taiga Next." That team went on to found BIRU and rebranded the software as Tenzu. So while Taiga remains available, Tenzu is where active development of this lineage now continues, rebuilt with modern technology and a renewed focus on sustainability and simplicity.

For existing Taiga users and anyone who valued Taiga's clean, agile-first approach, Tenzu represents the natural next step, carrying forward the same philosophy with a fresh codebase and an organisation structured to keep it free and independent for the long term.

Built by a Worker Cooperative

Tenzu is developed by BIRU, an independent French cooperative (SCOP) that has been involved in open source since its creation. The cooperative structure is central to the product's promises: governance is participative, with all employees holding the same decision-making power as directors, remuneration is fair, and operations are fully transparent. Because a SCOP cannot simply be bought out by investors, BIRU is able to make credible long-term commitments about how Tenzu will be run.

As a French organisation operating within the EU, BIRU is subject to GDPR and European data protection law. The company commits to strictly necessary data collection and no transmission of user data to third parties.

Truly Free and Open Source

Tenzu is released under the GNU AGPLv3 licence, with every feature included, there is no "open core" with paid features locked away. BIRU has formally committed that Tenzu is not and will never be an OpenCore product, and will never switch to a non-free licence in the future. This guarantee is reinforced by the cooperative structure, which prevents the kind of ownership change that often leads other open-source tools to relicense or restrict their software.

The full source code is available on GitHub, and the project can be self-hosted by any team that wants complete control over its data and infrastructure.

Features for Agile Teams

Tenzu focuses on doing the essentials well rather than overwhelming teams with complexity. It offers Kanban board management for visualising and organising work, real-time collaborative editing on tasks so teams can work together without conflicts, and a clear structure of workspaces and projects to keep everything organised.

Additional capabilities include single sign-on via OpenID Connect and LDAP, granular permission controls, attachments and comments on tasks, a REST API for integrations and automation, a dark theme, and multilingual support across English, French, and Spanish. Accessibility is treated as a first-class concern rather than an afterthought.

Hosting and Data Sovereignty

The Tenzu SaaS is hosted in Europe, keeping data within EU jurisdiction and under GDPR protection. For organisations with strict data residency or sovereignty requirements, the fully open-source nature of Tenzu means it can be self-hosted on any European infrastructure, giving complete control over where data lives and how it is processed.

A Different Pricing Philosophy

Tenzu does not use subscription tiers or feature gating. Instead, the cloud service runs on a free-contribution model: every user gets the same full feature set, and you choose a contribution that fits your budget, whether you are an individual, a small business, or a large corporation. BIRU is transparent that hosting and development carry real costs, and commits to publishing an annual financial report detailing how funds are used. Self-hosting, of course, remains completely free.

To keep costs low and stay independent, BIRU deliberately runs a small team with no sales or marketing staff and no management layer, every member is directly involved in building Tenzu.

Limitations to Consider

Tenzu is a young project and intentionally lightweight, so teams needing deep enterprise features, extensive third-party integrations, or advanced reporting such as burndown charts and Gantt views may find it less complete than long-established tools. Its scope is focused on agile task and project management rather than being an all-in-one work platform.

Because the project is still evolving, some capabilities are on the roadmap rather than shipped today. Teams evaluating Tenzu should check the current feature set and roadmap against their must-have requirements, though the trajectory and governance model are strong reasons for optimism.

Who Should Use Tenzu

Tenzu is ideal for agile teams that want a simple, fast, fully open-source project tool and care about the ethics and governance behind the software they rely on. It is especially compelling for organisations that prioritise European data hosting, want ironclad guarantees that their tool will stay free and open, and prefer supporting an independent cooperative over a venture-backed vendor. Existing Taiga users looking for an actively developed path forward will feel right at home.