Redmine vs YouTrack

Disclosure: Breeze publishes this comparison and is one of the tools discussed here. Breeze is not an issue tracker and cannot be self-hosted, so for most of this page it is not the answer; we say where it is and where it isn't.

Review process: Prices, version numbers and support status were read from the vendors' own pages in late July 2026 — the JetBrains YouTrack purchase page, the Redmine download and installation wiki, and the JetBrains help section on imports. Ratings come from Capterra at the same time. Vendors change packaging often, so confirm the current total for your team before buying.

Short answer: pick Redmine if the licence line has to stay at zero and you already have someone who runs Rails applications. Pick YouTrack if your team is 10 people or fewer, because it is then free on both cloud and self-hosted server, or if you want agile boards, time tracking and reports without assembling plugins. The premise worth checking first: wanting to self-host does not rule out YouTrack.

Most Redmine-versus-YouTrack articles set up a fight between free open source and paid commercial software. That framing is wrong in two places. Redmine's licence costs nothing but its upkeep is a real, recurring line in somebody's week, and YouTrack is not cloud-only — JetBrains sells a self-hosted server edition that is free for the first ten users.

So the honest question is not "free or paid". It is who maintains the thing, and what the first ten seats cost you either way.

Redmine vs YouTrack at a glance

Redmine and YouTrack compared on the points that decide this pair

Feature	Redmine	YouTrack
Best for	Teams with in-house Rails ops	Small teams and mixed dev/support teams
Licence cost	$0 — GPL, any team size	Free to 10 users, then paid
Self-hosting	Only option	Yes — Server edition
Hosted by vendor	No	Yes — YouTrack Cloud
Agile boards	Plugin required	Built in
Upgrade burden	Ruby, Rails and every plugin	One vendor distribution
Rating	4.1/5 on Capterra (177 reviews)	4.5/5 on Capterra (95 reviews)

Quick verdict: Redmine vs YouTrack

Choose Redmine if:

• A zero-dollar licence at any headcount is a hard requirement, not a preference
• You already run Ruby on Rails applications and patching one more is routine
• You need to bend the tracker into something else — a CRM, a change-management desk, an asset register — using community plugins

Choose YouTrack if:

• Your team is ten people or fewer, where it costs nothing on either cloud or server
• You want boards, sprints, time tracking and reports on day one instead of after a plugin hunt
• Support and engineering share one tool, since the helpdesk and knowledge base sit in the same product

Choose Breeze if:

• The instance stopped being a bug tracker years ago and is now a task list for designers, marketers and account managers
• You want boards, timelines and time tracking hosted for you, with nobody on the hook for upgrades
• You do not need commit linking, query languages or workflow scripting, and would rather not pay in complexity for them

Key differences between Redmine and YouTrack

Redmine is a general-purpose issue tracker that a community has extended in every direction for two decades. Its power is that almost anything can be added; its cost is that almost everything has to be. YouTrack is one vendor's product with a wide feature surface already assembled, sold on a licence that happens to be free at small sizes.

The second difference is the one teams underestimate: Redmine ties you to a stack. Redmine 7.0 runs on Rails 8.1 and Ruby 3.2 through 4.0, and each version has its own supported combination. Every plugin you install has to keep working across those jumps. YouTrack Server is a single distribution with no plugin chain to reconcile, so its upgrades are a maintenance window rather than a small project.

Is Redmine better than YouTrack?

Redmine is better than YouTrack when the licence has to be free at every headcount, when a working plugin already does something specific to your business, or when policy forbids any commercial software in the stack.

YouTrack is better than Redmine for teams under ten people, where it costs nothing either way, and for any team that would rather use agile boards and reports than assemble them.

Breeze is worth a look only in the narrow case where the tracker is no longer tracking code, and hosting it yourself is a habit rather than a requirement.

If you are weighing the wider field rather than these two, Redmine alternatives covers the open-source and hosted options side by side, and YouTrack alternatives runs through Linear, GitLab, OpenProject and the rest.

If the shortlist is really about self-hosted tools, Redmine vs OpenProject is the next one to read — OpenProject began as a Redmine fork, so the migration path between them is unusually well trodden.

What is Redmine?

• Pricing: free and open source under the GPL; you pay for hosting and maintenance
• Rating: 4.1/5 on Capterra from 177 reviews

Redmine is a Ruby on Rails issue tracker that you download as a tarball and install yourself. There is no vendor, no hosted plan and no support contract — the project ships releases and the rest is yours. Version 7.0.0 arrived on June 30, 2026, and the support policy is stricter than most self-hosters expect: 7.0.x gets everything, 6.1.x gets fixes and security patches, 6.0.x gets important security updates only, and 5.1.x and older are unsupported outright.

Out of the box Redmine gives you multi-project issue tracking with per-project roles, configurable statuses and workflow transitions, custom fields, a Gantt chart, a calendar, time tracking, per-project wikis and forums, a repository browser for Git, Subversion, Mercurial, CVS and Bazaar, and authentication against multiple LDAP directories. What it does not include is a Kanban or Scrum board — that comes from a plugin, and the well-known one, Redmine Agile, is a paid add-on. This matters against YouTrack, where the board is simply there.

What users say about Redmine

"The installation process can be a pain for novices: You have to prepare your VM installing Ruby, then Ruby Gems and others gems to make advances functions to work."

Source: Capterra

What is YouTrack?

• Pricing: free for up to 10 users on cloud and server; $4.50 per user per month billed annually above that
• Rating: 4.5/5 on Capterra from 95 reviews

YouTrack is JetBrains' issue tracker, and the fact that decides this comparison is that it comes in two forms. YouTrack Cloud is hosted by JetBrains; YouTrack Server is the same product installed on your own hardware. Both are free for the first ten users, which means the "we self-host, so Redmine" reasoning collapses for any team that size.

Where Redmine hands you a foundation, YouTrack hands you an assembled product: agile boards with sprints and burndown charts, a search-based query language, JavaScript workflow rules for automation, time tracking, reports, and a helpdesk with a knowledge base for teams that also field customer tickets. It also ships a predefined import script for Redmine, alongside the Jira, GitHub, Asana, ClickUp and Mantis ones, which connects to your instance through its API instead of asking you to hand-prepare a file.

What users say about YouTrack

"It is a very complete product, I appreciate the deep integration between the different part of the software."

Source: Capterra

Redmine vs YouTrack features

Both cover the tracker basics — issues, statuses, custom fields, roles, time entries. The differences show up in what arrives assembled and how far you can push each one without writing code.

Where Redmine and YouTrack diverge on capability

Area	Redmine	YouTrack
Agile boards and sprints	Plugin, usually paid	Built in
Gantt and calendar	Built in	Gantt via reports and plugins
Time tracking	Built in	Built in
Search and filtering	Form-based filters	Query language with saved searches
Automation	Plugin or custom Ruby	JavaScript workflow rules
Repository browsing	Git, SVN, Mercurial, CVS, Bazaar	Git hosting integrations
Helpdesk and knowledge base	Plugin territory	Included modules
Directory authentication	Multiple LDAP servers	LDAP and SSO

Redmine's genuine advantage here is repository breadth — support for Subversion, Mercurial, CVS and Bazaar alongside Git is rare in 2026, and if your history lives in one of those, that is a hard requirement YouTrack does not meet as directly.

YouTrack's advantage is the query language and the workflow scripting on top of it. Redmine's filters are fine for "open bugs assigned to me"; they are not a language you can build saved views and automation around, and closing that gap means plugins or Ruby.

Redmine vs YouTrack pricing

Redmine has no price list because there is nothing to buy. YouTrack has two, one per hosting model, and both start at zero.

Published pricing, checked in late July 2026

Plan detail	Redmine	YouTrack
Free tier	Unlimited users	Up to 10 users
Cloud	Not offered	$4.50/user/mo billed annually
Cloud, monthly billing	Not offered	$5.40/user/mo
Self-hosted, 25 users	$0	$1,500/year
Self-hosted, 100 users	$0	$6,000/year
Renewal	Not applicable	About half the new price

One licensing detail catches people out: YouTrack's helpdesk agents are billed separately from ordinary users, at $6.00 per agent per month. If support is the reason you are looking at YouTrack, that line belongs in the estimate.

What each one actually costs to run

This is the part the comparison usually skips. "Free" describes Redmine's licence, not its cost, and once you put both columns next to each other the gap is smaller than the sticker price suggests.

Annual licence cost by team size, and what sits outside it

Team size	Redmine licence	YouTrack Cloud	YouTrack Server
10 users	$0	$0	$0
25 users	$0	$1,350/year	$1,500/year
100 users	$0	$5,400/year	$6,000/year

Cloud figures assume every seat is billed at the annual rate once you pass the free ten; JetBrains' published table applies volume discounts from 100 users upward, so confirm your exact count with them. Server figures are the list price of the user pack that covers that size, and renewals run at roughly half.

Against Redmine's zero you have to set three things that never appear on an invoice: the machine and database it runs on; patching, since releases before 6.0 no longer receive security updates and staying supported is therefore a standing commitment; and the upgrades themselves, where a Rails major version moves underneath you and every plugin has to be checked against it. Budget a few hours a month for routine care and a proper window for each major upgrade.

Put crudely: below ten users YouTrack is free and Redmine is not, because Redmine still costs a server and an administrator. Above roughly fifty users Redmine's zero starts to win on paper, and the question becomes whether you would rather spend the money or the hours.

Redmine vs YouTrack ease of use

For the person filing an issue, Redmine is plain and predictable — reviewers routinely call the interface dated, and one puts it bluntly: the UI is ugly even with themes, which is a real cost for a team staring at it all day. Nothing about it is confusing, and nothing about it is pleasant.

YouTrack is denser. It scores 4.1 for ease of use against 4.5 overall on Capterra, which is the profile of a capable tool with a learning curve — reviewers mention permissions being fiddly to set up and the lack of good onboarding material rather than anything being broken. In exchange, the things Redmine makes you install are already in front of you.

For the person maintaining it, the comparison is not close. Redmine asks you to build and keep a Ruby environment healthy; YouTrack Server asks you to run an installer and, later, a newer one.

Redmine pros and cons

Redmine pros

• Licence is free at any headcount, where YouTrack starts charging above ten users
• Two decades of community plugins let it become a CRM, ticket desk or asset register — YouTrack expects you to stay inside its model
• Gantt chart, calendar and time tracking are in the core product, no add-on needed
• Browses Subversion, Mercurial, CVS and Bazaar as well as Git, which YouTrack does not match
• Multiple LDAP directories supported natively, and nothing phones home to a vendor

Redmine cons

• No agile board in core — the boards YouTrack includes are a paid plugin here
• Installation means preparing Ruby, gems and a database yourself, as reviewers repeatedly note
• Upgrades are pinned to specific Ruby and Rails versions and every plugin must survive them
• Releases older than 6.0 receive no security updates, so falling behind has a real deadline
• Filtering is form-based, with no query language of the kind YouTrack builds saved searches on

YouTrack pros and cons

YouTrack pros

• Free for the first ten users on both cloud and self-hosted server, where Redmine still costs you a machine and an admin
• Agile boards, sprints and burndown reports are included rather than bought as a plugin
• Query language plus JavaScript workflow rules, against Redmine's fixed filters
• Helpdesk and knowledge base modules cover support teams that Redmine would need plugins to serve
• Predefined Redmine importer that reads your instance over its API

YouTrack cons

• Costs real money above ten users, which Redmine never does
• Ease-of-use scores trail its overall rating; the interface is dense and reviewers call it clunky in places
• Permissions are fiddly to configure compared with Redmine's straightforward role matrix
• Helpdesk agents are licensed separately from regular users
• You are tied to one vendor's roadmap, where Redmine's source is yours to fork

When Redmine is the better choice

A 60-person engineering organisation with a platform team that already runs Rails services in production, and a policy that new software has to be open source. Redmine's licence stays at zero as headcount grows, and adding one more Ruby application to an existing patching routine is genuinely cheap.

The other clear case is a company whose Redmine has grown into the system of record for change requests and IT tickets through custom fields and a plugin or two. Reviewers describe exactly this, and replacing it means replacing a process rather than a tracker.

When YouTrack is the better choice

An eight-person product team with no sysadmin. YouTrack is free at that size, and choosing Server over Cloud becomes a data-residency decision rather than a budget one — which is the argument most teams think they are having when they say they want to self-host.

The other is a 30-person company where one tool has to serve engineering and customer support. The helpdesk and knowledge base cover that without a plugin search, well below the hours a Redmine equivalent would take to assemble.

Breeze as an alternative

Breeze is not an issue tracker and does not pretend to be one. There is no query language, no workflow scripting, no commit linking, and no self-hosted edition at all. If you are choosing between Redmine and YouTrack because developers need to track bugs against code, stop reading this section — one of those two is your answer.

There is one case where it applies. Plenty of long-running Redmine instances stopped being bug trackers years ago; they now hold marketing requests, client work and internal admin, and the engineering-shaped interface is why nobody outside the team will touch them. Breeze covers that work with boards, timelines and built-in time tracking, hosted so that no one owns an upgrade.

Since Breeze deliberately stops where developer tooling starts, the honest place to see the boundary is what Breeze sets out to do — it is a short read and it will tell you quickly whether this is the wrong tool for your team.

What users say about Breeze

"Quick ease of use on moving between swimlanes and columns. Task editing is pretty good, being able to use templates for to-do lists as well as task cards is nice."

Source: Capterra

Which tool should you choose?

The decision in one line each

Choose Redmine	Choose YouTrack	Choose Breeze
Zero licence cost is mandatory	Ten users or fewer	Work is no longer engineering work
You already run Rails in production	You want boards without plugins	Nobody should own an upgrade
A plugin already runs your process	Support and engineering share a tool	Time tracking matters more than commits

The trap in this comparison is treating self-hosting and open source as the same requirement. They are not. If what you actually need is your data on your own hardware, YouTrack Server meets that and is free up to ten users, and the choice becomes an ordinary one about features and price. If what you need is source you can read, fork and keep forever regardless of a vendor's decisions, only Redmine qualifies and no amount of feature comparison changes it.

The second thing worth being honest about is the direction of travel. Redmine's cost curve is flat on licence and rising on attention: every year adds another upgrade, another set of plugins to verify, another support deadline as older releases fall off. YouTrack's is the reverse — nothing to maintain, a bill that grows with headcount. Which shape you prefer usually depends on whether the person doing the maintaining has other work they would rather be doing.

FAQ

Is YouTrack free if you host it yourself?

Yes. YouTrack Server is free for up to 10 users, and YouTrack Cloud is free for up to 10 users as well. Past that, JetBrains sells the self-hosted server in user packs, starting at $900 a year for 15 users, and the cloud at $4.50 per user per month billed annually. Helpdesk agents are licensed separately.

Can you migrate Redmine issues into YouTrack?

Yes. YouTrack ships a predefined import script for Redmine that connects to your Redmine instance through its API rather than asking you to prepare a file. JetBrains documents it alongside the Jira, GitHub, Asana, ClickUp and Mantis importers. Plan on checking custom fields and workflow states after the run, since those rarely map one to one.

Does Redmine have agile boards without installing a plugin?

No. Redmine's own feature list covers issue tracking, Gantt charts, a calendar, time tracking, wikis, forums and repository browsing, but no Kanban or Scrum board. Boards come from third-party plugins such as Redmine Agile, which is a paid add-on. YouTrack includes agile boards, sprints and burndown reports in the base product.

Which is less work to maintain, self-hosted Redmine or self-hosted YouTrack?

YouTrack, in most cases. Redmine pins you to a specific Ruby and Rails combination — 7.0 needs Rails 8.1 — and every plugin has to survive each upgrade, while releases older than 6.0 are already unsupported. YouTrack Server ships as a single distribution from one vendor with no plugin chain to reconcile, so upgrades are a maintenance window rather than a project.