osTicket
Plane
| Feature | osTicket | Plane |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $12/mo | Free / from $7/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4 / 5 | 4.2 / 5 |
| Best For | small-businesses, budget-conscious-teams, self-hosted-advocates, it-departments | developers, open-source-advocates, startups, engineering-teams |
| Founded | 2003 | 2022 |
| Ticket Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Email Piping | ✓ | ✗ |
| Custom Fields | ✓ | ✗ |
| Sla Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Agent Collision Avoidance | ✓ | ✗ |
| Knowledge Base | ✓ | ✗ |
| Cycles | ✗ | ✓ |
| Modules | ✗ | ✓ |
| Views | ✗ | ✓ |
| Pages | ✗ | ✓ |
| Self Hostable | ✗ | ✓ |
| Analytics | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ osTicket Pros
- Completely free self-hosted version
- Active open-source community
- Highly customizable
- Supports multiple departments
✗ osTicket Cons
- Dated user interface
- Requires server management
- Limited automation compared to paid tools
✓ Plane Pros
- Open source and self-hostable
- Modern clean interface
- Jira-like power without complexity
- Active community
✗ Plane Cons
- Relatively new
- Smaller integration ecosystem
- Documentation still maturing
The Verdict
osTicket is built for small businesses and budget conscious teams, with a focus on ticket-management and email-piping. Plane targets developers and open source advocates and leads with cycles and modules.
On pricing, Plane is the clear winner for budget-conscious users — starting at $7/mo compared to $12/mo for osTicket. That $5/mo difference adds up quickly for growing teams.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.