Best Project Management for Solo Developers

The Problem With Every "Best PM Tool" List

Search for "best project management for solo developers" and you'll find the same article copied twenty times. Jira, Asana, Monday.com, ClickUp. Maybe Trello thrown in as the "lightweight" pick.

These are team tools. That's like recommending a tour bus to someone who commutes alone — it technically works, and it's wildly wrong for the job.

Team tools were designed for managers coordinating groups of people, running sprints across departments, tracking who's blocking whom. None of that applies when you're one person building a side project at 11pm after your day job. You don't need sprint planning. You don't need resource allocation. What you need is something that stops you from adding features at 2am, validates whether your idea is even worth building, and holds you accountable when you haven't touched your project in three weeks.

This list uses criteria specific to solo developers — not "best UI" or "most integrations" or "best free plan," but whether each tool actually helps a single person ship software. You can also read why solo developer project management is fundamentally different from team PM for the broader context.

What Solo Developers Actually Need

Here are the five criteria that matter. Team tools optimize for coordination. Solo developer tools should optimize for discipline.

1. Does It Enforce Completion?

Tracking tasks is easy. Finishing them is hard. A good solo dev tool doesn't just let you create tasks and move them across columns. It should actively push you toward done — deadlines with teeth, progress visibility, and some mechanism that makes abandoning a project a conscious decision rather than something that quietly happens over six months.

2. Does It Have Idea Validation?

Most solo developers don't fail at building. They fail at building the right thing. If your PM tool treats every idea the same — from "I should build a SaaS" to "I should add dark mode" — it's not doing enough. You need a way to evaluate ideas before they become six-month commitments.

3. Does It Prevent Scope Creep?

You know the pattern. You start with three features. Two weeks later it's twelve. A month later you're rebuilding your auth system from scratch because you "might need multi-tenancy someday." Solo developers are their own worst enemy when it comes to scope. Your tool should make it hard to keep adding things.

4. Does It Have Accountability Mechanisms?

When you work alone, nobody notices if you skip a week. Or a month. There's no standup, no sprint review, no manager asking for a status update. A good solo developer tool fills that gap somehow — streaks, a public log, or just an honest record of what you actually did versus what you said you'd do.

5. Is It Designed for One Person?

This sounds obvious but it matters more than you'd think. Tools built for teams have team concepts baked into every interaction — workspaces, members, permissions, shared boards. When you're using a team tool solo, you're constantly navigating around features that don't apply to you.

The Best Project Management for Solo Developers, Reviewed Honestly

1. FoundStep

FoundStep was built specifically as an indie developer project management tool. The feature set only makes sense for one person. Scope Locking prevents you from adding features once you've committed to a build plan. The 7-Step Validation Framework forces you to score an idea against real criteria before you start writing code. And Shame History keeps a permanent record of every project you abandoned and why.

The completion enforcement is the strongest of any tool on this list. Your project moves through defined phases, and you can't skip ahead or quietly shelve it without the tool recording that decision. If you bail on a project, you'll see it every time you open the app.

The downside is real: FoundStep is opinionated. If you want flexibility, if you want to customize your workflow with fifty different views and integrations, this isn't the tool. It prescribes a specific way of working. That works if your problem is discipline. It doesn't work if your problem is something else entirely.

Best for: Developers who start ten projects and finish zero. If you've ever looked at your GitHub and felt embarrassed by the graveyard of abandoned repos, this tool was literally built for you.

2. Linear

Linear is fast. Genuinely fast, not "fast for a web app" fast. The keyboard shortcuts work, the UI doesn't fight you, and issue tracking feels effortless. It's the best-designed project management tool on the market, period.

But Linear is a team tool. Every concept — from cycles to projects to teams — assumes you're coordinating with other people. You can use it solo and it works fine. Where Linear falls short for solo work: it has no idea validation, no scope locking, and no accountability beyond what you impose on yourself. It tracks what you tell it to track. It won't push back when you add twelve features to a cycle, and it won't ask you why you haven't shipped in three weeks.

Linear also has a generous free tier for small teams, which effectively means it's free for solo use.

Best for: Solo developers who want a polished, team-grade tool and have enough self-discipline to not need guardrails. If you finish projects consistently and just need clean issue tracking, Linear is hard to beat.

3. Notion

Notion is a blank canvas. You can build anything in it: a task board, a wiki, a CRM, a habit tracker. That's both its greatest strength and its biggest problem for project management.

The solo developer Notion trap goes like this: you spend a weekend building the perfect project management system. Custom databases, linked relations, rollup fields, a beautiful dashboard. It feels productive. It isn't. You just spent two days building a tool instead of building your project. Then three months later, you rebuild the system because you found a better template on Reddit.

Notion is genuinely good at knowledge management — storing research, documenting decisions, keeping notes. It's the wrong tool to be your primary project management system if you struggle with shipping. It won't stop you from adding features. It won't validate your ideas. It won't tell you that you haven't made progress.

Notion paired with a shipping-focused tool is a strong combo. Use Notion for docs and research, use something else for the actual build tracking.

Best for: Knowledge management and documentation alongside a separate shipping tool.

4. Todoist

Todoist is the best personal task manager available. Fast, syncs everywhere, natural language input works surprisingly well.

Where Todoist breaks down is at the project level. It doesn't understand project lifecycles. There's no concept of phases, milestones, or scope. A project in Todoist is just a folder of tasks. You can't see whether a project is 30% done or 90% done without manually counting. There's no validation step, no scope control, no mechanism for deciding whether a project is worth continuing.

Todoist also treats every task equally. "Buy groceries" and "Build the payment integration" live in the same system with the same weight. That's fine for personal productivity. It's not fine for managing a software project.

Best for: Daily task management and personal to-do lists. If your project is small enough that a flat task list covers it, Todoist works great.

5. Trello

Trello popularized kanban boards for personal use, and the core experience is still good. Drag cards across columns. Visual, intuitive, almost no learning curve.

The problem is that Trello boards accumulate. Cards pile up in "To Do." The "Someday" column grows endlessly. There's no pressure to finish anything, no penalty for letting cards sit for months, and no mechanism to question whether those cards should exist at all. This is also why kanban fails for solo developers — the format encourages endless organization over shipping.

Best for: Visual thinkers who want lightweight, low-friction tracking on small projects with clear scope.

6. GitHub Projects

If your code already lives on GitHub, Projects is right there. Issues become tasks, pull requests close them automatically. For open-source maintainers tracking bugs and feature requests, GitHub Projects is solid.

But GitHub Projects is entirely passive. It tracks what you put in. It never pushes back, never asks questions, never suggests that maybe you've been stacking features without shipping. Check out the GitHub Projects review for solo developers for the detailed breakdown.

Best for: Open-source projects and developers who want everything in GitHub. Good for issue tracking, not sufficient for full project lifecycle management.

7. Obsidian (With Plugins)

Obsidian has a cult following for good reason. Markdown files stored locally, linked together in a graph. You can build a project management system in Obsidian using plugins like Tasks, Kanban, Dataview, and Templater.

Here's the thing: you can build a house with hand tools too. The question is whether building the system is the point or shipping software is the point. Obsidian project management requires significant setup and ongoing maintenance. The Dataview queries break when you rename files. You end up spending real hours debugging your productivity system instead of writing application code.

Obsidian is outstanding for note-taking and knowledge management. For project management, it's a distraction disguised as productivity.

Best for: System-builders who enjoy the meta-work of creating custom workflows.

Comparison Table

Tool	Completion enforcement	Idea validation	Scope control	Accountability	Built for one person
FoundStep	Strong (phase-locked, Shame History)	Yes (7-Step Validation)	Yes (Scope Locking)	Strong (abandonment tracking)	Yes
Linear	Weak (cycle-based, optional)	No	No	Weak (self-directed)	No (team tool)
Notion	None	No	No	None	No (team tool)
Todoist	Weak (due dates only)	No	No	Weak (karma streaks)	Partially
Trello	None	No	No	None	No (team tool)
GitHub Projects	None	No	No	None	No (team tool)
Obsidian	None (plugin-dependent)	No	No	None	Yes (but DIY)

The pattern is obvious. Most solo developer tools don't have solo developer features. They have task tracking, which is one small piece of what it actually takes to ship a project alone.

Choosing the Right Tool: A Decision Framework

Do you ship projects regularly (3+ per year)?

• Yes: You have discipline. Linear or GitHub Projects for tracking works fine.
• No: You need a shipping system. Use FoundStep.

Is your main problem starting too many things?

• Yes: You need validation and scope enforcement. FoundStep.
• No: You might just need better tracking. Linear.

Do you struggle with what to work on next?

• Yes: You need prioritization support. FoundStep's AI Next Action.
• No: A simple task list might suffice.

Do you want proof of your shipping record?

• Yes: Ship Cards and Harbor. FoundStep.
• No: Any tool works — but consider what you're missing.

What Solo Developer Project Management Looks Like in Practice

Here's a concrete week with a working PM system:

Sunday evening. Idea hits for a small B2B tool. Instead of opening VS Code immediately, run the 7-step validation. Questions: who has this problem, how painful, what exists, can you ship in four weeks? The answers are strong. Green light.

Monday. AI MVP Planner generates a feature list: dashboard, CSV import, one-click report, email export, simple user auth. Five features. Scope looks right. Lock it.

Tuesday–Thursday. AI Next Action surfaces the highest-priority task each session. Build the large feature first. AI coding tools handle the boilerplate. You handle the logic.

Friday. Scope temptation hits. "What if I added a Slack integration?" Hit the lock. Would need a permanent justification. Is it worth it? No. Write it down for v1.1. Keep building.

Three weeks later. All todos complete. Deploy. Get the Ship Card. Share it. Harbor entry #4.

This is solo developer project management when it works. The system does the heavy lifting. You do the building.

Our Pick

FoundStep is our top pick for the best project management for solo developers. We built it, so yes, we're biased. But we built it because nothing else on this list solved the actual problem: solo developers don't fail because they can't track tasks. They fail because they don't validate ideas, they let scope expand without limits, and nobody holds them accountable.

That said, a discipline-enforced system isn't the right choice for everyone. If you're already disciplined and just need clean issue tracking, Linear is better. If you need a knowledge base, Notion or Obsidian will serve you well. If your projects are small enough that a flat to-do list works, Todoist is simpler and faster.

What we'd push back on is using no tool at all, or using a tool that was built for a team of twenty. Solo developer tools exist now. Use one.

For the methodology behind why this approach works, the how to ship faster as a solo developer guide covers the reasoning, not just the features.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the best project management tool for one person?

It depends on what you need. For shipping discipline and scope control, FoundStep. For flexible note-taking and knowledge management, Notion. For simple task tracking, Todoist. Most "best PM tool" lists recommend team tools that solo developers don't need.

Do solo developers need project management software?

You need something. Whether it's a tool or a sticky note on your monitor, you need a system that prevents scope creep and keeps you accountable. The tool matters less than the discipline it enforces.

Is Notion good for solo developer project management?

Notion is good at organizing knowledge, but its flexibility becomes a trap for project management. You'll spend time building your system instead of building your project.

What project management tools do indie hackers use?

Most indie hackers bounce between Notion, Trello, and Linear. The common complaint is that none of these tools are built for solo work. They're team tools repurposed for one person.

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Looking for something built specifically for solo developers? Try FoundStep and see if structured shipping discipline is the missing piece.