How to Self-Host Vikunja 2026

TL;DR

Vikunja (GPL 3.0, ~3K GitHub stars, Go + Vue) is a self-hosted task management app — a free replacement for Todoist or TickTick. It supports projects, team sharing, labels, priorities, due dates, recurring tasks, reminders, and CalDAV sync (connects to any CalDAV client for todo sync). Todoist Pro costs $4/month; TickTick Premium $2.79/month. Vikunja is free to self-host. Single Go binary + SQLite/MySQL/PostgreSQL backend.

Key Takeaways

• Vikunja: GPL 3.0, ~3K stars — full-featured todo manager, CalDAV sync
• CalDAV sync: Connect to iOS/macOS Reminders, Thunderbird, DAVx⁵ for bidirectional task sync
• Team sharing: Share projects with team members, assign tasks
• Multiple views: List, Gantt chart, table view
• Reminders: Push notifications, email reminders
• Labels and priorities: Organize tasks across projects

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Vikunja vs Todoist vs Alternatives

Feature	Vikunja	Todoist Pro	Tasks.org (OSS)
License	GPL 3.0	Proprietary	GPL 3.0
Cost	Free	$4/mo	Free
CalDAV	Yes	No	Yes
Team projects	Yes	Yes	No (personal)
Subtasks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Recurring tasks	Yes	Yes	Yes
Labels	Yes	Yes	Yes
Priorities	Yes	Yes	Yes
Gantt chart	Yes	No (add-on)	No
Mobile app	PWA (web)	iOS/Android	Android only
API	Yes	Yes	—
Self-hosted	Yes	No	—

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Part 1: Docker Setup

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  vikunja:
    image: vikunja/vikunja:latest
    container_name: vikunja
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "3456:3456"
    volumes:
      - vikunja_files:/app/vikunja/files
      - ./config.yml:/app/vikunja/config.yml:ro
    depends_on:
      - db
    environment:
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_TYPE: postgres
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_HOST: db
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_DATABASE: vikunja
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_USER: vikunja
      VIKUNJA_DATABASE_PASSWORD: "${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}"
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET: "${JWT_SECRET}"
      VIKUNJA_SERVICE_FRONTENDURL: "https://tasks.yourdomain.com"

  db:
    image: postgres:16-alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: vikunja
      POSTGRES_USER: vikunja
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}"
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready -U vikunja"]
      interval: 10s

volumes:
  vikunja_files:
  postgres_data:

# .env
POSTGRES_PASSWORD=your-db-password
JWT_SECRET=$(openssl rand -hex 32)

docker compose up -d

Visit http://your-server:3456 → register your account.

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Part 2: HTTPS with Caddy

tasks.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3456
}

---

Part 3: Configuration (config.yml)

# config.yml
service:
  JWTSecret: "${VIKUNJA_SERVICE_JWTSECRET}"
  frontendUrl: "https://tasks.yourdomain.com"
  enableRegistration: false      # Set true for initial setup, then disable
  enableEmailReminders: true
  enableTaskAttachments: true
  maxAvatarSize: 1048576         # 1MB

database:
  type: postgres
  host: db
  database: vikunja
  user: vikunja
  password: "${VIKUNJA_DATABASE_PASSWORD}"

mailer:
  enabled: true
  host: smtp.yourdomain.com
  port: 587
  username: noreply@yourdomain.com
  password: "${SMTP_PASSWORD}"
  skiptlsverify: false
  fromemail: noreply@yourdomain.com
  fromname: Vikunja

---

Part 4: CalDAV Sync

Vikunja exposes a CalDAV endpoint for todo sync with any CalDAV client.

CalDAV URL: https://tasks.yourdomain.com/dav/principals/USER/

iOS Reminders

1. Settings → Reminders → Accounts → Add Account → Other
2. Add CalDAV Account
3. Server: https://tasks.yourdomain.com/dav/
4. Username + password
5. iOS Reminders now shows your Vikunja projects as lists

DAVx⁵ (Android)

1. Install DAVx⁵
2. Add account with base URL: https://tasks.yourdomain.com/dav/
3. Enable CalDAV (for todo sync)
4. Use with Tasks.org or any Android todo app

Thunderbird

1. Install the TbSync and Provider for CalDAV extensions
2. Add CalDAV account with the Vikunja DAV URL

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Part 5: Creating and Organizing Tasks

Projects (formerly Namespaces + Lists)

My Projects/
  Work/
    Q1 Roadmap
    Bug Backlog
  Personal/
    Shopping
    Home Projects

1. + New Project → name it
2. Add tasks within the project

Task Properties

Each task supports:

• Title + description (Markdown)
• Due date + time
• Reminders: Email or push notifications
• Priority: Urgent / High / Medium / Low / None
• Labels: Color-coded tags
• Assignees: Assign to team members
• Subtasks: Nested task hierarchy
• Attachments: File uploads
• Recurring: Daily/weekly/monthly/custom repeat

Bulk Operations

Select multiple tasks → bulk change due date, priority, assignee, labels.

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Part 6: Team Sharing

Share a project with other users:

1. Project → Share → Invite User
2. Enter their username or email
3. Set permission: Read, Write, or Admin
4. They see the project in their dashboard

For public sharing (no account required):

1. Project → Share → Generate Share Link
2. Share the link — viewers can see tasks without logging in

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Part 7: Views

Switch between views on any project:

• List: Default linear task list, group by priority/due date/label
• Gantt Chart: Timeline view for projects with due dates — see task overlaps
• Table: Spreadsheet-like, shows all task properties as columns
• Kanban Board: Drag-and-drop cards across status columns

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Part 8: Labels

Create labels across all projects:

1. Labels → + New Label
2. Set name and color
3. Apply to any task from any project

Labels are shared across all projects — useful for cross-project filtering:

• Filter all tasks labeled #urgent across every project

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Part 9: API

# Get auth token:
TOKEN=$(curl -s -X POST https://tasks.yourdomain.com/api/v1/login \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"username":"alice","password":"your-password"}' \
  | jq -r .token)

# List all projects:
curl https://tasks.yourdomain.com/api/v1/projects \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" | jq '.[].title'

# Create a task:
curl -X POST "https://tasks.yourdomain.com/api/v1/projects/42/tasks" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "title": "Review pull request",
    "description": "PR #123",
    "due_date": "2026-03-15T10:00:00Z",
    "priority": 3
  }'

# Complete a task:
curl -X POST "https://tasks.yourdomain.com/api/v1/tasks/123" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"done": true}'

---

Maintenance

# Update Vikunja:
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

# Backup database:
docker exec db pg_dump -U vikunja vikunja \
  | gzip > vikunja-db-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql.gz

# Backup file attachments:
tar -czf vikunja-files-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz \
  $(docker volume inspect vikunja_vikunja_files --format '{{.Mountpoint}}')

# Logs:
docker compose logs -f vikunja

Why Self-Host Vikunja?

The case for self-hosting Vikunja comes down to three practical factors: data ownership, cost at scale, and operational control.

Data ownership is the fundamental argument. When you use a SaaS version of any tool, your data lives on someone else's infrastructure subject to their terms of service, their security practices, and their business continuity. If the vendor raises prices, gets acquired, changes API limits, or shuts down, you're left scrambling. Self-hosting Vikunja means your data and configuration stay on infrastructure you control — whether that's a VPS, a bare metal server, or a home lab.

Cost at scale matters once you move beyond individual use. Most SaaS equivalents charge per user or per data volume. A self-hosted instance on a $10-20/month VPS typically costs less than per-user SaaS pricing for teams of five or more — and the cost doesn't scale linearly with usage. One well-configured server handles dozens of users for a flat monthly fee.

Operational control is the third factor. The Docker Compose configuration above exposes every setting that commercial equivalents often hide behind enterprise plans: custom networking, environment variables, storage backends, and authentication integrations. You decide when to update, how to configure backups, and what access controls to apply.

The honest tradeoff: you're responsible for updates, backups, and availability. For teams running any production workloads, this is familiar territory. For individuals, the learning curve is real but the tooling (Docker, Caddy, automated backups) is well-documented and widely supported.

Server Requirements and Sizing

Before deploying Vikunja, assess your server capacity against expected workload.

Minimum viable setup: A 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM VPS with 20GB SSD is sufficient for personal use or small teams. Most consumer VPS providers — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr — offer machines in this range for $5-10/month. Hetzner offers excellent price-to-performance for European and US regions.

Recommended production setup: 2 vCPUs with 4GB RAM and 40GB SSD handles most medium deployments without resource contention. This gives Vikunja headroom for background tasks, caching, and concurrent users while leaving capacity for other services on the same host.

Storage planning: The Docker volumes in this docker-compose.yml store all persistent Vikunja data. Estimate your storage growth rate early — for data-intensive tools, budget for 3-5x your initial estimate. Hetzner Cloud and Vultr both support online volume resizing without stopping your instance.

Operating system: Any modern 64-bit Linux distribution works. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Debian 12 are the most commonly tested configurations. Ensure Docker Engine 24.0+ and Docker Compose v2 are installed — verify with docker --version and docker compose version. Avoid Docker Desktop on production Linux servers; it adds virtualization overhead and behaves differently from Docker Engine in ways that cause subtle networking issues.

Network: Only ports 80 and 443 need to be publicly accessible when running behind a reverse proxy. Internal service ports should be bound to localhost only. A minimal UFW firewall that blocks all inbound traffic except SSH, HTTP, and HTTPS is the single most effective security measure for a self-hosted server.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Running Vikunja without a tested backup strategy is an unacceptable availability risk. Docker volumes are not automatically backed up — if you delete a volume or the host fails, data is gone with no recovery path.

What to back up: The named Docker volumes containing Vikunja's data (database files, user uploads, application state), your docker-compose.yml and any customized configuration files, and .env files containing secrets.

Backup approach: For simple setups, stop the container, archive the volume contents, then restart. For production environments where stopping causes disruption, use filesystem snapshots or database dump commands (PostgreSQL pg_dump, SQLite .backup, MySQL mysqldump) that produce consistent backups without downtime.

For a complete automated backup workflow that ships snapshots to S3-compatible object storage, see the Restic + Rclone backup guide. Restic handles deduplication and encryption; Rclone handles multi-destination uploads. The same setup works for any Docker volume.

Backup cadence: Daily backups to remote storage are a reasonable baseline for actively used tools. Use a 30-day retention window minimum — long enough to recover from mistakes discovered weeks later. For critical data, extend to 90 days and use a secondary destination.

Restore testing: A backup that has never been restored is a backup you cannot trust. Once a month, restore your Vikunja backup to a separate Docker Compose stack on different ports and verify the data is intact. This catches silent backup failures, script errors, and volume permission issues before they matter in a real recovery.

Security Hardening

Self-hosting means you are responsible for Vikunja's security posture. The Docker Compose setup provides a functional base; production deployments need additional hardening.

Always use a reverse proxy: Never expose Vikunja's internal port directly to the internet. The docker-compose.yml binds to localhost; Caddy or Nginx provides HTTPS termination. Direct HTTP access transmits credentials in plaintext. A reverse proxy also centralizes TLS management, rate limiting, and access logging.

Strong credentials: Change default passwords immediately after first login. For secrets in docker-compose environment variables, generate random values with openssl rand -base64 32 rather than reusing existing passwords.

Firewall configuration:

ufw default deny incoming
ufw allow 22/tcp
ufw allow 80/tcp
ufw allow 443/tcp
ufw enable

Internal service ports (databases, admin panels, internal APIs) should only be reachable from localhost or the Docker network, never directly from the internet.

Network isolation: Docker Compose named networks keep Vikunja's services isolated from other containers on the same host. Database containers should not share networks with containers that don't need direct database access.

VPN access for sensitive services: For internal-only tools, restricting access to a VPN adds a strong second layer. Headscale is an open source Tailscale control server that puts your self-hosted stack behind a WireGuard mesh, eliminating public internet exposure for internal tools.

Update discipline: Subscribe to Vikunja's GitHub releases page to receive security advisory notifications. Schedule a monthly maintenance window to pull updated images. Running outdated container images is the most common cause of self-hosted service compromises.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Container exits immediately or won't start

Check logs first — they almost always explain the failure:

docker compose logs -f vikunja

Common causes: a missing required environment variable, a port already in use, or a volume permission error. Port conflicts appear as bind: address already in use. Find the conflicting process with ss -tlpn | grep PORT and either stop it or change Vikunja's port mapping in docker-compose.yml.

Cannot reach the web interface

Work through this checklist:

1. Confirm the container is running: docker compose ps
2. Test locally on the server: curl -I http://localhost:PORT
3. If local access works but external doesn't, check your firewall: ufw status
4. If using a reverse proxy, verify it's running and the config is valid: caddy validate --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Permission errors on volume mounts

Some containers run as a non-root user. If the Docker volume is owned by root, the container process cannot write to it. Find the volume's host path with docker volume inspect VOLUME_NAME, check the tool's documentation for its expected UID, and apply correct ownership:

chown -R 1000:1000 /var/lib/docker/volumes/your_volume/_data

High resource usage over time

Memory or CPU growing continuously usually indicates unconfigured log rotation, an unbound cache, or accumulated data needing pruning. Check current usage with docker stats vikunja. Add resource limits in docker-compose.yml to prevent one container from starving others. For ongoing visibility into resource trends, deploy Prometheus + Grafana or Netdata.

Data disappears after container restart

Data stored in the container's writable layer — rather than a named volume — is lost when the container is removed or recreated. This happens when the volume mount path in docker-compose.yml doesn't match where the application writes data. Verify mount paths against the tool's documentation and correct the mapping. Named volumes persist across container removal; only docker compose down -v deletes them.

Keeping Vikunja Updated

Vikunja follows a regular release cadence. Staying current matters for security patches and compatibility. The update process with Docker Compose is straightforward:

docker compose pull          # Download updated images
docker compose up -d         # Restart with new images
docker image prune -f        # Remove old image layers (optional)

Read the changelog before major version updates. Some releases include database migrations or breaking configuration changes. For major version bumps, test in a staging environment first — run a copy of the service on different ports with the same volume data to validate the migration before touching production.

Version pinning: For stability, pin to a specific image tag in docker-compose.yml instead of latest. Update deliberately after reviewing the changelog. This trades automatic patch delivery for predictable behavior — the right call for business-critical services.

Post-update verification: After updating, confirm Vikunja is functioning correctly. Most services expose a /health endpoint that returns HTTP 200 — curl it from the server or monitor it with your uptime tool.

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See all open source productivity and task management tools at OSSAlt.com/categories/productivity.