Canny alternative
The Canny alternative that’s free right now
Openbook replaces Canny with a full agent-first workspace — boards, docs, chat and 18 room types, with AI agents that write stories, build changes and open pull requests. Every feature is free right now: no seat limits, no trial clock, no credit card.
Why people leave
Why teams look for a Canny alternative
These are the complaints that actually recur in reviews and forums — if they sound familiar, you're in the right place.
A feedback board priced like a platform
Canny’s per-tracked-user pricing scales with your audience, not your team — successful products get punished with bigger bills for the same board.
Feedback lives apart from the work
The request board is one tool, the roadmap another, the actual build a third. Feedback that can’t become a story on your board is just a list.
The alternative
What you get instead of Canny
Not a clone — a whole workspace. Here's where Openbook goes beyond Canny.
Feedback next to the work, not in another tab
A Canny request becomes real work somewhere else, usually by copying it into Jira and hoping the two stay in sync. In Openbook the request and the Kanban card live in the same workspace, so the roadmap column a request sits in is the same board your team plans in.
Boards you can shape yourself
An Openbook feedback room can hold as many boards as you want, and each one is typed: a feedback board for requests, a roadmap board with columns you name and reorder yourself, or a changelog board. So a "What people hate" board with its own columns is a thing you can make in about ten seconds, not a workaround.
One bill instead of a second subscription
Canny is priced as a standalone product on top of whatever you already pay for project management, docs and chat. Openbook's feedback room is included in the same plan as the other room types, so collecting feedback does not add a line item.
Internal and external feedback on one surface
Openbook rooms sit inside a workspace your team already uses, so the same board serves the request your own designer raised and the one a customer posted through the portal. Internal requests and internal comments simply never appear on the public side.
Honest advice
Who should switch — and who should stay
Switch to Openbook if…
- Teams who want customer feedback to sit beside the board where the work gets planned.
- Companies already paying for a project tool who do not want a second subscription just to collect requests.
- Product teams who want to shape their own boards and roadmap columns rather than fit a fixed workflow.
Stay on Canny if…
- Teams whose feedback arrives inside support and sales conversations and needs to be extracted automatically.
- Companies who need feedback tied to Salesforce or HubSpot opportunity data without manual entry.
- Product organisations that must push requests into an existing Jira or Linear workflow.
Want the feature-by-feature table? Read the full Openbook vs Canny comparison →
Switching
Moving off is a day, not a quarter
Create a workspace, pick a space template, and the rooms are ready — boards seeded, check-ins scheduled, feed live. Most teams rebuild their active boards in an afternoon and let the old tool expire at renewal rather than migrating years of archive.
You don’t have to move everything at once: rooms are independent, so many teams start with the one room that replaces Canny and add the rest as other renewals come up.
FAQ
Canny alternative questions
What is the best free alternative to Canny?+
Openbook — it covers what Canny does inside a full workspace (boards, docs, chat, whiteboards and 18 room types, plus AI agents that do real work), and every feature is free right now with no seat limits and no trial clock.
Can Openbook replace Canny?+
For the core loop, yes: a public portal where customers post and vote, boards and categories, statuses that drive a roadmap, a changelog that notifies the people who voted, and revenue attached to each request. What it does not replace is Canny Autopilot, which mines your support and sales conversations for feedback automatically, or the CRM sync.
Do customers need an account to post?+
No. The portal has its own link and works signed out. A visitor is remembered by their browser, so their own votes and posts are recognised when they come back, and if they leave an email they get told when the thing they asked for ships.
How does prioritising by revenue work?+
You track companies and users with their ARR and MRR, and votes carry the customer behind them. Each request then shows the monthly revenue it represents, and the list can be sorted by it. You can also define scoring factors of your own and weight them, and save segments such as "paying customers" to re-rank the whole list through that lens.
What happens when we ship something?+
You write a changelog entry, link the requests it ships, and publish. Everyone following those requests is notified, and the entry appears on the public changelog with its type and labels. That last step is the part teams usually skip, which is why the same request keeps coming back.
How does pricing compare?+
Openbook's feedback room is part of the same plan as every other room type: free for teams up to 10, or $15 per user per month on Pro. Canny is a separate product priced on top of whatever you already use for project management.
Also replacing something else?
Leave Canny without writing a check
Openbook is completely free right now — every room, every feature, the agents included.