PortBayvsVibe Kanban
Vibe KanbanBoth give you a Kanban board where you assign work to AI coding agents and watch it move to Done. Vibe Kanban is a cross-platform orchestrator for 10 agent CLIs: each workspace gets a branch, a terminal and a dev server, and you review diffs, leave inline comments and open the PR without leaving the UI. Since its April 2026 shutdown announcement it runs fully locally, so privacy is no longer what separates the two. What does: PortBay's card runs inside a provisioned dev environment — managed PHP and Node, a per-project database, trusted HTTPS and a public tunnel — so the agent builds against a running app rather than a dev-server command you wrote yourself.
Which one is right for you
You want the full stack, open source.
You want the agent working in a real environment — a running database, HTTPS on a real .test domain, email capture, a shareable tunnel — and you want one native app that is also your everyday local dev tool. You value a native app over an npm process, and you want the board and the stack it runs in the same window.
It already fits your workflow.
You're on Windows, you want a zero-install Node CLI (npx vibe-kanban) rather than a native desktop app, or the review loop is the whole job: Vibe Kanban's inline diff comments go straight back to the agent, it opens and merges the PR for you, and its built-in browser has devtools, inspect mode and device emulation. You don't need PortBay to run your database or serve the site. Worth knowing before you commit: bloop, the company, shut down in April 2026 and the project is now community-maintained.
Where PortBay and Vibe Kanban actually differ
The table below has the row-by-row detail. These are the three shapes it cannot draw: the job you already use one of them for, the job only one of them does, and what survives the move.
PortBay and Vibe Kanban overlap on the everyday job: a local site on a real domain, over HTTPS, with the services it needs. If that is all you need, either will do it.
Claude Code
Codex
CursorMove a card to To Do and PortBay launches Claude Code, Codex or Cursor against a project that is already running. Vibe Kanban has no board to dispatch from.
Point PortBay at the folders you already have. They stay where they are, .test domains are re-issued on the first run, and databases are imported rather than rebuilt.
Feature by feature
Vibe Kanban rows come from Vibe Kanban’s own site and docs, on the date below. PortBay rows come from the app’s source. We mark partial support honestly — including where the other side wins.
Vibe Kanban facts on this page were last checked against github.com/BloopAI/vibe-kanban on . Pricing and limits change — check their site before you decide.
Already using Vibe Kanban?
PortBay doesn't import a Vibe Kanban board — it gives those same agents somewhere to run. Point PortBay at your project, start its services, and dispatch the same agent from a card that's working against a live database and a real HTTPS URL — PortBay covers 11 CLIs plus any other via a Custom command template. Keep Vibe Kanban for Windows, for its zero-install Node CLI, and for its inline diff review and PR flow; use PortBay where the agent needs the app actually running.
Install PortBay and add the project folder you've been pointing agents at.
Press play — PortBay provisions the runtime, database and HTTPS for that project.
Create a card, assign Claude Code or Codex, move it to Todo, and the agent works against the running app.
PortBay vs Vibe Kanban, in plain terms
Don’t see your question answered here? The docs go deeper — every feature, flag and failure mode.
Read the docsPortBay runs the environment the agent works in. The same card that dispatches Claude Code or Codex also has a managed PHP/Node runtime, a per-project MySQL or PostgreSQL database, trusted HTTPS on a real .test domain, email capture and a one-click public tunnel behind it. Vibe Kanban gives a workspace a branch, a terminal and a dev server started from your own command — the runtime, database and certificates are still yours to supply.
Three things worth naming. It runs on Windows, which PortBay does not. Its review pane takes inline comments on a diff and sends them straight back to the agent, then opens the pull request with an AI-written description and merges it — PortBay leaves the diff to your own editor and git workflow. And it embeds a browser with devtools, inspect mode and device emulation, where PortBay opens your project's real .test URL in the browser you already use.
Vibe Kanban is open source under Apache-2.0 and continues as a community-maintained project. bloop, the company that built it, announced on 10 April 2026 that it is shutting down, writing that "the Vibe Kanban project will live on, open source and community maintained". Development now depends on the community rather than a funded team — the npm package's most recent release, 0.1.44, was published on 24 April 2026.
No. The April 2026 announcement said remote services would remain available for 30 days, "after which Vibe Kanban will transition to a fully local architecture", and that local workspaces would continue to function. That window closed in May 2026. Both PortBay and Vibe Kanban now keep your board on your own machine, so privacy is not what separates them — the agent CLIs each tool launches still talk to their own model providers either way.
PortBay's roster is slightly larger. Vibe Kanban documents 10 agents — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, Claude Code Router and Qwen Code. PortBay dispatches 11 out of the box — Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, Gemini, Aider, Copilot CLI, OpenCode, Amp, Qwen Code, Antigravity and Ollama — plus any other CLI via a Custom command template. It detects whichever you have installed and dispatches them from a card. Neither tool ships a model — both launch CLIs you already authenticated.
Yes. Turn parallel dispatch on and each card runs in its own git worktree at .portbay/worktrees/<card-id>, on its own card/<id> branch, so concurrent agents never collide on one working tree. A board-level concurrency cap decides how many run at once, and a lease stops two agents claiming the same card. Vibe Kanban isolates too, giving each workspace its own branch. The difference isn't the isolation — it's that PortBay's worktree comes with a running app: a managed runtime, a database and trusted HTTPS on a .test domain.
Choose PortBay when the agent needs a real running environment — a database to query, a site to load over HTTPS, a tunnel to demo — and you want one app that's also your daily local dev tool. Choose Vibe Kanban if you're on Windows, if you want a zero-install Node CLI, or if inline diff review and a PR-to-merge flow matter more to you than what the agent is running against.
Give your projects and your agents a real local home.
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