head to head · open source
ActivityWatch vs Ziit
ActivityWatch has 18,919 GitHub stars, 1,012 forks, 186 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ziit has 254 stars, 12 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 27 days ago. ActivityWatch leads on adoption by 7,348% (18,919 vs 254 stars). ActivityWatch is written in Python under MPL-2.0; Ziit is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. ActivityWatch has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Ziit 5%. ActivityWatch was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (dashboard, productivity, time-tracker, time-tracking), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| ActivityWatch | Ziit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 254 |
| License | MPL-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 12 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ActivityWatch if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Ziit if
- You want the Ziit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Ziit fits your workflow better
About ActivityWatch
ActivityWatch is the free and open source automated time tracker in the productivity and time tracking ecosystem. It is written in Python and uses the MPL 2.0 license. The project records what a user does so the user can know how time has been spent, while keeping the data under the user's control.
read the full ActivityWatch overview →
About Ziit
Ziit is an open source, self hostable code time tracker written in TypeScript and released under the AGPL 3.0 license. It lives in the developer productivity ecosystem as a drop in alternative to WakaTime, and its own documentation describes it as "the Swiss army knife of code time tracking." A hosted instance is offered at ziit.app, but the project is designed so that a developer or a team can run the whole service on their own infrastructure instead, keeping coding data on a server they control. The dashboard is deliberately minimal and is inspired by Plausible Analytics, which is to say it favors a small numbe…
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Frequently asked questions
Is ActivityWatch or Ziit more popular?
ActivityWatch has 18,919 GitHub stars and Ziit has 254. ActivityWatch has the larger community by that measure.
Are ActivityWatch and Ziit free?
Both are open source. ActivityWatch is licensed under MPL-2.0 and Ziit under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ActivityWatch and Ziit?
ActivityWatch is written in Python and Ziit in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ActivityWatch or Ziit?
Choose ActivityWatch if you want the larger community (18,919 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose Ziit if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.