head to head · open source
Kimai vs Freeter
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars, 844 forks, 350 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Freeter has 1,026 stars, 64 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Kimai leads on adoption by 388% (5,005 vs 1,026 stars). Kimai is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; Freeter is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. Kimai has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, Freeter 6%. Kimai was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Kimai | Freeter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.0K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 844 | ⑂ 64 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Kimai if
- You weight community size — 5.0K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Freeter if
- You want the Freeter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Freeter fits your workflow better
About Kimai
Kimai is a free and open source, web based time tracking application written in PHP on the Symfony framework, licensed under AGPL 3.0. It is built as a multi user, multi timezone and multi language system that handles the time tracking use cases of freelancers as well as companies with dozens or hundreds of users. The project lives in the PHP ecosystem, stores its data in MariaDB or MySQL through Doctrine, and renders its interface with Tabler. It is distributed both as a self hosted on premise application and as a hosted SaaS version at kimai.cloud.
read the full Kimai overview →
About Freeter
Freeter is a free, open source desktop workspace organizer, licensed under GPL 3.0 and written in TypeScript, for people who work on their computer and need to gather everything required for a project into one place.
read the full Freeter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kimai or Freeter more popular?
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars and Freeter has 1,026. Kimai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kimai and Freeter free?
Both are open source. Kimai is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Freeter under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kimai and Freeter?
Kimai is written in PHP and Freeter 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, Kimai or Freeter?
Choose Kimai if you want the larger community (5,005 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Freeter if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.