head to head · open source
Kimai vs Hackatime
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars, 844 forks, 350 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hackatime has 204 stars, 169 forks, 114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kimai leads on adoption by 2,353% (5,005 vs 204 stars). Kimai is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; Hackatime is written in Ruby under MIT. Kimai has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, Hackatime 83%. Hackatime 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 | Hackatime | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.0K | ★ 204 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 844 | ⑂ 169 |
| 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 Hackatime if
- You want the Hackatime feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Hackatime 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 Hackatime
Hackatime is a free, open source, WakaTime compatible coding time tracker built by Hack Club that records how long a developer spends coding across more than 70 editors, and it is intended for individual programmers and Hack Club community members who want that time data collected and displayed without paying for a proprietary service.
read the full Hackatime overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kimai or Hackatime more popular?
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars and Hackatime has 204. Kimai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kimai and Hackatime free?
Both are open source. Kimai is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Hackatime under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kimai and Hackatime?
Kimai is written in PHP and Hackatime in Ruby. 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 Hackatime?
Choose Kimai if you want the larger community (5,005 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Hackatime if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.