head to head · open source
Kimai vs Kanri
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars, 844 forks, 350 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kanri has 2,029 stars, 171 forks, 140 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kimai leads on adoption by 147% (5,005 vs 2,029 stars). Kimai is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; Kanri is written in Vue under GPL-3.0. Kimai has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, Kanri 8%. Kanri 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 | Kanri | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.0K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Vue |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 844 | ⑂ 171 |
| 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 Kanri if
- You want the Kanri feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You evaluated both and Kanri 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 Kanri
Kanri is a desktop Kanban board application for Windows, macOS, and Linux, built with Tauri, Nuxt 3, Vue, and TypeScript. It is positioned as an offline first productivity tool for task management, and it does not require an internet connection or a user account. The project lives in the open source desktop application ecosystem, where it is distributed as a native application rather than as a hosted web service.
read the full Kanri overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kimai or Kanri more popular?
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars and Kanri has 2,029. Kimai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kimai and Kanri free?
Both are open source. Kimai is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Kanri under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kimai and Kanri?
Kimai is written in PHP and Kanri in Vue. 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 Kanri?
Choose Kimai if you want the larger community (5,005 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Kanri if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.