head to head · open source
Kimai vs Sol
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars, 844 forks, 350 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Sol has 3,132 stars, 180 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kimai leads on adoption by 60% (5,005 vs 3,132 stars). Kimai is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; Sol is written in TypeScript under MIT. Kimai has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, Sol 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 | Sol | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.0K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 844 | ⑂ 180 |
| 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 Sol if
- You want the Sol feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Sol 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 Sol
Sol is an open source application launcher and command palette for macOS, written in TypeScript and distributed under the MIT license. It runs natively on the desktop and is built with React Native, which is also the toolchain required to compile it from source. The project is hosted on GitHub, where it has accumulated roughly 3,100 stars and 180 forks, and it is tagged with topics such as launcher, command palette, cmd k, spotlight, alfred, and raycast — placing it squarely in the macOS productivity ecosystem alongside those well known launchers.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kimai or Sol more popular?
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars and Sol has 3,132. Kimai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kimai and Sol free?
Both are open source. Kimai is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Sol under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kimai and Sol?
Kimai is written in PHP and Sol 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 Sol?
Choose Kimai if you want the larger community (5,005 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Sol if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.