head to head · open source
Kimai vs Ziit
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars, 844 forks, 350 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ziit has 254 stars, 12 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 27 days ago. Kimai leads on adoption by 1,870% (5,005 vs 254 stars). Kimai is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; Ziit is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. Kimai has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, Ziit 5%. Kimai was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (self-hosted, 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
| Kimai | Ziit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.0K | ★ 254 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 844 | ⑂ 12 |
| 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 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 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 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 Kimai or Ziit more popular?
Kimai has 5,005 GitHub stars and Ziit has 254. Kimai has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kimai and Ziit free?
Both are open source. Kimai is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Ziit under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kimai and Ziit?
Kimai is written in PHP 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, Kimai or Ziit?
Choose Kimai if you want the larger community (5,005 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Ziit if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.