head to head · open source
Kimai vs Ziit
Kimai has 5,129 GitHub stars, 878 forks, 350 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ziit has 258 stars, 13 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Kimai leads on adoption by 1,888% (5,129 vs 258 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Kimai | Ziit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.1K | ★ 258 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 878 | ⑂ 13 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Kimai if
- You weight community size — 5.1K 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 1 Open Source Time Tracker Kimai is a professional grade time tracking application, free and open source. It handles use cases of freelancers as well as companies with dozens or hundreds of users. Kimai was build to track your project times and ships with many advanced features, including but not limited to: JSON API, invoicing, data exports, multi timer and punch in punch out mode, tagging, multi user multi timezones multi language (over 30 translations existing!), authentication via SAML/LDAP/Database, two factor authentication (2FA) with TOTP, customizable role and team permissions, responsive design…
read the full Kimai overview →
About Ziit
The Swiss army knife of code time tracking. Docs • Stats • Leaderboard • Discord [!IMPORTANT] Upvote Ziit on AlternativeTo, ProductHunt, PeerPush to help me promote it. Star History What is Ziit? Ziit (pronounced 'tseet') is an open source, self hostable alternative to WakaTime. It provides a clean, minimal, and fast dashboard for displaying coding statistics, while ensuring privacy by keeping all data on your own server. Ziit tracks coding activity such as projects, languages, editors, files, branches, operating systems, and time spent coding all presented in a familiar interface inspired by Plausible…
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Time & Task Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Time & Task Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimai or Ziit more popular?
Kimai has 5,129 GitHub stars and Ziit has 258. 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 (5,129 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.