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.

What it is

Hackatime is a web application written in Ruby on Rails with a Svelte front end, released under the MIT License, and developed in the open in the hackclub GitHub organization. The project describes itself as WakaTime-compatible, which places it in the same ecosystem as the WakaTime editor clients that many developers already run, and it states its purpose plainly as the free, open source alternative for that job. Documentation lives at https://hackatime.hackclub.com/docs, and the hosted instance carries public uptime and status badges from uptime.hackclub.com alongside Skylight performance telemetry, which indicates that this is operated as a live service rather than maintained only as source code.

The concrete problem it solves is the cost and the closed nature of hosted coding time tracking. A developer who wants per-editor time data normally has to send that data to somebody else's server, with no ability to inspect the collector or move the records. Hackatime keeps the compatible data shape while being free of charge and MIT licensed, so an operator can run the collection endpoint directly, read the source, or fork it outright. It also gives the Hack Club community one shared measurement layer, which matters where tracked coding time feeds into club programmes and member profiles.

Key capabilities

• Records coding time across more than 70 editors through WakaTime-compatible client data.
• Runs as a Rails application with a Svelte front end, keeping the server and the interface in one repository.
• Serves per-user work time badges from hackatime-badge.hackclub.com that can be embedded in a profile or README.
• Publishes uptime and status badges through uptime.hackclub.com, giving the hosted instance a public health signal.
• Reports Skylight performance data for the production deployment.
• Ships a separate installer repository at hackclub/hackatime-setup for client setup.
• Distributed under the MIT License, which permits modification, self-hosting and redistribution.

Who uses it and how

• Hack Club members, whose coding time on the hosted instance at hackatime.hackclub.com feeds their participation in club activities.
• Individual developers who already have a WakaTime-compatible editor setup and want the same measurements without a paid account.
• Self-hosters running their own instance for a group or organization, following DEVELOPMENT.md for local and server setup.
• Profile authors who embed the work time badge from hackatime-badge.hackclub.com to show tracked hours publicly.
• Contributors and forkers, of whom there are 168 forks and 204 stars against 114 open issues, indicating steady fork-and-deploy use.

Getting started

The README directs readers to DEVELOPMENT.md for instructions on setting up and running the project locally, and client-side installation code is kept in the separate hackclub/hackatime-setup repository. A hosted instance is available at https://hackatime.hackclub.com for anyone who does not want to operate the stack.

How it compares

The facts provided do not enumerate paid products that Hackatime replaces, and the only comparable tool named anywhere in them is WakaTime itself, whose compatibility Hackatime deliberately adopts. The contrast therefore rests on the axes the facts do support: Hackatime is MIT licensed, free of charge, and can be run on infrastructure the operator controls, while compatibility with WakaTime is presented as the entry point rather than the difference.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster takes on a Rails application, its front end build, a database and the surrounding service configuration, so the project suits teams or clubs with Ruby hosting experience rather than anyone wanting a fully managed, hands-off product. The README is deliberately thin and defers almost everything to DEVELOPMENT.md and the installer repository, and 114 open issues against the last push on 16 September 2026 suggest active but unsettled development. Anyone who needs vendor support, guaranteed uptime or a commercial agreement should look elsewhere.