[opensourcedex]

Kimai is a free, open source time & task management project written in PHP and released under AGPL-3.0. It has 5,005 GitHub stars, 844 forks and 350 open issues, and was last pushed 22 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #4 of 13 tracked projects in Time & Task Management, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 22 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

What is Kimai?

What it is

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.

The concrete problem Kimai solves is turning tracked project time into billable, auditable records. Instead of scattered spreadsheets, users manage timesheets in one place, apply customer, project and user specific rates, generate invoices directly from recorded time, and export data for downstream accounting. Teams get shared visibility through customizable role and team permissions, advanced search and filtering, and budgets expressed in money and time, while administrators get an authentication layer that accepts SAML, LDAP or database credentials alongside two-factor authentication with TOTP.

Key capabilities

  • Time capture in two modes: a multi-timer for parallel activities and a punch-in/punch-out mode.
  • Invoicing generated from tracked timesheets, with data exports for external accounting.
  • A JSON API for integrating Kimai with other tools and building custom workflows.
  • Authentication via SAML, LDAP or database, plus two-factor authentication using TOTP.
  • Customizable role and team permissions, with per-user, per-customer and per-project rates.
  • Advanced search and filtering, tags, money and time budgets, and advanced reporting.
  • Support for plugins from a paid and free plugin marketplace, with developer documentation for writing new ones.

Who uses it and how

  • Freelancers track project time and turn it into invoices without maintaining separate spreadsheets.
  • Companies with dozens or hundreds of users share one instance, separated by role and team permissions.
  • Distributed teams work across multiple timezones, with each user selecting from more than thirty existing translations.
  • Administrators connect Kimai to existing identity infrastructure through SAML or LDAP and enforce TOTP two-factor authentication.
  • Integrators extend or connect the application using the JSON API, the plugin marketplace and the developer setup documentation.

Getting started

Installation options documented in the README include Docker images published as kimai/kimai2, available with FPM only or including Apache, Caddy with Docker-Compose on Hetzner or DigitalOcean, an SSH setup using Git and Composer, and a Docker-based Synology deployment. Requirements are PHP 8.2 or newer with the gd, intl, json, mbstring, pdo,

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Kimai logo

CI Status Code Coverage Latest stable version

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, user/customer/project specific rates, advanced search & filtering, money and time budgets, advanced reporting, support for plugins and so much more.

Links

  • Home — Kimai project homepage
  • Blog — Read the latest news
  • Documentation — Learn how to use Kimai
  • Newsletter - Subscribe and get notified about new releases and important updates

Requirements

  • PHP 8.2 minimum with support for 8.3, 8.4, 8.5
  • MariaDB / MySQL: oldest maintained LTS release (MariaDB >= 10.6 or MySQL >= 8.4) or newer
  • A webserver and subdomain (subdirectory is not supported)
  • PHP extensions: gd, intl, json, mbstring, pdo, tokenizer, xml, xsl, zip

Installation

There are more documented ways for on-premise hosting.

And if you don't want to host Kimai, you can use the Cloud version of it.

Updating Kimai

Plugins

Roadmap and releases

You can see a rough development roadmap, which is open for changes and input from the community, your ideas are welcome.

Release versions will be created on a regular basis, every couple of weeks latest. Every code change, whether it's a new feature or a bugfix, will be done on the main branch.

Contributing

You want to contribute to this repository? This is so great! The best way to start is to open a new issue for bugs or feature requests or a discussion for questions, support and such.

In case you want to contribute, but you wouldn't know how, here are some suggestions:

  • Spread the word: Please write a testimonial for our Wall of love, vote for Kimai on any software platform, you can toot or tweet about it, share it on LinkedIn, Reddit and any other social media platform!
  • Translate Kimai into your language, or help to improve the existing translations, many languages look for a contributor
  • Answer questions: You know the answer to another user's problem? Share your knowledge.
  • Something can be done better? An essential feature is missing? Create a feature request.
  • Report bugs makes Kimai better for everyone.
  • You don't have to be programmer, the documentation and translation could always use some attention.
  • Sponsor the project: free software costs money to create!

There is one simple rule in our "Code of conduct": Don't be an ass!

Follow Kimai

Credits

Kimai is based on modern technologies and frameworks such as PHP, Symfony and Doctrine, Bootstrap and Tabler, and countless others.

Frequently asked questions

Is Kimai free to use?

Kimai is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does Kimai do?

Effortless time tracking for teams and projects

What is Kimai written in?

Kimai is primarily written in PHP. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/kimai/kimai, and it has 5,005 GitHub stars.