ActivityWatch vs Kimai
ActivityWatch and Kimai are both time tracking software. ActivityWatch is open source under MPL-2.0, with 19k GitHub stars. Kimai is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 5.1k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick ActivityWatch when
- You want private automatic time tracking without a cloud service.
- Pick Kimai when
- A freelancer or company with many staff needs proven self-hosted time tracking and invoicing.
Side by side
Automatically records which apps, windows and websites you use and shows how you spent your time, keeping data on your own machine.
A multi-user time tracking application with timesheets, reports, invoicing, budgets and approval workflows.
Browser and editor tracking need extra watchers, and team use is not its focus.
Several useful plugins are paid.
Production-ready (both)
Desktop app
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Python and Rust
PHP, Symfony and MySQL
Open source, MPL-2.0 (weak copyleft)
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
You can use it inside a product you sell; changes you make to its own files must be shared.
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
19k GitHub stars
5.1k GitHub stars
Established: started 10 years ago, latest release v0.14.1.
Established: started 10 years ago, latest release 2.71.0.
Other comparisons
More time tracking apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.