How much does Kimai cost, and what do you really pay for?

Listed price: free (paid plans from €2.99/month/user). What the subscription covers and is hard to maintain yourself: Ready-made reports and exports.; PDF and DOCX invoice templates.; The time-clock mode and the customer portal.; LDAP and SAML login and two-factor authentication..

What free or open-source alternatives to Kimai exist?

Super Productivity (open source), ActivityWatch (open source). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.

Where do you start to build an equivalent of Kimai?

Copy this page’s prompt into Claude, Codex or Cursor to get a first prototype. Then plan for hosting, data backups and GDPR compliance: that is what costs the most to maintain over time.

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Kimai

Official website · kimai.org ↗Are you the publisher? Suggest a correction

ReplaceableOur view: a custom-built tool is realistic.free (paid plans from €2.99/month/user)casevibecode verdict · 0 votesPage updated on October 23, 2026 · Published by North Studio

Open-source time tracking (AGPL-3.0) for project-driven teams: customers, projects, teams, roles, reports and analytics, invoicing with PDF and DOCX templates, XLSX, PDF, CSV and HTML exports, time-clock mode, customer portal, plugins (expenses, e-invoicing), JSON API, LDAP and SAML login, two-factor authentication. Free self-hosting (Docker or manual install) or a managed cloud in Europe: Standard at €2.99 and Professional at €3.99 per user per month billed annually (€3.99 and €4.99 monthly), 30-day trial. More than 30 languages; the vendor claims more than 7,500 companies.

Recording a start and end time on a customer and a project, applying an hourly rate and producing a monthly total is one of the simplest applications to program. Kimai already does it, for free and translated: reproducing it only makes sense for a very particular need. What takes more effort: the time-clock mode for a team, invoice templates, SAML login. For a freelancer, a spreadsheet or a self-hosted version is enough; do not invoice from a time tool without checking the legal mentions on your invoices.

What you lose

Ready-made reports and exports.
PDF and DOCX invoice templates.
The time-clock mode and the customer portal.
LDAP and SAML login and two-factor authentication.

Existing alternatives to Kimai

Super ProductivityOpen source
Open-source task manager (MIT) with time tracking and daily planning, no account required; less suited to client billing.
ActivityWatchOpen source
Open-source automatic tracking (MPL-2.0) of the time spent on each application and site, recorded locally.

See all 2 alternatives

What a home-built tool costs once it exists

Hosting and database: a server cost, and automatic backups you actually test.
Security and GDPR: dependency updates, an HTTPS certificate, protection of your customers’ data.
Upkeep time: who fixes the tool on a Saturday night in the middle of service if the server goes down?

The prompt to build it yourself

Open in ClaudeOpen in Codex Open in Cursor

Build a small time tracker for my business, replacing a timesheet subscription.

Context: a freelancer, 8 customers, 15 projects, billing by the hour or at a fixed fee.

To do:
- Customers, projects and activities with an hourly rate per customer.
- A start/stop timer with possible manual entry, attached to a project and an activity.
- A weekly view by day and by project, editable.
- Reports per customer and per month: hours, amount, comparison with the planned fee.
- A CSV export to prepare the invoice.
- Locking of hours already invoiced.

Out of scope: legal invoicing, teams, SAML login.

Stack: web app, SQLite. README: how to run, backup.

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Kimai cost, and what do you really pay for?: Listed price: free (paid plans from €2.99/month/user). What the subscription covers and is hard to maintain yourself: Ready-made reports and exports.; PDF and DOCX invoice templates.; The time-clock mode and the customer portal.; LDAP and SAML login and two-factor authentication..
What free or open-source alternatives to Kimai exist?: Super Productivity (open source), ActivityWatch (open source). Options to compare before committing to a custom build.
Where do you start to build an equivalent of Kimai?: Copy this page’s prompt into Claude, Codex or Cursor to get a first prototype. Then plan for hosting, data backups and GDPR compliance: that is what costs the most to maintain over time.

How are our verdicts established? Read our detailed methodology ↗

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