Time Tracking

Open source and free-tier time tracking — for billing, payroll, project costing, and freelancers.

For project management (where these hours often roll up) see Project Management for Ops. For invoicing the tracked hours see Accounting. For broader HR / attendance see HR & HRMS.

Open source / self-host

★ Kimai — PHP; AGPLv3; full timesheet + invoicing + reports + multi-user. The most-deployed OSS time tracker. Default if you bill clients.
★ Solidtime — newer OSS; modern stack (Laravel + Vue); AGPLv3 + paid commercial license. The 2025–26 challenger to Kimai; cleaner UX.
Timewarrior — terminal-native; companion to Taskwarrior; MIT.
TMetric Free — free tier (limited); paid above.
Hamster — GNOME desktop time tracker; old but works.
Traggo — tag-based time tracker; OSS.
anuko time tracker — long-running OSS PHP.
Project Hamster, Hours Tracker, Watson — terminal / niche.

★ Toggl Track Free — up to 5 users; clean app; the most polished free tier. Default if you don't want to self-host.
★ Clockify Free — unlimited users; the most-generous free tier in the space. Default for "we have 30 freelancers and need it free."
TimeCamp Free — unlimited users on free tier.
Hubstaff Free — small free tier; screenshots / activity tracking.
DeskTime Free — small.
My Hours Free — small free tier.

Harvest — beloved for invoicing-from-time; paid; free for 1 user / 2 projects.
Tickspot (Tick) — simple; paid; small free trial.
Everhour — integrates deeply with Asana / Trello / ClickUp.
Rippling Time & Attendance — bundled.
QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) — payroll-integrated.
Replicon — enterprise.

Hubstaff, Time Doctor, DeskTime, ActivTrak — screenshot / activity / keystroke tracking; the "monitoring" end of the market. Disclose to employees; many regulators (EU GDPR especially) require explicit consent.

Pomotroid, Focus To-Do, Forest, Pomodoro Tracker — for individuals.
Toggl Track has a built-in Pomodoro mode.

Two clocks, one truth: if you track time in both a PM tool and a separate timesheet, they will diverge. Pick one.
Daily entry beats Friday catch-up. Make it cheap to log a time entry from anywhere (Slack, browser ext, mobile).
Round to 15 min — sub-minute precision creates noise without value (unless you're billing in 6-min increments — UK / law-firm convention).
Tag with project + activity — two dimensions are usually enough.
Don't surveil. Screenshot / keystroke tracking trades short-term visibility for long-term trust loss; few orgs that adopted it stayed adopted.