---
draft: false
title: "Kimai Time Tracking"
category: productivity
date: 2026-06-28T00:00:00+08:00
---

# Meet Kimai: Open Source Time Tracking That Doesn't Lock You In

If you're paying for Harvest, Toggl, or Clockify and wondering why time tracking costs this much, Kimai is worth a serious look. It's a free, open-source time tracker built for project-driven teams — freelancers, agencies, consultants, and companies of all sizes — and it's trusted by over 7,000 organizations worldwide.

Made in Austria, open source under AGPL 3, and available in 20+ languages.

## What It Does

At its core, Kimai tracks time against projects, customers, and activities. But it goes well beyond a simple stopwatch. You get detailed reporting and analysis — breakable down by user, customer, project, activity, tag, or time period — so you actually understand where your team's hours are going. And when it's time to bill a client, Kimai can generate invoices directly from your tracked time, with configurable templates, entry grouping, custom invoice numbers, and output in PDF or DOCX.

For teams that need to plug into existing infrastructure, Kimai supports LDAP and SAML authentication (Google Workspace, Azure AD, Authentik), two-factor authentication via TOTP, and ships with an extensive JSON API so it can talk to your other tools. There's also a plugin marketplace if you need to extend it further.

## Cloud or Self-Hosted — Your Call

This is where Kimai stands out from most SaaS time trackers: you actually get to choose how it runs.

**Kimai Cloud** is the managed option — instant setup, automatic updates and backups, GDPR-compliant EU hosting, and priority support. It's the quickest path to getting your team up and running, and it includes plugins out of the box.

**Self-hosting** is free forever. Deploy it on your own server via Docker or manually, and you have complete control over your data and infrastructure. The community forum on GitHub is active, and there's a plugin marketplace for self-hosted installations as well.

Same features either way. You just decide where it lives.

## Who It's For

Kimai is designed for teams that bill by the hour or need to track time against projects — agencies, consultants, software developers, and non-profits. Users consistently highlight how straightforward and intuitive it is to pick up. One executive director put it simply: "I needed to find a good time tracker on short notice, wanted it to be EU hosted and open source. Luckily, I found Kimai and have been very happy with it ever since."

For organizations where data sovereignty matters — and for technical teams that just don't want another SaaS bill — Kimai is a genuinely production-ready alternative to the paid tools. It's been around long enough to be stable, has active development, and the team is known for responsive support.

## The Bottom Line

If you're a technical team running on Harvest, Toggl, or a similar tool and the per-seat cost is starting to sting, Kimai gives you a credible exit. Self-host it for free, or let the Kimai team run it for you in the cloud. Either way, you own your data and you're not beholden to a pricing page that changes every year.

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Learn more at [federated.computer](https://federated.computer). Want to offer Kimai to your customers or partners? Check out [Federated Enterprise](https://enterprise.federated.computer).
