Best Self Hosted Alternatives to DeskTime

ActivityWatch is an automated time tracking and lifelogging suite that records how you spend time on your devices. It stores data locally under your control and provides a web interface to explore and analyze your activity.

Key Features

• Automatic tracking via “watchers” (active app/window, AFK status, browser tab activity, and more)
• Local, user-controlled data storage with a REST API and query engine
• Web dashboard to visualize time usage and breakdowns
• Categorization to group and summarize activity for better overviews
• Cross-platform support (Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android)
• Extensible ecosystem with browser extensions and editor plugins

Use Cases

• Personal productivity and work-life balance tracking
• Understanding time spent across apps, websites, and projects
• Quantified-self lifelogging and behavioral research datasets

Limitations and Considerations

• Activity synchronization across devices is still a work in progress

ActivityWatch is a strong fit for individuals and teams who want detailed, automatic time tracking without giving up data ownership. Its modular watchers and API make it adaptable to many workflows and research needs.

solidtime is a modern open-source time tracking application built for freelancers, agencies, and teams. It combines time entry tracking with project organization, client management, and billing workflows in a single web app.

Key Features

• Time tracking with a fast, modern interface
• Projects, tasks, and client management
• Billable rates per project, member, organization, and more
• Roles and permissions for team collaboration
• Multiple organizations per user account
• Import from other trackers (including Toggl and Clockify)
• Billing, reporting, and PDF invoice generation
• Progressive Web App (PWA) experience for mobile devices

Use Cases

• Freelancers tracking billable hours per client and generating invoices
• Agencies managing projects, team access, and rates across multiple clients
• Teams centralizing time entry reporting for internal or client-facing summaries

Limitations and Considerations

• Some announced features may be marked as “coming soon” depending on the version (for example offline support and certain client templating features)

solidtime is a good fit for organizations that want a modern UX and strong core time-tracking features while keeping control via an open-source, deployable product. It is especially well-suited when projects, client billing, and permissions need to live in the same system.

Kimai is a professional, web-based time-tracking application for freelancers, agencies, and organizations. It helps teams record working time across customers, projects, and activities, and turns that data into reports and invoices.

Key Features

• Multi-user time tracking with roles, teams, and permission controls
• Customer, project, and activity management with budgets and hourly rates
• Time-clock mode (punch-in/punch-out) and multi-timer support
• Advanced reporting, filtering, and dashboards for time and cost analysis
• Invoicing with configurable templates and multiple export formats
• Data export options (for example CSV, PDF, and spreadsheet formats)
• Extensive JSON API for integrations and automation
• Authentication options including database login, LDAP, and SAML, plus optional TOTP-based 2FA
• Plugin system to extend features

Use Cases

• Tracking billable work and generating invoices for clients
• Company-wide timesheets and internal reporting by team, project, and period
• Integrating time tracking into existing tooling via the JSON API

Kimai is a solid fit when you need a full-featured time tracking system with strong reporting and invoicing capabilities, while supporting both small and large multi-user deployments.

TimeTagger is a web-based time-tracking application focused on tagging time entries and exploring them in an interactive timeline. It is designed for individuals and freelancers and can run locally or on a server, with optional multi-user authentication.

Key Features

• Interactive timeline UI for quickly tagging and reviewing time spent
• Tag-based workflow (instead of project-heavy structures)
• Reporting and exports, including PDF reports and CSV export
• Targets for daily/weekly/monthly goals and progress tracking
• Responsive UI for mobile and desktop, with offline use and sync
• Optional Pomodoro timer (experimental)
• Multiple authentication options, including built-in credentials or reverse-proxy header auth

Use Cases

• Personal productivity tracking and weekly review of time allocation
• Freelancer time tracking and generating client-ready PDF reports
• Lightweight team tracking when deployed with multi-user authentication

Limitations and Considerations

• Pomodoro functionality is marked as experimental
• Multi-user setups typically require explicit credential configuration or reverse-proxy integration

TimeTagger emphasizes a fast, focused tracking experience and practical reporting without heavy project management overhead. It is a strong fit for users who prefer tags, clear timelines, and straightforward exports for analysis or billing.

Traggo is a tag-based time tracking application that records time as tagged time spans rather than tasks. It provides a web UI with configurable dashboards, list and calendar views, and user management, and is distributed as open-source software for self-hosting.

Key Features

• Tag-based time tracking where each tracked interval is annotated with flexible tags (e.g., project, type).
• Customizable dashboards and diagrams for visualizing tracked time and tag-based statistics.
• List and calendar views for browsing and managing tracked time spans.
• The web UI includes multiple themes and simple user management.
• Provides a GraphQL schema/API and is implemented in Go; official distribution includes multi-architecture Docker images and a default SQLite database file.

(traggo.net)

Use Cases

• Freelancers or contractors who want flexible, tag-centric tracking across multiple projects and activity types.
• Small teams needing lightweight time-tracking with visual dashboards and exportable data for reporting.
• Privacy-conscious users or organizations that prefer to self-host an open-source time tracker and keep data under their control.

(traggo.net)

Traggo is focused on simplicity and flexibility for time recording via tags and suits users who want a lightweight, open-source, self-hosted tracking solution. It is implemented primarily in Go and is packaged for easy deployment with Docker and Docker Compose.

(github.com)

Titra is a lightweight, project-focused time tracking application designed for freelancers, small teams and small businesses. It emphasizes quick start, simple UI, realtime exports and project-based reporting while offering a hosted demo and a deployable stack for private instances. (titra.io)

Key Features

• Project-centric time tracking with intelligent autocompletion for quick entry and project-based reporting. (titra.io)
• Realtime tabular and graphical reports plus export options for further processing and billing. (titra.io)
• Out-of-the-box connectors (example: integration with an open-source invoicing tool) and basic integration endpoints. (titra.io)
• Hosted free demo available and first-class support for deployment via Docker Compose; repository includes Docker and docker-compose examples. (github.com)
• Performance-focused frontend with dark mode and minimalist UX to reduce friction when tracking time. (github.com)

Use Cases

• Freelancers who need fast, per-project time capture and exportable reports for client billing. (titra.io)
• Small teams tracking project and absence/leave time with shared dashboards and CSV/exports for payroll or invoicing. (titra.io)
• Organizations wanting a self-hosted, open-source alternative to SaaS time trackers that can be deployed via Docker and integrated into existing tooling. (github.com)

Limitations and Considerations

• Integration set is modest out of the box; advanced or niche connectors may require custom development or additional tooling. (titra.io)
• The project is implemented on a Meteor/Node.js stack and targets a lightweight feature set; organizations needing deep HR/payroll features or enterprise-grade billing workflows may need supplementary systems. (github.com)

Titra provides a focused, no-frills time tracking experience with both a publicly hosted demo and an open-source repository with Docker-based deployment instructions. It is suitable for individuals and small teams who prefer simple, project-first time capture and straightforward reporting.