Kimai vs Traggo: Which Time Tracker to Self-Host?
Quick Verdict
Kimai is the better choice for teams, freelancers who invoice clients, or anyone who needs project-based time tracking with reporting and exports. Traggo is the better choice for personal time tracking on minimal hardware — it’s a single container with no database dependency, using a flexible tag-based system instead of rigid project hierarchies. Choose Kimai for business use, Traggo for personal productivity tracking.
Overview
Kimai is a mature, feature-rich time tracking application built with PHP (Symfony). It organizes time around customers, projects, and activities — a traditional hierarchy designed for billing workflows. It includes invoicing, team management with roles and permissions, LDAP/SAML support, and export to multiple formats. Requires MySQL or MariaDB. Over 4,500 GitHub stars with active development since 2006 (rewritten as Kimai 2 in 2018).
Traggo is a lightweight, tag-based time tracker written in Go. Instead of rigid projects and activities, you tag time entries with arbitrary labels — project:website, type:coding, client:acme. This flexibility lets you slice and dice your time data in any dimension. Uses SQLite internally, so it’s a single container with zero external dependencies. Around 1,100 GitHub stars, actively maintained.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Kimai | Traggo |
|---|---|---|
| Organization model | Customers → Projects → Activities | Flexible tags (any key:value pairs) |
| Invoicing | Built-in (PDF/DOCX export) | No |
| Team management | Yes (roles: admin, team lead, user) | Basic (multi-user) |
| LDAP/SAML SSO | Yes | No |
| API | REST API | GraphQL API |
| Reporting | Detailed (by project, user, time range) | Custom dashboards with diagrams |
| Export formats | CSV, XLSX, PDF, HTML, JSON | None (dashboard-only) |
| Calendar view | Yes | Yes |
| Timer (start/stop) | Yes | Yes |
| Manual entry | Yes | Yes |
| Expense tracking | Yes (plugin) | No |
| Billable/non-billable | Yes | Via tags |
| Tags | Yes (as supplementary labels) | Core feature (primary organization) |
| Themes | Multiple | Light and dark |
| Mobile app | Mobile-optimized web UI | Responsive web UI |
| Plugins/extensions | Yes (marketplace) | No |
| Database | MySQL/MariaDB (required) | SQLite (built-in) |
| Language | PHP (Symfony) | Go |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
Installation Complexity
| Aspect | Kimai | Traggo |
|---|---|---|
| Containers | 2 (app + MySQL) | 1 |
| External database | MySQL/MariaDB required | None (SQLite built-in) |
| Environment variables | 10+ (DB, admin, SMTP, timezone) | 5 (port, default user, log level) |
| RAM requirement | ~500 MB (app + database) | ~50–100 MB |
| Time to first use | ~10 minutes | ~2 minutes |
| First-time configuration | Web-based setup, admin creation | Set env vars, login with defaults |
Traggo wins decisively on setup simplicity. A single container, five environment variables, and you’re tracking time in under two minutes. Kimai requires a MySQL database container, database credentials, and a bit more configuration — still straightforward, but more moving parts.
Performance and Resource Usage
| Resource | Kimai (app + MySQL) | Traggo |
|---|---|---|
| RAM (idle) | ~400–500 MB | ~50–100 MB |
| RAM (under load) | ~600–800 MB | ~100–200 MB |
| CPU | Low–Medium (PHP) | Very low (Go) |
| Disk | 500 MB (app) + DB growth | ~100 MB total |
| Docker image size | ~400 MB | ~7.5 MB |
Traggo is dramatically lighter. Its Go binary is tiny (7.5 MB image), uses minimal RAM, and the built-in SQLite database eliminates MySQL’s ~200 MB overhead. On a Raspberry Pi with 1 GB RAM, Traggo barely registers while Kimai needs about half the available memory.
Community and Support
| Metric | Kimai | Traggo |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ~4,500 | ~1,100 |
| First release | 2006 (v1), 2018 (v2 rewrite) | 2019 |
| Plugin ecosystem | Yes (marketplace) | No |
| Documentation | Comprehensive | Adequate |
| Update frequency | Frequent (v2.49.0, Feb 2026) | Regular (v0.8.3, Mar 2026) |
| Commercial support | Available | Community only |
Kimai has a much larger community, a plugin marketplace, and commercial support options. It’s battle-tested over nearly two decades. Traggo is a newer, simpler tool — well-built but with a smaller ecosystem.
Use Cases
Choose Kimai If…
- You bill clients for your time and need invoicing
- You manage a team and need per-user reporting
- You need LDAP or SAML SSO integration
- You want a plugin ecosystem for extensions
- You need export to CSV, PDF, or XLSX for accounting
- You’re replacing Toggl, Harvest, or Clockify for business use
Choose Traggo If…
- You track personal time and don’t need invoicing
- You want maximum flexibility in how you categorize time
- You’re running on constrained hardware (Raspberry Pi, small VPS)
- You prefer a tag-based system over rigid project hierarchies
- You want the simplest possible setup (single container, no database)
- You’re a developer who appreciates a GraphQL API
Final Verdict
Kimai is the right choice for business and team use. It’s a complete time tracking platform with invoicing, team management, exports, and integrations. The PHP/MySQL stack uses more resources, but you get a mature, extensible tool that covers the full freelancer-to-agency workflow.
Traggo is the right choice for personal time tracking on minimal resources. The tag-based system is genuinely more flexible than Kimai’s customer/project hierarchy — if you want to track time by project, client, task type, and mood simultaneously, Traggo handles that naturally. And at 50 MB of RAM in a 7.5 MB image, it’s one of the lightest self-hosted apps you can run.
For most self-hosters who track billable hours, start with Kimai. For personal productivity tracking or resource-constrained environments, Traggo is excellent.
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