Miru vs TimeCamp: Why We Think Open Source Wins

TimeCamp has a smart trick: automatic time tracking. Install the desktop app, and it watches which applications you use and logs your hours for you. It’s clever. We respect the approach.

But clever isn’t the same as useful.

The automatic tracking trade-off

TimeCamp’s automatic tracking watches your desktop activity and assigns time to projects based on keywords and app usage. In theory, this eliminates manual entry. In practice, it creates a different problem: you spend time correcting entries instead of creating them.

The app saw you in Figma for 40 minutes, but 15 of those were browsing Dribbble for inspiration on a different project. It logged your Slack time as “communication” but half of it was a client conversation that should be billable. Now you’re editing auto-generated entries instead of typing accurate ones.

Miru takes a different position: you know what you worked on. We give you the fastest tools to log it — a one-click timer, manual entry, or a CLI that lets you type miru track start "Client API work" without leaving your terminal. Intentional tracking beats surveillance tracking.

Pricing: “free” has fine print

TimeCamp’s free plan tracks time. That’s about it. You want invoicing? Upgrade to Starter at $3.99/user/month. Need budgeting and advanced reports? Premium at $6.99/user/month. The free plan is a demo, not a product.

Miru’s free plan includes everything: time tracking, invoicing, expenses, Stripe payments, reports, team management, and the CLI. Up to 5 users. No feature gates. When you outgrow 5 people, it’s $1/member/month. Not $3.99. Not $6.99.

A 20-person team on TimeCamp Premium: $1,678/year. The same team on Miru Pro: $240/year. That’s an 85% savings with more features unlocked from day one.

The open source advantage

This is where the conversation changes entirely. TimeCamp is proprietary software. You can’t see the code, you can’t self-host, and you can’t leave without losing your workflow.

Miru is MIT licensed and fully open source. Self-host it on your own servers for zero monthly cost. Audit the code for security compliance. Fork it and customize it to your exact needs. Your data, your infrastructure, your rules.

For teams that care about data sovereignty — and increasingly, that’s everyone — open source isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a requirement.

When TimeCamp makes sense

If your team genuinely benefits from automatic desktop tracking and you don’t need invoicing on the free plan, TimeCamp is a reasonable choice. The automatic tracking works well for teams that switch between many applications and want passive logging.

When Miru wins

For everyone else. Especially teams that:

• Want invoicing and time tracking in one tool
• Need a CLI for developer workflows
• Require self-hosting for compliance
• Prefer paying $1/member instead of $4-7/user
• Believe their tools should be open source

The bottom line: TimeCamp is a good automatic tracker with an expensive upgrade path. Miru is a complete time-tracking-to-payment platform that starts free and stays cheap. Try it today.