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Open Source

Open Source Time Tracking:
Own Your Data, Own Your Tools

Most time tracking software is a black box. You put your data in, you pay every month, and you hope the company doesn't get acquihired or jack up prices. Miru is MIT licensed and open source. Self-host it, read the code, or use our cloud. Your call.

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Why open source matters for time tracking

Your time data is your business data. You should own it — not rent access to it.

🔓

No vendor lock-in

MIT licensed. The code is yours. If we disappeared tomorrow — which we won't — you'd still have a working time tracker. Export your data, fork the repo, or switch providers. Your choice, always.

🖥️

Self-host on your servers

Run Miru on a $20/month VPS and serve your entire company. Your data never leaves your infrastructure. No third-party analytics. No telemetry. Compliance teams love this.

🤝

Community-driven development

Features get built because users need them, not because a product manager is chasing a KPI. File an issue, submit a PR, vote on the roadmap. This is how software should be built.

Open source time trackers compared

Miru vs Kimai vs the proprietary tools that call themselves "free."

Feature Miru Kimai TimeCamp Clockify
License MIT (fully open) AGPL-3.0 Proprietary Proprietary
Self-hostable Yes Yes No No
Invoicing built in Yes Plugin (paid) No No
Expense tracking Yes Plugin (paid) Limited No
CLI Yes No No No
REST API Full API Yes Yes Yes
Stripe payments Yes No No No
Tech stack Rails 8 + React 18 Symfony (PHP) N/A N/A
Cloud option $1/member/mo From €9/mo From $3.99/user/mo From $3.99/user/mo

Get started in three steps

Cloud or self-hosted. Either way, you're tracking time within the hour.

1

Sign up or self-host

Create a free account at app.miru.so — takes 30 seconds. Or clone the repo from GitHub and deploy on your own infrastructure. Docker Compose included.

2

Add your projects and team

Create clients, add projects, invite team members. Five roles — owner, admin, employee, book keeper, client. Assign people to projects and set hourly rates.

3

Start tracking

Timer, manual entry, weekly timesheet, or CLI. Pick whatever fits your workflow. Time entries become invoices. Invoices become payments. That's the whole loop.

Questions about open source time tracking

Is Miru truly open source?
Yes. MIT licensed. The entire codebase is on GitHub at github.com/saeloun/miru-web. You can read every line, fork it, modify it, and deploy it anywhere. No open-core tricks where the good features are locked behind a proprietary license.
What's the difference between MIT and AGPL for time tracking?
MIT means you can do whatever you want — use it commercially, modify it, keep your changes private. AGPL (used by Kimai) requires you to share your changes if you host it as a service. For most companies, MIT is the simpler, more permissive choice.
Can I self-host Miru for my company?
Yes. We provide Docker Compose files and a self-hosting guide. A basic VPS with 2GB RAM handles most teams. For enterprise deployments with SLA support, we offer paid plans starting at $1K/year.
How does Miru compare to Kimai?
Kimai is a solid open source time tracker built on Symfony/PHP. Miru is built on Rails 8 and React 18 with a more modern stack. The key difference: Miru includes invoicing, expense tracking, and Stripe payments out of the box — features that are paid plugins in Kimai.
Is the free cloud tier actually free?
Yes. Up to 5 users with every feature included. No credit card. No trial period. No feature limits. If you grow beyond 5 users, it's $1 per member per month. If even that's too much, self-host for free.

Your tools should be as open as your source code.

Free for up to 5 users. Self-host for $0 forever. MIT licensed.

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