Finance and accounting decision
Duefly.com
A competent developer can reproduce a useful self-hosted subset (time tracking + invoicing) using existing open-source projects, but matching a polished hosted product with support, uptime, and payment-compliance is nontrivial and likely worth paying for.
Visit website↗Not priced
No pricing page we fetched carried a figure, so there is nothing to compare against. The build side is still real.
$100one-off160 h to build
$0/mo6 h/mo upkeep
No published price to break even against.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Duefly.com alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- User signs in -> start/stop time entry tied to a project/task -> store timesheet -> generate invoice from billable entries -> send invoice / accept payment
What it still won’t have
- Hosted service reliability, backups and uptime SLAs
- Vendor-provided customer support and onboarding
- Commercial polish, analytics dashboards and polished UX
- Ongoing compliance/certified payment handling and fraud monitoring
- Automated upgrades, hosted integrations and Marketplace connectors
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
No published price
Duefly.com does not publish a price we could read, so there is nothing to compare against. What building costs is below.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal self-hosted time-tracking + billing web app using: React (Vite) frontend, Node.js + Express backend, Postgres, Docker for deployment, and Stripe for payments. In scope: user auth (email/password), project and task CRUD, start/stop timers and manual time entries, timesheet storage, generate PDF invoices from billable entries, send invoice emails, Stripe payment handling, simple React UI for dashboard/reports, migrations, error handling, and automated tests (unit + basic E2E). Out of scope: multi-tenant branded portals, advanced analytics, third-party marketplace integrations, and mobile-native apps. Provide Docker Compose for local dev, production Dockerfile, health checks, logging, and CI that runs tests.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 3 cited sources+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Evidence score64
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 3
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productDuefly - Track time, manage projects, get paid
- open sourcekimai/kimai
- open sourcemidday-ai/midday
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
