Project and task management decision
RescueTime
A technical user can reproduce the core automatic-tracking + reporting and Focus sessions, but they won't match RescueTime's years of collected data, cross-platform polish, and breadth of integrations without substantial additional time and resources.
Visit website↗$9/mo
$108/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off80 h to build
$0/mo8 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
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 RescueTime alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Run a lightweight background agent that records active window titles and URLs, send events to a server that aggregates and categorizes activity, show per-user reports and dashboards, and allow users to set goals/receive alerts and start Focus sessions which block specified domains/apps.
What it still won’t have
- Years of historical activity data and derived baselines
- Polished cross-platform agent stability and browser extension coverage
- Broad third-party integrations and enterprise billing/invoice options
- Brand recognition and large existing user community
What remains hard
- Proprietary data
3 billion hours logged
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 1 seat.
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 RescueTime-like service: use an Electron (or native) background agent to capture active window titles and URLs and send batched events to a Node.js + Express API; store events and users in Postgres; implement categorization rules in the backend, a React web UI for timeline/reports/goals, and a small admin job that produces weekly summary emails. In scope: agent event capture (Windows/macOS), backend ingestion and categorization, user auth, dashboard with timeline and productivity report, Focus session push to agent (simple blocking by domain/process), and weekly summary emails. Out of scope: mobile SDKs, enterprise SSO, payments, and advanced integrations. Include robust error handling, tests for ingestion and categorization, and deployment scripts for a single small VPS (Docker).
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- 3/3 assessment runs agreed+4
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- 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 · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productRescueTime home
- official pricingRescueTime pricing
- official docsRescueTime Solo Focus features
- open sourceActivityWatch/activitywatch
- open sourceJerryZLiu/Dayflow
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
