Project and task management decision
Timely
A basic automatic-tracking + timesheet-review workflow is feasible for a single engineer in ~30 hours, but matching Timely's cross-platform agents, polished AI AutoSheet, integrations catalogue, and enterprise features would require much more engineering and operations investment.
Visit website↗$11/mo
$132/yr
Per seat. Read off the official pricing page.
$50one-off30 h to build
$50/mo10 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 5 seats.
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 Timely alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Capture app/activity usage on a device → send activity events to a backend → classify/assign events to projects (automatically or by simple rules) → present a web UI for users to review/approve timesheet entries → export reports/invoices or sync via integrations.
What it still won’t have
- Polished automatic tracking across thousands of apps and platforms (wide OS + mobile coverage)
- Mature AI AutoSheet models and accuracy claims
- Large catalog of built-in third-party integrations and prebuilt syncs
- Enterprise features: SSO/Azure AD, dedicated customer success, and scale-focused support
- Polished UX, onboarding flows, and reliability/edge-case handling developed by the vendor
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 5 seats.
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 automatic time-tracking service using a macOS agent + Node.js backend + Postgres + React UI. Core features in scope: (1) macOS agent that records active app/window titles and timestamps and posts batched events to a REST API; (2) Node/Express API storing events in Postgres with deduplication and user/project tables; (3) simple classification pipeline (rule-based heuristics plus a lightweight ML classifier or embedding-based matcher) that assigns events to projects and suggests timesheet entries; (4) React web UI for users to review/edit/approve suggested timesheet entries and export CSV reports; (5) a webhook-based export endpoint for simple accounting syncs. Out of scope: mobile OS agents (iOS/Android), enterprise SSO, advanced AI AutoSheet training, and a catalog of 3rd-party built integrations. Include logging, retries, error handling, unit tests for backend logic, and an end-to-end integration test for event ingestion → suggestion → approval → CSV export. Provide Docker compose for local dev and deployment docs for a single small cloud VM plus managed Postgres.
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
- Evidence score67
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 productTimely — official product
- official pricingTimely Pricing & Plans
- official docsTimely Features
- open sourceopf/openproject
- open sourcefrappe/erpnext
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
