Project and task management decision
Toggl Track
A single developer can build a useful self-hosted timer plus basic reporting in ~30 hours, but reproducing Toggl Track’s automated activity tracking, 100+ integrations, and enterprise compliance/features is not realistic without significant additional investment.
Visit website↗$9/mo
$108/yr
Per seat. Read off the official pricing page.
$50one-off30 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 Toggl Track alternatives, with the arithmetic →
Code Toggl Track publishes itself
Not a way out of the subscription - these are the vendor’s own repositories. Worth a look for how they build, and for anything you would have to integrate with.
- toggl/track-extension★1,146 GitHub starsApache-2.0Toggl Track browser extension for Chrome and Firefox↗
- toggl/komposable-architecture★318 GitHub starsApache-2.0🏗️ Kotlin implementation of Point-Free's composable architecture↗
- toggl/holidefs★32 GitHub starsMITDefinition-based national holidays in Elixir↗
What a replacement has to do
- Start/stop a timer, create/edit time entries tied to projects/clients/tasks, and view/export summary reports
What it still won’t have
- Automated desktop/app activity tracking and auto-conversion into time entries
- 100+ native integrations and browser extensions
- Enterprise features: SSO, dedicated customer success, volume discounts
- ISO 27001 / SOC 2 level certifications and guaranteed uptime SLA
- Built-in scheduled reports, advanced customizable profitability reports, and invoicing linked to QuickBooks
What remains hard
- Compliance and regulation
ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 Type II compliance
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 self-hosted time-tracking web app using Node.js + Express, React, and Postgres. Core features in scope: user auth (email/password), per-user workspaces, start/stop timer UI, manual time-entry form, projects/clients/tasks CRUD, report endpoint that aggregates time by project/client/date and exports CSV, basic timesheet locking and simple timesheet approval workflow, and CSV import for initial data. Out of scope: desktop activity auto-tracking, native desktop/mobile apps, SSO, and enterprise-grade compliance. Include error handling, request validation, and automated tests for API endpoints and report aggregation.
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 productToggl Track
- official pricingToggl Track Pricing
- official docsToggl Track Features
- open sourcekimai/kimai
- open sourcesolidtime-io/solidtime
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
