Kimai
by Kimai · Open-source time tracking, hosted or self-hosted
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Kimai
Homepage
Overview
Kimai is a hosted time-tracking application for teams, covering project time tracking, billable and non-billable hours, invoicing and reporting. Data exports to PDF, ODS, XLSX, HTML and CSV, and a JSON REST API connects it to other applications. A role concept limits what each user can see, and every data change is written to an audit log.
- Best for
- Teams up to 250+ users wanting EU-hosted, open-source time tracking with invoicing
- Pricing
- No free plan: €2.99 per user/month for Standard and €3.99 per user/month for Professional after a 30-day free trial, excluding tax.
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Open source, usable self-hosted or as a hosted cloud plan
- Hosted in Germany and described as GDPR compliant
- Exports data and invoices to PDF, ODS, XLSX, HTML and CSV
- JSON REST API for querying and creating data
Trade-offs
- No free plan; only a 30-day trial before per-user billing starts
- SSO, expenses and working time accounts need the Professional plan
- Standard backups are weekly; daily backups only on Professional
- Annual billing is advertised as 20% cheaper but the same €2.99 is shown
How Kimai markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Kimai’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“Kimai – Time-tracking”
- Angle: Simplicity / ease
- Hero: Typography only
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Kimai’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
API quality
Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Pricing transparency
Whether real prices are published, self-serve signup exists, and usage costs are knowable without a sales call.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
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Where this comes from
The Kimai pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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