Open-source WakaTime alternatives

ActivityWatch is an open-source application that records what you do on your computer so you can see how you spent your time. Its guiding goal is to let people collect as much valuable lifedata as they like without compromising privacy, so everything is stored securely on your own machine and you control what is gathered.

Data comes from small programs called watchers. The standard ones record the currently active application and its window title, the active browser tab with its title and URL, and keyboard and mouse activity to work out whether you are away from the keyboard. You decide how much to collect, and community members are encouraged to write more watchers. The repository also includes a server and libraries, and the project provides a feature comparison with other time trackers.

ActivityWatch is written mainly in Python, is MPL-2.0 licensed and works across Windows, macOS and Linux. It has a forum, documentation and a newsletter. It appeals to people who want automatic time tracking and productivity analytics without sending activity data to a cloud service.

Wakapi is a lightweight, self-hosted backend for collecting coding statistics, built to work with the WakaTime editor plugins. You point your existing editor integration at your own Wakapi server and get time-tracking statistics for each project, language, editor, host and operating system without sending data to a third party.

Features include badges, weekly email reports, a REST API, partial compatibility with the WakaTime API, optional WakaTime integration and Prometheus exports, with a focus on being fast. The software is written in Go. The README notes that because the maintainers have limited time, they are temporarily not accepting pull requests.

Wakapi is MIT-licensed and can be run on your own server, with an option to use the public instance at wakapi.dev instead. It suits developers who want private coding time tracking and dashboards without handing their activity to a commercial service.