Hackatime
Free, open-source coding time tracker for 70+ editors, built by Hack Club.
🔗 Visit Hackatime
Description
Hackatime is a free stopwatch for your code editor: install a small plugin and it quietly records how long you actually spend coding, in which project, and in which programming language — the same idea as a fitness tracker, but for your keyboard instead of your steps.
It's an open-source, WakaTime-compatible replacement built by Hack Club (a nonprofit for teen coders), meaning it reuses the existing WakaTime plugin ecosystem — if your editor already has a WakaTime plugin, it works with Hackatime too, across 70+ editors and IDEs. Unlike the proprietary alternative, your coding history is stored indefinitely and isn't locked behind a subscription or a data-retention limit.
💬 Our review
The short version: Hackatime is a genuinely free, no-catch alternative to WakaTime's paid tier, and a good pick for anyone who just wants long-term coding stats without worrying about a bill later.
It piggybacks on WakaTime's own plugin ecosystem, so setup is nearly identical — you're not learning a new tool, just pointing an existing plugin at a different, free backend. The catch is scale and polish: it's a much smaller project (a few hundred GitHub stars, run largely for Hack Club's teen-coder community) than WakaTime, which has years of dashboards, team features, and integrations built around it. For an individual developer or student who wants unlimited history and zero cost, Hackatime is a clear win; a team that needs organization-wide reporting or guaranteed uptime SLAs is better served by WakaTime's paid plans.
💰 Pricing
📊 Global score
🤖 AI-enriched data
Perpetually free and open source, no premium tier
Pros
Completely free
Compatible with WakaTime plugins
Indefinite data retention
Open source
Cons
Smaller project, less polish
No team/org dashboards
Built for a specific community (Hack Club)