Clockoli vs Clockify
Sergey NikolaevCo-founder at Clockoli
Clockify offers conventional time tracking without running your own server. Its current pricing FAQ allows up to four invited people plus the owner on Free. Reports are included; additional users and advanced features require a paid plan. Free tracking is not unique to either product.
What Clockify does better
Time parsing that forgives you. Type 0345 and get 03:45. Type 1am, or 13,
and it does the right thing. Durations take 2h, 2.75 or :30. Edit a start or an
end and the duration recomputes. It autosaves with an undo toast. This is a small
thing that you touch fifty times a week, and Clockify is one of the two products that
got it right.
A calendar that edits properly. A separate Calendar page with 60/30/15/5-minute zoom: click an empty slot to add, drag edges to resize, drag a block to move it, and click a running block to split it in place. Splitting a running entry is genuinely useful and rare.
The extension is the app. The popup is a compact clone of the web list — timer bar, week total, day groups, coloured project dots, play buttons to continue. You rarely need to open the web app for daily work. It also injects a timer button into GitHub, Jira, Trello, Asana, GitLab, Notion and Gmail, prefilling the description from the page title and URL.
Project colours you choose. A preset palette plus hex, with eight saved customs, shown as a dot next to the coloured project name everywhere.
What Clockoli does that Clockify cannot
 Clockoli |  Clockify | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your hours live | Plain JSONL files in your GitHub repo | Vendor-hosted service |
| Writing to several places at once | One install, a repository per client, each one owned by that client | Several workspaces, one account; all of it in Clockify |
| Own your data without running a server | GitHub is the backend; no separate tracker server or database | No customer-controlled backend in SaaS |
| Source code | Open source (GPL-3.0 or later) | Proprietary service |
| Free plans and team costs | Core is free; no seat or usage limits. GitHub limits apply | Free: up to 5 people; paid upgrades |
| Reporting | Cross-repo team reports; browser-local billable rates | Reports included free; advanced features paid |
| Who can read task titles | Anyone with repo read access; hosted by GitHub | Workspace access and roles |
| Hourly rates and teammate access | Browser-local, not in shared time files; protect browser access and exports | Service-stored; rate visibility controls |
| Getting your data out | Canonical files already in Git; clone, CSV/JSON, print to PDF | Report exports and API; plan limits apply |
| Corrections kept as history | Git commits, not an immutable compliance audit log | Audit log: Enterprise |
| Tracking while on GitHub | In-page issue/PR timer; any URL via popup | In-page GitHub extension timer |
| Invoicing | Built in and free; rendered in your browser, never committed | Standard and above |
| Mobile app | None | iOS and Android |
| Browsers and desktop | Chrome Web Store extension; Firefox and Safari builds in testing | Web; Chrome/Firefox/Edge; desktop apps |
Checked September 10, 2026. Kimai and solidtime columns describe self-hosting unless marked Cloud; Tempo describes Timesheets Cloud. Free core software does not make hosting or paid add-ons free. Sources and details.
The important difference is the backend, not the existence of a free plan. Clockify operates a managed time-tracking service. Clockoli uses your GitHub repository as storage, without a separate tracker server or database. Clockify includes basic reports on Free; invoicing starts at Standard and its audit log is an Enterprise feature. Clockoli Core has no seat or usage limits, but GitHub’s limits still apply.
Clockify provides report exports and an API; it is not a data trap. Clockoli’s canonical records are already JSONL files in Git, which you can clone for local analysis. Kimai and solidtime offer another route: an open-source application and database you host yourself. See the full architectural comparison.
Which to pick
Take Clockify if its free-plan limits fit your team, or its paid workflows, mobile apps, inline time parsing, and calendar editing are worth more to you than keeping the canonical records in Git.
Take Clockoli if “the vendor’s database” is a real objection rather than an abstract one, or if you want the whole team’s hours in one private repo without a second SaaS account and a per-seat bill behind it.
One thing to check before you decide either way: whether everyone tracking time has a GitHub account. Clockify does not care. Clockoli requires it.
Clockoli is free and open source. See what it does or read the code.