OpenToggl is a free, private-first, AI-friendly alternative to Toggl.
Project status: OpenToggl is currently in a very early stage.
It exists for a simple reason: Toggl is too expensive for many individuals and teams, too closed for private-first workflows, and too rate-limited for serious AI and automation use.
OpenToggl aims to match Toggl's product surface, so you can keep the workflow you already know while taking back control of hosting, data, and API throughput.
Toggl works until cost, control, or automation stop being negotiable.
OpenToggl is built for that gap.
- Free instead of expensive recurring pricing
- Private-first instead of keeping your time data on someone else's infrastructure
- Self-hostable instead of locked to one vendor
- AI-friendly instead of rate-limited into uselessness
- Built to preserve the Toggl-shaped workflow instead of inventing a different product you have to relearn
- Better suited for heavy API usage, where
30/houris nowhere close to enough for real agents and automation
If you want a Toggl-compatible workflow without Toggl's pricing pressure, vendor dependence, and API ceiling, that is exactly what OpenToggl is for.
Most time-tracking tools were built for humans clicking buttons in a browser.
OpenToggl is also built for agents.
AI workflows need to read projects, tasks, tags, users, reports, and running timers. They need to create and update entries continuously. They need enough HTTP headroom to operate as real software, not as a demo trapped behind tiny hourly limits.
OpenToggl is a better backend for:
- AI agents
- Automation pipelines
- CLI-heavy workflows
- Personal scripts
- Internal tools
Your time data is operational data.
It reflects what you worked on, when you worked on it, which clients you billed, and how your team spends time. That should be deployable on infrastructure you control.
OpenToggl treats self-hosting as a first-class product direction, not an afterthought.
OpenToggl does not try to invent a new time-tracking philosophy.
The goal is to match Toggl's product surface as closely as possible, so switching does not mean retraining your team, rebuilding your scripts, or abandoning existing habits.
You keep the workflow. You lose the pricing pressure, vendor dependence, and API ceiling.
OpenToggl works with toggl-cli, so you can use the same CLI workflow against your own instance.
toggl auth <YOUR_API_TOKEN> --type opentoggl --api-url https://your-instance.com/api/v9- Repository:
https://github.com/CorrectRoadH/opentoggl - Self-hosting docs:
./docs/self-hosting/docker-compose.md - CLI:
https://github.com/CorrectRoadH/toggl-cli