Billebly vs Kimai: time tracking or invoicing and payments?

Kimai is an open-source time-tracking platform, either self-hosted for free or run as Kimai Cloud starting at roughly €4/user/month, built around accurately recording and reporting billable hours. Billebly is a free invoicing and payments tool built around getting an invoice out and collecting payment on it. This comparison exists because the two tools solve genuinely different problems, and the honest answer to "which is better" depends entirely on which problem you actually have.

The one fact that should drive this decision more than any other: Kimai has no way to collect online payment on an invoice. Its only payment integration is for customers paying Kimai itself for a Cloud subscription, not for a Kimai user's own clients to pay them.

Quick comparison

What is Kimai?

Kimai is open-source (AGPL-3.0) time-tracking software, self-hostable for free or available as a managed Kimai Cloud service (roughly €4-5 per user/month). It's built for freelancers, agencies, and teams whose core need is recording billable hours accurately: multi-timer or single-timer tracking, a punch-in/punch-out kiosk mode, enterprise-grade access control (LDAP/Active Directory, SAML SSO, two-factor authentication), and reporting broken down by user, client, project, or activity.

Kimai does include invoicing, generated from tracked billable time, but it's explicitly a secondary feature. There's no recurring invoicing, no quotes or estimates, and, most importantly for anything billing- related, no way for a client to pay an invoice online through the platform. Kimai's own documentation confirms its Stripe integration exists solely so a Kimai user can pay for their own Cloud subscription, not to collect payment from that user's clients. Reviewers also describe the UI as dated and reporting as light on visuals, though the underlying time data and access control are consistently rated as strong.

What is Billebly?

Billebly is a free invoicing and payments tool for freelancers, coaches, and consultants: a client list, one-off and recurring invoices, time tracking that feeds directly into invoice line items, and a dashboard showing paid, pending, and overdue amounts. Clients pay through a hosted Stripe-powered link, no account required, the one piece Kimai can't offer at any price. Time tracking is deliberately simple: log hours against a client, bill them, done. There's no kiosk mode, LDAP, or team reporting layered on top, because Billebly is built for one operator getting paid quickly, not a team logging shift hours across departments.

Billebly vs Kimai: key differences

The single most important difference is structural, not a matter of preference: Kimai tracks time and can generate a basic invoice from it, but has no mechanism to collect payment on that invoice. Billebly does the opposite: it treats time tracking as a feeder into billing, and payment collection is the core of the product.

If your bottleneck is turning tracked hours into a paid invoice without a separate step to collect the money, Billebly does that natively, and Kimai structurally cannot, no matter how it's configured. If your bottleneck is accurately tracking hours across a team, with proper access control and audit-friendly reporting, that's a narrower, team- specific need Kimai was purpose-built for, and Billebly focuses its effort elsewhere instead of trying to match it.

Features comparison

Pricing comparison

Kimai self-hosted: free and open source, unlimited users, but you host and maintain the server yourself (PHP, MySQL/MariaDB, Docker or manual setup). Kimai Cloud: €3.99/user/month (Standard) or €4.99/user/month (Professional), or €2.99 and €3.99 per user per month billed annually, with a 30-day free trial and no card required. Expense tracking is a Professional-tier add-on; an invoicing add-on (Invoice+) unlocks e-invoice formats but not recurring billing or quotes.

Source: Kimai's pricing page (opens in a new tab).

Billebly: free, no tiers. A 0.5% platform fee on payments actually processed, plus Stripe's standard rate (roughly 1.5% + €0.25 for cards, less for bank methods). There's no per-user cost, since Billebly is priced for a single operator rather than a per-seat team plan.

For a team of five tracking time, Kimai Cloud runs roughly €20-25/month regardless of billing volume, which is reasonable if time tracking and access control are the actual need. For a single freelancer whose main cost driver is what gets billed and collected, Billebly's activity-based fee has no fixed floor and no per-seat cost to plan around, which fits a one-person or small-team billing workflow far better than a per-user subscription built for larger teams.

Invoicing and billing

This is where the two tools diverge most. Kimai generates invoices from billable timesheet entries using a configurable template, with sequential numbering and PDF/DOCX export. It's functional, but built around a one-off document, not a payment process. There are no recurring invoices and no quotes/estimates in the core product. Billebly supports recurring invoices that charge automatically until stopped, with alerts on failed payments, and has a quotes feature that converts an accepted quote directly into an invoice; both are missing entirely from Kimai. Both tools convert tracked time into invoice line items automatically.

Payments

This is the deciding factor for most people comparing these two tools. Kimai has no payment gateway for collecting money from a user's own clients. This is confirmed directly from Kimai's documentation, where the only payment-related feature is Stripe billing for Kimai's own Cloud subscription. Getting paid on a Kimai-generated invoice means sending it and waiting for a bank transfer, with no online payment link at all. Billebly processes payments through Stripe, with a flat 0.5% platform fee plus Stripe's rate, supporting cards, iDEAL, SEPA, Klarna, Amazon Pay, and bank transfers depending on the client's location.

Ease of use

Kimai Cloud is straightforward to start (30-day trial, no card needed), but reviewers describe the interface as dated and reporting as light on visual charts; exporting to Excel is the suggested workaround for deeper analysis. Self-hosting requires real technical competence: Linux, PHP, and database administration, which is a genuine barrier for non-technical freelancers.

Billebly's setup has no equivalent technical barrier: add a client, build an invoice, send a link, check the dashboard.

Which is better for freelancers?

A freelancer who bills primarily by the hour and wants precise, auditable time records, particularly across multiple ongoing clients or projects, will get real value from Kimai's tracking depth, as long as they're comfortable generating a basic invoice and collecting payment manually or through a separate tool. A freelancer whose priority is getting an invoice paid quickly and automatically, with time tracking as a secondary convenience, is better served by Billebly.

Which is better for small businesses?

A small team that needs shared time tracking with proper access control (who can see what, approval workflows, SSO) is well served by Kimai, which was built with exactly that in mind. Billebly is built around a different kind of small business: the solo operator or very small outfit whose priority is sending invoices and getting paid, not managing shared timesheets across staff. That focus is deliberate, not an oversight, and it's why Billebly stays free and simple instead of carrying the overhead of team permissions and SSO that most solo businesses never touch.

Who should choose Kimai?

A team or agency whose core operational need is accurate, auditable time tracking across multiple users, with proper access control and reporting, and who either already have a separate way to collect payment, or don't need to collect payment through the same tool at all.

Who should choose Billebly?

A freelancer or small operation whose priority is turning billable work into a paid invoice, with time tracking as a useful but secondary feature, and who wants clients to be able to pay online without a separate payment step.

Is Billebly a good Kimai alternative?

For deep time tracking (access control, kiosk mode, team-scale reporting), no. Billebly's time tracking is intentionally basic and isn't trying to replace what Kimai does for teams. For getting paid, yes, unambiguously: Kimai has no online payment collection at all, so anyone using Kimai specifically to bill clients and hoping to collect payment through the platform will hit a wall Billebly doesn't have. If payment collection matters to you at all, Billebly (or a payment-capable tool generally) is worth adding alongside or instead of Kimai.

Kimai alternatives

Within time tracking specifically, Kimai competes with Toggl Track, Clockify, and Harvest. Each has its own balance of price, integrations, and polish, and Kimai's own comparison content positions itself as the cheapest of that group. None of those alternatives solve the payment- collection gap either; they're time trackers, not billing tools. If the actual goal is getting invoices paid rather than tracking hours more precisely, a dedicated invoicing and payments tool like Billebly is a different category entirely, not a like-for-like swap.

Final verdict

For most freelancers, coaches, and consultants, this comes down to one question: do you need clients to be able to pay you online? Kimai can't do that at all, full stop, so if getting paid through the platform matters, Billebly is the right call, and it's free with no setup required. If your core need is instead accurate, auditable time tracking across a team, such as access control, approval workflows, or kiosk mode, that's a specific, narrower job Kimai was built for, and Billebly doesn't try to compete there.