WakaTime

What WakaTime does

WakaTime is a developer productivity and AI coding analytics platform founded in 2013 by Alan Hamlett and headquartered in San Francisco. Its core product is a collection of open-source plugins for 100+ IDEs, text editors, terminals, and browsers that automatically capture developer coding activity via a Go-based command-line tool (wakatime-cli). The system emits heartbeat events on file changes, typing, and saves, sending timestamped data to a cloud backend where it is aggregated into personal dashboards, team analytics, and leaderboards. Microsecond-level timing accuracy, offline buffering via boltdb, and configurable privacy controls (hide_project_folder, exclude patterns) form the technical foundation.

The company's strategic positioning has shifted toward AI-era developer analytics with a specialized AI Dashboard that tracks AI-generated versus human-written code, per-agent cost breakdowns across Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, and other assistants, as well as model efficiency and prompt length metrics. Supporting products include Mac and Windows desktop apps that track activity outside supported IDEs, an automatic PDF invoicing module for freelancers, public/private leaderboards, embeddable charts, a yearly "Wrapped" report, the wonderful.dev developer profile platform, and a public JSON REST API at api.wakatime.com.

WakaTime monetizes through a freemium SaaS model. The free tier retains 1 week of dashboard history; paid individual plans are Basic ($9/mo) and Premium ($14/mo). Team plans are $21/developer/month (up to 100 seats) and Business plans $24/developer/month (100-1,000 seats with SSO, OIDC, SCIM, and prioritized support). Go-to-market is product-led via IDE plugin marketplaces and GitHub OAuth onboarding, supplemented by organic community channels (GitHub, Reddit, X/Twitter, Mastodon), with direct sales only for the Business tier. As of 2025, more than 500,000 developers collectively tracked 61.5 million hours of programming, up from roughly 250,000 users in 2020.

Name

WakaTime

Legal name

WakaTime

Website

https://wakatime.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2013

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

WakaTime is a developer productivity and AI coding analytics platform that provides open-source plugins for 100+ IDEs to automatically track coding time, project activity, and AI tool usage across 500k+ developers and teams worldwide.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Developer Productivity / AI Coding Analytics

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132)

SIC

Services-Prepackaged Software (7372)

akta.pro primary industry

Generative AI & LLM Solutions Services (RAG, Agents, Copilots) (BPAEAHAG)

Keywords

• Developer time tracking
• AI coding analytics
• IDE productivity plugins
• Developer observability
• Engineering metrics platform

Headquarters

HQ city

San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. SaaS Subscription (Individual Plans): Freemium model with three individual tiers: Free (1-week history), Basic ($9/mo or $99/yr - 2-week history, daily reports), and Premium ($14/mo or $154/yr - unlimited history, private leaderboards, invoices). Revenue from monthly/annual subscriptions.
2. Team and Business Plans: Per-developer monthly pricing for team collaboration: Team plan at $21/dev/mo ($230/yr) includes up to 100 developers, unlimited team dashboards, and team analytics. Business plan at $24/dev/mo ($275/yr) supports 100-1,000 developers with SSO, SCIM, and prioritized support.
3. Student Discount: Offers discounted student pricing at $5/month ($7 savings from Premium) for verified students, driving adoption among the developer community.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels6 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

WakaTime provides open-source text editor and IDE plugins for 100+ editors (VS Code, JetBrains, Vim, Neovim, Emacs, Sublime, Chrome, etc.) that automatically track developers' coding time and send heartbeat events to cloud-based dashboards. Its differentiated offering is an AI coding analytics layer that measures AI-generated versus human-written code, AI tool adoption, model efficiency, and per-agent cost across assistants such as Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot. Supporting products include Team Dashboards, Leaderboards, Invoicing, Goals, Embeddable Charts, Yearly Wrapped reports, Desktop Apps for Mac/Windows, and a public JSON REST API.

Product overview

WakaTime is an AI coding analytics platform that provides automated time tracking and productivity insights for developers. The core product consists of open-source IDE plugins (100+ editors supported including VS Code, IntelliJ, Vim, and more) that automatically track coding activity and send heartbeats to the WakaTime API. The platform is built around a central Dashboard and specialized AI Dashboard that transform coding activity into clear metrics. Related products include wakatime-cli (the common Go-based command line tool powering all plugins), Desktop Apps (for Mac and Windows to track time outside IDEs), Team Dashboards for aggregated team statistics, and Leaderboards for competitive coding tracking. Additional modules include Goals for programming goal tracking, Invoicing for automatic invoice generation from code stats, Embeddable Charts for sharing statistics, and Wrapped for yearly personalized coding reports. The platform also exposes a public JSON API for developers to build custom integrations and access data programmatically.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• WakaTime Dashboard

Quantifiable outcome

• 500k+ developers track 61 million hours of programming annually as of 2025
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers4 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

AI capability6 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• GitHubcoreTechnology or IntegrationGitHub integration using GitHub Apps for fine-grained, read-only repository access. Provides commit message tracking and PR statistics. Users authenticate via GitHub OAuth. WakaTime is a GitHub Secret Scanning partner for detecting leaked API tokens.
• ChromacoreTechnology or IntegrationWakaTime uses the Chroma syntax highlighter for automatic programming language detection across hundreds of languages. This enables accurate language breakdown in coding statistics.
• 100+ IDE/Editor DeveloperscoreTechnology or IntegrationCommunity ecosystem of developers who maintain plugins for specific editors (Vim, Emacs, Sublime Text, etc.). These community contributors extend WakaTime's reach to editors not supported by official plugins.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Swarmia: Engineering effectiveness platform that tracks developer productivity, DORA metrics, and team goals. Direct competitor to WakaTime's team and business tiers with deeper enterprise integrations and venture-backed scale.
• Jellyfish: Engineering management platform that captures coding, planning, and review telemetry to attribute engineering work to business outcomes. Competes with WakaTime's team analytics in the same buyer persona (engineering leaders).
• LinearB: Engineering productivity tool with automated workflows, DORA metrics, and cycle-time analytics. Targets the same engineering leader buyer as WakaTime's Team and Business plans.
• Waydev: Engineering analytics platform that visualizes team performance, sprint health, and code review velocity. Comparable product offering to WakaTime Team dashboards with similar Git-based data collection.
• Haystack: Engineering productivity analytics for measuring cycle time, review speed, and developer impact. Competes for the same engineering leader buyer with comparable metrics dashboards.
• Allstacks: Value stream intelligence platform for engineering organizations, tracking delivery metrics, risk, and forecasting. Overlaps with WakaTime's team and business analytics at the engineering-management buyer level.

Broad incumbents

• Pluralsight Flow: Enterprise engineering analytics platform (formerly GitPrime) bundled within Pluralsight's broader developer training business. Comparable in feature set but part of a much larger portfolio targeting enterprise L&D buyers.
• CodeClimate: Engineering intelligence platform covering code quality, velocity, and team performance. Comparable in tracking developer activity and providing engineering leader dashboards, with broader enterprise positioning.
• Sentry: Developer-first observability and error tracking platform serving a similar developer persona. Not a direct competitor on time tracking but a comparable developer-tooling SaaS with overlapping IDE and GitHub integrations.
• Sourcegraph: Code intelligence platform that tracks code search, navigation, and AI-cody usage across repositories. Adjacent in serving developer productivity and AI-coding analytics at the team and enterprise level.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/WakaTime
• GitHubgithub.com/wakatime
• Facebookfacebook.com/WakaTime
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/wakatime

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about WakaTime