Busy Panda, a forever free time tracker built out of frustration with paywalled tools

Hi everyone! Excited (and a little nervous) to share Busy Panda with you today.

The problem: Every time tracker I tried - Clockify, Toggl, Harvest - eventually gated the features you actually need behind a paywall. Basic time tracking (a timer, projects, real reports) shouldn't require a subscription. It's not complex enough to justify that.

What I built: A simple, Clockify-style time tracker -

• Start/stop a running timer in one click

• Organize entries by project, with custom colors

• Add optional notes to each entry

• See report totals and a project breakdown chart

• Everything kept private and separated per user

How it came together: I started as minimal as possible - just start/stop a timer logged against a project. Once that core loop worked, I layered on the rest: colors, notes, and finally the reporting/charts, so people could actually see where their time goes, not just record it. I kept scope tight the whole way so it's something you can set up in five minutes.

Why I'm the right person for this: I use Busy Panda myself, every single day. It's not something I built and walked away from - it's the tool I track my own work in. If something's clunky, I feel it first.

Where things stand: This launch is effectively day one - pre-revenue, no growth numbers yet, just a tool that's been my daily driver while I built it. It's lean by design (PHP/MySQL/vanilla JS, no heavy infra), so keeping the core free costs very little to sustain.

Would love your feedback - what would make this useful for how you track time? 🐼⏱️