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Blog | Miru
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Blog

Product launches, pricing opinions, engineering notes, and practical guides for teams that bill by the hour.

Operations
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
tools freelancers business

Free FIRE Calculator for Freelancers and Consultants

We built a free FIRE calculator with multi-currency support, investment breakdowns, Monte Carlo simulations, and country-specific defaults. No signup required.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
tools freelancers invoicing

Free W-9 Generator: Fill and Download in 30 Seconds

We built a free online W-9 form generator that creates a properly formatted PDF. Private, in-browser, no signup required.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Time Tracking Product

The Floating Timer: Track Time Without Leaving Your Current View

New in Miru: a floating timer that lives on every page. Start, pause, stop, and save without navigating away from what you're doing.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Featured Mobile Product

Miru Mobile App Preview: Track Time From Your Phone

We're building a mobile app with Expo. Today view, Week view, offline support. Here's what it looks like and when you can get it.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Security Product

Miru Now Supports 2FA: Authenticator Apps and Passkeys

Your Miru account just got a lot more secure. TOTP authenticator apps and passkey sign-in are live today.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Engineering AI CLI

How We Track Time with AI Agents and the Miru CLI

A practical guide to automated time tracking for teams using Claude Code, Codex, and other AI coding tools. Real workflows, real scripts, zero browser tabs.

Saeloun Team · · 5 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
AI CLI Product

AI-Tagged Time Entries: Know Which Hours Were AI-Assisted

Time entries created via CLI with AI tools like Claude Code now get automatically tagged. See exactly which work was AI-assisted.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru expenses screen with expense entries and approvals
Featured Release Product

Introducing Miru 3.0

The biggest release in Miru's history. New expense management, CLI tool, dark mode, API access, six report types, and a completely redesigned experience.

Saeloun Team · · 7 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Featured Comparison Time Tracking

The Definitive Time Tracking Comparison: Miru vs Every Alternative in 2026

We tested every major time tracking tool. Here's an honest, side-by-side breakdown of pricing, features, and what actually matters for teams that bill by the hour.

Vipul A M · · 6 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Time Tracking Product

Copy Last Week's Timesheet: The Feature That Saves 10 Minutes Every Monday

If your week looks like last week, why re-enter everything? New in Miru: one-click week copy and quick entry shortcuts.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Comparison FreshBooks

Miru vs FreshBooks: Stop Overpaying for Invoicing

FreshBooks charges $17-$55/month before you add a single team member. Miru gives you invoicing, time tracking, and expenses for $1/member/month.

Saeloun Team · · 2 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Comparison Harvest

Miru vs Harvest: Which Time Tracker is Right for Your Team?

A head-to-head comparison of Miru and Harvest. Pricing, features, open source vs closed source, and why Miru wins for most teams.

Saeloun Team · · 2 min read
Miru expenses screen with expense entries and approvals
Comparison Toggl

Miru vs Toggl: Time Tracking is Just the Beginning

Toggl is a great timer. Miru is a great timer plus invoicing, expenses, payments, and a CLI. All for $1/member/month. Here's the full comparison.

Saeloun Team · · 2 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Open Source Opinion

Why Your Time Tracking Tool Should Be Open Source

Vendor lock-in, surprise pricing, and disappearing features. Here's why open source time tracking isn't just nice to have — it's the only sane choice.

Saeloun Team · · 3 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Pricing Opinion

You're Paying 10x Too Much for Time Tracking

A 50-person team on Harvest pays $600/month. On Miru Pro, that's $50. Here's the math on why per-seat pricing is a scam.

Saeloun Team · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Agencies Guide

How to Bill Clients Without Losing Your Mind

A practical guide to client billing for agencies: time tracking, invoicing, expense management, and getting paid on time.

Saeloun Team · · 4 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Freelancers Guide

The Freelancer's No-BS Guide to Getting Paid

Track your hours, send professional invoices, and get paid without chasing. A practical guide for freelancers who'd rather do the work.

Saeloun Team · · 4 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Migration Harvest

How to Migrate from Harvest to Miru in 10 Minutes

A step-by-step guide to switching from Harvest to Miru. Export your data, import via CLI, and start saving 90% on your time tracking bill.

Saeloun Team · · 2 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Engineering Design

Dark Mode Done Right: Why Most Apps Get It Wrong

CSS invert() is not dark mode. Here's what it actually takes to build a dark theme that doesn't hurt your eyes.

Saeloun Team · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Remote Agencies

Billing for Remote Teams: What We Learned Running a Distributed Agency

Practical lessons from billing clients across timezones. Time tracking, invoicing, and getting paid when your team spans continents.

Saeloun Team · · 4 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Comparison Clockify

Miru vs Clockify: Why Free Isn't Always Free

Clockify markets itself as free forever. But the features you actually need cost $7.99/user/month. Here's what they're not telling you.

Saeloun Team · · 2 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Comparison Monday

Miru vs Monday: Stop Using a Bulldozer to Plant a Flower

Monday.com is a project management suite. You need a billing tool. Here's why using Monday for time tracking is expensive overkill.

Saeloun Team · · 2 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
CLI Engineering

Why We Built the Miru CLI (And Why Every SaaS Should Have One)

Most SaaS tools treat the terminal as an afterthought. We built a full CLI because developers deserve better than a browser tab.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Featured Story Product

From Consulting Agency to Product Company: The Miru Origin Story

We built Miru because we were a consulting company that couldn't find a decent time tracker. Here's the honest story of how it happened.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Engineering Rails

Why We Chose Rails 8 and React 18 for Miru 3.0

In a world obsessed with Next.js and serverless, we bet on Rails 8 and React 18. Here's why boring tech wins.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Pricing Opinion

Why We Charge $1 Per Person (And Why Everyone Else Charges 10x More)

Per-seat pricing at $10-15/person is a racket. Here's the math behind Miru's $1/member pricing and why it works.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Self-Hosting Guide

Self-Hosting Miru: A Complete Guide for Teams That Own Their Data

Step-by-step guide to deploying Miru on your own infrastructure. Docker, bare metal, or cloud -- your servers, your rules.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
CLI Workflows

5 Miru CLI Workflows That Save Our Team Hours Every Week

Real shell scripts and automation patterns our team uses daily. Git hooks, cron invoicing, Slack integration, and more.

Vipul A M · · 6 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Developers Guide

Time Tracking for Developers: A Guide for People Who Hate Time Tracking

Most developers hate tracking time. Here's how to make it painless with the right tools and a 30-second daily habit.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Business Open Source

How We Make Money Giving Away Software

Miru is open source and MIT licensed. We charge $1/person/month. Here's why this works and why more companies should try it.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Stripe Guide

How to Set Up Stripe Invoicing with Miru in 5 Minutes

Connect Stripe, send an invoice, get paid. Step-by-step guide to accepting payments through Miru.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Featured Comparison Guide

Best Time Tracking Apps in 2026: An Honest Comparison

We reviewed every major time tracking app. Here's what we found — and why we think most of them are overpriced.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Automation Guide

How to Automate Your Invoicing (And Never Chase a Payment Again)

Manual invoicing costs you hours every month. Here's how to set up automated billing with Miru's CLI and Stripe integration.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Pricing Opinion

Per-Seat Pricing Is Broken: A Rant

Slack, Harvest, Jira — they all charge per seat. Here's why this pricing model punishes growth and how to escape it.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Integrations Guide

How to Connect Miru to 5,000+ Apps with Zapier

Use Miru's API with Zapier to auto-create time entries from calendar events, send invoice notifications to Slack, and sync payments to your accounting tool.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
API Engineering

Building on the Miru API: What Developers Need to Know

Authentication, endpoints, rate limits, and real code examples. Everything you need to build on top of Miru's REST API.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Engineering Rails Open Source

Why Rails Developers Love Miru (And How to Contribute)

Miru is built on Rails 8 and React 18. Here's why the stack matters, how to set up your dev environment, and where to start contributing.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Remote Guide

How to Track Time Across Timezones Without Losing Your Mind

Practical guide for distributed teams: UTC storage, local display, and billing across timezones without spreadsheet chaos.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru expenses screen with expense entries and approvals
Expenses Guide

Expense Management for Small Teams: Stop Using Spreadsheets

Why spreadsheets fail at expense tracking and how to replace them with categories, receipt photos, approval workflows, and tax-time exports.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Invoicing Guide

Let Clients See Their Own Invoices: The Miru Client Portal

How the Miru client portal works: secure token links, no login required, self-service invoice access, and fewer 'can you resend that?' emails.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Product Roadmap

The Miru 2026 Roadmap: What We're Building Next

Recurring invoices, multi-currency, a mobile app, and webhooks. Here's what's coming to Miru in 2026 and why we're building it in this order.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Security Engineering

How We Think About Security at Miru

Encryption, authentication, role-based access, open source auditing, and self-hosting. How Miru protects your billing data.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Pricing Opinion

Why We Don't Do Annual Contracts

No annual lock-ins. No discounts for commitment. If the product is good, people stay. If it's not, no contract will save you.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru invoicing screen with invoice status and totals
Agencies Guide

How to Set Up Retainer Billing for Agency Clients

A practical guide to retainer agreements: how to structure them, track hours against them, invoice monthly, and handle overages without awkward conversations.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Agencies Metrics

Utilization Rate: The Number Every Agency Owner Should Track

What utilization rate is, how to calculate it, what good looks like, and what to do when it's dropping. The single most important metric for service businesses.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Careers Team

We're Hiring: Join the Team Behind Miru

Saeloun is hiring. Rails + React. Small team. Remote-friendly. No hustle culture. Here's what it's actually like.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Partners Product

Introducing the Miru Partner Program: 30% Recurring Commission

Earn 30% recurring commission recommending Miru. 90-day cookie window. Monthly payouts. Here's how the partner program works.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Product Story

Miru 2025 Year in Review: From Side Project to 500+ Teams

An honest look back at Miru's 2025. The milestones, the mistakes, and what we learned building an open-source product company from India.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Comparison TimeCamp

Miru vs TimeCamp: Why We Think Open Source Wins

Comparing Miru and TimeCamp on pricing, features, automatic tracking vs CLI, and why open source time tracking is the better long-term bet.

Vipul A M · · 2 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Remote Guide

The Remote Team's Guide to Time Tracking That Doesn't Suck

How distributed teams handle timezone-aware time tracking, async logging, CLI workflows, and utilization reports without losing their minds.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru dashboard showing revenue, projects, and recent activity
Product Opinion

We Deleted Our Roadmap

Public roadmaps are a trap. They become contracts, not plans. Here's why we stopped publishing ours and what we do instead.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Culture Opinion

No Meetings on Wednesdays: How We Ship Faster

One day a week with zero meetings. No standups, no syncs, no 'quick calls.' Just eight hours of uninterrupted work.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Engineering Opinion

We Run a Monolith and We're Not Sorry

Microservices are a scaling solution for organizations, not technology. Here's why a Rails monolith serves Miru perfectly.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Hiring Culture

We Don't Do Leetcode Interviews (And We Get Better Engineers)

Reversing a binary tree tells you nothing about building products. Here's how we hire at Saeloun.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru reporting screen with utilization and revenue reports
Freelancers Opinion

Charge More: A Letter to Every Freelancer Underpricing Themselves

You're charging $50/hour when you should charge $150. Here's the math, the psychology, and the permission you need.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru team management screen with members and roles
Engineering Tools

The Tools We Actually Use to Build Miru

No sponsored content. No affiliate links. Just the actual tools our 15-person team uses daily and why.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Engineering Opinion

Why We Don't Use TypeScript on the Backend

TypeScript is great for React components. It's overkill for a Rails API. Here's our take on where types help and where they just add noise.

Vipul A M · · 3 min read
Miru time tracking interface with timers and recent entries
Business Story

Why We Didn't Take VC Money

We had the option. We said no. Here's why bootstrapping Miru was the right call and why it might be right for you too.

Vipul A M · · 4 min read
From blog to product

Read the idea, then run it in Miru.

The blog explains how we think about time tracking, invoicing, and pricing. Miru gives you the actual workflow in the product.

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