6:10 AM
They're awake
End the night with one tap. baybay works out that it ran ten and a half hours (hopefully) so you never type a duration
Feeds and naps, logged in two taps
Built by parents who needed something simple that just works
No signup, no email. Demo opens on a week of sample data
- Yours alone Never sold, never shared
- No nagging Nothing to upgrade mid-feed
- Free to run MIT licensed, forever
A day with baybay
Every entry is one tap, or two
Nothing below takes longer than it takes to read it. That is the entire design goal, a tracker you resent is a tracker you stop using
6:20 AM
First feed
Bottle or breast, and an amount if you are counting. The time fills in as now, so most feeds are two taps and done
9:20 AM
Down for a nap
One tap starts a timer that keeps running. Tap again when they wake, or 10 minutes later, and the nap is recorded
3:10 PM
A look at the week
The dashboard has been building itself the whole time: feeds a day, hours slept, and whether bedtime is drifting
7:40 PM
Bedtime
The same one tap as a nap, marked as the night. It carries across midnight without you doing anything about it
9:30 PM
Dream feed
Hands full or fall back asleep? Log it later and set the time back. Nothing has to be entered the moment it happens
Time spent logging all of that? about two minutes
Try it yourselfOpens a loaded demo session of the real app
What it does
Six things, done easy
There is no meal planner, no milestone gallery and no community feed. What is here is what a parent uses in the first year
Two-tap logging
Open, tap the feed you gave, save. Amounts have presets and the time defaults to now, with backdating
Time since, always visible
The first thing on the app screen is how long since the last feed and the last sleep
Charts you never set up
Feeds a day, hours slept, bedtime drift and bottle amounts, drawn from what you have already logged
Installs like an app
Add it to the home screen and it opens full screen, with no browser in the way. It does want a connection to work
Your data is one file
Everything you log lives in a single SQLite file. Export takes it whole, or as CSV or JSON; delete unlinks it
Both parents, and the sitter
Share a short code so someone else can log too. Rotate it and everyone who joined with the old one is signed out
What it looks like
Two screens is the entire app
One to log, one to look. Both of these are screenshots of the current app, not mockups
Honestly compared
Against everything else you might use
Paper is genuinely good at some of this, and others track a great deal more than baybay does. The column that should worry you is the subscription apps.
| Compared on | Pen & paper | Subscription apps | others |
baybay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it tracks | Anything you write down | Most things, once you pay | ✓Lots, from diapers to head circumference | ~Feeds and sleep, and nothing else |
| Logging one feed | If you can find the notebook | Half a minute, through a menu | A form, once you pick the type and etc... | Two taps |
| Setting it up | Buy a notebook | App store, then an account | Docker, or a Python environment | ✓PHP and SQLite |
| Charts | ✕Draw them yourself | ~Often behind the paywall | ✓Included | ✓Included, automatic |
| Works without signal | ✓Until it's lost | ✕Usually needs a connection | ✕Needs the server | *Needs a connection |
| Cost | Pen & paper | $10–20 a month | Free, self-hosted | Free to run yourself |
| Where the data sits | ✓On your kitchen counter | ✕Their servers, their terms | ✓Your server, your database | ✓One file, yours to take |
| Upgrade prompts | New pen | ✕Constant | ✓None | ✓None |
| Source code | Your handwriting | ✕Closed | ✓Open, BSD-2-Clause | ✓Open, MIT licensed |
Open source
Run the whole thing yourself
Clone it, point a web server at public/ and it is
running. No Composer, no npm, no build step
- PHP 8.2+
- SQLite
- MIT licence
# everything you need
git clone https://github.com/webdevday/baybay
cd baybay
# configure and set a signing key
cp .env.example .env
php bin/baybay key:generate
php bin/baybay migrate
# first household, then serve it
php bin/baybay household:create --child="Wren"
php -S localhost:8000 -t public
Pricing
Two ways to have it
Either way the data is yours in the same file. Paying only moves who deals with the server, the updates and the backups
Self-hosted
Free
Your server, your file, forever.
- Every feature, nothing held back
- Runs on any PHP host
- MIT licensed, fork it
- Nothing ever leaves your machine
Hosted
$7
a month
We run it, you just open the link
- Nothing to set up or update
- Backups handled for you
- Export the whole file any time
- Cancel whenever, no hassle
Not open, just the demo and self-host
Join the list
Questions
The things people ask first
Mostly about what it does not do, which is the more useful half of the answer.
Is baybay open source?
Yes. baybay is MIT licensed and the entire application is public at github.com/webdevday/baybay. There is no open-core split and no feature held back for a paid tier: charts, export and shared access are all in the repository. The hosted plan pays for someone else to run the server, not to unlock anything.
Can I self-host baybay?
Yes, and it is the intended way to run it. Clone the repository, copy .env.example to .env, generate a key, run the migration and point a web server at public/. baybay needs PHP 8.2 or newer with SQLite, which ordinary shared hosting already has. Run it yourself and no data about your family ever leaves your machine.
What does baybay actually track?
Feeds and sleep, and nothing else. Feeds are bottle or breast with an optional amount in millilitres; sleep is naps and nights, started with one tap and ended with another. baybay does not track diapers, growth, milestones or medication. That is a deliberate limit rather than a roadmap — it is why logging a feed takes two taps.
How is baybay different from Baby Buddy?
Baby Buddy tracks far more — diapers, tummy time, pumping, medication, temperature, weight, height and head circumference alongside feeds and sleep — and it has a larger community and a Home Assistant integration. baybay tracks feeds and sleep only, and installs without Docker or a Python environment: PHP and SQLite, no build step, two screens.
Does baybay need Docker?
No. baybay runs on PHP 8.2 or newer with SQLite, and installing it is cloning the repository and pointing a web server at public/. There is no Docker image, no Composer step, no npm and no build step — which is also why it will still install in five years. It runs on ordinary shared PHP hosting.
Can both parents and a sitter use it?
Yes. Each household in baybay has a short code like moss-lark-42 that a partner, grandparent or sitter types once to join — no account to create and no invitation email to chase. The owner signs in with a magic link instead. Rotating the code from Settings signs out everyone who joined with the old one.
Can I export my data?
Yes, at any time, and export is never gated on a subscription. Everything one family logs in baybay lives in a single SQLite file, and export hands you that file whole — it opens in any SQLite browser. CSV and JSON are there too. Deleting a household unlinks the file; there is no soft-delete flag quietly keeping it.
Does baybay work offline?
No, and the limit is deliberate. baybay installs to the home screen and opens full screen like an app, but it needs a connection to show or record anything: no page and no feed time is ever cached, and a failed write says so rather than queueing silently. A "last fed 20 minutes ago" that is really two hours old is worse at 3am than no answer.
Is baybay free?
Self-hosting is free forever, with every feature and nothing held back. It is MIT licensed, so you can fork it, change it or run it for someone else. A hosted plan is coming for parents who would rather not run a server; it will be the same application, and the same file you can export.
Have a look before you decide anything
Demo is the real application on sample data. Nothing to fill in, nothing kept permanently
Try the demo