Best Time Tracking Software in 2026

Why time tracking software is worth choosing carefully

Every time tracker can start and stop a timer. The differences show up later: when a manager has to approve 40 timesheets on a Monday, when finance needs hours that will not change after payroll runs, or when an agency discovers that a fixed-fee project burned twice its budget. A tool that is pleasant for one freelancer can turn into a spreadsheet-export chore for a 30-person team.

The seven tools in this guide all track time, but they come from different starting points. Clockify and Toggl are general-purpose trackers that have grown into billing, approvals and capacity planning. Harvest started as time tracking plus invoicing for agencies. Everhour lives inside project management tools such as Asana and Jira. Timely is built around automatic tracking that drafts timesheets for you. Hubstaff and Time Doctor are workforce tools that add payroll, attendance and (optionally) monitoring.

This comparison sticks to what each vendor documents on its own pricing pages and help center as of October 2026. Two of the tools changed significantly this year, so older reviews can be misleading:

• Toggl Track became Toggl. According to Toggl's own "Toggl vs Toggl Track" page, the new Toggl became the flagship product in September 2026. Toggl Track and Toggl Plan remain available to existing users, but new sign-ups get the new Toggl, with new plans and prices.
• Harvest moved to seat pricing plus usage billing. Harvest's pricing page footer now names Bending Spoons as the operator, and its help center explains that paid plans are billed per seat plus usage charges for active projects, clients, tasks and invoicing (or a fixed "Unlimited" usage fee).

What to look for in time tracking software

Start with how your people will actually record time, then work outward to what happens to those hours.

1. Capture method: timer, timesheet or automatic. Timers suit people who switch tasks during the day and remember to press start. Weekly timesheets suit teams that fill in hours at the end of the day or week. Automatic tracking (Timely's Memory tracker, Toggl's desktop activity tracking, Clockify's auto tracker) records which apps and sites were open so people can turn that record into entries later. Check whether the automatic record is private to the user until they approve it: Timely, Toggl and Clockify all say it is.

2. Billable rates and invoicing. If you bill clients by the hour, you need rates at the right level (per person, per project, per task) and a way to turn approved hours into an invoice. Harvest, Clockify, Everhour, Hubstaff and Timely can create invoices; Toggl focuses on billable reports and exports rather than generating invoices.

3. Project budgets and alerts. Budgets in hours or money, with an alert before the project runs over, are what turn tracked time into margin protection. Look for recurring budgets if you run retainers.

4. Approvals and locking. For payroll and client billing, hours should be submitted, approved and then locked. This is often gated to a higher plan, so it is one of the biggest price drivers in this category.

5. Payroll. Most tools export approved hours for payroll. Only a few (Hubstaff in this list) calculate pay and send payments through providers.

6. Integrations. Developers want to start a timer from a Jira issue; agencies want hours to flow into QuickBooks or Xero. Check that the specific integration you need is on the plan you plan to buy.

7. Free plan and seat rules. Free plans range from one person (Harvest) to five users (Clockify, Everhour). Paid plans may have seat minimums (Everhour, Hubstaff) or user caps (Timely Starter).

A short note on monitoring. Hubstaff, Time Doctor, Clockify (Pro and up) and Everhour can capture screenshots; Toggl and Timely state that they do not take screenshots or log keystrokes. If screenshots and activity monitoring are your main requirement, see our separate employee monitoring comparison. This guide focuses on time tracking for billing, budgets and payroll.

Clockify: full review

What it is. Clockify is a time tracker from CAKE.com (the company also sells Plaky for project management and Pumble for team chat). It covers timers, timesheets, a kiosk for shared clock-in devices, a calendar view and an auto tracker, then layers on billing, approvals, scheduling and monitoring as you move up its five paid plans.

Key features for time tracking.

• Several ways to capture time. Timer, timesheet, calendar and kiosk are all listed under timekeeping. The desktop auto tracker (Windows, Mac and Linux) records programs and websites you view for more than 10 seconds. According to the help center, that data is stored locally, "only the person using the app can see recorded activities and add them as time entries", and it is deleted after 45 days.
• Billing. Billable rates start on Basic; task rates, rounding, invoicing and recurring invoices come with Standard. Invoices are created from tracked time and expenses, downloaded as PDF and tracked by status.
• Approvals and locking. Standard adds formal weekly or monthly timesheet approval ("so they can't be changed later"), locking of past timesheets, attendance and overtime reporting, and reminders when someone forgets to log time.
• Budgets and profit. Pro adds time or money budgets on projects with alerts when a project reaches its budget or estimate, labor cost rates for profit analysis, expenses, forecasting and scheduling.
• Payroll handoff. Standard includes the QuickBooks integration, which per the help center sends tracked time entries to QuickBooks Online for payroll and billing.

Pricing. Free covers up to 5 users with unlimited tracking, but reports only cover a one-month date range. Paid plans, per seat per month: Basic $3.99 billed annually ($4.99 monthly), Standard $5.49 ($6.99), Pro $7.99 ($9.99), Enterprise $11.99 ($14.99). A CAKE.com Bundle with Clockify Enterprise, Plaky and Pumble is $12.99 annually ($15.99 monthly). Every active or invited user, including the owner and admins, takes a paid seat. Clockify offers a 7-day free trial of Pro features with no credit card.

Who it is for. Small and mid-size teams that want invoicing and approvals without paying premium prices, and companies with hourly staff who need a kiosk, attendance and overtime reporting. The free plan is a real option for teams of five or fewer, as long as one month of report history is enough.

Limits. The feature list is spread across five tiers, so the plan you need depends on one or two specific features (budgets are on Pro, approvals on Standard). The Free plan's one-month report range is restrictive for anyone who reviews quarterly. Monitoring note: activity monitoring with screenshots is available on Pro, Enterprise and the Bundle through a desktop agent, and admins must confirm consent and legal compliance before turning it on.

Toggl (formerly Toggl Track): full review

What it is. Toggl spent 20 years as Toggl Track, a famously simple timer. In September 2026 the company made "the new Toggl" its flagship: the same time tracking plus task management, a timeline (Gantt-style) view, capacity planning, time off management, profitability reporting and an AI assistant. Existing Track and Plan customers can keep using those products, and Toggl documents a data import and live sync for switching.

Key features for time tracking.

• Capture options. Real-time timers, manual entry, duration entry and tracking from calendar, list or board views, on web, desktop, mobile and a browser extension. Automated options include desktop activity tracking on Windows and macOS (apps and websites used for over 10 seconds, where "you control which activities turn into time entries"), turning calendar events into entries, auto-tracking selected pages through the browser extension, keyword-triggered reminders, idle detection and a Pomodoro timer.
• Billable rates and profitability. Starter adds billable rates at workspace, member and project level (project member rates on Premium). Premium adds labor costs with effective dates, fixed-fee projects, profitability reports by project, client, task, member and tag, and project dashboards comparing actuals to estimates.
• Budgets and alerts. Toggl's invoicing page describes budgets in hours or fees, including recurring budgets for retainer clients, with an alert at 80%.
• Approvals. Premium includes timesheet approvals: choose who submits and who approves, lock submitted timesheets, flag individual entries for correction and approve in bulk.
• Integrations. Jira and Asana integrations are listed on Premium. Toggl also offers an API and an MCP server.

Pricing. Free for up to 3 users (timers, calendar integrations, tasks and boards, personal reports). Starter is $9/user/month billed annually or $12 billed monthly. Premium is $16 annually or $24 monthly. Enterprise is quoted by sales and adds custom roles, a dedicated customer success manager and multiple workspaces under one organization. Add-ons: Time Off Pro at $2/user/month and Capacity Management at $5 annually or $6 monthly. The annual toggle advertises "4 months free" (33.3% off). Paid plans have a 30-day free trial with no credit card.

Who it is for. Agencies, consultancies, law firms and in-house teams that care about utilization and margin, and companies that want time data without surveillance. Toggl's FAQ is explicit: it does not take screenshots or record keystrokes, browsing history or location.

Limits. Toggl does not generate client invoices: its invoicing page describes applying billable rates and exporting billable hours to CSV, Excel or PDF to attach to an invoice. Approvals and the Jira and Asana integrations require Premium, which at $16 annually is one of the pricier plans here. And because the new Toggl only launched in September 2026, some help content and third-party reviews still describe Toggl Track's older plans.

Harvest: full review

What it is. Harvest combines time tracking, expenses, invoicing and payments, and has been a default choice for agencies for years. It is now operated by Bending Spoons (per the pricing page footer) and uses a new pricing model.

Key features for time tracking.

• Timers and timesheets. One-click timers, weekly and daily timesheets, and calendar imports on web, desktop (macOS and Windows) and mobile apps.
• Invoicing and payments. Every plan, including Free, can generate and track invoices. Stripe takes card or ACH payments, and on Teams and up Harvest copies invoices and payments to QuickBooks Online or Xero. Time and materials and fixed-fee projects are both supported.
• Estimates and budgets. Project estimates on all plans; Harvest's pricing page lists automatic insights into budgets and team capacity, and its separate Forecast product handles scheduling.
• Rates and profitability. Teams adds billable and cost rates per person; Enterprise adds profitability reporting by client, project, task or team.
• Approvals and audit. Timesheet approval, an activity log, required notes and SAML SSO are Enterprise features.
• Integrations. The integrations page lists Asana, Jira and Trello (via browser extension or power-up), Slack, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Stripe, Deel (transfer timesheets) and Zapier. According to the help center, the Slack integration is Enterprise-only.

Pricing. Free: 1 seat and 2 projects, with time tracking, invoicing and expenses. The help center adds that free accounts cannot connect QuickBooks Online, import data, or email invoices or export them as PDF without connecting Stripe. Teams is $9/seat/month billed annually ($108 per seat per year) or $11 monthly. Enterprise is $14 annually ($168 per seat per year) or $17.50 monthly. Enterprise Plus is custom. Annual billing is 20% off, and the free trial runs 30 days with Enterprise features except SSO.

The catch is usage billing. The pricing page says "additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use". The help center explains that each plan is billed either as Flex (seat price plus usage charges on active projects, clients, tasks and invoicing above a free allowance, starting at your second paid renewal) or Unlimited (a fixed usage fee). The per-unit rates are not published on the pricing page; Harvest points customers to Settings, Billing inside the app, and its own help article gives an example of a bill rising from a seats-only $44 to $404 once usage is added.

Who it is for. Agencies and consultancies whose main job for a time tracker is producing accurate client invoices and getting them paid.

Limits. You cannot predict the full bill from the pricing page alone, so model your project and client counts in the trial's billing screen before committing. Approvals and profitability need Enterprise. Harvest's pricing page does not list automatic tracking or screenshots.

Everhour: full review

What it is. Everhour is a time tracker designed to sit inside the project management tools teams already use. Its marketing calls it the "#3 Asana Marketplace App", and timers appear directly in Asana, Jira, ClickUp, monday.com, Trello, Notion, Basecamp, Linear, GitHub and Wrike.

Key features for time tracking.

• Native PM integrations. More than 40 integrations, with time tracked against the tasks in your existing tool and synced into one place.
• Budgets with teeth. Email alerts at 75%, 90% and 100% (or custom thresholds), recurring budgets that reset daily through yearly, and a "budget protection mode" that auto-stops timers and prevents logging once a budget is exceeded.
• Invoicing. Build invoices from tracked time by client, projects and period, add notes and payment links, record payments and export PDF or UBL. Invoices can be copied to QuickBooks or Xero with status syncing back; FreshBooks and Deel are also listed.
• Approvals and locking. Managers review timesheets by member, project or date range; entries must be approved before they are locked for payroll or invoicing, and specific periods can be locked.
• Time off, scheduling and expenses are part of the same plan.

Pricing. Free for up to 5 seats with limited features (time tracking, projects and tasks, reports, export) and no integrations. Team is $8.50/seat/month billed yearly or $10 billed monthly, with every feature included and a 5-seat minimum (so the smallest annual bill is $42.50 a month). Custom pricing starts at 50 seats. Annual billing saves 15%, unused months are not refunded on cancellation, and payment is by card only. New accounts get a 14-day trial of all features without a card.

Who it is for. Teams that plan work in Asana, Jira, ClickUp or monday.com and want time tracking, budgets and invoicing without asking people to open another app.

Limits. The free plan is not useful for integration-driven teams because integrations are paid-only. The 5-seat minimum makes it poor value for a two-person team. Monitoring note: Everhour offers optional screenshots from a Mac and Windows desktop app, captured randomly once per 10-minute slot while the timer runs, with blur and the ability for staff to pause or delete them.

Timely: full review

What it is. Timely, from Timely AS in Oslo, is built around automatic tracking. Its Memory tracker records the apps, websites and documents you use, and AI drafts timesheets from that record. Timely positions itself as "Privacy-first. Not spyware": timelines are private, and "only user-approved entries are shared".

Key features for time tracking.

• Automatic capture. Automatic tracking across "thousands of apps and websites", AI timesheets and categorization, idle detection, plus a manual timer on phone, tablet or computer. GPS location tracking is available through the Android and iOS apps.
• Billing controls. User-specific hourly rates, internal cost rates to compare against billable rates, "mark as billed" to prevent double billing, required tags and notes, and locked time.
• Budgets. Time or money budgets with alerts at budget milestones; recurring budgets are Premium and Unlimited only.
• Reporting. Project and people dashboards, PDF, CSV and XLS exports, live reports clients can view, and branded reports.
• Integrations. Jira, Asana, Trello, GitHub, Google and Outlook calendars, Gmail, Zoom and Microsoft Teams for tracking context; sync integrations with monday.com and ClickUp; QuickBooks Online, where invoices created in Timely can be sent "in a click".

Pricing. Starter is $9/user/month billed yearly or $11 monthly, limited to 5 users and 20 projects. Premium is $16 yearly or $20 monthly for up to 50 users and unlimited projects, and adds project management sync, accounting integrations, team management, budgets and costs, and planning. Unlimited is $22 yearly or $28 monthly with no user cap, capacity reporting, overtime and undertime, and Azure user management. Enterprise is quoted by sales. A Tasks add-on starts at $5 per person. There is no free plan: the 14-day trial includes every feature, after which a subscription is required.

Who it is for. Consultants, agencies and knowledge workers who lose billable time because they forget timers or reconstruct their week on Friday.

Limits. No free plan, and the cheapest plan stops at 5 users, so most teams start at Premium ($16). The pricing page does not document a formal timesheet approval workflow, so check that in the trial if you need sign-off before payroll.

Hubstaff: full review

What it is. Hubstaff is a workforce management platform for distributed and hourly teams. Time tracking feeds timesheets, payroll, scheduling, attendance and (on Enterprise or as an add-on) GPS job sites.

Key features for time tracking.

• Timers and timesheets on all paid plans, starting with Starter.
• Clients and invoices. Starter includes clients and invoices, with unlimited clients from Grow.
• Budgets. Project budgets from Grow; client budgets from Team.
• Approvals and limits. Timesheet approvals, overtime, daily and weekly limits, time off and scheduling arrive on Team.
• Payroll. "The payroll feature is available on Team plans and up." It converts tracked hours into payments using hourly or fixed rates on weekly, twice-weekly, bi-weekly or monthly pay periods, through Wise, PayPal, Payoneer, Bitwage and HRIS integrations including Deel, Gusto and Remote.
• Integrations. Grow includes 1 integration; Team includes unlimited integrations.

Pricing. Per seat per month: Starter $4.99 billed annually or $7 monthly; Grow $7.50 or $9; Team $10 or $12; all with a 2-seat minimum. Enterprise is $25/seat/month billed annually through sales. Add-ons (starting prices, annual / monthly): Insights $2.50 / $3, Tasks $2.50 / $3, Locations $3.33 / $4, Silent App $2.50 / $3, more screenshots $2.50 / $3, data retention $1.67 / $2. No free plan is listed on the pricing page; there is a 14-day free trial with no card and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Who it is for. Companies paying hourly contractors or remote staff, where the time tracker should also calculate and send pay.

Limits. The useful payroll and approval features start on Team ($10 annually). Seats are billed for every member even if some do not track time. Monitoring note: screenshots, activity levels and app and URL tracking are part of every plan with different caps, and an Enterprise Silent App tracks in the background on company devices. If your team does not want that, configure it carefully or choose Toggl or Timely.

Time Doctor: full review

What it is. Time Doctor is a time tracking and workforce analytics tool. It offers an interactive desktop app (the user starts and pauses tracking and picks tasks) and an automatic app that tracks whenever the computer is on.

Key features for time tracking.

• Tracking apps for Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome and mobile on all plans, with online and offline tracking, projects and tasks and a timeline report.
• Approvals and attendance. Standard adds time approvals, schedules, attendance, and leave and break tracking.
• Payroll exports. Standard and Premium generate payroll for any date range with per-user pay rates and export files for PayPal, Wise, Gusto, Payoneer, ADP and Deel; Time Doctor does not send payments itself. Payroll is only available to companies using the interactive app.
• Integrations. Standard lists 60+ integrations. Premium adds an open API, SSO and client login access.
• Idle handling. A "Time Out After" setting stops tracking after a set period without keyboard or mouse input, on all plans.

Pricing. Basic is $6.67/user/month billed annually ($8 month-to-month), Standard $11.67 ($14), Premium $16.70 ($20), and Enterprise is custom. Add-ons for Basic and Standard include video screen recording ($3/user/month) and meeting insights ($2); account add-ons such as a native payroll or HRIS integration are $200 per integration per month. History is kept for 3 months on Basic, 6 months on Standard and 2 years on Premium. There is no free plan; the 14-day trial includes all Premium features with no credit card.

Who it is for. Teams that need time tracking and payroll exports and also want oversight of remote work in the same tool.

Limits. Client invoicing is not documented on Time Doctor's pricing page or help docs, so plan to invoice elsewhere. Basic keeps only 3 months of history. Monitoring note: screenshots are on every plan, video recording is Premium or an add-on, and the automatic app has no user interface or pause. That is a lot of oversight for a team that only wants to bill clients.

Pricing comparison: what 10 people cost

Prices below are per month for 10 users, using each vendor's published annual price (monthly billing in brackets). They use the plan a 10-person team would need for timesheet approvals, because approvals are the feature most likely to push you up a tier.

Timely does not document an approval workflow on its pricing page, so it is not in the table. For reference, a 10-person team cannot use Timely Starter (5-user cap), so Timely Premium costs 10 x $16 = $160 a month billed yearly, or $200 billed monthly.

If you do not need approvals, the entry points change: Clockify Basic (10 x $3.99 = $39.90), Hubstaff Starter (10 x $4.99 = $49.90), Time Doctor Basic (10 x $6.67 = $66.70), Toggl Starter (10 x $9 = $90) and Harvest Teams (10 x $9 = $90, plus usage) per month on annual billing.

Three things the table does not show:

• Harvest's usage charges are added on top of seats on Flex billing, and the rates are only shown inside the app. Treat the Harvest figures as a floor.
• Annual discounts differ a lot. Toggl's monthly price is 50% higher than its annual price ($24 vs $16 on Premium), while Everhour's gap is $10 vs $8.50.
• Free plans can cover small teams. A team of three can run Toggl Free; a team of five can run Clockify Free (with one month of reports) or Everhour Free (without integrations).

How to choose the right time tracker

If you bill clients by the hour and want invoices from the same tool, shortlist Clockify Standard, Harvest and Everhour. Clockify is the cheapest; Harvest has the most mature invoicing and payments (Stripe, QuickBooks Online, Xero); Everhour is the better fit if your work already lives in Asana or Jira.

If profitability and utilization matter more than invoices, look at Toggl Premium. Labor costs, fixed-fee projects, profitability reports and capacity planning sit next to the tracked hours, and your accounting tool can handle invoicing from Toggl's exports.

If people forget to track time, Timely's automatic tracking and AI-drafted timesheets solve the input problem directly. Toggl and Clockify also offer private desktop activity tracking, but people still turn that record into entries themselves.

If you need hours to be approved and locked for payroll, compare the plan each tool requires: Clockify Standard, Everhour Team, Hubstaff Team, Time Doctor Standard, Harvest Enterprise or Toggl Premium.

If the tool must pay people, Hubstaff Team is the only option here that sends payments through payroll providers. Time Doctor and the others export hours for your payroll system.

If your team works inside Jira or Asana, Everhour (all paid seats) and Toggl Premium both list Jira and Asana integrations; Harvest and Timely list them too.

If you have a strict no-surveillance culture, Toggl and Timely both state that they do not take screenshots or log keystrokes. If you need the opposite, use our employee monitoring comparison rather than this list.

Run a real trial. Trials range from 7 days (Clockify Pro) to 30 days (Toggl and Harvest). Use a full pay period or billing cycle, and include one approval round and one invoice or payroll export before you decide.

Conclusion

Clockify is the best overall time tracker for most teams in 2026. It is free for up to 5 users, and its Standard plan at $5.49 per seat per month (billed annually) includes invoicing, timesheet approvals, locked time, attendance reporting and QuickBooks. The next-cheapest plan with timesheet approvals in this comparison, Everhour Team, costs $8.50. The trade-off is a long plan ladder: check which tier has the one feature you cannot live without.

Toggl is the strongest choice for professional services teams that want profitability and capacity reporting without monitoring, as long as they invoice in another tool. Harvest remains the most complete invoicing-first tracker, but its new usage billing means you should model the real bill before you sign. Everhour is the obvious pick for teams that run their work in Asana, Jira or ClickUp. Timely is worth its higher price if missed time is your biggest problem. Hubstaff and Time Doctor make sense when payroll, attendance and oversight of remote staff are part of the job.