The Best Time Tracking Apps for Freelancers

Time tracking has exactly one failure mode that matters, and it is not accuracy. It is abandonment. Every tool in this category records hours correctly when the timer is running; the difference between them is how likely you are to still be running it in three months.

That reframes the comparison. A tracker with worse reports that you use every day is worth more than a superior one you stopped opening in February, because half a year of missing data is worth nothing at all.

The second thing worth knowing before you compare prices: none of the free plans here include billable rates. You can track your hours for nothing. Attaching money to them costs money, in every case.

The short answer

Prices are each vendor's published list price, checked on 25 August 2026 and linked at the foot of this page.

Toggl Track — the one you will keep using

Toggl Track has a reputation built almost entirely on friction, or the absence of it. The timer is available wherever you are working - Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, browser extension - and starting one is a click.

That sounds like a small thing and is the whole argument. Tracking that requires navigating an app before you can begin is tracking that stops during your busiest week, which is exactly the week you most needed the data.

Free covers timers, timesheets and summary, detailed and workload reports. Starter at $9 per user per month adds billable rates, PDF invoices and time rounding. Premium is advertised at $14 for the first year on annual billing and renews at $18 - compare against $18, not $14 - and adds profitability and utilisation reporting.

Choose it if you have tried time tracking before and stopped. Paying more for the tool you will actually use is not a luxury, it is the entire point.

Look elsewhere if price is the binding constraint - Clockify does billable rates for less than half - or if you want invoicing that goes beyond a downloadable PDF.

Clockify — the cheap one, with one real catch

Clockify undercuts the category deliberately: free for up to five users with unlimited tracking, then $3.99 per seat per month billed annually for billable rates, and $5.49 for invoicing.

Platform coverage is wide, including Linux, and the feature list is broad. For a three-person studio the saving against Toggl Track is around $200 a year, which is not nothing.

The catch is specific: free plan reporting covers a one-month data range. Your time is still tracked, but you cannot report across more than a month of it. That is fine for monthly invoicing and useless for "how many hours did that client take last year" - which is the question that makes tracking worth doing in the first place.

Choose it if you need billable rates on a budget, or you are on Linux, or five free seats covers your whole team.

Test it honestly if you are choosing it purely on price. Spend a fortnight with it before deciding the difference from Toggl Track does not matter to you - because if it turns out to matter, the cheaper tool costs you a year of data.

Harvest — the one that finishes the job

Harvest is the only tracker here whose free plan includes invoicing. It is limited to one seat and two projects, and covers time tracking, invoicing and expenses.

Two projects is a binary. Two long-running retainer clients and you have a complete, free, tracking-to-invoicing setup. Six concurrent jobs and you are past the ceiling immediately, paying $9 a seat monthly or $108 annually.

Paid plans bring team reporting and integrations with Stripe, QuickBooks Online and Xero - so tracked hours become an invoice and then become money without leaving the product. Profitability reporting sits on the $14 Enterprise tier.

Choose it if hours are how you bill and you would rather run one tool than two.

Check first that you work on Mac or iOS, since those are the desktop and mobile apps Harvest lists - Windows and Android users should try the web experience before committing. And note that paid plans bill partly on usage, including additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks.

Bonsai — you may already own a tracker

Worth a mention because it prevents a duplicate purchase. Bonsai includes time tracking on every plan, including its $9 Basic tier. If you already pay for Bonsai for proposals, contracts and invoicing, you have a tracker already and adding another subscription is money spent twice.

It is not the strongest tracker in this list - that is not what it is for - but "good enough and already paid for" beats "better and additional" in most freelance budgets.

The question behind the choice

Before comparing anything, work out which of two jobs you actually want done. They look the same and are not.

Billing accuracy. Capturing hours you would otherwise round down, forget or fail to bill at all. This is money, and it is solved by any tracker with billable rates - the cheapest tier that has them is the right answer.

Rate intelligence. Finding out which clients and which kinds of work are actually profitable once the real hours are counted. This is a business decision rather than an admin one, it needs reporting across a year rather than a month, and it is what the higher tiers are genuinely selling.

Most freelancers assume they want the first and benefit far more from the second. The discovery that your best-paying client is your worst-paying client per hour is the sort of thing that changes what you take on - and no amount of accurate invoicing does that for you.

What we would do

If you have never tracked time: start free with whichever tool you will actually open, and give it a month before spending anything. The habit is the hard part, not the software.

If you bill hourly and are choosing properly: Toggl Track at $9 if you have abandoned tracking before, Clockify at $3.99 if you have not and price matters, Harvest if you want the invoice at the end of it and your project count is low.

If you work fixed-fee: track anyway, for a quarter, purely to find out what your prices really are per hour. You can stop afterwards. Most people do not.

Head to head on the two closest options: Toggl Track vs Harvest. For the rest of the stack, see software for freelancers.