Top 9 Free Time Tracking Software for Better Productivity

No matter your business, you want to ensure that you have a solid time-tracking system in place. Whether you’re looking for a simple time-tracking option for employees or want to gain past project insights or develop team scheduling and resource planning, the right time tracker free options can help you accomplish your goals as a team and as an organization. 

Price also matters. When looking for the best time tracker free options, you may be able to get away with a free version, though your team may better meet its goals with a more complex option. 

Read on for our carefully researched best free time tracker apps. 

• Harvest: Best Overall
• TMetric: Best for Small Businesses
• AccountSight: Best for Invoicing and Accounts Features
• Hubstaff: Best for Management Tools
• Homebase: Best for Gauging Employee Satisfaction
• TimeTrack: Best for Mid-Sized Companies
• Clockify: Best for Always-Free Option
• Paymo: Best for Workflow Transparency
• Timesheet: Best for Customization

Free Time Tracking Software for Better Productivity

What is the best free time tracking software?

We’ll take a look at our choices for free time tracking software companies, including the pros, cons, features, and pricing of each option. The best free time tracking app for individuals may involve some exploring. You may want to consider using a free trial to identify a time tracker app for employees before you upgrade to a paid version, which we’ve also outlined for every option below. 

Harvest: Best Overall

Harvest, a cloud-based time-tracking software, does more than just capture time for individuals and teams — you can gain insights from past projects, invoice, and team scheduling and resource planning. 

Pros

• 30-day trial: Harvest offers a free 30-day trial so you can get the hang of all of its integrations and other features.
• Reasonable pricing: Besides the free version, Harvest only costs $10.40 per employee per month. 
• Easy-to-use app: An intuitive app, Harvest allows you to take care of a wide variety of tasks easily, integrating other websites and apps your employees already know and enjoy using.

Cons

• Sales tax: Harvest doesn’t include sales tax as an automatic feature.
• Limited billing increments: Harvest allows you to export or invoice hours by rounding to the nearest or rounding up to six, 15, or 30 minutes.
• No lingering timer notification: On some devices, you may not receive a notification that the timer has been idling.

Features

On apps for desktop, mobile, and web browser, employees can track everything with one click and will get reminders to start tracking time each day. You can create instant reports no matter what you’re tracking, from budgets to projects to expenses and more. You can use your favorite apps alongside Harvest (like Trello and Asana) to connect all your projects with the platform.

Harvest also offers invoicing, whether you bill by time or by project. 

As a manager, Harvest gives you visual reports that let you compare the amount of time you’ve spent through your budget. You’ll also get more accurate timesheet and cost data as well as where tasks impact your budget.

Pricing

For one seat and two projects, Harvest costs $0 forever. For unlimited seats and unlimited projects, it costs $10.80 per seat per month, billed yearly. 

TMetric: Best for Small Businesses

TMetric’s time tracking, reporting, project management, team management, integrations and apps offers a comprehensive time tracking solution for businesses of all sizes. It offers a free version for solopreneurs or individuals for those looking for the best free employee time tracking software. 

Pros

• Advanced features: As a whole, time tracking, team member monitoring, and staff scheduling all have advanced features for both local and remote teams.
• Team view function: Team lead, administrators, and owners can easily see the productivity of each team member, including daily analysis or older data. Each team members’ work shows on a separate timeline and indicates productivity levels for that particular day. It’s an at-a-glance opportunity to measure teamwork and project implementation.
• Quick invoice creation: You can quickly create invoices once work is finished and send them to clients. You can also synchronize your existing accounting tools with TMetric.

Cons

• Limited free version: The free version taps out if you have more than five employees. At six, you must pay for either the business or professional versions of TMetric.
• Complex desktop version: Some employees have reported that the desktop version of TMetric is confusing to navigate.

Features

Depending on your subscription plan, you can take advantage of a wide variety of features for your team. For every subscription level, you can access the following: 

• Time tracking: Timer tracking, adding time manually, bulk editing of tie entries, tags, timeline, idle detection, offline mode, and websites and app usage tracking. 
• Reporting: Project summary reports, detailed reports, activity summaries, exporting to PDFs and CSVs, time formats, company logo, and rounding.
• Project management: Unlimited projects and clients and project permissions.
• Team management: Editing workspace member profiles, custom avatars, deactivating users, user groups, and permissions, adding time for workspace members, and activity members.
• Integrations and apps: Browser extension, link time entries, desktop app, mobile app access, and calendar integrations. 

The higher-tier your subscription plan, the more features you can take advantage of.

Pricing

TMetric offers free, professional, and business-level pricing. You’ll get charged on a sliding scale based on the number of employees you have. For example, for two employees, the business plan costs $14 per month and the professional plan costs $10 per month. For 100 employees, the business plan costs $560 per month and the professional plan costs $400 per month. The free version becomes unavailable if you have more than five employees.

AccountSight: Best for Invoicing and Accounts Features

AccountSight allows individuals to plan projects and schedule, budget, report time and expense tracking, slick invoicing to payment systems, easy-to-glimpse dashboards and reporting, payroll, and PayPal, and QuickBooks integration. 

Pros

• User-friendly application: The application is easy to use and captures more billable time in seconds, with online expense tracking and reporting that allows you to parse relevant data.
• Reminders: AccountSight allows you to create notifications and reminders for missed or delayed time, expenses, and invoices. 
• Cloud-based: AccountSight is completely cloud-based, meaning that no software or hardware is required.

Cons

• Not as intuitive as it could be: Users have reported that the layout of the application may not be as intuitive as it could be, such as clicking on something users would like to edit rather than having to click on the “edit” tool. 

Features

AccountSight offers customizable integrated time tracking, resource planning, expense, and invoicing opportunities. The company also offers excellent customer support and assistance through email, chat, a ticketing system, and phone.

Pricing

Free pricing allows for one user, five clients, five projects, unlimited invoicing, and unlimited travel and expense reporting. The basic level is currently $108 per user yearly for two to five users, with unlimited clients, projects, invoicing, and travel and expense reporting. The small group rate costs $96 for six to 20 users per year and offers the same unlimited options as the basic level. The enterprise level costs $72 per person for 21 to 100 users per year for the same unlimited options as the basic and enterprise levels. 

Hubstaff: Best for Management Tools

When teams can start tracking right away, you know Hubstaff doesn’t have a huge learning curve. Hubstaff can also help your team manage workloads and maximize profits using an array of management tools. Look at the pros and cons of Hubstaff before you make a decision.

Pros

• Automation: Hubstaff offers automated time tracking for billing, budgets, and more. 
• Employee management capabilities: Hubstaff creates streamlined processes, such as managing time off, attendance, and schedules. 
• Reports: The company offers a wide variety of reports so you gain a comprehensive overview of how your business performs.

Cons 

• No basic timer: If you want a basic timer, Hubstaff may not be what you need. It may offer more applications than necessary.
• Basic reporting: If you want more complicated employee management and advanced tracking, you may require more complex reporting tools than what Hubstaff offers.

Features

Hubstaff offers time tracking, employee experience, reporting and analytics, and workforce management features. 

• Time tracking: Time tracking offers time tracking software, employee timesheets, online time reporting. It also offers a time clock app, and geofencing employee tracking. 
• Employee experience: Employee experience offers remote employee experience, employee productivity software, a habit tracker app, workforce optimization software, and a daily stand-up tool. 
• Reporting and analytics: This part of the tool offers insights, workforce analytics software, workforce analytics metrics, project cost management, and an overtime tracker.
• Workforce management: The tool offers employee scheduling, work order management, online invoicing, and a payroll tracker.

Pricing

Hubstaff’s pricing ranges from starter to enterprise plans. The Starter plan costs $4.99 per user per month. The Grow plan is $7.50 per user per month, the Team plan is $10 per user per month. These three plans require a two-user minimum. The Enterprise plan allows you to customize the features you want to include.

Homebase: Best for Gauging Employee Satisfaction

Homebase streamlines work schedules, time clocks, payroll, HR, and more for small businesses. It offers a wide array of opportunities for small business owners. 

Pros

• Employee happiness “index”: Homebase offers a unique feature to help you keep top employees with opportunities to encourage them to stay with your company. Keep track of how your team is feeling and team members can give each other shout-outs. You can even collect information about how employees feel after every shift.
• Can change plans anytime: Fortunately, you’re not locked in. If you want to switch plans, you’ll activate a new one at the start of the next billing cycle. 
• Great payroll features: Homebase makes payroll painless by calculating paychecks, sending direct deposits to employees, and filing your payroll taxes.

Cons

• Hard to correct: Some users have reported that it’s challenging to change the time when employees forget to clock in or out.
• Only U.S. dollars: The payroll feature only calculates using U.S. dollars instead of other currencies.

Features

Homebase’s features include scheduling, time clock, timesheets, payroll, hiring and onboarding, and team communication. It also gauges employee happiness, HR and compliance, integrations, and mobile app features. 

Pricing

The Basic level costs $0 for one location and up to 20 employees. The Essentials plan costs $20 per month for unlimited employees. The Plus plan costs $48 per month for unlimited employees, and the All-in-One package offers the most features and costs $80 per month for unlimited employees. These are the annual pricing costs — the monthly pricing costs more at each level. Look at the features of each plan before you buy.

TimeTrack: Best for Mid-Sized Companies

A digital time tracking software, TimeTrack lets employers follow employee working hours, projects, goals, and even absences. You can see everything you need on one screen. 

Pros

• Security compliant: As a European company, it’s GDPR compliant, a regulation that requires businesses to protect customers’ personal data and privacy. 
• Can book a demo: Before you make the decision for you, you can book a demo to ensure that you get the features you want.

Cons

• Adding and deleting customers: Users have reported that it’s difficult to add and delete customers, making it more difficult to track customers.
• Confusing pricing: The website has a confusing pricing arrangement based on whether you run a business or whether you’re a solopreneur.

Features

You can track products, manage working hours and absences, save time on employee scheduling with an intuitive time tracking software from TimeTrack. It also offers project and employee time tracking, a timesheet app, absence management software, a holiday tracker, auto scheduling, shift, appointments, and task planning.

Pricing

Standard pricing includes attendance tracking, leave management, and reporting and costs $5 per user per month. Premium pricing includes project time tracking, project reporting, workflows, travel expenses, and workforce planning as well as the standard features, all for $9 per user, per month. Gold pricing, which includes everything from the premium plan, also includes project billing, appointment scheduling, integration with other systems, and auto scheduling. It costs $11 per month, per user. 

You will pay less as a solopreneur or freelancer — TimeTrack Lite costs $0, TimeTrack Pro costs a one-time fee of $4.99 and TimeTrack Cloud costs $4.99 per month.

Clockify: Best for Always-Free Option

Clockify, a time tracker and timesheet app, will never cost you a penny and allows you to track work hours across projects. Unlimited users can also take advantage. You can track productivity, attendance, and billable hours to boost productivity, manage your team, and streamline processes.

Pros

The benefits of using Clockify include:

• Easy to use: Clockify is easy to use and implement, making getting started with the time recording online process a cinch.
• Can connect to other apps: Clockify can connect to other apps like other software seamlessly, including Trello, Asana, Quickbooks, and Jira. There are 80 options for app connection.

Cons

• Glitchy mobile app: Some users have reported problems using the mobile app. 

Features

The app offers intuitive features including a timer to track work hours in real time, a timesheet, calendar, auto tracker, and kiosk that allows you to clock in from a shared device. The app also has reporting features that analyze and export tracked time, show activity, and allow managers to see earnings, cost, and profit. 

You can also track project estimates and budget. Management capabilities allow you to schedule work, assignments, shifts, manage time off, approve timesheets, and create invoices. It also has the ability to record project expenses and fees.

Pricing

The app and all of its features are always free. 

Paymo: Best for Workflow Transparency

Paymo allows you to keep teams organized, manage projects, track work time, invoice clients, and measure profitability, all from the same platform. Look at the pros and cons of Paymo in the next section.

Pros 

• Multiple languages and recurring invoices: You can invoice in multiple languages from the same account and with recurring invoices.
• Kanban boards: The Kanban board offers workflow transparency, allowing you to create various tasks. You can move tasks in a sequence through a board until it achieves completion. Team members can be assigned to a task and stage to visualize the tasks, from “to-do” to “in progress” to “complete.” You can also customize your workflow. Meta Kanban boards give you a bird’s-eye view of work on a single Kanban board.

Cons

• Pricey top features: The Business version pricing costs $20.79 per user per month, potentially not an insignificant amount, even for a handful of employees.

Features

Paymo offers task management, time tracking, planning and scheduling, and resource management. It also offers file management, financial management, client and team collaboration, customization, mobile solutions, analytics, and reporting, invoicing and online payments, and profitably tracking.

Pricing

The free option offers basic tools, which includes unlimited time tracking and invoices, projects, clients, tasks, task views, static time reports, desktop and mobile apps, and guest access. 

The Starter version costs $4.95 per user per month. It encapsulates everything in the free version and other features, including up to six clients, up to 300 tasks, project templates, unlimited estimates and expenses, integrations, tech support, and 25GB of storage. 

The Small Office option costs $9.95 per user per month and includes everything in the Starter option, including unlimited clients, unlimited and recurring tasks, live time reports, active timers, 50GB of storage, Meta Kanban boards, and more. It’s ideal for small teams and departments.

The Business version, ideal for medium and large teams, costs $20.79 per user per month and offers everything in the Small Office version as well as free onboarding and training, employee scheduling and workload, employee leave management, priority support, 500GB of storage, and more.

Timesheet: Best for Customization

Looking at all the features at a lower cost can offer location tracking features, reporting, and user-friendly features and integrations. The company offers comprehensive audit trails, security features, customized user permissions, GPS enabled for mobile devices, and live phone, chat, or email support.

Pros 

• Inclusions: The price includes a wide range of options, including project and hourly time, expenses, HR docs, and more. You get the same price if you use all or just some of the features.
• Only pay when you need it: You only pay for what you need. For example, if your business is a ski hill in the winter, you only pay for the service when your employees actually work. 
• Customization: You can export everything in the format you want it, whether you want it exported by employee, project, or another way. 

Cons

• Lack of integration: You can’t integrate Timesheets like you can with some other time tracking options.

Features

Timesheets.com can track time with mobile site or admins can restrict where employees clock in to office locations. Its DCAA compliant system has a full audit trail and permissions architecture for security purposes. A number of payroll and accounting software platforms can integrate with it, including QuickBooks.

Pricing

Freelancer pricing costs $0, the Standard plan costs $5.50 per user, and the nonprofit version costs $4.50 per user. Photo Timestamp costs an additional $1 per user license. 

Methodology 

We used an evaluation system to find the best free time tracking app companies by reviewing more than 20 providers. Our strategy also considered financial ratings, pricing, ease of use, features based on pricing tiers, features for the free level, and number of users/projects allowed for the free version. We also considered the best options from both an employer and an employee’s perspective to choose the best free time tracking software.

FAQs