9 Best Free Time Tracking Software in 2022
Charlette has over 10 years of experience in accounting and finance and 2 years of partnering with HR leaders on freelance projects. She uses this extensive experience to answer your questions about payroll.
The best free time tracking software not only monitors hours worked from multiple platforms but also allows GPS tracking and geofencing, PTO tracking, break options, and overtime or early clock-in/out alerts. Some even have productivity and invoicing tools, enabling users to view idle/inactive times and bill clients easily.
In this article, we evaluated 18 providers and narrowed the list down to our nine top recommendations:
- Hubstaff: Best overall free time tracking software
- Homebase: Best for restaurants and retailers needing POS integration
- TimeTrack: Best for iOS users
- Clockify: Best for freelancers and teams on a budget
- Harvest: Best for businesses that need to bill clients and get paid quickly
- TMetric: Best for improving productivity and tracking team performance
- AccountSight: Best for accounting, consulting, and law firms wanting expense recording and billing tools
- Paymo: Best for manufacturing and design businesses
- Timesheet: Best for construction and other companies needing geofencing for off-site work
Many of the free time trackers here offer paid plans with additional tools. If you are looking for solutions with more advanced features and are willing to pay for them, check out our guide to the best time tracking software.
Best Free Time Tracking Software Compared
# Users in Free Plan | Paid Plans (Monthly Pricing) | Geofencing* | Biometrics, Badges, Fingerprint* | Scheduling* | Projects* | Invoicing* | Payroll Integrations* | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | $7–$10/user; min. 2 users | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
Unlimited | $19.95–$99.95/location | ✔ | Limited | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ | |
1 | $3.99 one-time; $10/user | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
Unlimited | $4.99–$14.99/user | ✔ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | |
1 | $12/seat | ✖ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ | |
1 | $5–$7 | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
1 | $8–$10/user | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
10 | $11.95–$18.95/user | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |
1 | $5 (one user only); $10/user | ✔ | ✖ | ✖ | ✔ | ✔ | ✖ |
*Some features may be found in only paid plans.
Hubstaff: Overall Best Free Time Tracker
Hubstaff
Overall Score: 4.40
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Web, desktop, and mobile apps to track time accurately
- User-friendly, customizable user interface
- Geofencing and GPS trackers
- Paid plans priced reasonably for a great set of tools
What's Missing
- Advanced features like GPS tracking, PTO, and employee monitoring tools cost extra
- Free version is for one user only
- No scheduling, invoices in free version
Hubstaff Pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Time Free: 1 user, time tracking, time sheets, limited reports, limited payment
- Time Starter ($7/user/month; min. 2 users): Free + unlimited reports, 1 integration, 24-hour support
- Time Pro ($10/user/month; min. 2 users): Starter + unlimited teams, unlimited payments, limited public API, time off and holidays, scheduling and attendance, invoices, payroll, client and project budgets, time sheet approvals, daily and weekly limits, expense tracking
- Enterprise (Custom): VIP support, concierge setup, unlimited Job sites, HIPAA compliance
Hubstaff, an all-in-one time tracking and employee monitoring solution, earns the No.1 spot on our list for its strength of features for individuals and companies. Its free plan has both time tracking and reporting functionalities, including idle detectors and a simple-to-use online time sheet, which allows you to log hours and activities. You can also set a schedule to automatically send reports to yourself, your client, or even stakeholders so everyone is updated. The paid plans offer scheduling, invoicing, and payroll.
In our evaluation, Hubstaff earned 4.4 out of 5. It got perfect marks on employee time tracking and reporting and high scores for pricing, ease of use, and popularity. Its employee monitoring tools and geofencing and GPS trackers raised its score as well. It took a hit for lacking phone support, having some billing features only in paid plans, and complaints of glitches in the mobile app.
In addition to standard time tracking, Hubstaff can see routes employees take. (Source: Hubstaff)
Hubstaff Features
Free Plan (1 user)
- Payroll management: You can automatically process payroll by just inputting your employees’ hourly rate and schedule (weekly, monthly, biweekly). Hubstaff does not support overtime calculations; you’ll have to calculate manually. For the free plan, you export payroll information to send payments manually.
- Smarter, streamlined time tracking: Like most of the software in this guide, Hubstaff works with desktop, mobile, and web apps. It can also record your time even when it is offline.
- Mobile app: The mobile app has a timer and reports and works offline. It rates 4.5 out of 5 with around 1,000 reviews on iOS but 3.3 out of 5 with about 610 votes on Android—one of the lowest scores for Android of those on our list. (Homebase and Timesheet are best for Android.)
- Geofencing and GPS tracking: Like several others on our list, Hubstaff has geofencing, but it goes a step further by reminding employees to clock in or out when in the zone—or, like TimeTrack, it can clock employees in automatically within a zone. Its GPS tracking system lets you see workers’ routes as they travel.
- Monitor activity levels: Track how your employees spend their time by monitoring mouse and keyboard usage and by taking screenshots. (Limits apply with the free plan.)
Paid Plans
Has everything in the free option, plus:
- Scheduling and attendance tracking: Like Homebase, Hubstaff lets you schedule individual or recurring shifts for your employees and receive email alerts for late, missed, or abandoned shifts. You can even set a limit for the number of hours your team members can track each week, a tool unique to Hubstaff. Unlike Clockify and Timesheet, Hubstaff allows you to set policies for time off requests and paid holidays.
- Client invoicing: With Hubstaff, you can track billable hours for invoicing. You can invoice your clients based on the time your team has tracked in Hubstaff, as well as add your own line items. The system will alert you when you’re nearing a budget limit.
- Robust employee productivity tools: If you are worried about your team’s real-time performance, Hubstaff will help you remove unproductive time through its app, URL tracking, and idle time/inactivity warning. On the other hand, your employees’ work in progress will be monitored by capturing screenshots. Of our list, only TMetric and Clockify offer so much in productivity.
- Project management: You can create project budgets based on hours, bill rates, or pay rates. Hubstaff is unique in that it lets you create work orders as well, so you can keep the client information, team assignments, and a history of actions all in one place.
- Integrations: Hubstaff integrates with a wide variety of third-party apps. Some notables are Salesforce, Zendesk, and Gusto. However, if you need POS integrations, you need the API—or check Homebase.
- Payroll: With the Pro Plan, you can set payments to go out to employees automatically using PayPal, Payoneer, Wise, Gusto, or Bitwage.
Ease of Use
With Hubstaff, a support representative will respond through email, live chats, on-screen shares, or video conferencing when you send a ticket, something other providers in this guide do not offer. It also offers training through videos online. Real-world users rated it 4.52 out of 5, averaged across multiple review sites. This is high for software in general but about average for those on our list.
Homebase: Best Free Timekeeping Software for Restaurants & Retail
Homebase
Overall Score: 4.38
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- By-location pricing, unlimited users
- Top-rated scheduling tool for retail, restaurants
- Hiring features in the free plan
- Easy to use
What's Missing
- Some complaints about login issues
- Time-off tracking only in paid plans
- Team communication only in paid plans
Homebase Pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Free: 1 location, unlimited employees, time sheets, time clocks, scheduling, availability, messaging, hiring
- Essentials ($19.95/month/location): All in Free + team communication, performance tracking, remote tools
- Plus ($49.95/month/location): All in Essentials + labor costing, time off limits, PTO tracking, permissions
- All in One ($99.95/month/location): All in Plus + onboarding, employee documents, HR, compliance
Homebase’s free plan offers excellent time-tracking tools and top-rate scheduling tools. In fact, it ranks No. 1 on our lists of the best retail scheduling software and best restaurant scheduling software. Your employees and contractors can review schedules, trade shifts, request time off, and communicate with co-workers. The system also helps you stay compliant by tracking paid and unpaid breaks and keeping track of missed shifts, breaks, clock-outs, and overtime and integrates with point-of-sale (POS) systems. Built for locations rather than projects, it lacks client invoicing capabilities.
It earned 4.38 out of 5 in our rubric, with top marks for reporting and ease of use. Users on third-party user review sites rated it 4.57 out of 5 overall, which was a high score, but not the highest. (AccountSight, for example, earned 4.86 out of 5.) However, it took a hit because the mobile app had a lot of complaints for glitching. It also lost points for lacking invoice capability.
Most of the free time tracking software on our list are geared toward projects and remote work. If you want to explore more options for clock-in/out software, read our guide on the best employee scheduling software.
Homebase lets you clock in from computers, mobile devices, and POS systems. (Source: Homebase)
Homebase Features
Free Plan (1 location)
- Hiring tools: While not related to time tracking, Homebase offers hiring tools like customizable job descriptions, free job posting, and applicant tracking tools—even in the free plan. This is a great asset for companies in a staffing crunch or that have high turnover.
- Time clock: Your employees can clock in with a variety of devices, from a computer to mobile. You can even integrate it into your POS system, which most of the time trackers on our list don’t offer. Homebase offers employee-specific PIN codes, can snap photos of the person logging in, and has geofencing. Unlike the other systems we reviewed, Homebase offers alerts for overtime based on work hours; most have alerts that are based on project hours instead.
- Scheduling: Most of the time trackers here have scheduling capability, but offered only in paid packages or in relation to project planning rather than store hours. Homebase’s free plan, however, lets you create templates, consider availability and time off requests, and set open shifts.
- Employee communications: Homebase is the only provider with a free version that includes employee messaging, such as for shift swaps. Employees can also indicate availability.
- Mobile app: The mobile app includes clock-in and communications tools. It rates 4.8 out of 5 with around 29,500 reviews on iOS and 4.4 out of 5 with about 14,360 votes on Android. Note, though, that there are reports of login issues.
Paid Plans
Everything in the free plan, plus:
- Advanced scheduling: The paid plans add automated scheduling, with rules for breaks and overtime already set for your state.
- Job costing and billing: Many providers in this guide track labor costs in terms of project in their paid plans. Homebase, too, has labor costing and forecasting in its paid versions—but in terms of sales rather than project budgets. You can tie time sheets to payroll software, but it does not have invoicing. If you want invoicing in a free plan, check out Harvest and AccountSight.
- Advanced employee communications: Among those on our list, Homebase is the only one with a free version that includes employee messaging, such as for shift swaps. The paid subscriptions also include announcements, schedule notes, automated reminders, and alerts, such as when employees clock in late.
- Employee performance: Homebase makes it easy to use its software to conduct employee performance evaluations, approve time off, see employee availability, and more. It goes further with advanced compliance support for breaks and other labor laws, HR advisers, and labor law alerts. It provides the most HR features of those on our list.
Ease of Use
Homebase offers customer support live via chat, phone, and email and has help guides and video tutorials. Only a few scheduling software have live support, usually via chat. Real-world users praise Homebase’s ease of use, rating it an average of 4.57 out of 5 across multiple user review sites.
TimeTrack: Best Free Time Tracking Software for iOS Users
TimeTrack
Overall Score: 4.35
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Works with Siri, Apple Watch
- Highly flexible, customizable
- Project management tools
- Expense tracking tools
What's Missing
- Not popular or well rated on Android
- Cloud-based version costs extra
- Limited entries in the free plan
TimeTrack Pricing
- 14-day free trial
- Free: 60 entries, all features, priority support
- Free, unlimited ($3.99 one-time fee): Free + unlimited entries
- TimeTrack Cloud ($4.99/month): Real-time sync, access to the web app, priority one support
- Standard ($4/user/month, paid annually): Attendance tracking, expense tracking, reporting, mobile and web app
- Premium ($8/user/month, paid annually): Standard + project time tracking, project planning, project evaluation, shift planning
- Gold ($10/user/month, paid annually): Premium + invoicing, appointment scheduling, integration, automatic scheduling
The German-created TimeTrack has been around since 2014, but it’s not popularly known in the US. Nonetheless, it offers a lot in terms of functionality, even in the free plan. Designed for iOS, it works for desktop, iPad, iPhone, and even Apple Watch. You can use voice commands to work it through Siri, something no other software on our list does. You can track time and expenses, create invoices, run reports of your working hours, view time sheets, manage projects, and more.
TimeTrack earned 4.35 out of 5 in our rubric. It took a big hit in popularity, with very few reviews for the software or the phone app. (TimeTrack itself says it has 500,000 users.) It only offers its Enterprise app in Android, so you’ll need to look to our other apps if you don’t use iOS. One other drawback is the free version is limited to 60 time entries. However, for a one-time fee of $3.99, you can get unlimited entries, and the range of features and flexibility is remarkable. The free plan is meant for freelancers, but the paid plans for businesses are reasonably priced.
TimeTrack is an excellent timekeeping software if you use Apple products. (Source: App Store)
TimeTrack Features
TimeTrack’s free plans include all these features (lacks cloud store and sync) but are limited to one user and 60 time entries.
- “Hey, Siri”: TimeTrack is the only tool on our list that specifically works with voice commands, allowing you to start your timer with a simple command. This is great not only if you are on the go but also for people with disabilities. You can also give commands to your Apple Watch. How convenient is that? Only Timesheet comes close to this convenience.
- Time tracking: Enjoy automatic GPS time tracking by creating workplaces. TimeTrack will automatically start your timer when you enter the work area and stop it when you exit. Timesheet also does this; most—like Hubstaff, Homebase, and Clockify—only have geofencing. It also has time rounding, overtime, pause timer, and more.
- Billing and invoicing: In addition to tracking time for invoices, you can add expense entries, even by taking photos of receipts. It has over 40 settings to create custom invoices and billing.
- Project management: Like most of the time trackers we evaluated (except Homebase), TimeTrack is focused on projects. As such, the software includes project planning with tasks and budgets, performance at a glance, and reports. Many of the time trackers on our list have these functions, but some may only be in paid plans.
- Employee management: Unlike Homebase and Clockify, the employee management tools are only found in the paid versions. You can manage time sheets and leave and get paid leave reports. TimeTrack was the only time tracking software on our list that lets employees log in via kiosk using NFC/RFID tags like a keycard or fob. It also alerts you if breaks are not being taken.
- Integrations: TimeTrack falls short on integrations compared to the other providers here, although it does integrate with QuickBooks for accounting. For payroll, it integrates only with lexoffice. It has an API for making your own integrations, however. Homebase is the best for integration capability, although Clockify is best for integrating with project management tools.
- Mobile app: TimeTrack’s iOS app is one of the highest-rated, with 4.8 out of 5 with 116 reviews on iOS. The Android version is for the Enterprise plan only and has no ratings. We suggest Homebase and Timesheet for Android.
- Ease of use: There are few user reviews, but it earned 4.7 out of 5 stars averaged over multiple user review sites. It has an info center with short how-to articles and basic illustrations. It offers 24/7 support, but only by email.
Clockify: Best Free Timekeeping Software for Freelancers & Teams on a Budget
Clockify
Overall Score: 4.31
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- User-friendly with an intuitive interface
- Free tier comes with web, desktop, and mobile time tracking apps
- Offline mode using the mobile app
- Pomodoro timer and idle alerts
What's Missing
- GPS tracking is available only in premium plans
- PTO policies and tracking are not yet available
- Invoicing and labor cost versus budget comparisons cost extra
Clockify Pricing
- Free time tracking with unlimited seats and projects
- Basic ($4.99/user/month): Administration, including time audits, add times for others, bulk edit, project templates, import time sheets
- Standard ($6.99/user/month): Basic + Time sheets and Billing, including time and PTO processing, manager roles, targets and reminders, invoicing, QuickBooks integration
- Pro ($9.99/user/month): Standard + Productivity and Profit, including scheduling, expenses, labor costing, budgets, alerts, GPS tracking
- Enterprise ($14.99/user/month): Pro + single sign-on, custom domain, custom accounts, audit log
Clockify is an affordable, full-featured time tracking software. Its free version is good for freelancers (it is our top recommendation for best freelancer time tracker) as it’s easy to use and available on web, desktop, and mobile. It also allows unlimited users and projects, which is why we especially recommend it for employers on a tight budget needing to manage teams. Aside from basic time tracking, you get unlimited detailed reports, API access, multiple customer support options (email, chat, and phone), and over 80 third-party software integrations for project management and productivity (though few for payroll or accounting).
In our evaluation, the system earned an overall score of 4.31 out of 5. It got perfect marks on pricing and reporting features and excellent scores for employee tools, ease of use, and popularity. It offers break tracking and noted that PTO tracking is coming soon. It lost points for billing and job costing only because those tools are in the paid plans. Users find it easy to use, but its Android app is not as good as most on our list.
You can track time with a timer or load it manually and mark billable hours. (Source: Clockify)
Clockify Features
Free Plan
- Flexible time tracker: Clockify’s time tracking tool is accessible via computers, mobile devices (iOS and Android), and web browsers. It also has browser extensions for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Mozilla Firefox. (TMetric, by contrast, has 50+ app integrations for its timer.) Like with many time trackers on our list, you can access it offline, and it will automatically sync the data to your account once the internet connection has been restored.
- Project management: With Clockify, you can monitor your work hours and progress on every project. You can even break projects down by task, categorize time by job type, and track the status of each task. Its management tools are strong, but if you need more, consider Paymo, which has Gantt charts and Kanban boards.
- Detailed reporting and analytics: Clockify provides you with a visual time breakdown and customizable reports that you can share with others via a link and/or export as PDF, CSV, and Excel files. With this feature, you can set up project estimates for both time and costs, and then check your budget versus the actuals. You can even compare your labor costs against the amount you charge clients. Unlike others on our list, however, you need to export data to create custom reports.
- Mobile app: The mobile app has a timer and reports and works offline. It rates 4.6 out of 5 with about 1,020 reviews on iOS but 3.9 out of 5 with around 770 votes on Android.
- Multiple third-party integrations: Clockify integrates with over 80 third-party software and web apps. Some of its partner systems include Jira, Asana, Basecamp, GitHub, QuickBooks, Zendesk, Zapier, and Freshdesk. For the best payroll and POS integrations, try Homebase. (For QuickBooks integration, you need the Standard Plan.)
Paid Plans
Has everything in the free option, plus:
- GPS tracking: Clockify’s Pro package includes a clocking and location tracking tool, which is similar to that of Hubstaff, to help you locate your staff’s whereabouts during a workday. With it, you can see your onsite field workers’ current or last known locations, current or last clocked-in locations, and all currently visited worksites.
- Productivity tools: Clockify offers timer reminders on a daily and weekly basis through emails to employees, managers, and administrators. It has a screenshot app (to update clients on work progress), idle detection, a Pomodoro timer (which separates work intervals with short breaks), and auto tracker. Like Hubstaff and TMetric, it’s an extremely feature-rich timekeeping software for productivity.
- Invoicing: Unlike AccountSight’s unlimited invoicing in its free version, Clockify only offers this feature in paid plans. For Standard plan users, billable hours can be imported into its invoicing tool. The invoices that are generated in Clockify can be downloaded as PDF documents that you can email to clients. You can also edit invoices, as long as they haven’t been paid by the client.
- Advanced administrative features: With the paid plans, you can conduct time audits, round time up or down, manually change times for an employee, set up timesheet reminders, schedule reports, and set up budgets and job estimates.
Ease of Use
Clockify provides email and phone support in addition to FAQs, video tutorials, and a library of how-to guides. You can connect with the support team through an in-app chat as well. Users on third-party review sites rated Clockify an average of 4.68 out of 5, which was above average for those on our list.
Harvest: Best Free Time Tracker for Free Invoicing & Billing
Harvest
Overall Score: 4.18
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Invoicing and payments
- Integration with payment processors
- Free plan has all the features
- Job costing and budgeting
What's Missing
- Free plan limited to 2 projects
- No scheduling app
- Limited integrations—none for payroll or POS
Harvest Pricing
- 30-day free trial
- Free: 1 seat and 2 projects
- Pro ($12/seat/month): Unlimited seats, unlimited projects
Harvest stands out for its invoicing and billing because it offers integration with Stripe and PayPal. It offers free time tracking, invoicing, and expense reporting for one user and two active projects. The free plan is ideal for freelancers who don’t need to give other users access to their data. Harvest also integrates with other popular software like QuickBooks, Google Workspace, Trello, and Slack, so you can easily export hours. Like TimeTrack, it lets you take photos of receipts for expenses, and it works great with Android and Apple.
With a 4.18 out of 5 per our evaluation, it stands out for billing features because it offered everything on our rubric in its free plan, where others charged for some tools. It also got a perfect score for reports. It is well rated by users but lost points because it lacks scheduling (Homebase is your best choice for that). The Pro plan only differs from the Free option in that it has unlimited seats and projects.
Harvest’s time tracking interface is clear and simple. (Source: Harvest)
Harvest Features
Harvest’s packages only differ by the number of seats and projects you get.
- Invoicing and getting paid: Like many on our list, it generates invoices but also tracks payments, something we did not see in many of the providers here. It especially stands out, however, in that it integrates with Stripe and PayPal, so your clients can easily pay online or from their email. Only Paymo has more payment integrations. You can copy your payments to QuickBooks or Xero for accounting.
- Time tracking: Harvest itself says it’s a “lightweight” tracking experience. You can track hours with timers on your desktop and mobile or enter them at once. Harvest also has codes for adding a Harvest timer button, which lets you track time when working in a particular software. Meanwhile, TMetric has a button option for 50 apps.
- Project costs and tracking: You can track hours and check expenses and labor against budgets. The team view (with the paid plan) lets you see when an employee is over their allotted time. Reports let you dig into the details of how employee time is spent. You can also edit and approve time sheets.
- Reports: You can create your own reports or use the standard time and contractor reports. Reports can be saved, exported, or shared with clients. Harvest has fewer reports than other time trackers in this guide, like AccountSight, but they cover the basics and are customizable.
- Integrations: Harvest integrates mostly with product management tools (like Asana), Slack, calendar apps, and browser extensions. For payroll and POS, we suggest Homebase; AccountSight works with QuickBooks Payroll, whereas Hubstaff has its own payroll tool.
- Mobile app: The mobile app tracks time, billable hours, mileage, and expenses. It also has invoicing and time sheet management. It rates 4.2 out of 5 with around 510 reviews on iOS but 4.2 out of 5 with about 2,250 votes on Android. This is about average, and good especially for Android users. Even better, there were few complaints about glitches in the apps but had requests for more features.
- Ease of use: Real-world users rated it 4.36 out of 5, averaged across multiple review sites. This is high for software but just below average for those on our list. The online support section includes how-tos, webinars, and videos, but you need to contact support by email or contact form.
TMetric: Best Free Timekeeping Software for Improving Productivity
TMetric
Overall Score: 4.14
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- One-click retrieval of time sheet data for faster payroll processing
- Offline mode
- PTO and leave monitoring features
- Multiple currencies for invoicing
What's Missing
- Limited mobile app functionality
- Limited scheduling options
- Limited tools in free version
TMetric Pricing
- 30-day free trial
- Free: One user, unlimited projects and clients, reporting, time tracking, timer button in 50+ web apps
- Professional ($5/user/month): Free + calendar integrations, billable rates, budgeting, invoicing, task management, activity level for employees
- Business ($7/user/month): Professional + app and site usage reports, screenshots, client login for reports, PTO tracking, time-sync with third-party apps
We recommend the free version of TMetric for freelancers and solopreneurs who need a little help with productivity. That’s because TMetric, unlike most on our list, offers idle alerts and collects data on websites and applications that you visit. However, its paid plans are great for running projects with teams, with everything from budgeting tools to PTO tracking and time-sync with other apps.
TMetric has an overall score of 4.14 out of 5 in our evaluation. It earned perfect marks for pricing and reporting, and users gave it an excellent score for the software itself. However, the mobile app did not fare as well as those from Clockify, Paymo, Homebase, and others. It also lost points for limited integrations and only offering many billing features in paid plans.
It’s easy to get an overview of how you spend your time during any period. (Source: TMetric)
TMetric Features
Free Plan
- Time tracking: Like most apps, you can track time with a click using desktop, mobile, or a web app. It has manual and even bulk time adding and editing, plus the ability to categorize your time using tags or labels like milestones, location, or special status. With the paid plan, administrators can disable time entry editing, set required fields for time entries, and permit manual and mobile time tracking functions that are unique to the software.
- Reporting and analytics: TMetric’s range of reports provides detailed information about all projects, tasks, team members, and even the apps and websites they use. It’s rivaled only by AccountSight. These reports are customizable and can be exported to PDF and CSV formats for printing or post-processing.
- Mobile app: This app works with multiple projects and lets you categorize time, create reports, and monitor your team. It rates 3.6 out of 5 with around 15 reviews on iOS and 3.2 out of 5 with about 170 votes on Android. These are some of the lowest scores for mobile apps. If mobile is important, consider Homebase, Paymo, and Timesheet.
- Multiple third-party integrations: TMetric works well with more than 50 web apps for timers, more than we’ve seen among the time tracking software in this guide. However, aside from that, it integrates only with a handful of apps unless you use a REST API. Homebase and Clockify offer more variety.
Paid Plans
Everything in the free subscription, plus:
- Productivity tools: TMetric stands out with its idle detection. It will alert you during times of zero activity and remind you about break times. It also tracks website and app usage, so you can see where you may be getting distracted. Clockify and Hubstaff also have some of these tools.
- Project management: You can add multiple projects and clients without losing track of your actual work time. Aside from putting descriptions or creating subprojects, the paid plans let you set flat hourly rates for each assigned staff, put in time estimates, and create a project budget that you can monitor and analyze to stay on top of your finances. This is similar to several of the software on our list—Harvest has these tools in its free plan.
- Invoicing: There are three ways you can do invoicing with TMetric. You can 1) create an invoice and send it to your client, 2) export a report and send it to your client, and 3) mark the time as invoiced. The solution, which handles recurring billing, can also sync time with QuickBooks Online for creating invoices from there. Like Paymo, it offers multiple currency options for catering to international clients.
- Team management: You can customize workspace member profiles, create user groups, assign team leaders, and even activate/deactivate users. Aside from setting company workdays and holidays, you can monitor time off, take real-time screenshots, and gauge your employees’ activity levels.
Ease of Use
Real-world users rated it 4.53 out of 5, averaged across multiple review sites, a great score for software and above average for those on our list. The online help section is basic but includes images. Contact support by email.
Tracking your employees’ time effectively is a vital part of being an employer. Learn more about managing employees in our employee management guide.
AccountSight: Best Free Time Tracking Software for Accounting & Consulting
AccountSight
Overall Score: 4.14
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Robust expense tracking tools
- Flexible invoicing features
- Responsive customer support
- Discounts for government and educational institutions
What's Missing
- Limited mobile app functionalities
- Lacks employee productivity tools
- Limited third-party integrations
AccountSight Pricing*
- No free trial
- Free: 1 user, 5 clients, 5 projects, unlimited invoicing, unlimited time and expense
- Basic ($10/user/month): Free + up to 5 users, unlimited clients, unlimited projects
- Small Group ($9/user/month): Basic, up to 20 users
- Enterprise ($8/user/month – Custom pricing for over 50 users): Basic, up to 100 users
*Special pricing for government and educational institutions
AccountSight’s cloud-based time tracking, expense recording, and invoicing software make it ideal for professional services companies, consultants, and freelancers. With the system, you can capture work hours by manually filling up online time sheets or using the stopwatch timer to track your projects in real time. It has the best time sheet management of the software on our list, and the system integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks Online products and PayPal.
With an overall score of 4.14 out of 5 in our evaluation, it received top scores for billing and reports. However, compared with other providers like Clockify, Hubstaff, and TMetric, it has limited time clock options. It also lacks employee productivity tools like alerts for overtime and going past budgeted hours in a project. In addition, although some users praised AccountSight for how user-friendly it is, it lacks user feedback, which affected its score on popularity.
AccountSight’s interface is more dated than others on our list but highly rated by users. (Source: AccountSight)
AccountSight Features
The Free Plan allows all features but limits to one user, five clients, and five projects.
- Time sheet management: The free plan allows you to create a time sheet for yourself, but AccountSight’s paid plans let your employees upload time sheets individually or in bulk through Excel. It allows up to five levels of approval. Managers get reminders to approve or reject time sheets individually or in bulk to avoid delays. In either plan, you can add comments and upload expense reports or other files with your time sheet.
- Project planning: AccountSight’s project planning goes beyond most of the platforms we evaluated in that it allows you to plan projects and forecast resource needs, coordinate teams, and identify and allocate available resources based on role and skill set. You can also monitor forecast versus actual hours and control costs, plus track expenses for each phase and task.
- Attendance tracking: Similar to Hubstaff, Homebase, Clockify, and TMetric, AccountSight has an easy-to-use leave monitoring system (with the paid plans). Time off requests can be routed for multiple levels of approvals, and managers can view all leave requests in the dashboard’s calendar and approve/reject requests accordingly. AccountSight also works seamlessly with Outlook.
- Expense tracking: Aside from tracking work hours, AccountSight allows users to track and manage all project expenses—just like Hubstaff, TimeTrack, and TMetric. You can set your own expense types with charge rates or per-unit costs before completing the online expense sheets—which can be updated and submitted individually or by bulk at a specific time. Project managers can also approve or reject single, multiple, or all pending expenses simultaneously.
- Invoicing: You can create three types of invoices: recurring invoices for costs, manual invoices, and invoices based on billable hours and expenses. It also has an option to copy existing invoices. In the paid plan, invoice roles are set. Managers can print or email invoices to clients from the system, while administrators can predefine tax rates, discounts, and price adjustments. They can also set notifications to track payment delays, send reminders to clients, and monitor the billing history of all paid and due payments. A few timekeepers in this guide have such permissions in their higher plans.
- Reporting: AccountSight has more premade reports than others on our list. In addition to reviewing and analyzing all weekly time sheet data, you can view and compare all invoiced and uninvoiced project expense data. Its dashboard provides a pictorial presentation of time, expense, and invoice data and a summary with bar and pie charts. Reports can be printed, saved as a PDF file, or exported to Excel.
- Mobile app: Not many people have rated its mobile app. It scored 3 out of 5 with only 3 reviews on iOS and 2.3 out of 5 with around 20 votes on Android—the lowest score for Android of those on our list. If you need mobile, we suggest Homebase, Harvest, and Timesheet.
- Ease of use: Real-world users rated it 4.86 out of 5, averaged across multiple review sites. This was the highest-rated software on our list. It offers training videos, integrates with QuickBooks Payroll for paying employees, and is one of the few with live phone support.
Paymo: Best Free Time Tracker for Manufacturing & Design
Paymo
Overall Score: 4.05
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Free plan allows unlimited projects
- Projects have file versioning
- Billing tools in the free plan
- Multilingual, multicurrency
What's Missing
- Free plan has community support only
- No alerts for over time or budget
- No geofencing
Paymo Pricing
- 15-day free trial
- Free: Per month—up to 10 users, unlimited projects, 100 tasks, 3 project templates, 250 time entries, 3 invoices, 3 time reports; calendar and board views, file versioning, integrations, time tracking
- Small Office ($11.95/user/month): Free + unlimited everything, meta task board, recurring tasks, active timers, in-app tech support, 50GB storage
- Business ($18.95/user/month): Free onboarding and training, schedule and workload tools, Gantt charts, leave management, priority support, online remote assistance
The project management tools of Paymo, like Gantt charts and Kanban boards, especially in the paid plans, make it a great choice for manufacturers and creative companies like web designers. It also allows you to create multilingual invoices, which incorporate more than 85 currencies, and lets you get paid faster by automating payments with PayPal, Payoneer, Stripe, and Authorize.net. Only Harvest also integrates with payment processing.
It earned 4.05 out of 5 on our rubric, with top scores in billing tools and reporting. It did well in popularity with a user satisfaction score of 4.64 out of 5. It lost some points for not having an offline option, geofencing, or over time/budget alerts.
Paymo has a bright interface that works on multiple platforms. (Source: Paymo)
Paymo Features
Free Plan
The free option has some limits to tasks, project templates, and invoices.
- Billing and invoicing: While Harvest is our top choice for invoicing, Paymo is the best for international billing. With over 85 currencies, invoicing in 15 languages, and integrations with multiple payment providers, it’s easy to create an invoice that gets you paid, no matter where your client resides. Plus, it can track partial payments.
- Time tracking: Like most of the timekeeping software we evaluated, you can track time on desktop, via mobile, and with a widget on your browser. It does not have geofencing, however. We suggest Timesheet or TimeTrack for automated clock-ins and Hubstaff or Homebase for standard geofencing tools.
- Job costing and reports: You can estimate costs and track expenses—even adding expenses by snapping receipts like TimeTrack does. You can set up live reports that automatically update when someone reviews them so you don’t have to manually create them each time. No others mentioned this capability. You can share reports with clients as well.
- Integrations: Paymo integrates with calendar apps, Slack, QuickBooks, and a few other productivity apps. It does not integrate with payroll or POS apps, although it does integrate with Square as a payment processor. Look to Homebase for integrating with payroll and POS.
- Mobile app: Paymo’s mobile app handles project management, time tracking, and invoicing. It has excellent rates, though not many reviews. It has a 4.6 out of 5 with about 50 reviews on iOS and 4.1 out of 5 with around 160 votes on Android. It has very few complaints of glitches or errors.
Paid Plans
Has everything in the free option, plus:
- Active timers: Managers can track all employee timers in parallel to see who is on the job when.
- Project management: Paymo excels in project management tools, especially in its paid plans. While most have calendars, Paymo also includes Gantt charts and Kanban boards. It lets you create projects, plan milestones, split tasks and assign them to team members, attach files and notes, and more.
- Advanced support: Paid plans include in-app tech support and online remote assistance.
Ease of Use
Real-world users rated it 4.64 out of 5, averaged across multiple review sites. This is high for software and above average for the free time tracking software on our list. Its help section has video tutorials and illustrated articles, but for live support, you must contact the team through chat or an online form.
Timesheet: Best Free Time Tracking Software for Construction & Other Companies With Off-site Workers
Timesheet
Overall Score: 4.00
OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Geofencing time tracking functionalities
- Flexible invoicing features
- Unlimited projects
- Budget and job costing
What's Missing
- Lacks employee productivity tools
- Invoicing costs extra
- Users of the free app on mobile complain of spam and nags to pay/upgrade
Timesheet Pricing
- 30-day free trial
- Free: Time tracking, unlimited projects
- Plus ($5/month); for one user only: Free + cloud backup
- Pro ($10/user/month): Plus + web access, multiple users, PDF invoices
Timesheet is a free time tracker that can start tracking time automatically using WLAN and geofencing technology, making it suitable for construction companies and others that employ off-site workers. It will also stop tracking automatically when an employee leaves their assigned location, a function TimeTrack also has. Scheduling is part of Projects, but you can also add breaks, expenses, and notes and record working hours with a simple push of a button.
In our rubric, the system earned a 4 out of 5, with perfect marks for pricing, billing and job labor costing, and reporting. However, it lost points because of complaints about the mobile app and the lack of employee productivity tools and offline mode functionality.
Timesheet lacks a traditional scheduling program but lets you plan hours and breaks as part of projects. (Source: Timesheet)
Timesheet Features
Free Plan
- Time tracking: Like the others on our list, you can run the Timesheet app on your iPhone and Android smartphone and your computer. Its web application is also compatible with major browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer. You can add breaks, expenses, and notes into your schedule while recording working hours. For field employees, Timesheet can track working hours using WLAN and geofencing technology. Like TimeTrack, it can automatically track your hours when you are in the assigned location.
- Project and task management: You can plan, track, collaborate on, and execute projects in real time from one dashboard. It lacks a scheduler like you would find with Homebase, however. Like Clockify, TMetric, and Paymo, it allows unlimited projects in the free plan.
- Feedback and analytics: Like most of the timekeeping software in our guide, Timesheet lets you review the time you spent on a project or task through in-depth reports of your daily, weekly, and monthly hours. However, it stands out in that it can record feedback to track your progress, identify trends, improve time utilization, and weed out inefficiencies. If needed, you can export reports as an Excel or CSV file.
- Integrations: Aside from browsers and QuickBooks, Timesheet has few native integrations, although you can integrate through Zapier. For more integrations, check Homebase and Clockify.
- Mobile app: The mobile app is more popular on Android, but both it and the iOS version have time tracking, project management, location-based tracking, and cloud sync. Like TimeTrack, it can also support smartphones. It rates 4.6 out of 5 with around 10 reviews on iOS and 4.3 out of 5 with about 13,280 votes on Android. However, customers using the free version complained of spam on the app and through email.
Paid Plans
Everything in the free package, plus:
- Invoices: Timesheet offers customizable invoices. You can search invoices by title, client, or description and see the status. It’s easy to create new invoices and add billable tasks from your project lists. You can apply custom rates to tasks and add expenses. Unlike Harvest or Paymo, it does not integrate with payment processors.
- Cloud backup and web features: Securely store your data, manage it online, and sync it across all devices. Plus share projects across your team. Many time trackers on our list also charge for cloud backup, but most will sync between mobile and desktop.
Ease of Use
Real-world users rated it 4.8 out of 5 on Capterra, and we didn’t find reviews on other sites. The documentation is searchable and illustrated and has a troubleshooting guide. You can only contact support by an online form.
How We Evaluated the Top Free Time Tracking Software
We started with 18 timekeeping software and narrowed our list down to the best nine with free plans. We compared each product’s pricing and ease of use. We also looked for essential features like secure clock-ins/outs, geolocation tracking, invoicing, prebuilt reports, mobile apps, and the ability to allocate hours to jobs. We also considered the providers’ integration options with third-party software like payroll and project management solutions.
Based on our evaluation, Hubstaff is the best free time tracking software. It earned an overall score of 4.4 out of 5, with perfect marks for employee and reporting features and high marks for pricing, ease of use, and popularity. Hubstaff’s free version also includes paying employees.
To see our full evaluation criteria for the best free time tracking software, click through the tabs in the box below.
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Pricing
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Employee Time Tracking Functionality
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Billable Hours and Job Labor Costing Functions
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Popularity
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Reporting
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Ease of Use
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We selected providers with a free plan and transparent pricing for its paid tiers. Extra points were given to providers with paid subscriptions that are priced at $10 or less per employee monthly. Clockify, TMetric, TimeTrack, and Timesheet all earned perfect scores.
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We awarded more points to the free time tracking plans that allow users to allocate hours by job code, compare budget versus actual hours, manage projects, and generate invoices to bill clients. Some points were given if the paid plans had such functions. Timesheet, TimeTrack, Paymo, AccountSight, and Harvest earned 5 out of 5 stars.
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*Percentages of overall score
Check out our guide to tracking employee work hours for ideas beyond free time tracking software.
Bottom Line
The best free time tracking software offer a variety of tools in addition to helping you track time on a project. They work on mobile and desktop and may provide scheduling, invoicing, and even project management tools. Some allow for teams, but many free plans are geared toward the solopreneur.
Overall, we found Hubstaff the best overall free time tracking software. It maxed our rubric for time management features and is the only one that lets you pay your team from the software itself. Its paid plans offer greater functionality and start at $14/month for two users. Try it free or get a free trial today.
