If you bill by the hour, the tracker you pick decides how much of your work turns into money. Some apps are a plain timer you start and stop. Some watch what you are doing and write the timesheet for you. Some carry the hours straight into an invoice. Filter the twelve below by what you actually need.
12 tools compared, no affiliate links
Toggl Track (opens in a new tab)
Free planOne-click timer with browser extensions and reports, built to add as little friction as possible.
Best for: A timer you will actually remember to start
Time tracker and timesheet app whose free tier has no cap on users, projects or tracked hours.
Best for: Free tracking without a usage ceiling
Time tracking that turns tracked hours directly into client invoices and online payment links.
Best for: Tracking hours and billing them from one place
Tracks app and website use in the background, then lets you assign that activity to projects and bill it.
Best for: Recovering hours you forgot to log
Time tracking that lives inside the project tool you already use, rather than in its own tab.
Best for: Tracking from inside Asana, Trello, ClickUp or Jira
Records everything you work on in the background and drafts your timesheet from that record.
Best for: Never starting a timer again
Offline desktop app that records which programs and documents you used, minute by minute.
Best for: Automatic tracking without sending data to a server
RescueTime (opens in a new tab)
Free planMeasures where your attention goes during the day and scores it, rather than billing it.
Best for: Finding out where the hours actually go
Time tracking with screenshots and activity levels, used when a client wants evidence of hours worked.
Best for: Clients who require verified proof of hours
Project management, time tracking and invoicing in one app rather than three.
Best for: Running projects and billing them in one tool
Project time tracking with client rates, aimed at people who bill by the hour.
Best for: Per-client hourly rates without extra setup
Formerly Timeular. An eight-sided physical tracker you flip to switch tasks, paired with a tracking app.
Best for: People who forget software timers exist
No tool in this list matches that filter yet.
Outbound links are not affiliate links and no tool paid to be listed. Plans change often, so check the current pricing page before you commit.
Five of these have a free tier that works on its own rather than a trial that expires. Clockify is the most generous, with no cap on users, projects or tracked hours. Toggl Track covers solo tracking and reporting, TimeCamp puts automatic capture on its free tier, and My Hours gives you per-client rates without paying. Filter the list by Free plan to see them together.
Tracked hours are not paid hours. Harvest, Paymo, Everhour, TimeCamp and My Hours turn a timesheet into an invoice with no copy-paste step in between. Check one thing before you commit: they issue the invoice in your own name, so you need a registered company in the country you bill from. If you do not have one, that is exactly where you get stuck, and it is the gap Ruul fills by letting you invoice without a company and acting as the legal counterparty when you send the invoice.
Timely and Memtime record what you worked on and draft the timesheet from that record, so there is no timer to forget. TimeCamp does the same in the background and lets you assign the captured activity to billable projects, while RescueTime measures attention rather than billing it. The trade-off is privacy: Memtime stays offline on your own machine, the others sync to a server.
Consulting usually means several clients at different rates, and a client who wants to see what the hours went into. Harvest and Everhour handle project budgets and client-readable reports. My Hours sets a different rate per client, project and task. Paymo adds a client-facing project view on top.
People leave Clockify for one of two reasons: they want tracking to happen automatically, or they want invoicing in the same tool. TimeCamp covers both and keeps a free tier. My Hours covers the invoicing side with per-client rates. If the free tier was the reason you were there in the first place, Toggl Track is the closest swap.
Harvest is strong at turning hours into invoices and is priced per seat. Everhour does the same job from inside Asana, Trello or Jira. Paymo wraps project management around it. My Hours and TimeCamp keep the billing flow but start from a free tier.
Toggl Track is the default recommendation, so the alternatives each win on a single axis. Clockify for an unlimited free tier. Timely or Memtime for automatic capture. Harvest or Everhour for invoicing in the same app. Timeular if the real problem is remembering to start a timer at all.
Before you commit
Manual timers are cheaper and simpler, and useless if you forget them. If you have already abandoned one timer, buy an automatic tracker instead of trying harder.
A tracker that exports a CSV you retype into an invoice costs you the time it saved. Either pick one with invoicing, or pick one that exports cleanly into the tool you already bill with.
If you charge different rates per client or per task, confirm the tool supports that before you commit. Several only handle one rate per project.
Free usually caps something: users, projects, report history or exports. The cap that matters is the one you will hit in month three.
Tracked hours are evidence of the work behind an invoice. Whatever you pick, make sure you can export a full history, and keep it with your invoices and receipts so the year-end is a download rather than a reconstruction.
Ruul lets you invoice clients without a registered company, in 190 countries, with payouts in 140+ currencies. You send the invoice, Ruul acts as the legal counterparty and collects the payment, and you get paid within one business day of the client paying. No setup cost and no monthly fee, just a 5% transaction commission.
