Best Time Tracking Apps for Freelancers

People often track their working hours because they need to make customer invoices and get paid. Others track their time to see how long it takes for different tasks or to make sure a flat-rate project does not cost more money to complete than it does. Regardless of why you monitor your time, the most accurate way to do that is to run a time tracking app when your tasks are in progress.

We found the 5+ Best Time Tracking Apps for freelancers and small businesses after reviewing more than 40 apps — they will also work for personal time tracking, too. Click a link below to see why we chose it, or continue reading to learn more about time tracker software.

What’s best about Time Tracking Apps or software on time?

Tracking time while you’re working helps you to invoice more accurately than measuring the time after the fact. Having a higher degree of accuracy also generates trust for your customers but it also helps the business. You can analyze it, and make smarter business decisions as a result, if you know how you spend your time.

Almost all time tracking apps allow you to track in real-time, which means they send you a running clock that you launch when you start a mission, and you can pause or stop when you’re finished. The best apps allow you to keep track of the time after the fact, such as if you accidentally leave a timer running while you’re taking off for lunch. You should be able to edit the time log to delete the many minutes you didn’t work though.

You also want an app that lets you reach a time block post hoc if you fail to run a timer at all. For instance, if your phone rings and you hop into a 20-minute consulting call, you may not start a timer, but you do want to log in and bill for those working hours.

Of course not every business charge by the hour. If you charge for projects with a flat rate, you’ll probably need a time tracking app that can warn you before you spend too much time on a task, and its value decreases. There is a difference between having a $1,500 project wrapped up in 30 hours and 60.

Some of the best time tracking apps for freelancers and small businesses are designed with solo entrepreneurs in mind, though many have a time tracking features through small teams as well. Does each of your colleagues charge the same rate per hour? How do you handle an invoice that lists multiple employees? A few of the best time tracking frameworks have plenty of options to help direct you through these and other issues.

Apps that monitor time may have more features, too. For example, some are adept in handling multiple currencies. Others have built-in Mobile applications for billing and invoicing. In addition to time tracking, some offer expense tracking, allowing you to easily notice supplies you purchase, miles you drive and other reimbursable expenses. Nevertheless not every freelancer or small business needs all of these features. You wouldn’t want to end up paying for features you’re not using. Therefore, considering what each app has to offer and finding the right fit for your business is important. Luckily, some apps provide multiple levels from which you can choose to upgrade as your business and needs grow.

Best free time tracking app

Toggl (extension for, Browser Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, and Cloud)

If you need a time monitoring app and can’t afford to pay for one, use Toggl. The time tracking platform has a generous free tier of service that gives you access to all of its devices (Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, web, and browser extension) and provides all of the core functions you’d expect from a time tracking app. Nevertheless, free account holders are unable to work with other team members and are given limited reporting tools. Apart from those drawbacks, if you need to quickly, clearly, accurately and free track your time through different projects, Toggl is the app to use.

One explanation why Toggl works seamlessly is that when you start timing a job it doesn’t ask much of you. You have to have a customer, mission, and task entered into your account with many time tracking applications before the app will let you track time. If you don’t, you need to set your mission aside and join it for the time being. You can now monitor your time with Toggl and later worry about the details.

Toggle Pricing:

Unlimited plan: Yes

Paid plan: for the Starter package from $10/user/month.

Best time monitoring feature for teams

Harvest (through integration in Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, mobile, browser extension, and other web apps)

Harvest is a top team choice amongst the best time tracking apps. It’s also a stellar option for solitary entrepreneurs, but it’s built to handle a collaborative workload in a clear and easy to understand manner. If it’s not your strong suit to track and organize a team time, then Harvest is a great app to help you get the job done.

Everyone on your team will be able to install and use as many Harvest instances as they like, including the desktop app, mobile app and browser extension. The apps work offline, even when you’re not online, allowing you and your teammates to record time on tasks. When team members run their personal timekeeping clocks, all the information flows into the Harvest account of the administrator, where it is described in both description and detail. If you like, Harvest will periodically notify team members to apply their timetables and the business owner can always edit, review and approve team timetables.

Pricing for Harvest:

Free plan: Yes.

Pay plan: $12 per person per month

Best Time Tracking Apps to monitor and control the availability of the team

Everhour (web app, browser extension, and through integration in other web applications)

Everhour is an online time tracker and lightweight scheduling app that synchronizes with the productivity apps that you might already be using. When you connect Everhour to a supported app, like Asana, all the projects you’ve created in Asana appear in Everhour as projects. In that way, the work of setting up Everhour to reflect all your projects is automatically done for you. You can have your time recorded on task much faster.

To add a timer button inside the web-based app of your choosing, the syncing feature goes one step further, enabling you to start and stop recording time from within the application. Within Asana, for example, you’ll see a new button with options for “Start Time,” “Add Time,” “Edit Time,” and “Add Estimate.” Besides Asana, Everhour also syncs with Basecamp, Bitbucket, GitHub, Teamwork Projects, Trello, and a few other devices. While having a sync timer button from your choice app is an excellent feature, Everhour is not unique in that. It’s also supported by Toggl, FreshBooks and a few other phones.

Everhour Pricing:

free plan: Yes

Paid plan: $11.81/month for Solo account (billed annually), $10.34/month for Team account per person

Best time tracking app within business software

FreshBooks (extension of Android, iOS, internet, and server, and other web applications through integration)

FreshBooks is better known as accounting software but with a time tracking feature, every level of service it offers comes with. This time monitoring software is complete with the ability to add information to tracked sessions and produce reports on how you spend your working hours. FreshBooks also provides substantial support for the use of virtual teams.

When you start a task, you have a few options for tracking the time you’ve spent on it. You can use the FreshBooks — Best Time Tracking Apps in all you may use buttons that are incorporated into other cloud-based productivity apps (Asana, Boomr, Basecamp, Day cast, Intervals, Teamwork Projects, and Trello), or the FreshBooks mobile app (iOS and Android). You get versatility by having a range of options. For example, if you have a meeting where opening your laptop might be disrespectful, the mobile app also allows you to respectfully monitor your time. If you are using the web app, you will be accompanied by the running clock from page to page, but it’s collapsible so it doesn’t get in the way.

Freshbooks Pricing:

Free plan: No

payment plan: from $15/month to 5 customers

Best time tracking app with a calendar view

Timely (Android, iOS, macOS, web, Windows)

Some business owners use a calendar to carve out time blocks to work on various projects. If you like to work that way, then Timely could be the ideal time tracker for you. Timely incorporates scheduling and time monitoring into one program, providing you with a calendar-like view of the time spent on tasks. You can log in manual entry, run a timer and plan how much time you expect to work on different projects in advance.

The app has drag-and-drop capabilities, letting you move around your calendar’s dedicated time blocks. You can see your total worked time at the bottom of each day. At the top of the screen, Timely shows you how much you earned for different tasks based on the hourly rates you plugin, and your projected earnings if you stick to the weekly plan you’ve created.

Timely Pricing:

Free plan: No

pay plan: $7/month individual plans, $99/year team plans

Best time tracking app for visualizing time differently

HourStack (Android, iOS, web)

HourStack is a collaborative time tracking tool that looks, unlike many other time tracking applications. This shows time in blocks as if it was an occurrence in your calendar that took you time to work on a job. It’s not the only app that lays out your time in this fashion (Timeneye does that too), but it does emphasize planning your time before you start to work more than other applications. For instance, you can allocate blocks of time to your calendar for tasks that you plan to work on later this week. You can indicate that you think the task will take an hour, or you’d like to spend no more than an hour there.HourStack will keep an eye on the clock for you once you launch the timer, to help you stay within your expectations.

Like other time tracking software, HourStack lets you create projects and activities that you can use color-coding to visualize. In addition, you can add labels to types of tasks, such as business development and communication, to differentiate between them. These can also be color-coded. (Color choices for labels, however, are the same as for projects, which can be confusing.)

HourStack Pricing:

Free plan: No

payment plan: $7 a month

Best automatic time tracking app for Mac users

Timing (macOS)

If you’re a Mac user looking for an offline, stand-alone, pay-once time tracking app, then timing might be just what you’re looking for. The app tracks your usage of your software and website on a timeline, which can then be automatically grouped and logged as part of a project underway. This makes it easy to discover how long you have spent working on different projects, even if those projects involve using multiple websites and applications. In larger projects, you can create children’s projects, and even create rules for defining applications and website use as they apply to your working day.

Timing is not just for computer-based task recording. You can add events offline manually (provided you choose the Professional tier), and even start manual tasks with a timer. When you review the logs at the end of the day, you can simply drag and drop projects on to the timeline to categorize whole blocks of activity quickly.