If you are a freelancer, consultant, or even student, keeping a tab on the amount of time you spend working or learning is one of the best practices to do to track your productivity and stay on top of your goals. While there are a plethora of apps and services to choose, not all of them offer the essential features and the ease-of-use, which is one of the crucial deterring factors. So, to help you find the right app for your requirements, here are our recommendations for the best time tracking apps.
Table of Contents
6 Best Time Tracking Apps
1. Toggl
If you are looking for a time tracking app that is easy-to-use and allows you to add quick entries, Toggl is an ideal service. The app simplifies time entries by offering one-click timers and offers calendar integration along with support for over 100 third-party apps. To ensure you do not forget to start taking entries, it gives you reminders, and in case you forget to stop the timer, it automatically detects the idle time and gives you the option to decide what to do with it later. Moving towards the reporting side of things, you get various filters to view data for different activities with the ability to export it and a project dashboard to compared project progress and get detailed insights. Moreover, the app offers cross-platform usability, which syncs your data across different devices to allow you to manage and access data on any device.
Available for: Android and iOS; Linux, macOS, and Windows, Web
Plan: Starter ($9/month) and Premium ($18/month)
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2. Harvest
Harvest is more than just a time-tracking utility. It also offers expense tracking along with invoices and estimates to allow you to keep track of projects’ expenses. The service comes with built-in invoicing and supports Stripe and PayPal integration. Moreover, it automatically reminds your clients of payment on your behalf, so you don’t have to bother doing it yourself. Coming back to the time-tracking feature, you get different options to log times: you can either start and stop timers based on your to-do list or enter all your work hours in the timesheet at once. Besides daily timers, the app also provides a weekly timesheet, which helps in determining the amount of time you spent working on a project. If you rely on various third-party services, Harvest brings integration support for a range of apps so you can use them in tandem. In addition, it also supports cross-platform sync, which can come in handy if you use the service on multiple devices.
Available for: Android and iOS; macOS and Windows; Web
Plan: Free and Pro ($12/month)
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3. Timely
Timely is another straightforward time-tracking solution that gets rid of the hassle of manual entry and automatically records the amount of time you spend across different work apps to give you a detailed look at your timeline of the day. Further, to offer deeper insights, it leverages the power of AI to draft timesheets, which can come in handy if you are a freelancer and need to generate invoices. One of the advantages that the service claims to offer is the ability to focus more on work rather than maintaining a record of the time you work. And for this, it suggests keeping capturing all your activities as you move between different tasks. Similar to most time-tracking apps, Timely also comes with support for various third-party apps and tools across different categories, with calendar integration being one of the most useful additions.
Available for: Android and iOS; macOS, Windows, and Web
Plan: Free trial, Moonlight ($5/month), and Freelancer ($11/month)
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4. RescueTime
As its name suggests, Rescue Time helps you keep track of the time you spend across different apps and services while also providing insights into how productive you were through the day. It comes with automatic time tracking, much like some of the other time trackers, which automatically tracks the time you spend across different apps and services to save you the effort of manual entry. In addition, it also has an offline tracking feature that tracks time even when you are not connected to the internet. To improve your productivity and avoid distractions, you can block the apps and websites you often get distracted by and can start a FocusTime session to split up your work into different tasks to focus better. RescueTime can also be used to set and accomplish daily goals and build habits, with real-time alerts to help you stay on track. Moreover, if you use other productivity tools, there is support to integrate different third-party apps for diverse tracking.
Available for: Android and iOS; Linux, macOS, and Windows
Plan: Free and Premium
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5. Clockify
Clockify is a free time-tracking app. It comes with an easy-to-use interface and allows you to keep track of your work hours, with a detailed timesheet to offer insights into the day. Similar to most other apps on the list, you can use it to either record your work hours automatically or enter your work hours manually. Besides, the app can also help you keep track of your invoice for different projects and have an organized entry for various projects. There is a dedicated dashboard in the app, which offers insights into what you have been working on and the amount of time you spent on doing it. To make entries easier to comprehend, the dashboard provides visual charts, along with breakdowns for different tasks and live status for ongoing tasks.
Available for: Android and iOS; Linux, macOS, and Windows
Plan: Free
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6. Hours
For those in search of a simple time-tracking solution, the Hours app is the best option for you. It allows you to keep track of the time you spend on while working or performing various tasks, and gives an overview of how you spent your day with a visual and interactive timeline. The timeline provides several filters that can be used to get detailed information on the desired tasks and projects. As for tracking, you can either track time using the start/stop timer or fill in the entries manually. Further, to add context to the time recording, the app also provides you with the option to add notes in time blocks on the timeline. The free plan offers adequate features for regular time-tracking needs. However, if you wish to get more out of the app, you can upgrade to Pro.
Available for: iOS; macOS; Web
Plan: Free, Pro ($8/month)
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That’s all!
If you struggle to keep a tab on the amount of time you spend working or on using various apps and services, you can use the apps mentioned above to get a comprehensive look into your day. Furthermore, if you freelance, you can also leverage these apps to track the number of hours you spend on a task in a day to make sure you are quoting your clients accordingly with your invoices.