Toggl Track has been around for years and built a well-earned reputation among freelancers and small teams. It’s ISO-certified and SOC 2 Type 1 compliant, which matters if you handle client data or work in an industry with stricter data requirements. The free plan supports up to five users with no time limit, making it a practical way to evaluate the tool before spending anything.

From a privacy standpoint, Toggl doesn’t sell your data or use it for advertising, and all tracking information belongs to you. That sounds like it should be a given, but it isn’t consistent across every tool in this space. For freelancers doing sensitive client work, that distinction is worth knowing upfront.

The Starter plan at $9 per user per month covers billable rates, project time estimates, and revenue reports, which is enough for most freelancers and small client-facing teams. Premium at $18 per user per month adds profitability analysis, timesheet approvals, fixed-fee project support, and Jira and Salesforce integrations. Enterprise pricing is custom and includes dedicated onboarding and a customer success manager.

Toggl Track features: Automatic time-tracking | Browser extension | Billable rate management | Revenue and productivity analysis | Timesheet approvals | Project time estimates | SSO (Premium+)

Timely takes a different approach from most trackers. Rather than asking you to start and stop a timer, it automatically records your activity throughout the day and uses AI to turn that log into a timesheet. The Memory Tracker runs in the background, capturing time spent in apps, documents, meetings, and websites without requiring you to remember to log anything.

Privacy is built into the product in a way that actually matters for adoption. Timely only shows users their own data by default, and managers can only see what employees choose to share with them. I noticed this framing works particularly well with remote-first teams, where surveillance concerns tend to kill buy-in for any tracking software.

The Starter plan is $11 per user per month or $9 per user per month billed annually. It caps at five users and 20 projects, so it fits freelancers and very small teams best. Premium at $20 per user per month opens up unlimited projects, team management, and accounting integrations. The Unlimited plan at $28 per user per month adds capacity management, overtime tracking, and Azure user management. This tier also offers support for more than 50 currencies, which makes it the practical home for larger distributed teams.

Timely features: AI memory tracker | Automatic timesheet generation | Project budget management | Planned time scheduling | Capacity management | Locked time | Multi-currency billing

7pace Timetracker, now under Appfire’s portfolio, is the top-rated time tracking extension on the Azure DevOps Marketplace. Unlike general-purpose trackers, 7pace lives inside your project management tools. You log time directly on a work item with a single click, which means developers never have to leave the place where they’re already managing their tasks.

The adoption argument is where 7pace actually earns its keep. Time-tracking fails more often from habit friction than from missing features, and when logging happens inside the same tool you’re already using, both compliance and accuracy go up. I’ve seen this play out in practice with development teams that struggled with standalone trackers but picked up 7pace quickly.

Pricing for Azure DevOps starts at around $8 per user per month, while the Jira version starts at $12.10 per month for 11 users. Note that 7pace raised prices by 6%-20% in July 2025 depending on plan and user tier, so if you’re an existing customer your current rate may have changed at your last renewal. The tool is trusted by over 3,000 customers worldwide, but it’s only worth evaluating if your team already works in one of the three supported platforms.

7pace features: In-work-item time logging | Weekly and monthly timesheet views | Budget tracking | Approval workflows | Customizable reporting dashboards | One-click timer | Azure DevOps and Jira integration

QuickBooks Time (previously TSheets) is the obvious choice if your business already runs on QuickBooks Online. Time entries flow directly into payroll and invoicing without any manual export, which is the main reason small business owners choose it over more general-purpose trackers. If you’re paying workers hourly and using QuickBooks for payroll, that workflow alone saves several hours a month.

The GPS tracking and geofencing features work well for service businesses with mobile or field teams. Managers can set up location-based clock-in rules, see real-time locations, and verify that time was logged from the correct job site. That level of oversight isn’t what most remote knowledge workers need, but it’s genuinely practical for construction, cleaning, or delivery operations.

Premium runs $20 per month as a base fee plus $8 per user per month. Elite costs $40 per month plus $10 per user per month and adds project tracking, job costing, and advanced administrative controls. Both plans require an active QuickBooks Online subscription on top of these costs, so the total bill grows faster than it first appears for larger teams. If you’re not already inside the QuickBooks ecosystem, there are more cost-effective trackers on this list worth looking at first.

QuickBooks Time features: Mobile clock-in/out | GPS location tracking | Geofencing alerts | Employee scheduling | Job costing | Payroll integration | Customizable reports

ActivityWatch is the rare tool that costs nothing and sends zero data to any server. Everything it records stays on your device, stored locally in an open format you can export and query however you like. For privacy-focused freelancers, security researchers, or anyone uncomfortable with cloud-based activity monitoring, that’s a hard combination to beat.

The tool runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, and it automatically tracks which apps and websites you’re using without any manual input. You can categorize activity, create custom tags, and view breakdowns by day, week, or month. The open-source codebase (licensed under MPL-2.0) has over 15,000 GitHub stars and a contributor community that regularly adds plugins, browser extensions, and integrations.

The main trade-off is that ActivityWatch isn’t built for team use. There’s no billing, no client reporting, no shared dashboards, and no support team to contact if something breaks. Initial setup can also feel rough if you’re not comfortable installing local server software. For someone who wants honest, private insight into how they spend their computer time, without paying anything, it’s a serious option.

ActivityWatch features: Automatic app and website tracking | Local data storage | Browser extension | AFK detection | Daily and weekly activity views | REST API | Custom event tracking