Top 10 Clockify Alternatives (Paid & Free) – Decision Guide

The best Clockify alternatives in 2026 are Productive, MyHours, Harvest, TimeCamp, Toggl Track, Timely, Jibble, Deltek (Replicon), Time Doctor, and Kimai.

If you are evaluating time tracking apps and comparing tools like Clockify for billing, automation, attendance, or compliance, start with the shortlist below. Each time-tracking solution includes a jump link that takes you to the detailed review.

If you’re here for a high-level overview, use the table below to narrow down to two or three options. If you only need an online time tracking tool with a timer and exports, prioritize the lighter tools first.

Use this table to quickly shortlist time trackers. Labels are intentionally simple so you can compare tradeoffs without reading a spec sheet.

If Clockify is “fine,” but your team still lives in spreadsheets, the real problem is not tracking. It is everything that happens after: budgets, resourcing, approvals, and profitability checks that never quite match your time logs.

Productive treats tracked time as part of project delivery and company operations, so hours feed budgets, resourcing, and reporting.

Forgotten timers not only lose hours. They also distort capacity plans, so you end up booking by gut feel and scrambling when work runs long.

Productive connects tracked hours with resource planning so you can compare planned capacity to actual delivery. When a project trends long, you can rebalance work earlier and protect utilization without burning out the team.

Managers can approve time off before it is confirmed in the Resource Planner, so capacity plans stay realistic. And yes, Productive also syncs with your Google Calendar.

Most standalone timers show hours but not budget impact, unless someone translates the data into a separate sheet. That is why budget & profitability reviews happen late, and scope creep becomes “normal.”

In Productive, time and expenses are linked to each project’s budget. Budget owners can approve time entries and expenses, so costs do not slip in after the fact. That gives you insights into budgets while the project is running.

You get fewer billing surprises and less time spent reconciling numbers across tools. If you need extra advice here, head over to our guide on tracking project expenses.

Profitability issues are easiest to fix during delivery, not after the write-off.

Productive helps you see profit signals while delivery is in motion. When tracked time and expenses roll into the same budget structure, you can spot margin drift and too much non-billable work before it becomes a write-off.

For more practical advice, head over to our guide on project profitability formulas and metrics.

That gives you a chance to fix the plan, adjust scope, or have a client conversation early. Approvals also help reduce the “we don’t trust our own data” problem that makes profitability reporting useless. Learn more about balancing employee timesheets and hours in our billable and non-billable hours guide.

Many agencies run Clockify plus a PM tool, finance software, and spreadsheets. That fragmentation slows reporting, invoicing, and weekly decision-making. You also don’t get accurate time tracking.

Productive reduces that stack by keeping time, budgets, approvals, resourcing, and reporting in one system. Instead of exporting time entries to rebuild reports, you can report from the same place where the data was created and approved.

Productive offers a 14-day free trial, so you can see what it can do for your project’s financial health.

Teams look for a new tool when the workflow stops matching how they bill, report, and keep logs consistent across a growing team.

The key features of Clockify substitutes prevent bad logs, speed up review, and keep billing and payroll outputs consistent. Those are the benefits of time tracking for Time Management, not just compliance.

Start by matching capture to how work shows up on a real day. If most work happens in long blocks, a simple timer works. If work is fragmented across short tasks, you need fast manual add flows and reminders so people do not backfill at the end of the week.

A solid time tracker supports both timer and manual logging, plus the small details that keep data usable: reminders for remote employees, required fields for notes or tags, and consistent behavior across desktop and mobile.

You need comprehensive reporting capabilities that match how you review work and build invoices, without rebuilding everything in a spreadsheet. The basics should be easy: billable versus non-billable splits, client and project totals, and detailed time reports with customized reporting for account managers.

If you invoice from tracked time, validate rate handling and rounding rules, then check how exports line up with your billing process. If you bill project costs, confirm expense tracking covers approvals, receipts, and reporting without a separate spreadsheet.

A usable approval process gives reviewers a clear queue, enough context to approve quickly, and a way to lock a period once billing is final.

Reviewers should be able to spot bad time entries immediately, such as missing notes, unclear project selection, or inconsistent billable status, without digging through extra screens.

Decide what data you collect before you pick a tool. Some teams only need hours and notes. Others want app usage, screenshots, or location signals. If you’re choosing an online time tracking tool, test the web flow and the desktop app side by side.

Some tools also record background activities, so decide what is acceptable before rollout. Whatever you choose, make sure it is configurable:

A smooth switch depends on a clean structure. You should be able to recreate clients, projects, and people roles, then map billable rules and rates without weeks of manual work.

Export a small sample from Clockify first and confirm you can import it, report on it, and invoice from it the way you expect. Then run a short parallel period so you can compare outputs before fully switching.

Choose your Clockify substitute by running a short selection sprint that you can finish in a week. Shortlist two or three time tracking apps, then run the same workflow test in each tool: log work for a week, approve it, export it, and compare totals against your real invoice and payroll outputs.

Open your last two invoices and pick one internal payroll report. Those three files become your acceptance criteria. Write down what must be true for those outputs to be correct: rates, rounding rules, billable versus non-billable splits, and which fields must be present on entries.

Then ask each tool to reproduce the same layout, using its standard reports or exports. If you need a spreadsheet to “fix it after,” you are buying more admin work.

Do a five-minute audit of one typical day. Count how many times you switch context between clients, meetings, email, and deep work. Then do one practical check: can you track time quickly when you bounce between short tasks, or do people give up and backfill later?

If the day is fragmented, prioritize fast manual add and good reminders. If the day is continuous, prioritize a timer you can start and stop without friction. For the pilot, pick one team and log hours for five working days, then check how many gaps you still have.

Before you compare features, draw your approval path on a napkin or make a simple diagram. Who reviews client work, who reviews internal work, and who locks a week once billing is final?

Now test that path inside the tool: can approvers find what they need fast, request fixes, and close a period without spreadsheets. If approvals require constant nudging or back-and-forth comments, billing will slip.

Use last week’s data to test reporting, not a demo dataset. Pull one real week of time from your current tool (or export from Clockify) and import it into the tool you are trialing, then generate a report of time spent for the same period.

Next, you’ll run these three checks exactly as written:

Then repeat the process: once as an admin and once as a project lead. If either role has to export and rebuild the view in a spreadsheet, reporting will become a weekly tax.

Instead of listing tools, map one real handoff end-to-end. Example: log hours, approve them, export or sync, invoice, and reconcile.

Make a simple table with five columns: step, owner, current tool, new tool, and what could break. If your team already lives in other productivity tools, focus on whether native integrations remove double entry or just move it.

Pick an owner and give them a clear task list: recreate clients and projects, set rate rules, set roles, create one report for billing, and create one report for leadership. If you are comparing enterprise pricing, ask for a quote at your peak headcount and confirm what counts as a billable user per month.

Run parallel for one week with a small group. Compare totals and spot gaps early. If you cannot match your key outputs in a week, full migration will be painful.

To migrate from Clockify, export your data, recreate the same structure in the new tool, import a small sample, then run one parallel week before you switch everyone over. This keeps reporting and invoices consistent, and it helps you catch mapping issues while the week is still fresh in everyone’s memory.

Before you touch exports, pick three outputs you need to preserve. For most teams, that is one client invoice breakdown, one internal weekly summary by person, and one monthly rollup by project.

Write down what must match (rates, rounding, billable splits, required notes).

Start with one export that captures your historical time entries, then pull structure exports for projects and people.

In Clockify, use the Detailed report export (CSV or Excel) for the date range you want to migrate. Export projects so you can recreate project names and client associations. If you need to preserve user emails, export user info as well.

Create clients, projects, and roles first. Then configure the rules that change totals, like rounding, billable status defaults, required notes, and who can edit after approval. Do this with a small subset of data so you can see the effect of each rule.

Do not import a year of history on day one. Import one client and one week, then reproduce your three “correct” outputs. Compare totals, spot missing fields, and fix naming and mapping issues early.

Pick a pilot group, keep Clockify as your reference, and have the group track time in the new tool for five working days. At the end of each day, compare totals by person and project, then fix issues while the week is still fresh.

Once the pilot matches your outputs, roll out to the full team. Freeze changes in Clockify, export a final archive for the month, and publish a one-page logging rule doc that covers what must be captured on every entry (project, billable status, notes).

If approvals are part of your workflow, set the approvers and lock periods from week one so totals stop drifting.

When you compare alternatives to Clockify, shortlist two or three time tracking apps and run the same one-week pilot on real projects (rates, approvals, and the exports you use today). Compare totals and cost per user per month across the shortlist.

If your evaluation keeps drifting into resourcing, budgets, and approvals, it may be time to look at an all-in-one project management tool like Productive.

Book a quick demo to see if it fits your setup.