Manually recording hours worked has wasted countless pieces of paper stock over the years. Luckily, there’s a new way of tracking employee time, saving trees and time simultaneously — all from your trusted mobile device.
Managing time and attendance no longer requires tedious roll calls or outdated time punches. Boost payroll accuracy and streamline your timekeeping approach without going over budget by switching to a free time tracking app.
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Article Roadmap
For the scope of this article, we only considered the freemium version of a product or solutions that are completely free to use. We haven’t included products that only offer a free trial. Using that starting point, our analysts used an in-depth research process to understand the market. They then recommended the best 5 products based on a range of criteria.
We looked at the following criteria: feature comprehensiveness, product popularity, user reviews and ratings, SelectHub in-house data, hands-on experience, market analysts’ reports, thought leaders’ opinions and information availability in the public domain.
Products with better user reviews were given preference, provided they adequately met the other criteria listed.
Best Free Time Tracking Apps
Working on the go through mobile devices is the key to optimizing productivity in today’s fast-paced world. Check out the best free time tracking apps below!
Compare Top Time and Attendance Software Leaders
Toggl Track
Toggl is a cloud-based SaaS time and attendance solution with project management tools. Capture every time entry, even if your internet connection goes out. Offline time tracking syncs your data and account so as soon as your connection is back, your time gets noted for accuracy.
The Toggle Track app is designed for admins, managers, freelancers and full-time employees to track their time and tasks simultaneously on a single platform. Never miss a time punch with remote suggestions on where to track time, based on your previous entries. Toggl Track provides native Android and iOS mobile applications.
Toggl Track Dashboard.
Top Benefits
- Enhanced Visibility: Get a comprehensive overview of projects and employees. Real-time monitoring and customizable reports with unique tagging filters provide insights into project statuses and employee performance.
- Increased Efficiency: Identify and promptly address inefficiencies. Compare estimates with actual project times and closely monitor employee engagement by tracking program usage, empowering productivity.
- Flexibility: Track employee time from any location with the app that’s also available offline. Settings get tailored to individual preferences so workers can have different assignments, pay rates, and permissions, regardless of where they are based.
- Simplified Payroll: Customize billing rates and effectively manage finances, including payroll and project costs. Integrate with a third-party payroll provider, streamlining the payroll process.
- Automatic Trackers: Break down work into 25-minute sprints, punctuated by short breaks. Track every application and website user automatically after 10 seconds.
Primary Features
- Offline Timesheets: Keep track of your time even when offline. Once you reconnect, your worked hours will be automatically synchronized.
- Project Support: Easily manage your projects by assigning different colors. Completed projects are conveniently archived in case future access is needed.
- Collaboration Tools: Monitor and analyze your team’s time tracking from the previous nine days. Create user groups to grant project permissions to everyone in one go. You can also assign different levels of permission (basic, project manager, or workspace manager) to each user in the workspace.
- Idle Time Detection: If you take a break from work while a timer is on, Toggl Track’s idle time detection feature promptly lets you know.
- CSV Files: Simplify importing time entries, projects, tags, users and client data in CSV files.
Limitations
- No employee monitoring features
- No time kiosks
Pricing
- Free: $0 (up to 5 users)
- Starter: $9 per month per user
- Premium: $18 per month per user
- Enterprise: Custom pricing (unlimited users)
A 30-day trial is available. After the trial period ends, premium features are automatically removed and users may continue using Toggl Track’s Free plan.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Clockify
Clockify is a time and project tracking tool available as SaaS or in the cloud. From freelancers to managers, Clockify streamlines clocking in or out, requesting time off and checking PTO balances from the native Android and iOS mobile app. Unsure if you missed a time punch? View your timesheet and make manual edits as needed on the calendar.
The single sign-on through the app remembers your username and password through your device, so you can say goodbye to forgotten passwords while still protecting personal information. Also, instead of piling up on paper receipts, simplify expense reporting with mobile reimbursements, just snap a picture of your receipt on the app or upload images from your gallery.
Clockify time tracker.
Top Benefits
- Mobile Support: Track time on the go with the app, available on iOS and Android devices. Even if you’re offline, any changes or recordings will automatically sync once you’re connected again.
- Transparency: Simplify the employee tracking process with our centralized platform. Utilize a user-friendly stopwatch-style timer to clock in and out and include the tasks getting worked on.
- Efficiency: Assign employees to specific tasks and effortlessly organize their hours as needed.
- User-Friendly Metrics: Charts and graphs highlight trends and outliers, making it easy to spot meaningful patterns. Generate detailed reports that allow for in-depth analysis of specific points.
- Inclusivity: Use multiple languages including French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese and Russian, perfect for teams working together across the world.
Primary Features
- Time Tracking: Simplify and manage your team’s time tracking with a stopwatch that allows tracking for specific projects, marking it as billable. Display and organize your logged time efficiently using timesheets, which include predefined tasks, projects and schedules.
- Pomodoro Timer: Elevate productivity using the Pomodoro Timer. This browser extension sends notifications when it’s time for a break or time to resume work.
- Compliance & Security: Bolster security using Single Sign-On, which authenticates a user’s login through the company’s secure database. Companies no longer need to rely on multiple databases and security measures, making authentication processes efficient and streamlined.
- Custom Fields: Make task descriptions even more comprehensive using custom fields. The custom fields cater to diverse descriptions, from text and numbers to switches, links and selections. Additionally, links provide external data points to help contextualize job descriptions.
- Time Auditing: Audit time more effectively with a system that flags any suspicious time entries that require review. Highlight incomplete or insufficient time entries for quick changes and better accuracy.
Limitations
- GPS time tracking isn’t included with the free app
- Scheduling features aren’t included with the free app
Pricing
- Free: $0 per user
- Basic (Administration): $3.99 per user per month billed annually
- Standard (Timesheeting and Billing): $5.49 per user per month billed annually
- Pro (Productivity and Profit): $7.99 per user per month billed annually
- Enterprise (Control and Security): $11.99 per user per month billed annually
Clockify’s Kiosk feature is only available as an add-on. The pricing for single kiosk devices are:
- Basic: $0.99 per user per month
- Standard: $1.49 per user per month
- Pro: $1.99 per user per month
- Enterprise: $2.99 per user per month
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Harvest Time Tracking
Harvest Time Tracking is a time and attendance solution providing businesses with project management support like in-depth project projections. The app is ideal for any business size with native Android and iOS mobile applications compatibility.
Track time on or offline and manually add billable or non-billable hours as needed. Use various templates for custom timesheets and lock data from unauthorized edits, ensuring comprehensive monitoring.
Harvest Timesheet.
Top Benefits
- Easy Timesheets: Add work hours on timesheets quickly and accurately with start and stop timers. Monitor time and expenses remotely.
- Improved Invoicing: Enhance communication between employees, contractors and clients through in-app email correspondence, payment reminders and expressions of gratitude.
- Visibility: Personalize time and productivity monitoring visibility for all departments, boosting workplace transparency.
- Project Organization: Ease planning projects with three types including time and materials, fixed fee and non-billable.
- Task Sync: Avoid task repetition by integrating productivity and collaboration software like Trello, Slack and Asana.
Primary Features
- Time Tracking: Efficiently track and manage time with the convenience of start-and-stop timers or completing timesheets. Empower employees to maintain accurate records through automated reminders that prompt them throughout the day.
- Project Monitoring: Maintain project timelines and budgets with real-time updates. Compare budget projections and current costs, ensuring optimal resource allocation. Optimize employee workloads by comparing individual contributions and preventing excessive burdens.
- Reporting: Visualize and analyze data trends with customizable reports, including time utilization, budget analysis, billable hours, workload distribution, and attendance. Gain valuable insights by comparing logged hours across different projects to prioritize tasks effectively.
- ?Communication: Enhance coordination by seamlessly syncing with individual Google and Outlook Calendars, ensuring clarity and minimizing scheduling conflicts. Transform calendar events into automatic time entries, fostering a seamless and accurate record-keeping process.
- Accounting Management: Simplify financial management by automating the tracking of outstanding invoices. Streamline record-keeping by effortlessly exporting financial data to leading accounting providers like QuickBooks Online and Xero, ensuring comprehensive and accurate financial records.
Limitations
- The free version doesn’t include uploading a company logo
- Integration with QuickBooks Online isn’t available in the free version
- Importing projects and people from Asana isn’t available in the free version
- The free plan doesn’t include data importing
- The interface is only available in the English
Pricing
- Free: $0
- Pro: $10.80 per seat per month billed annually
Harvest also offers a 10% discount for users who switch from monthly payments to annual plans.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Everhour
Everhour is a SaaS timekeeping solution with productivity tools like activity tracking. Everhour is ideal for small and medium businesses, with native iOS applications available with the paid plan.
Get premade weekly, bi-weekly and monthly timesheet templates that are easy to download. Remotely track attendance and time spent on tasks for future project planning. Organize assignments with Kanban boards, visualize progress with percentage milestones and add the browser extension with project management tools like Asana, Jira or ClickUp.
EverHour Team Availability.
Top Benefits
- On-the-Go Time Tracking: Track time easily using Everhour on Web, iOS app, or browser extension.
- Manual Time Editing: Admins can manually include or modify employees’ time entries.
- Easy Data Exports: Everhour simplifies exporting reports by providing multiple formats including CSV, Excel and PDFs.
- Enhanced Focus: Set hours or minutes from any device for task time tracking with a digital timer alarm when the countdown ends. View active timers on your screen.
Primary Features
- Timesheets: Online templates and downloadable premade timesheets (weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly) track time spent on specific tasks.
- Project Management: Create projects, tasks and time estimates. Organize project tasks in list view or Kanban boards and track progress with completion percentages for individual tasks or milestones.
- Invoices: With Everhour, it’s easy to generate professional-looking invoices online without any cost. Send your clients estimates via invoice templates. Empower clients to make online payments, and there’s also an option to print or save invoices as a PDF.
- Extensions: Track time using Everhour’s browser extension that can embed natively with project management tools such as Asana, Jira, Basecamp and ClickUp.
Limitations
- No native Android applications
- No time-off feature in the free version
- The free plan excludes reminders
Pricing
- Free: $0 (up to 5 users)
- Lite: $5 per user per month billed annually
- Supports a minimum of 2 users and a max of 10 users. A minimum fee is applicable.
- Team: $8.50 per user per month billed annually
- Supports a minimum of 5 users. A minimum fee is applicable.
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Jibble
Jibble is a cloud-based SaaS time-tracking and project management solution available for native Android and iOS mobile applications. One handy feature is facial recognition log-ins for better security.
The time tracking widget lets employees add time and sync time entries on multiple devices. Customize your leave policies, approve time off and monitor upcoming vacation time all from the app. Employees can track their time, even if their connection is lost with the app’s offline mode. Filter timesheets to find entries from last week or months prior.
Jibble Dashboard.
Top Benefits
- User-Friendly: Ease workplace management with the easy-to-use set-up wizard. Follow the step-by-step instructions, and your staff can log in and out with a single click.
- Custom Views: The system is fully customizable. Create custom views, fields, calculations, objects and rules to fit your needs. With customizable modules, monitoring what each employee is working on is easier than ever.
- Time Theft Prevention: GPS locations and facial recognition eliminate time theft like buddy punching. Photo verification ensures that only authorized personnel can log in.
- Better Productivity: Add what employees should be working on to their schedules, ensuring an efficient workflow. Streamline scheduling by choosing a scheduling type between fixed, flexible or weekly schedules.
Primary Features
- Time Management: Jibble offers multiple ways to track time, including web browsers, mobile devices and kiosks. The time tracking widget feature allows users to add time tracking functionality on device home screens and sync time entries across multiple devices.
- Project Management: Bulk edit multiple activities or projects simultaneously and hide inactive items, like activities, projects and clients. Restore hidden items as needed.
- Leave Management: Administrators and managers can add leave requests on behalf of team members and view past, present, and future requests. Jibble also allows for setting paid and unpaid leave policies for team members.
- Timesheets: Keep your time-tracking efforts on track even when you lose connection with offline Timesheets. Data will be automatically synced with the server once you regain an internet connection.
- Scheduling: Customize schedules, assign break limits and overtime. Ensure your employees are well-rested and compliant with various labor laws. Add defaults and create a customized list of national holidays.
Limitations
- No locking timesheets in the free version
- No exporting timesheets in XLS or CSV file formats in free version
- No setting overtime rules in the free version
Pricing
- Free: $0
- Premium: $2.49 per user per month billed annually
- Ultimate: $4.99 per user per month billed annually
- Enterprise: Custom Pricing
Platform:
Company Size Suitability: S M L
Primary Benefits
According to the BLS, during a typical work week in 2022, 34% of employees worked from home. Aside from a monitor, laptop and maybe a few pens, you can’t bring your entire office setup home with you. Having the flexibility of clocking in and out (and other core tasks) right on your phone is a major perk. Dive into the other benefits below!
Better Productivity
Get a more in-depth look at how employees allocate time. By tracking and analyzing tasks throughout the day, these apps offer valuable insights into time management habits and highlight shortcomings. Also, time-tracking apps often have helpful features like reminders, notifications and goal-setting capabilities that further enhance collaboration.
Enhanced Teamwork
The key to project success is communication, ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding all things time and attendance with real-time updates, messaging and remote PTO requests. Better collaboration also improves accountability and reduces the risk of missed deadlines or schedule conflicts.
Additionally, with an app, team leaders can easily view the progress of each member and adjust their work allocation as needed. Using a time-tracking app, team members are better equipped to communicate and collaborate effectively to achieve their common goals.
Compliance
Non-compliance, even unintentional, puts you at risk of hefty legal fees. Using a time-tracking app improves compliance with labor laws by ensuring accurate attendance recording.
Generating automated reports also helps streamline managing timesheets, further reducing administrative errors. With the ability to track and validate work hours, you can promote a fair work environment for all.
Lower Risk of Time Theft
Time theft costs businesses billions of dollars every year. Effectively eliminate time theft with app features like two-factor authentication and GPS Geofencing technology through time tracking apps. Administrators can also monitor and validate the hours worked remotely, instantly identifying inconsistencies or discrepancies.
Key Features
Let’s look at the key features of time tracking apps.
Automation
Save time and increase efficiency by automatically recording employee working hours, eliminating the need for manual calculations. Automate overtime calculations and PTO, ensuring coverage when vacations occur and on-time payroll.
Overtime Management
At first glance you might think having employees work longer leads to more productivity, but long hours often have a negative impact on employee’s health and safety. Stop workplace fatigue by preventing early clock-ins and closely monitoring overtime.
Leave Management
Review and approve employee hours, ensuring accuracy and eliminating discrepancies. Proactive leave management ultimately leads to happier and more motivated employees, more efficient payroll processing and lower labor costs for the company.
Dashboards
The app’s layout should be clear and concise to enable easy reading and understanding. An organized and clean interface can help reduce confusion, increase productivity and improve time management.
Navigate daily tasks at the office or anywhere else, from adding and deleting projects, starting and stopping the timer, requesting time off and viewing schedules.
Integration From Multiple Devices
Integrate across different devices, like desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. Track employee time in real-time from different locations and devices, as long as there is internet connectivity.
Most time tracking apps also feature an auto-sync feature, automatically saving data when a connection is re-established, preventing you from losing important information.
Reporting
Display tracked hours, highlight important information, like total hours, average time spent per day, week and month and detailed time breakdowns by task.
The reports also commonly filter information to generate custom reports and quickly export information. Analytics tools monitor and adjust work time, ensuring productivity and reducing overtime.
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Tips for Comparing Time Tracking Apps
Finding the best free time tracking app for your business can be overwhelming. It’s not a simple question, but rest assured, it doesn’t have to feel like decoding an ancient Cipher.
Streamline your selection process by making a must-have list of features and draft a comprehensive checklist based on the crucial features and functions.
Recognizing the drawbacks of your current time-tracking approach and identifying how a mobile time and attendance app would address any shortcomings is crucial. Researching online reviews and requesting feedback from colleagues are also pivotal resources throughout your search.
Compare key features and prices to ensure you leverage the benefits of the time and attendance app while remaining within your budget. If you find yourself swamped with numerous options, keep your checklist handy, like a flashlight on a camping trip.
Compare Top Time and Attendance Software Leaders
Next Steps
Without innovation, we’d still take horseback rides to work instead of cars. Like other modern inventions, a free time tracking app revolutionizes how you conduct daily tasks. Time is money; with these free time tracking apps, you won’t break the budget (without compromising quality).
With advanced features like automated reminders, invoicing and reports, time-tracking apps take the hassle out of time management, giving you more time to focus on other day-to-day tasks.
Still unsure which product is right for you? Simplify your search by checking out our free comparison report, where you can see how leading systems stack up, with features scores, product ratings and more.
Which free time tracking app stood out to you? Which time and attendance features are on your must-have list? Let us know in the comments below!
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Comparison Report: An interactive analyst report with comparison ratings, reviews and pricing for Time and Attendance software