5 Best Time Tracking Apps [2021 Review]

Time tracking apps can be a life saver if you want to keep track of where your time goes. There are several applications in the market for tracking your time, depending on your needs. As an student, you might want to keep track of where your time goes, so that you can plan your study sessions and assignments effectively. As a business owner, you might want to keep track of the time your employees spend on projects. If you’re a working professional you may want to become more efficient at managing your work tasks.

What are the best time tracking apps?

To help you choose the right time tracking app for you, I’ve compiled a list of the best time tracking apps based on their key features and ease of use. These apps automatically track time from all your favorite tools and devices and help manage team availability, offer visualization, analytics, reporting and some apps even offer expense tracking.

1. RescueTime

RescueTime is a popular time tracking tool which has over 2 million users. The best thing about RescueTime is that its unobtrusive. All you have to do is install RescueTime on your computer and the app does the rest for you. It keeps track of the websites and applications you visit and you can classify them as productive or unproductive.

Key Features:

• Availability – RescueTime is available for both online and offline use
• Automatic Time tracking – This allows you to track time spent on apps and websites you visit
• Detailed reporting – You get detailed reporting on where your time is going
• Custom Work Hours & Burnout Protection – You can set you work hours and set up alerts to prevent overworking and avoid burnout
• 1-Click Offline Time Tracking – When you need to step away for meetings or calls, you can set up offline time with a single click so that you get a more accurate picture of your day.

Pricing: RescueTime offers a free trial for 14 days and starts at $9 per month or $72 per year (4 months are free if you opt for the annual plan).

Platforms: RescueTime is available for download on Desktop, Mobile or as Browser extensions.

2. Toggl

Toggl is one of my favorite time tracking applications. It’s a delightful app that has a simple design and is intuitive to use. With a single click you can track your time, by clicking on ‘start’ when you start a task.

Key Features:

• Availability – Toggle is available for both online and offline use
• Tracking Reminders – The app reminds you when you’re not tracking your time.
• App integrations – Toggl has over 100+ app integrations, so that you don’t have to switch back and forth between applications
• Manual Time Entries – Toggl also lets you log your time manually
• Calendar Integration – The app detects when you have meetings so that you can turn your calendar entries into time entries on Toggl
• Reporting – Toggl has some neat reporting features, which allow filtering of your time tracking data
• Tracking Reminders – Toggl also allows you to send reminders to your team to track their time.
• Insights – This feature in Toggle gives you actionable insights and data about the clients and projects that are profitable.

Pricing: Toggl’s free plan with basic time tracking is available for 5 members after which Toggl charges on a per user basis. Toggl’s Starter plan is priced at $9 per month and the Premium plan is billed at $18 per month.

Platforms: Toggl is available for the web, windows desktop and as iPhone and Android apps as well as Chrome and Firefox Add-ons.

3. Harvest

Harvest, started in 2006, is another great time tracking app helps you track your time as you work on projects. It’s has great features to track time for teams as well.

Key Features:

• App Integrations – Harvest integrates with more than 100 applications
• Time and Expense Tracking – The app has both time and expense tracking features that let you invoice your clients.
• Powerful Reporting – Harvest turns time tracking data into reports that give you actionable insights. You can look at the time spent by your team on projects and prevent burnout.

Pricing: Harvest has a 30-day free trial and its free plan supports a single user with 2 projects, while the Pro plan supports unlimited users and projects

Platforms: Harvest is available on for the web, Windows and Mac desktops, iPhone and Android apps as well as Chrome and Firefox Add-ons.

4. Timely

Timely is another time tracking app that works a little differently. If you’re the kind of person that likes to carve out blocks of time to work on different projects, then Timely is the best app for you. You can plan blocks ahead of time and move them around according to your project needs.

Key Features:

• Automatic time tracking – Timely captures all the apps and websites that you spend time on.
• Team time tracking – With this feature you can track the time sheets of your team, and see where your team spends its time using customized tagging.
• Reporting – You also can share reports of the time spent by the team to different departments with a single click.
• Project time tracking – With dashboards, it becomes very easy to see how the project time is spent and how much time each team member has spent on each project. You can also get project activity feeds and track your budget against the projects.
• Integrations – Timely integrates with more than 100 apps making it easy to track your time from one place.

Pricing: Timely has a 30-day free trial and has the following three pricing tiers ranging from $5 per month to $18 per month. The Moonlight tier supports 5 projects whereas the Professional tier can support up to 125 projects. All plans include Timely’s basic features, whereas the Freelancer and the Professional tier also support more AI driven advanced features.

Platforms: Timely is available for the Web, Mac and Windows desktops as well as iPhone and Android Apps.

5. HourStack

HourStack is a time tracking tool whose look and feel is apt for those who like to plan blocks of time in their day to work on specific projects. You can move blocks of time around as priorities shift in your day or week. It’s great for individuals or small teams or agencies.

Key Features:

• Team Time Tracking – With this feature you can visualize how time is spent across different teams and get real time updates on tasks your team is working on.
• Reporting – This feature helps you understand the utilization of team members across projects and improve your efficiency.
• Integrations – HourStack integrates with 10 different tools such as Slack, Asana, Trello etc enabling you to track your time across these applications.
• Multiple Workspaces – HourStack supports multiple workspaces, which would be ideal for managing several clients. You can have projects, teams and users set up separately for each workspace.

Pricing: HourStack has a 14-day trial period after which you can opt in to any of these three pricing tiers, Personal, Professional and Enterprise. The Personal plan is priced at $5.60 per user and does not have reporting features that are included in the Professional plan. You also have a 20% discount if you opt to pay annually.

Platforms: HourStack is available for the Web and as iPhone and Android Apps.