Clockify’s pitch for years was simple: free forever, unlimited users. That is no longer true. Clockify’s free plan is now capped at five users, and invoicing, billable rates, time off and approvals have all moved behind the paywall, with free reports limited to a one-month date range. If you picked Clockify because it was free at any team size, check your account — the plan you chose does not exist any more.
What they cost in 2026
| Free tier | First paid tier | Leans toward | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Toggl Track | Limited users (Toggl does not publish the number) | Starter — $9/user/mo annual | Knowing where time went |
| Clockify | Up to 5 users | Basic — $3.99/user/mo annual | Broad coverage, cheaply |
| Harvest | 1 seat, 2 projects | Teams — $9/seat/mo annual ($11 monthly) | Getting invoices paid |
Two things to flag before you budget. Toggl Premium is $14 a licence for the first year of an annual plan, then renews at $18 — a 29% jump most people will not see coming. And Harvest has moved to hybrid billing: its own pricing page states that above the included allowances, “additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use.” Harvest does not publish those per-unit rates, so a growing agency cannot forecast its bill from the pricing page alone. That is worth knowing before you standardise a team on it.
Invoicing is the cleanest dividing line
If you bill hourly, this section is the whole comparison.
- Harvest invoices on the free plan. Time and expenses flow into an invoice, payment comes back through Stripe or PayPal, and invoices and payments sync to QuickBooks Online and Xero. Even at one seat and two projects, a freelancer can run a complete track-to-paid loop for nothing.
- Clockify invoices from Standard, $5.49 a seat, including recurring invoices and a QuickBooks integration. Invoicing was on the free plan before the 2026 change and is not any more.
- Toggl Track effectively does not invoice. Its pricing page lists “billing reports” from Starter, and that is the honest description — it will tell you what is billable and export it, then hand off to whatever actually sends the invoice.
Free-tier mechanics: Clockify still wins, even capped
The five-user cap hurts, but for a team that fits under it Clockify’s free plan remains the most generous on the actual mechanics of tracking. Pomodoro timer, idle detection, an auto tracker, calendar view and reminders are all free, across iOS, Android, macOS, Windows and Linux. Its browser extension is free and open source, injecting a timer button into roughly 90 apps including Asana and Jira — the strongest free integration story of the three. Screenshots, activity monitoring and GPS are Pro-only, which is the right side of the line for most people.
The catch is reporting: free reports are limited to a one-month date range. Fine for “where did last month go”, useless for a year-end review.
Toggl’s advantage is friction, not features. One keystroke starts and stops a timer, the browser extension puts it inside the tools you already work in, idle detection catches a forgotten timer, and the Autotracker suggests entries based on what software you are actually using. Desktop activity tracking and calendar auto-tracking are on the free plan. That matters more than any feature list, because the failure mode of time tracking is not missing features — it is people forgetting to press start.
Where approvals and rates actually sit
Timesheet approvals are the feature teams discover they need in month three, and the price varies by nearly three times.
| Capability | Toggl | Clockify | Harvest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billable rates | Starter, $9 | Basic, $3.99 | Teams, $9 |
| Timesheet approvals | Premium, $14 then $18 | Standard, $5.49 | Enterprise, $14 |
| Lock past time | — | Standard, $5.49 | — |
| Hide others’ time | — | Basic, $3.99 | — |
| SSO | Premium | Enterprise, $11.99 | Enterprise, $14 |
Approvals cost $5.49 at Clockify and $14 at Harvest for broadly the same function. If approvals are what you are buying, Clockify Standard is the cheapest serious answer by some distance.
Reporting and profitability
Toggl’s free reports (Summary, Detailed, Workload) are personal; team-level and billing reports arrive at Starter, and profitability, utilisation and custom reports at Premium. Its reports are shareable by link and can be scheduled for automatic delivery, and rates can be set per workspace, member, project, project member or task, with historical rates editable.
Clockify puts custom export at Basic, emailed reports at Pro, and labour cost and profit at Pro. Harvest reserves profitability reporting and unlimited custom reports for Enterprise at $14 a seat — the most expensive route to “is this client actually making us money”, though also the one most tightly coupled to real invoices.
Recent changes worth knowing
- Clockify cut its free plan to five users and moved invoicing, rates, time off and approvals to paid tiers. Confirmed on Clockify’s own pricing page.
- Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025, and its 2026 repricing introduced the usage-based component described above.
- Toggl Premium’s $14 introductory rate renews at $18.
What we would pick
- Freelancer who bills hourly: Harvest free, then Teams at $9. Nothing else invoices at zero.
- Team of five or fewer, no budget: Clockify free — still the best free mechanics, if you can live with one-month reports.
- Team that needs approvals: Clockify Standard at $5.49. Harvest wants $14 for the same thing.
- You just want the habit to stick: Toggl. The lowest-friction timer of the three, and that is the only feature that actually matters if nobody presses start.
Time tracking works better attached to real projects — here are the free project management tools worth using.
Prices verified against vendor pricing pages in September 2026. Harvest does not publish its usage-based overage rates — ask before you commit a growing team.
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