Cronus vs Rize

Both track your time automatically on macOS. Both say "AI." They are aimed at genuinely different people, and the fastest way to choose is to work out which one you are.

Short version: Rize is a productivity platform with time tracking inside it. Cronus is a time tracker. If you want the platform, pay for Rize. If you want the answer, Cronus is $6 a month.

At a glance

| | Cronus | Rize | |---|---|---| | Price | $6/mo after a three-day trial | $12.99 / $28.99 / $49.99 per month | | AI metering | None | 500 / 1,000 / 3,000 credits per month | | Categorization | AI infers from context | Rule-assisted, asks when unsure | | Goal-aware | Yes | No | | Screen captured | No | No | | Focus blocking | Nudges only | Blocking, Pomodoro, focus music | | API / webhooks | No | Yes, on Pro | | Client reports | No | Yes, on Pro | | Free trial | 3 days | 7 days, no card | | Platforms | macOS, Windows in progress | macOS, Windows |

Categorization: the difference that matters

This is the whole comparison, so it is worth going slowly.

Rize classifies activity largely by rules against known applications and domains. It has real AI in the product now, including chat with frontier models, but the categorization backbone is still substantially a lookup. When it meets something outside that ruleset, it asks:

Each prompt is trivial. Collectively they are the reason people stop opening the app.

Cronus reads the app name, window title and browser URL and uses a model to infer what the activity is, then judges it against the goals you have set. There is no ruleset, so nothing falls outside one.

The consequence is a class of judgment Rize structurally cannot make. Take YouTube. A rule engine has to decide once and for all whether youtube.com is productive, and it will be wrong roughly half the time. Cronus can call the same video research when you are learning a library for the project you told it about, and a distraction when you are not, because it is reasoning about context rather than matching a string.

If your work is conventional and stable, rules cover most of it and Rize will feel fine. If your work involves unfamiliar tools, wide research, or the same sites meaning different things on different days, the gap gets wide fast.

Price

Rize runs four tiers, and every individual plan is metered by AI credits.

The line at the bottom of their pricing page is the honest summary: plans "differ by AI credit allotment only." Max at $49.99/mo adds a bigger credit balance and priority support over Pro at $28.99, and nothing else.

Cronus is $6 a month, after a three-day free trial. One price, one product, no tiers above it and no credits metering the categorization. The trial only counts days you actually use the app, so trying it and then not opening it for a week does not burn it.

That is roughly half Rize's cheapest tier and an eighth of its most expensive.

Worth being clear about what that buys: Cronus is a smaller product with a narrower job. You are not getting Rize for less, you are getting something else.

Complexity

A Basic Rize subscription includes automatic tracking, AI auto-categorization and tagging, AI chat with frontier models, productivity and focus insights, focus music, smart breaks, personal reports, exports and integrations. Pro adds an efficiency dashboard, AI automations and agents, an MCP server, an API, webhooks and Zapier.

That is a lot of product for the question "where did my time go."

Cronus does one thing. There is a timeline, there is what the time meant, and there is a nudge when it is going somewhere you did not choose. No Pomodoro timer, no focus music, no credit balance.

Whether that reads as elegant or as missing features depends entirely on whether you wanted those features.

Blocking vs nudging

Rize will show a popup when you land on a site it considers distracting, and has focus sessions and Pomodoro timers built in.

Cronus deliberately does not block. It tells you what is happening and leaves the decision to you. This is a considered position rather than a missing feature: hard blockers get disabled. The failure mode of a wall is that you climb over it once and then remove it. The failure mode of a nudge is that you ignore one, which costs you nothing tomorrow.

If you have used blockers successfully for years, this is a point in Rize's favour and you should weight it.

Privacy

Neither product captures your screen. Rize states plainly that it does no screenshots or keylogging, and that is true.

Cronus reads window metadata through macOS accessibility permissions: app name, window title, browser URL. Sensitive information is redacted on your device before anything is transmitted, so it never reaches our servers. We are GDPR compliant, you can pause tracking whenever you want, and you can revoke accessibility permission at any time. Details in our privacy policy.

This one is close to a tie, and anyone claiming a dramatic gap is overselling.

Where Rize genuinely wins

We would rather say this plainly than have you find out later.

• Client billing. Scheduled reports in PDF and CSV, project profitability, an efficiency dashboard. Cronus has none of this.
• API, webhooks, Zapier, MCP. If you want to pipe your time data somewhere, Rize can and Cronus cannot.
• Enterprise requirements. SOC 2, SSO and SCIM on their Enterprise tier.
• Windows, today. Rize ships it. Ours is in progress.
• Blocking, if blocking works for you.

Where Cronus wins

• Categorization that does not need maintaining, and that understands context rather than domains.
• Goal awareness, which no rule engine can replicate.
• $6 a month, with no credit meter on the one feature you actually came for.
• A product you can hold in your head.

The verdict

Pay for Rize if you bill clients, need an API, or need Windows today.

Use Cronus if the question you have is simply where your time is going, and you would like it answered accurately, continuously, without configuration, and without deciding whether you have enough AI credits left this month.

Download Cronus. About a minute to set up, three days free, then $6 a month.