Updated August 2026

Clockify alternative, for one person who never presses start

We build a competing tracker, so read this with that in mind. Clockify is a good product and, for teams, often the correct one. This page is about the case where it is the wrong shape: you are one person, nobody is billing anybody, and the timer keeps not getting started.

Is Clockify free?

Yes, for up to five users, and the free plan is unusually complete: unlimited tracking, timesheets, an auto tracker, calendar, mobile and desktop apps, Pomodoro, idle detection, integrations and reports.

How much does Clockify cost?

Basic $4.99 per seat per month ($3.99 annually), Standard $6.99 ($5.49), Pro $9.99 ($7.99), Enterprise $14.99 ($11.99). Every active or invited user takes a paid seat.

Is Clockify good for individuals?

It works, and the free plan is generous for one person. But it is shaped for teams billing hours, and the tracking is fundamentally manual: you start and stop a timer, or fill in a timesheet afterwards.

What Clockify does better than us

It is cheaper. Basic is $3.99 a seat annually against our $6 a month, and the free plan covers up to five users with more in it than most paid tools.

It also does things we do not do at all: timesheets, projects, billable rates, invoicing, team dashboards, admin controls, kiosk mode, and apps on every platform including Windows, Linux, mobile and web.

If more than one person needs to see the data, or any of it turns into an invoice, stop here. Clockify does that and we do not.

The one problem

Clockify is built around the assumption that someone will tell it what happened, because in its core use case someone must: the entry becomes a bill, so a human has to stand behind it.

When nobody is being billed, that requirement has no upside left. It is pure cost, paid at every context switch, and it is the reason solo timesheets end up with the messy hours missing. The calm days get logged. The scattered ones do not, and those are the ones worth seeing.

The auto tracker helps you reconstruct afterwards, but reconstruction is still a chore performed later, and later is when it stops happening.

Clockify versus Cronus

ClockifyCronus
PriceFree up to 5 users, then $3.99–$14.99 per seat$6 a month
Built forTeams billing hoursOne person, no billing
Requires an action from youYes, timer or timesheetNo
Interprets what time meantNo, you label itYes, against your goals
Invoicing, rates, projectsYesNone
Team dashboardsYesNo
PlatformsWeb, Mac, Windows, Linux, mobilemacOS, Windows in progress

The difference that decides it

Clockify is an accounting tool for hours someone is paying for. Cronus is an awareness tool for hours nobody is paying for.

That is why one asks you to confirm everything and the other asks you for nothing. A billing record has to be defensible, so a human signs it. A picture of your week only has to be true enough to show you that Wednesday afternoon vanished into Slack, which is a bar a model can clear unsupervised.

Cronus showing a day broken down by what the time was in service of

Which to pick

Stay with Clockify if anyone bills hours, more than one person needs the data, or you need Windows, Linux or mobile. The free tier is genuinely hard to beat.

Try Cronus if you are tracking only for your own benefit, and the honest reason your timesheet looks tidy is that the chaotic hours never made it in.

Three days free, then $6 a month

The trial only counts days you actually use the app. Cronus never captures your screen.

Longer write-ups: why manual trackers fail, the genuinely free options.