Billable Hours Tracker: 6 Compared on 5 Criteria
A billable hours tracker is a narrower thing than a time tracker. A time tracker records duration. A billable hours tracker has to do three more jobs: know which of those hours a client actually owes you for, attach a rate to them, and get them onto an invoice without you retyping anything. Plenty of tools claim all four steps on their homepage. Fewer do the last two well, and the gap between "tracks time" and "gets you paid for it" is where most of the frustration in this category lives.
The trouble with picking one is that every vendor's feature list looks identical from the outside. So rather than open with a ranking, this guide opens with the criteria — the five questions that actually separate these tools once you're using one every day — and then applies them to six options. Where a tool is the wrong choice, it says so. One disclosure up front: BillNotch is our own product — who builds it and why is a separate page you can read before deciding how much weight to give our section. It's on the list because it fits a specific case, it's judged on the same five criteria as everything else, and the section on it names the two reasons you might pick something else instead.
What actually separates these trackers in daily use?
Five criteria, in the order they tend to matter once the novelty of a new tool wears off.
1. How time gets captured. There are three models and they are not interchangeable. A manual timer you start and stop. An activity log the app records in the background and you review and approve into entries. And automatic capture, where the app records what you worked on and sorts it into projects itself. The more the model leans on your memory, the more hours leak out of it — and the hours most likely to go missing are the short, scattered ones: the five-minute reply, the quick review, the call that ran long. If forgotten timers are your actual problem, swapping one manual timer for another won't fix it. How to track billable hours accurately covers why the gap opens in the first place.
2. Where invoicing lives. This is the criterion people underweight and later regret. There are three real answers: a native invoice generated from your billable total; a report export you can save as a PDF but that isn't an invoice the tool keeps track of; or nothing, and you rebuild the numbers in separate billing software. The closer invoicing sits to capture, the fewer hours are lost in the handoff — and the fewer transcription errors end up in front of a client.
3. The shape of the price, not just the number. Flat pricing is predictable. Per-seat pricing scales with headcount, which is fair and easy to forecast. Usage-based pricing — where invoices, projects, or clients each add to the bill — can be cheaper at small scale and much harder to predict as your roster grows. Compare the shape before the sticker.
4. Platform coverage. Web works everywhere; a desktop app is what makes automatic capture possible at all. If you're on Linux, the field narrows sharply — most of this category ships Windows and macOS only.
5. What leaves your machine. A tool that watches your desktop is a tool you should ask questions of. What does it record, what does it upload, where is it processed, and can you turn parts of it off per device?
Two things this guide deliberately does not score: integration depth (genuinely important, but entirely dependent on which other tools you run) and mobile apps (most billable desk work isn't done on a phone). Prices and plan limits in this category move often — treat every number below as a map, not a quote.
The six, side by side
Details as of June 2026 — verify on each vendor's pricing page before you commit.
| Tool | How it captures | Invoicing | Paid plans start at | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toggl Track | Activity log + manual timer | Report export, no invoices | $9/user/mo annual (Starter) | Windows, macOS |
| Harvest | Manual timer | Native, on every plan | $9/seat/mo annual + usage fees | Windows, macOS |
| Clockify | Manual timer | Native, Standard tier up | $3.99/seat/mo annual (Basic) | Windows, macOS, Linux, web |
| TimeCamp | Automatic desktop activity | Native, lowest paid tier | about $3.99/user/mo (Starter) | Windows, macOS, Linux, web |
| My Hours | Manual timer | Native, paid plans | about $4/user/mo annual (Basic) | Web |
| BillNotch | Automatic active-window + AI sorting | Native PDF + CSV | $9/mo flat (Pro), $12/seat (Team) | Windows, macOS, Linux |
Toggl Track
The most polished product in the group and the one with the deepest reporting. Its desktop apps record an activity log in the background that you review and approve into entries — so it sits between a manual timer and true automatic capture, and it does not sort your activity into client projects for you. The catch for billing specifically: Toggl does not generate invoices. You can export a report as a PDF, but those exports aren't stored as invoices in the app and there's no billing module behind them. Billable rates require the paid Starter plan ($9 per user per month billed annually, $10 monthly); the free plan covers up to five users but can't mark time billable at all. Premium is $18 per user per month annually. No Linux desktop app. Pick it if reporting is what you're buying and invoicing already lives elsewhere. The full breakdown is in BillNotch vs Toggl Track.
Harvest
The strongest billing heritage on this list, and the only tool here that includes invoicing on a $0 plan — one seat and two projects, but within those limits you get tracking and invoicing together, which is unusual. Paid plans are Teams at $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) and Enterprise at $14 per seat annually. The thing to understand before you commit is structural: after Bending Spoons acquired Harvest in July 2025, it added usage-based fees on top of the per-seat rate for things like additional invoices, projects, and clients. Worth being precise about this, because it's often reported wrong — the per-seat rate itself didn't rise. What changed is that the total is now metered, which makes it harder to forecast as your client list grows. Capture is a plain manual timer; no Linux. The Harvest price change explained has the detail, and BillNotch vs Harvest has the side-by-side.
Clockify
The value pick, and it isn't close. Per-seat annual rates run Basic $3.99, Standard $5.49, Pro $7.99, Enterprise $11.99, with monthly billing higher. Note where invoicing starts: Standard ($5.49) is the first tier that includes it — Free and Basic don't, and billable rates need at least Basic. In 2026 the free plan was capped at five users, down from an earlier uncapped free tier, and invoicing plus CSV/Excel export moved to paid; Clockify's 2026 free plan changes covers exactly what moved. Capture is a manual timer at heart. It does ship a real Linux build, which is rare here. Pick it if budget is the binding constraint or you're standardizing a larger team — on price per seat, nothing else on this list competes.
TimeCamp
The interesting middle. Its free plan includes unlimited users and unlimited projects — uncapped where Clockify now stops at five — and it does automatic tracking through a desktop app that records computer and app activity, including a Linux build. Invoicing is not free, but it starts on the lowest paid tier (Starter, around $3.99 per user per month annually), which makes it the cheapest paid invoicing in this comparison. Confirm the current plan names and prices directly, as this lineup has changed. Pick it if you need free automatic tracking for more than five people, or you want automatic capture at the lowest possible paid price.
My Hours
The simplest tool here, and the one that asks the least of you. The free plan covers up to five users with core tracking, unlimited projects and clients, and basic reporting. Invoicing is paid-only — Basic from about $4 per user per month annually, Pro from about $8. It's a manual tracker with no automatic capture and no desktop tracking, so it does nothing about forgotten timers. Pick it if you already log hours reliably and want tidy, low-cost project-and-client tracking without a learning curve.
BillNotch
Ours, judged on the same five criteria. Capture is automatic active-window recording on Windows, macOS, and Linux with no timer to start; keyword rules plus optional AI sort that activity into client projects, and anything the tracker is unsure about waits as a draft on a review screen rather than being assigned silently. Billable status is inherited per project, so the total is right without per-entry tagging, and it becomes a native PDF invoice or CSV export. A Revenue Leak Finder flags billable time you tracked but never invoiced — the revenue leak that separate tracking and billing tools structurally cannot see. Pricing is flat with no usage fees: Pro $9/month for one seat, Team $12/seat/month, 14-day trial, no card. On privacy, window titles can stay on-device per machine, each device connects with an API key you issue and revoke, data is processed on EU servers, and it's never sold. There's a fuller walkthrough on the automatic time tracker page.
Two honest reasons to pick something else. Price: $9 is more than Clockify's $3.99 Basic and there is no free tier — if you want a $0 plan, Clockify or TimeCamp is the answer, not this. Capture style: always-on recording is the heaviest model on this list, and if you'd rather decide yourself when the clock is running, a manual timer will feel better no matter how much it costs you in forgotten hours.
Which billable hours tracker fits your situation?
Sort yourself by the constraint that's real, not the feature list that's appealing.
- You want a free plan. TimeCamp for uncapped free users and automatic capture; Clockify's free tier for up to five users with tracking only; Harvest's free tier if the thing you need free is invoicing and one seat is enough.
- Budget is the hard limit. Clockify. Add Standard if you need invoicing inside it.
- Forgotten timers are the problem. Automatic capture: TimeCamp if price leads, BillNotch if you want the categorization and the invoice at the end of it.
- You're on Linux. Clockify, TimeCamp, or BillNotch. That's the list.
- Reporting depth matters most. Toggl Track, with billing handled elsewhere.
- You want tracking and invoicing in one place. Harvest or BillNotch — a manual timer with mature invoicing, or automatic capture with invoicing built on top.
The bottom line
There is no best billable hours tracker, only the best match for the way your hours currently go missing. If they go missing because you forget to start something, buy a different capture model. If they go missing between the tracker and the invoice, buy a tool that holds both. If neither is your problem and you just want the cheapest reliable log, the cheapest reliable log is the right purchase.
Whatever you land on, the two decisions that outlast every feature comparison are the capture model and the price shape — those are the ones you can't easily undo six months in. And before you shop at all, it's worth knowing your own numbers: how to calculate billable hours covers the arithmetic, and billable vs non-billable hours covers the harder question of what you should have been charging for in the first place.