When I started out as a freelancer, time monitoring felt a little like Ayn Randian surveillance from a dystopian overlord. (I was also 23 and fresh off an English degree.) But for the ones doing the employing, it's an indispensable tool for equitable resource allocation, transparent client billing, budgeting, and maybe a tasteful pinch of dystopian oversight.

Whether it's for internal teams or external partners, to track time effectively, you need user-friendly timesheet software that integrates into your workflows. So for those overlords who need to record, monitor, and report on work time on a budget, I've rounded up the best free timesheet software options on the market that can do all of the above.

The best free timesheet software

• Toggl Track for overall utility

• Jibble for unlimited users

• Connecteam for small teams

• busybusy for field teams

• Clockify for integrations

• OfficeTimer for check-in/check-out

• TMetric for client billing

• Traqq for activity monitoring

• TrackingTime for task management

• Everhour for interactive timesheets

What makes great free timesheet software?

Timesheet software is somewhat different from pure time tracking apps, which are usually productivity apps meant for personal timekeeping. Timesheet software, on the other hand, offers time tracking for multiple team members and has additional reporting features for use cases like client billing and resource scoping. Of course, some tools do both.

To be considered for this list, each timesheet app had to offer, at minimum:

• A generous free plan: It's not just that the free plan exists, but that it has robust utility that makes it genuinely useful without upgrades. I excluded tools with free trials but no actual free plans.

• Time tracking: Each tool has real-time time tracking capabilities, which may include additional features like keylogging, screenshots, and the ability to link directly to external apps.

• Project management: Beyond simple time tracking, these tools can also handle basic project management tasks like role assignment, workflow visualization, project module creation, scheduling, and task organization.

• Reporting: All the timesheet software on this list has reporting capabilities to monitor time allocation, export reports, invoice clients, review billing, and track budgets.

• Integrations: Each app can integrate directly with popular CRMs, task management apps, and SEO tools.

• Reviews. Since there are so many free timesheet apps out there, testing every single option would have taken weeks (which I could have logged with yet another timesheet app). Instead, I also narrowed my testing list down by looking at user reviews on aggregator sites like G2 and third-party reviewers.

The best free timesheet software at a glance

Best overall free timesheet software

Toggl Track (Web)

Toggl Track pros:

• Sharp, dynamic interface

• Convenient tracking and rich reporting

• Multiple premium features at the free level

Toggl Track cons:

• Limited to five free users

• Billable rates and tasks are available only for paid plans

It's probably no surprise to see a Toggl product here, and no surprise to Toggl Track users that this product gets the nod for best overall free timesheet software. In fact, it's also on Zapier's list of best time tracking apps and even serves as a great personal productivity tool.

Toggl Track has the best user experience (UX) of any tool on this list. The design is sharp, the dashboards are customizable, the modules are dynamic, the layout is well structured, and the dark purple/pink color scheme is fire. Once you add team members, tags, projects, and clients, you can easily churn workdays into timesheets in the reporting module. Users can track their time on the go from a browser, desktop, mobile app, or within over 100 third-party applications via browser extensions—or just by typing it into the timesheet or timer module manually, the way our ancestors did.

For the free plan, you get quite a few premium perks that other free plans tend to exclude, like a Pomodoro timer, idle time detection, automated time tracking triggers, team access level management, and exportable reports. Toggl doesn't give it all away, though. You'll have to pay if you want to change billable rates, save reports, use pre-populated project templates, and—notably—divide projects into tasks.

Toggl Track is a premium tool with one of the more generous free plans, offering premium features and unlimited tracking, projects, and tags for up to five users. For bigger teams with the budget, it's definitely worth ponying up to paid plans. ​​

You can do even more with Toggl Track by connecting it to Zapier, so you can do things like automatically start your timer when calendar events start. Learn more about how to automate Toggl Track, or get started with one of these pre-made workflows.

Toggl Track pricing: Free ($0, 5 users), Starter ($10/month/user), Premium ($20/month/user), Enterprise (pricing by request)

Best free timesheet software for unlimited users

Jibble (Web)

Jibble pros:

• User-friendly interface

• Robust features for on-site and virtual time monitoring

• Premium tier upgrades are very affordable

Jibble cons:

• Free tier caps at one admin

• Have to upgrade for other key limitations like overtime reporting, leave approval, and client tracking

In a world of premium tools with limited free plans, there aren't many full-utility free options out there. Jibble is basically an inversion of that model—instead of cutting lots of features from its core offering to create a free plan, Jibble starts out as a robust free tool that has premium add-ons.

Most users with small teams should be pretty satisfied with Jibble, which has a sleek interface. Despite its billing as a free tool, it has a premium feel that's very easy to learn. Logging time is intuitive, and timesheets integrate data instantly, allowing you to toggle between time entry and payroll views to track user time and dive into shifts to see how that time was spent. I also like how you can log time from any module from the top nav, which allows you to clock in, add time, and even include breaks on the fly.

Jibble has an impressive menu of features compared to the usual free plan fare. On the time tracking side, you get unlimited use across browsers, mobile apps, and an on-site kiosk. For those on-site use cases, you also get facial recognition, selfie capturing, PIN verification, and geofencing to limit where employees can clock in and out. You even get automated timesheets, leave administration, report scheduling, and the ability to set billable rates by user profile.

Granted, there is a bit of a catch to all this free utility. The base tier excludes functionality for: 

• XLS and CSV exporting

• Attendance reports

• Leave approval and accrual

• Overtime calculations

• Custom pay periods

• Client tracking

• Live location tracking

• Multiple kiosks

• Assignment of more than one admin role

Those limitations could be deal-breakers for some organizations, but for those who need more, even the two premium tiers are very affordable. If you're looking for a free timesheet tool at an organizational level, every option has limitations—Jibble just has way fewer than the competition.

And by integrating Jibble with Zapier, you can do things like log new clock-ins in Google Sheets rows. Here are a couple more workflows to get you started.

Jibble pricing: Free (€0, unlimited users), Premium (€3.99/user/month), Ultimate (€7.99/user/month)

Best free timesheet software for small teams

Connecteam (Web)

Connecteam pros:

• Wide range of customizable cross-functional features

• Generous 10-user limit for a full-feature free plan

• Great user experience

Connecteam cons:

• Modular pricing can be a little complicated

• Timesheet functionality isn't a focus

Connecteam is unique free employee time clock software. Its wide range of operations, HR, and communication tools make it almost more of a lite enterprise resource planning platform or employee management software than a basic time manager. 

Aside from time-oriented modules for timesheets, scheduling, time clocking, time off requests, job reporting, and task creation, you also get unique features like chats, directories, knowledge base creation, surveys, document management, and internal course creation. You can even digitize forms and individual form elements, so you can do wildly cool (if you think corporate workflow stuff is cool) things like save and tag signatures and logos to drop into new forms, tasks, and workflows.

Connecteam's interface is one of the best I've tested. It's deceptively simple for how many features it has, and can be customized to keep the modules you need handy. I love (no surprise) the drag-and-drop interfaces and how easily you can color code, label, tag, edit, and duplicate just about any type of entry—then turn them into templates.

Honestly, I'm shocked at how good this free offering is. Reviewing all these timesheet products, I noticed a general theme for free plans: they either offer all features for very few users or limited features for unlimited users. Connecteam is somewhere in between, with full-feature access for up to 10 users—well above the one to three users you get for most full-feature free plans. But I like Connecteam because it's not just one of the more generous free plans out there—it's also one of the most feature-rich ones. 

Granted, there's a reason there are four paid tiers above the free plan—premium access comes with other perks like more templates, app shortcuts, additional automated reports, and advanced settings. But if you've got 10 users or less, grab this free plan before they start charging for it.

Connecteam pricing: The Small Business Plan ($0, 10 users), Basic ($35/month, 30 users), Advanced ($49/month, 30 users), Expert ($119/month, 30 users), Enterprise (pricing by request)

Best free timesheet software for field teams

busybusy (Web)

busybusy pros:

• Equipment monitoring

• Granular timesheet views

• Customization for leave and overtime

busybusy cons:

• Kiosk and photo verification are premium features

• No scheduling at the free tier

• Paid plans are fairly expensive

Most timesheet products focus free features on managing time for remote teams, but busybusy puts their eggs in the on-site basket. Designed for the construction vertical, busybusy is easily the best option on this list for meeting IRL check-in/check-out needs.

At the free tier, busybusy has solid features for general time clocking for unlimited users. Employees can punch in or input their time manually, populating the time card interfaces with bird's-eye-view stats for regular time, overtime, PTO, and sick leave. Unlike some other free options, busybusy can customize overtime, lets users customize break and sick leave documentation, and includes job costing functionality.

For those in construction, manufacturing, and verticals with physical equipment, busybusy also has some pretty unique features, like:

• Equipment listing, tracking, and monitoring

• Machine hour logging

• Fuel level reporting

• Mobile reporting

• Employee break and activity reporting

If you want features like kiosk check-ins, photo verification, progress tracking, safety reports, and scheduling, you'll need to bump up to premium plans. But if you're looking for pretty basic equipment and time logging, busybusy's free plan is the best option you'll find.

And to make it even more useful, you can integrate Zapier with busybusy to do things like automatically send emails in Gmail when projects are updated. Here are a couple more workflows for inspiration, but you can connect busybusy with thousands of apps using Zapier

busybusy pricing: Free ($0, unlimited users), Pro ($11.99/user/month), Premium ($17.99/user/month)

Best free timesheet software for integrations

Clockify (Web)

Clockify pros:

• Free plan includes projects, tasks, and clients

• Integrates readily with many popular project management tools

• API and webhooks available at free level

Clockify cons:

• Clocking time is a little clunky

• Very limited scheduling utility at the free tier

Clockify may be the most popular tool on this list, setting it up to be the most integratable (not a word, but you get the idea) free timesheet tool. Its integrations list is a hefty 80+, featuring the likes of Asana, Jira, Trello, and HubSpot, and that's in addition to Zapier, which opens it up to thousands of other apps, like these.

It also offers API and webhooks access even at the free level, which is rare, as well as an open source extension you can add your own tool to.

What I like about Clockify is that it's a relatively simple tool—your employees log their time, which then loads into time and budget reports. You can easily set up projects with individual tasks and then assign them to clients, which is a level of organization not every free tool allows (looking at you, Jibble). I also like the calendar view, which has the handy drag-and-drop functionality I've got a well-documented love for.

What I don't love about Clockify is that its interface can be a tiny bit clunky at times. I also found the time logging mechanism to be a little more cumbersome and hidden away than competitors, which is kind of like running a bakery with hidden flour. You'll also have to pony up to paid plans for things like attendance tracking, time off, email reports, project templates, and scheduling. But for pure timesheeting (a word you probably shouldn't say out loud), Clockify is a great tool.

Clockify pricing: Free ($0, unlimited users), Basic ($4.99/user/month), Standard ($6.99/user/month), Pro ($9.99/user/month), Enterprise ($14.99/user/month)

Best free timesheet software for check-in/check-out

OfficeTimer (Web)

OfficeTimer pros:

• Unlimited users, check-ins, check-outs, and reports

• Geotagging available at free level

• Free live support

OfficeTimer cons:

• Limited features

• Interface isn't always very responsive

Sometimes, you want a thing that does a lot of things, and sometimes, you want a thing that just does one thing. OfficeTimer is the thing that does one thing: time the stuff that happens in offices.

Separated into four modules (Attendance, Time off / Leave, Timesheet & Project Management, and Expense Management), OfficeTimer specializes in time logging and reporting. Its features are actually fairly rich within those limitations, though, offering unlimited users, calendars, reports, and projects at the free level, along with free support, all of which most tools on this list don't offer. 

OfficeTimer's user experience isn't the cleanest. Every action requires a full page load, for example, so it can be a little slow maneuvering around the interface. It's also not the most appealing or responsive interface, but for exactly zero dollars, it could be worse. And considering it doesn't place any limitations on roles, permissions, users, and reports, OfficeTimer makes up for most of its limitations in comparison to free plans on comparable timesheet tools.

OfficeTimer is easily the most limited tool on this list in terms of feature scope, but, like a club sandwich at a diner, it's an unfussy product that doesn't try to be more than what it is. If you want heirloom tomatoes and imported Gruyère on sourdough, go to the brunch spot up the road. If you want clock-ins, clock-outs, timesheets, and not much else, OfficeTimer is for you.

You can do even more with OfficeTimer by connecting it to Zapier. That will open it up to automation across thousands of apps in your tech stack. Here are a couple of ideas for inspiration.

OfficeTimer pricing: Free ($0, unlimited users), Premium ($1.99/user/month), Enterprise ($2.99/user/month)

Best free timesheet software for client billing

TMetric (Web)

TMetric pros:

• Unlimited projects and clients

• Reporting focused on billing and expenses

TMetric cons:

• No invoicing, billable rate tracking, or task management in free plan

• Free data storage is limited to seven days

• No screenshot storage below highest paid tier

While a lot of these timesheet tools are focused on internal activity and time monitoring, TMetric's specialty is converting time to dollars for client billing and expense reporting. 

Using project budgets, client contracts, and employee pay rates, TMetric automatically churns billable hours into dollars-based reporting. This isn't necessarily a unique feature to TMetric, but it's the one tool on this list for which that's its (pardon my French) raison d'être. For the budget scoping overlords out there, it's also got more granular oversight than many other products, with a useful timeline view of user activity that drills down to 10-minute increments.

On the employee side, the interface is one of the friendlier ones for logging time on the fly and manual entry. You can easily add descriptions to individual logs to make notes on progress, add breaks, and request time off. There's also a nice user dashboard to track calendars, tasks, time, and an overview of tracked time by day, week, and month. TMetric doesn't have the sleekest interface out there, but it's simple, responsive, and organized (all the important stuff).

TMetric may not be the flashiest timesheet tool in the toolbox, but like your dad's unbranded wood-handled rusty hammer from the '80s, it gets the job done. Its free version gives you perks like unlimited projects and clients, in-app timers for over 50 third-party applications, and strong reporting functionality. 

Unfortunately (and this may be a pretty significant drawback), you'll have to pay the reasonable price for premium plans if you want key features like invoicing, task management, billable rate tracking, and integrating a Google or Outlook calendar. But for basic time and expense tracking on a client basis, TMetric's free plan is still useful.

Not to mention, you can use TMetric's Zapier integration to do things like automatically add tasks to TMetric from your other apps. Here are just a couple more of TMetric's many automated Zapier workflows.

TMetric pricing: Free ($0, up to 5 users), Professional ($5/user/month), Business ($7/user/month)

Best free timesheet software for activity monitoring

Traqq (Web)

Traqq pros:

• All premium features available for free

• Automated screenshots and screen recording

• Scheduled reports

Traqq cons:

• Fairly narrow feature set

• Reporting is geared toward employee activity monitoring

Traqq is another one of the more popular free timesheet software products, probably because it doesn't gatekeep features—not even for the free plan. The only catch is that the free plan is limited to three users max; the only thing you can pay for in Traqq is adding more users. It's an incredibly simple pricing structure.

Traqq is pretty straightforward software with features focused on time and activity management—it's basically custom-made for budget corporate overlords with two employees. There are five main modules: Activities, Reports, Time Requests, People, and Groups. That's it. People can clock in and out, log activities, get consolidated into groups for reporting, monitor time, and request time off. Simple stuff, but exactly what many managers are looking for, wrapped into an attractively designed interface.

Reports are pretty clearly geared toward employee activity monitoring, with presets for report templates that show them their most idle team members, how much time is manually adjusted, who the most and least active users are, and whose efforts are earning the most revenue. You can even schedule reports, which is rare for a free tool. 

For those who need (or want) to be really granular on accountability, Traqq uniquely offers intervaled screenshots and even screen video recording, blurred to preserve privacy. While this isn't an ideal way to build employee trust or morale on a day-to-day basis, when it's necessary to record activity, screenshots and recordings go straight to users' timelines for easy review. 

Traqq definitely doesn't have the most dynamic range of use cases and features of any timesheet tool on the market. But with full features, great user experience, and distinctive accountability tools, it's a no-brainer for anyone who needs (or micromanagers who want) a free timesheet product with activity monitoring capabilities.

Traqq pricing: Premium Starter ($0, 3 users), Premium Teams ($7/user/month), Enterprise (pricing by request)

Best free timesheet software for task management

TrackingTime (Web)

TrackingTime pros:

• Unlimited projects, clients, tasks, and subtasks

• Billable rates

• Free branded reporting

TrackingTime cons:

• User roles and permissions not available at the free level

• No scheduling features at the free level

• Maxes at three users at the free level

What makes TrackingTime a great tool isn't that it's great at tracking time (though that would be a Shyamalan-level twist). I mean, it does do that, but what I really like about it is that it's also one of the more useful task managers among the free timesheet tools.

This is one of the few free plans that opens the gates to unlimited tasks and subtasks, making it a perfect tool for users who want some added functionality for organizing the time they're tracking. You can log time easily at the click of a button and check your progress on daily, weekly, and monthly board or timeline views, and even create custom fields for your hours. It's also easy to turn time spent on those tasks (or billed on them) into branded reports and timesheets or view them in the Pace module to see how much you need to panic about your client deadlines.

TrackingTime has a pretty robust free plan for up to three users, coming in with some rare offerings most other free versions lack, like:

• Reminder notifications

• Batch time editing

• Unlimited tasks, projects, and clients

• Calendar synchronization

• Time rounding

• Branded reports

• Project priorities

• Subtasks

• Billable rates

That last one is, apparently, the holy grail of free timesheet tools. Not even my pick for best client billing tool (TMetric) lets you customize billable rates at the free level. Sure, there are premium features you can unlock if you're willing to dish out for your software, like automations, databases, and user roles and permissions. But overall, this is a pretty impressive free timesheet software offering for employees at all levels. 

That's especially true when you use Zapier for automated tasks like creating new TrackingTime tasks for incomplete tasks. That's not all by a long shot—here are just a couple more possibilities.

TrackingTime pricing: Free ($0, 3 users), Pro ($7/user/month), Business ($12/user/month)

Best free timesheet software for interactive timesheets

Everhour (Web)

Everhour pros:

• Unlimited reports, projects, and time tracking

• Reports can be exported in three formats

• Customizable, dynamic timesheets

Everhour cons:

• Free plan excludes quite a few important features

• Free use is largely limited to task and time tracking and reporting

Everhour is one of the more popular premium timesheet applications, with lots of software integrations and a roster of clients including Canon, Zoom, and McKinsey. It's also got a useful free plan with some of the more dynamic, user-friendly timekeeping tools on the market.

My favorite Everhour feature is its editable timesheet. Where most timesheets populate with pre-recorded data from other modules (which this also does), Everhour lets you edit and fill those sheets, annotate them, and build in tasks. You can even add new tasks with comments and logged time and add time off requests, then download finished timesheets as PDFs, CSVs, or XLSXes.

The big knock on Everhour's free version is that it's probably the stingiest one on this list. Its five-user limit is decent, but it bars quite a few features behind the premium plan paywall that you'd get for free with some of the other tools on this list. Want to add clients? Too bad. Billable rates? Gotta pay. Reminders, scheduled reports, time approval, clock-in/clock-out, timelines, and screenshots? Sorry, bud.

Everhour may not be as benevolent with its free plan as others, but depending on what you need, it still might be a good choice. If you really just want to do simple timekeeping and (can't believe I'm using this word again) timesheeting in a convenient interface, this tool is (pardon my French again) the sheet.

Everhour pricing: Free ($0, 5 users), Lite ($6/user/month, 2-10 users), Team ($10/user/month, 5+ users)

Free timesheet software I liked but didn't crack the list

I sifted through quite a few software options and liked a bunch of them. Since this wouldn't be a "best" list if I included them all, I'm rounding up a few more of my favorites here. This is far from all the options out there, but these were also solid choices if none of my picks work for you:

• My Hours: Unlimited members and projects

• We360.ai: Robust employee monitoring

• ActivTrak: Unlimited features for up to five users

• TopTracker: Great freelancer tool with full features for one user

• Sling: Good for employee scheduling

• WakaTime: Time tracking designed for coders

Automating your free timesheet software

Ultimately, your team's use case will determine the best free timesheet software for employees, managers, freelancers, and dystopian corporate despots, as each of the options above can be a great choice for the right situation. Want to create simple, straightforward timesheets for just a few team members? Try Everhour. Want free employee check-in/check-out software? Go for OfficeTimer. Need to keep accountable for idle employee hands? Go for Traqq.

And if you want to do any or all of the above alongside your other favorite software tools, Zapier can integrate many of the options in this post with thousands of apps, so you can automate team workflows. Learn more about how to automate your time tracking software.

Related reading:

• 3 time blocking methods to boost productivity

• The best time blocking apps

• How tracking my time helped me increase revenue in my business

• The best free CRM software

• Timesheet templates to help you track your time