Best Time Tracking Apps

You've probably noticed a host of choices out there if you're trying to pick the best time tracking apps to help you stay organized, focused, and task-oriented. Every day a new option is popping up and they all seem to do the same.

Nevertheless, not all time-tracking systems are created equal. Some are created with remote teams in mind while others make individual freelancers a priority. Others follow the freelance worker's mentality, while others seek to make life easier for managers. Many are also blunt, apparently giving little to no protection to those who mount it.

Those who try to find the best time-tracking apps often have a lot of questions left over. That's why we are breaking through all these questions and barriers to create a list of the top 8 time tracking apps for freelancers in particular.

Here are the best apps for freelancers to track time to help improve your productivity and track your work:

1. Due Time Tracking

Price: Free

Due is an incredibly unobtrusive app that allows you to monitor time by automatically detecting idle periods. Simply start the timer and you will automatically start a new session. You can use Due Time Tracking to produce invoices based on the hourly rates you set, as you continue with a project. Also, this time tracking app makes it easy to organize information about clients by name, address, hourly rates or even different currencies.

2. Calendar

Price: Free/$10 a month for automated transcriptions of meetings and calendar review

Calendar is the calendar app that is next generation. Calendar offers desktop and mobile (iOS and Android) platforms that allow you to synchronize and share multiple digital calendars as well as leverage machine-learning algorithms that serve as a virtual assistant. You will be able to track and control your time spent and become more effective at organizing meetings and events with calendar analytics that are easy to use.

3. Harvest

Price: Solo $12/month; Simple $49/month; Business $99/month

Harvest is another great time tracking apps for freelancers, as you can use it to simultaneously track a number of different projects, even if they contain different tasks and charge different rates. When you work with a team you can even assign different roles to individual team members within a project. Additionally, integration is extremely easy if you are working with other applications that help with remote work, such as Basecamp.

In addition to the heavy pricing, the only major downside of Harvest is that the app does not include desktop monitoring options such as active application or URL tracking.

4. TopTracker

Price: Free

TopTracker uses all the normal time tracking apps, such as timers, screenshots, and webcam shots, but freelancers can take full control by deciding how often things are tracked and by adding options such as tracking only written task descriptions or picture blurs. The free, standalone app is available on all devices, and will work on OS X and Windows, with Linux coming soon.

TopTracker uses all the normal time tracking tools, such as timers, screenshots, and webcam shots, but freelancers can take full control by deciding how often things are tracked and by adding options such as tracking only written task descriptions or picture blurs. The free, standalone app is available on all devices, and will work on OS X and Windows, with Linux coming soon.

5. Tick

Price: $0-$149/month

If the large price range confuses you, the price of Tick depends on the number of projects you have open at any given time. So if you're a single-project-at-a-time freelancer, it's possible you can get away with using it free. But let's be honest: Would you really need a time-tracking app if you were working on one project at a time? Tick is simple, easy, and can be used across devices, but be careful about pricing if you're the kind of freelancer who has a large number of projects open at once.

6. RescueTime

Price: RescueTime Lite is free; Premium is $9/month

RescueTime is perfect for independent freelancers who want to learn how to spend their time but need not report back to any boss. Like other time monitoring applications on this list, RescueTime will provide you with detailed reports and an accurate image of how you spend your days but only to quench your own personal curiosity. The App does not give managers or customers information

7. Toggl

Price: Basic free; Pro $5/month; Business $49/month free

Toggl's developers have built this time-tracking device with speed and usability in mind, so that even the busiest freelancer can use it. Reports produced with Toggl are easy on the eyes, and they monitor your work in real time as long as you remember turning it on. Toggl also helps you to enter work time after the fact for the forgettable freelancers out there. The app has been designed with team collaboration in mind, allowing individual freelancers to encounter some odd features.

8. Klok Desktop Application

Price: $19.99

Unless you want to use Klok to do a lot of team-based work, freelancers can get great results compared to their team console from their (cheaper) desktop application. This is best time tracking apps uses for the data accumulated from past projects to help you predict how much time you will need for future projects. The app also lets you separate your job into groups, so that you can see how much time you spend in meetings or on the web or self-marketing.