Billing and Time Tracking Software: 9 Compared
Billing and time tracking software compared on invoicing, real cost at 10, 25, and 50 users, and the pricing changes that hit two major tools this year.
Billing and Time Tracking Software Compared
Why the advertised seat price is no longer the price at two major vendors, what nine tools cost at 10, 25, and 50 users, and where client billing stops being a payroll record
For most of this category's history the buying question was simple: pick a per-seat price you can live with and check that the invoice template looks professional. Two things changed that in the last year, and both of them mean the number on the pricing page is no longer the number on the bill.
One major vendor was acquired and restructured its pricing to charge usage fees on top of the seat rate, with customers reporting renewal invoices that looked nothing like the prior year. Another raised its per-employee fee by 25 percent at the entry tier effective July 1, 2026. Neither change is hidden, but neither shows up in a side-by-side comparison of advertised starting prices, which is how most of these tools get compared.
This comparison covers what the category does, where client billing stops being a valid payroll record, what nine tools actually cost at three team sizes, and what the pricing changes mean if you are buying now.
What the category actually covers
The defining capability is not the timer. It is that a tracked hour carries a billable rate and a client attached to it, so an invoice can be generated from the time record rather than reconstructed from it.
| Capability | What it means | Who needs it |
|---|---|---|
| Billable rate per person | Different people bill at different rates | Any firm with mixed seniority on a project |
| Rate per project or client | The same person bills differently by engagement | Firms with negotiated client rates |
| Billable versus internal | Time is captured but excluded from invoices | Everyone, for utilization reporting |
| Budget tracking | Hours measured against an agreed project total | Fixed-fee and capped engagements |
| Invoice generation | The bill is produced from the time record | Firms invoicing monthly from hours |
| Profitability reporting | Revenue against cost per project | Firms deciding which work to take again |
The last row is where the cheap tools and the expensive ones diverge. Tracking hours and sending an invoice is close to a commodity in 2026 and available free. Knowing whether a given client is actually profitable once you account for the unbillable time surrounding their work is what the higher tiers charge for, and for many small firms it is the only feature worth paying for.
Client billing is not a payroll record
This distinction gets collapsed constantly, including by buyers who assume that because they are tracking hours they have satisfied their obligations as an employer. They have not.
| Question | Client billing | Payroll and compliance |
|---|---|---|
| What the hours produce | An invoice sent to a client | A paycheck paid to an employee |
| Who reviews them | A project manager, then the client | A manager, then payroll |
| What accuracy protects | Revenue and the client relationship | Legal compliance with wage and hour rules |
| Rounding convention | Tenths or quarters of an hour by custom | Actual time worked, to the minute |
| Unbillable time | Tracked but excluded from the invoice | Still paid, and still counts toward overtime |
| Recordkeeping duty | Contractual, set by the client | Statutory under the Fair Labor Standards Act |
The practical consequence is that a firm with salaried exempt professionals can often run on billing tracking alone, while a firm with non-exempt hourly staff needs a record of actual hours worked that satisfies statutory recordkeeping. Our comparison of time clock and payroll software covers that side, and our guide to overtime pay covers the rules that make it necessary.
Two pricing changes worth knowing before you buy
Comparison content in this category tends to list advertised entry prices and move on. Two of those numbers are currently misleading in ways a buyer should know about.
Harvest moved to seat plus usage
Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons in July 2025 and the pricing model was restructured afterward. The current arrangement pairs a per-seat plan fee with usage-based charges tied to account activity: invoices sent, projects created, clients managed, and tasks logged. The vendor offers a usage-based billing mode and a fixed-fee unlimited mode, and the free tier was cut to one seat and two projects.
QuickBooks Time raised its per-employee fee
Effective July 1, 2026, QuickBooks Time increased its per-employee monthly fee by $2 on both the Premium and Elite plans, with the base subscription unchanged. At the entry tier that moves the per-employee charge from $8 to $10, a 25 percent increase, applied on top of a base fee and on top of the QuickBooks Online subscription the product requires.
For a 25-person business the increase alone is roughly $600 a year. The product remains a reasonable choice for a firm whose books already live in QuickBooks, since the integration removes an export step, but the value calculation is different at the new rate than it was at the old one.
9 billing and time tracking products compared
Nine tools spanning free to enterprise, chosen because they cover the realistic range for a firm of one to fifty people rather than because they are the most advertised.
| Product | Best For | Entry Price | Pricing Model | Billable Rates | Invoicing | Payroll Link | Trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clockify | Budget-conscious teams | Free | Per user | Free tier | |||
| Toggl Track | Fast tracking, light billing | $9/user | Per user | Free tier | |||
| Harvest | Teams wanting mature invoicing | $9/user | Seat plus usage | Free tier | |||
| Paymo | Small project-based teams | $5.90/user | Per user | Free tier | |||
| Everhour | Teams living in Asana or Jira | $8.50/user | Per user | Free tier | |||
| Hubstaff | Distributed teams needing proof | $4.99/user | Per user | Free tier | |||
| QuickBooks Time | Businesses inside QuickBooks | $20 + $10/ee | Base plus per ee | Free trial | |||
| BigTime | Professional services at scale | $20/user | Per user | Demo | |||
| FreshBooks | Solo operators who invoice | $19/mo | Flat plus users | Free trial |
Clockify
The strongest free option in the category by a clear margin, offering unlimited users on the free tier with project tracking, billable rates, and reporting, and paid tiers from roughly $4 to $6 per user per month for features like scheduling, expenses, and approvals. For a small firm that needs hours captured against projects and can build invoices elsewhere, the free tier is frequently a permanent answer rather than a trial.
Toggl Track
Built around speed of capture, with an interface widely regarded as the cleanest in the category, a free tier for small teams, and paid plans from around $9 per user per month. If the problem at your firm is that people do not track time because tracking is annoying, this addresses the cause more directly than a feature-richer tool would.
The trade-off is the other half of the job: invoicing is comparatively limited, and firms that need billing depth typically pair it with something else or choose differently.
Harvest
A mature product with two decades of history, a well-regarded invoicing workflow, and wide integrations, at $9 per seat per month on Teams and $14 on Enterprise with annual billing. If the requirement is tracked hours becoming a clean client invoice with minimum friction, the workflow is among the best in the category.
The caveat is the pricing structure described above rather than the product. Model your actual project, client, and invoice volume before committing, and ask specifically about the fixed-fee billing option if predictability matters more than optimizing the monthly rate.
Paymo
A project-based work platform with time tracking and invoicing built in, starting around $5.90 per user per month and rising through tiers that add resource scheduling and profitability tracking. For a small agency or studio that wants project management and billing in the same tool rather than two subscriptions, it hits a useful middle point.
Everhour
Designed to embed inside project management tools rather than replace them, with native integrations into Asana, Jira, Trello, ClickUp, and others, a free tier for small teams, and paid plans around $8.50 per user per month. For a team whose work already lives in one of those systems, tracking from inside the task is a materially higher-adoption path than asking people to open a second app.
Hubstaff
Aimed at distributed teams where the client or the employer wants verification alongside the hours, with screenshots, activity levels, and GPS available depending on tier, starting around $4.99 per user per month with a two-seat minimum. For agencies billing clients who expect proof of work, this is the category answer, and for teams who would find monitoring intrusive it is the wrong one.
QuickBooks Time
Formerly TSheets, now Intuit's time product, priced at a base fee plus a per-employee charge and requiring a QuickBooks Online subscription. The argument is integration: hours reach payroll and the general ledger without an export, which for a firm already committed to QuickBooks removes a genuine friction point.
The argument against is cost, which was already the highest here at the entry tier before the July 2026 per-employee increase and is more so after it.
BigTime
A professional services automation platform rather than a time tracker, covering time, billing, resourcing, and project financials, from around $20 per user per month at the entry tier. For a consultancy or firm past roughly ten people where project profitability and resourcing are real management problems, the price buys capability the cheaper tools genuinely lack.
FreshBooks
An invoicing and accounting product with time tracking attached, rather than the reverse, from around $19 per month on the entry plan with additional team members charged separately. For a solo consultant whose actual need is to invoice clients and who tracks hours as an input to that, this covers both jobs in one subscription where the team-first tools cover only one.
What each product costs at 10, 25, and 50 users
Nearly everything here prices per user, which makes the arithmetic simple and the growth curve steep. There is no base fee to amortize across a team, so headcount multiplies the bill directly.
| Product | 10 users | 25 users | 50 users | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clockify | Free | Free | $100 | Free tier covers unlimited users |
| Hubstaff | $50 | $125 | $250 | Two-seat minimum applies |
| Paymo | $59 | $148 | $295 | Starter tier, per user |
| Everhour | $85 | $213 | $425 | Team tier, free up to 5 users |
| Toggl Track | $90 | $225 | $450 | Starter tier, invoicing is limited |
| Harvest | $90 | $225 | $450 | Seat fee only; usage fees add on top |
| QuickBooks Time | $120 | $270 | $520 | Base plus per employee, after July increase |
| BigTime | $200 | $500 | $1,000 | Essentials tier, professional services focus |
The spread at 50 users is roughly $1,000 a month between the cheapest paid option and the most expensive, which is a real budget difference for a firm of that size. Clockify staying free at any headcount is the outlier that reframes the whole table: if the free tier covers what you need, the correct comparison is not between the paid options but between free and whichever paid feature you actually cannot do without.
How to choose billing and time tracking software
Before you choose
FirstHR does not track billable hours or invoice clients. Every product above does something we do not, and a firm shopping for time and billing should buy one of them.
What all nine share is an assumption: the person tracking time is already an employee or contractor in good standing with an account provisioned for them. In a professional services firm that assumption carries weight, because billable staff are the product, and every new one arrives with paperwork that no billing tool touches.
| What happens before the first billable hour | Where it usually lives |
|---|---|
| Signed offer letter and employment agreement | Email attachments |
| Confidentiality agreement and client conflict terms | A folder somewhere |
| Form I-9 within three business days | Paper, often incomplete |
| Form W-4 and state withholding equivalent | Payroll provider, sometimes |
| Policy and handbook acknowledgment | Rarely captured with a signature |
| Professional certifications and renewal dates | Rarely tracked systematically |
None of that is produced by a time and billing tool, and in a firm under fifty people it typically lands on an operations lead alongside everything else. FirstHR covers that layer: onboarding workflows with deadline tracking, e-signature on offers and agreements, document management with retention and expiry tracking, training modules with completion records, an org chart, and employee self-service, at a flat $98 to $198 per month for US teams of 5 to 50 people. We sit alongside your billing tool rather than replacing it. Our comparison of employee onboarding software covers that layer against the alternatives.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is billing and time tracking software?
Software that records hours spent on client work and turns them into an invoice. The defining capability is that a tracked hour carries a billable rate and a client attached to it, so the bill is generated from the time record rather than reconstructed separately.
What is the difference between billing time tracking and payroll time tracking?
Billing tracking asks what a client should be charged and protects revenue. Payroll tracking asks what an employee is owed and satisfies a legal recordkeeping obligation. Unbillable time shows the gap: excluded from the invoice, still paid, still counted toward overtime.
How much does billing and time tracking software cost?
From free to roughly $20 per user per month, with most credible team options between $5 and $10. Because pricing is per user, cost scales linearly with headcount. Two vendors changed their models this year in ways that make the advertised rate misleading.
Why did Harvest pricing change?
Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons in July 2025 and its pricing was restructured to combine a per-seat fee with usage charges for invoices, projects, clients, and tasks. A fixed-fee option exists alongside the usage-based one, and the free tier was cut to one seat and two projects.
Is free billing and time tracking software good enough?
For time capture, often yes, since at least one established tool offers unlimited users free with billable rates and reporting. Limits usually appear at invoicing rather than tracking, so the test is whether invoices must leave the tool or merely be informed by it.
What is accounting time tracking software?
Usually it means time tracking used by accounting and CPA firms to bill their own clients, not accounting software with a timer. An accounting practice bills much like a law firm or agency, so the same category applies. See our comparison of payroll software for accountants for the adjacent question.
Do these tools handle rounding and billing increments?
Most support rounding rules and they should be configured deliberately. Professional services conventionally bill in six or fifteen minute increments. Rounding acceptable for client billing is constrained by wage and hour rules when it determines employee pay, so the two need separate configuration.
Should a small firm pick a specialist or an all-in-one platform?
A specialist is cheaper and faster to adopt if tracking and invoicing are the only broken parts. A platform makes sense if resourcing and project profitability also need solving. Buying a platform to fix a tracking problem tends to fail because only one module gets used.
Do billing tools track employee onboarding or HR records?
No. Every tool here assumes the person tracking time is already onboarded with an account provisioned. Hiring paperwork, signed agreements, policy acknowledgments, and the employee file sit outside these platforms. See our guide to new hire paperwork for what belongs in the file.