Time Tracking Software for Small Business: 12 Compared
Time tracking software for small business compared: desk vs field tools, real cost at 10 and 25 employees, and the recent price changes to know.
I run a small company and build HR software for other small businesses, and my advice to any owner choosing a time tracker is to settle one question before comparing prices: where do your people work? This page uses that answer to split twelve tools into a desk track and a field track, then does the arithmetic nobody publishes for each.
Almost every comparison in this category ranks a project timer, a GPS clock-in app, and a payroll module in one numbered list, then names a winner. That winner is useless to roughly half the people reading, because the two halves of this market solve different problems for different businesses and are not substitutes at any price.
A design studio needs to know which client consumed which hours. A plumbing company needs to know that the van reached the second job at 10:40 and left at 12:15. Both need time tracking software for a small business, yet the products that serve them share almost no features and no pricing logic.
For each track, you get monthly cost at 10 and at 25 employees with base fees and seat minimums included, plus how deeply each tool actually reaches payroll. The page also covers three documented pricing changes between January and July 2026 that have quietly invalidated most of the advice still circulating about these tools.
Desk work and field work split the market
Every product here records hours. What differs is the question it was built to answer, and that single distinction predicts adoption better than any feature list.
| Desk and project tools | Hourly and field tools | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Where did the hours go | Did they show up, and for how long |
| Built around | A timer attached to a project code | A clock-in attached to a place and a shift |
| Typical buyer | Agency, consultancy, studio, software team | Restaurant, retail, clinic, trades, field crew |
| Signature features | Project budgets, billable rates, invoicing | GPS and geofencing, schedules, clock-in verification |
| Priced by | Almost always per user | Per location, per user, or flat per team |
| Cost behavior as you hire | Rises in a straight line | Sometimes does not move at all |
| Usually feeds | Client invoices | Payroll |
The two pricing rows are where the money is. Because desk tools are uniformly per-user, comparing them is a matter of reading rates. Field tools are priced three different ways, so the cheapest one at ten employees is frequently not the cheapest at twenty-five, and the gap between them widens rather than narrows.
12 time tracking tools at a glance
Grouped by track, then sorted by entry price within each. The last column marks the products that charge something before the first employee is counted.
| Product | Track | Priced by | Entry price | Free plan | Built for shift work | Base fee or seat minimum |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clockify | Desk and project | Per user | $3.99/user | |||
| My Hours | Desk and project | Per user | $4/user | |||
| Everhour | Desk and project | Per user | $8.50/user | |||
| Toggl | Desk and project | Per user | $9/user | |||
| Timely | Desk and project | Per user | $9/user | |||
| Harvest | Desk and project | Per seat + usage | $9/user plus usage | |||
| Homebase | Hourly and field | Per location | $24/location | |||
| Connecteam | Hourly and field | Flat per hub | $29/hub | |||
| When I Work | Hourly and field | Per user | $2.50 to $4/user | |||
| Deputy | Hourly and field | Per user | $5/user | |||
| Buddy Punch | Hourly and field | Per user + base | $4.99/user plus $19 | |||
| QuickBooks Time | Hourly and field | Per user + base | $10/user plus $20 |
How we evaluated these tools
We evaluated for a US small business, where whoever approves the hours also does several other jobs. Four tests, applied identically to all twelve.
For desk and project work
Desk and project tools are built around a timer and a project code. They suit salaried and billable teams who need to know where the hours went rather than whether somebody arrived.
My Hours is effectively tied with Clockify Basic for the cheapest paid tier in this comparison and does the core job without ceremony: timer or weekly timesheet, hours attached to a client and project, billable rates, and clean exportable reports. After two decades in the market, it needs very little explanation before staff start logging time.
The free plan is limited to five active users, so a growing team outgrows it quickly. Approval workflows, budgets, and the deeper permission controls sit on Pro, which doubles the rate. There is no scheduling, no clock-in, and no GPS, so an hourly workforce is served badly, and the integration list is shorter than those of the better-known project trackers.
Clockify has the widest feature spread per dollar here and a sensibly built ladder: Basic adds administrative controls; Standard adds approvals, time off, and invoicing; Pro adds scheduling and GPS. The integration list runs well past eighty tools, and the product handles a fifty-person team as comfortably as a five-person one.
The important change is the free plan. By April 21, 2026, Clockify's own pricing page showed free workspaces capped at five users, with billable rates, CSV and Excel export, kiosk mode, and private projects moved to paid tiers and free reporting limited to a one-month range. Any article recommending Clockify for an unlimited free team is describing the previous product.
Everhour embeds the timer inside the project management tool your team already uses, so hours attach to the task where the work is actually planned rather than in a separate application nobody remembers to open. For a team that lives in a task board, this is the difference between tracking that happens and tracking that is reconstructed on Friday afternoon.
The five-seat minimum sets a floor of roughly $43 a month, which makes it poor value for a three-person team. The budgeting and forecasting are genuinely strong, but the value collapses entirely if you are not already committed to a supported project platform, and there is nothing here for hourly staff: no clock-in, no schedule, no GPS.
Toggl, formerly Toggl Track, has the best day-to-day tracking experience in this comparison. The timer is fast, the background autotracker suggests what you were doing when you forget to start it, the browser extension works inside dozens of tools, and the reporting is pleasant enough that people actually look at it.
Toggl also takes an explicit position against employee surveillance, which is worth something if you want hours recorded without the cultural cost.
Per seat, Toggl costs more than double Clockify for a broadly comparable payroll job: at twenty-five people Starter is $225 a month against about $100. The difference buys polish, project profitability, and an autotracker, all of which matter to a billing agency and none of which matter to a business that just needs hours for a pay run. There is no scheduling, no clock-in, and no GPS.
Harvest combines time tracking with invoicing and expense capture, which for a services firm removes an entire second tool from the stack. Track hours against a client, turn them into an invoice, attach expenses, and chase payment from one place. The product is mature and the approval and reporting flows are clean.
The pricing model is the main consideration. Harvest, which Bending Spoons now owns, moved in early 2026 from a flat per-seat rate with unlimited projects to a lower seat fee plus usage-based billing, charging for additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks as you use them.
The practical consequence is that a Harvest renewal can rise without a single seat being added. Get a written quote covering your actual project and client counts rather than budgeting from the per-seat rate.
Timely records what you actually did in the background and then drafts the timesheet from it, which solves the real failure mode of this category: people forgetting to press start and reconstructing the week from memory on Friday. For a small consultancy where billable accuracy is revenue, automatic capture is worth more than a cheaper manual timer.
The constraints are structural. Starter caps at five users and twenty projects, so a ten-person team is on a higher tier from day one and the advertised entry price does not describe what you will pay. There is no permanent free plan, and per-user cost is mid to high.
Timely's automatic capture, the feature that makes it useful, is also the part staff need convincing about. That conversation is worth having before rollout rather than after.
For hourly and field work
Hourly and field tools are built around a clock-in tied to a place and a shift. For a restaurant, shop, clinic, or crew in vans, this group fits the shape of the problem and the group above does not.
Homebase charges per location rather than per person, and at these headcounts that is the single most consequential pricing fact on this page. A twenty-five-person team at one address pays exactly what a ten-person team pays, so the bill does not move as you hire.
In Homebase, scheduling, time clock, timesheets, and labor cost tools all sit in one product, with labor costing on the top All-in-One tier. The free tier covers a single location of up to ten employees.
The model inverts across sites, and sharply: you pay the full location fee again for each one regardless of how few people work there, so five small sites cost five times over. Payroll is a separately priced add-on rather than an included feature, and the deeper HR and hiring tools sit on the higher tiers, so the entry price does not describe what a growing multi-site operator ends up paying.
Connecteam has the strongest free offer here for a small hourly team: nearly every feature, including GPS clock-in and geofencing, for up to ten users, with payroll integration the main exclusion.
Above the free tier, Connecteam's $29 flat fee covering thirty users works out under $1.20 a seat at twenty-five people, which nothing priced per user approaches, and its mobile app is genuinely built for staff who have no work email address.
The structure to understand before buying is the hub. Time tracking and scheduling live in one hub, team communication in another, training and HR in a third, so wanting two means paying two base fees and the flat-rate advantage narrows. It is also a broad workforce platform rather than a time tracker, which means a business that only wanted timekeeping adopts a great deal of product it will never open.
When I Work is a scheduling product with a competent time clock attached rather than the reverse, and for a shift business where the weekly roster is the actual work, that ordering is correct. Shift swaps, availability, and coverage alerts behave the way managers expect, the mobile app has high staff adoption, and payroll export is straightforward.
Two corrections before budgeting. There is no permanent free plan, despite regular appearances in free tool roundups, and the trial is short for testing across a full pay period. And the widely quoted $2.50 rate is the scheduling plan on the classic price cards, where adding time tracking lifts Essentials to $4 per user.
When I Work's newer layouts on the same pricing page include time tracking in a single-location plan from $2.50, so check which version you are offered. At the $4 rate, twenty-five employees cost $100 a month against $24 for Homebase at one location, which is the clearest illustration on this page of how much the pricing model matters.
Deputy is the most capable product here on the parts of timekeeping that carry legal exposure: meal and rest break compliance, overtime rule handling, and labor forecasting against sales. For a restaurant group or a clinic where break rules are enforced and audited, that depth is precisely what the premium buys, and the cheaper tools approximate it rather than doing it.
For a simpler business it is more product than the problem needs. At twenty-five employees Core is about $163 a month against $29 for Connecteam Basic, and that gap only repays if somebody uses the compliance and forecasting features weekly. There is no free plan, only a trial, and the $30 minimum monthly spend on monthly billing matters below about six employees.
Buddy Punch is built around one problem and solves it better than anything else here: proving that the person clocking in is the person working. Facial recognition, QR codes, PIN entry, and geofencing all sit on the clock rather than being bolted on, though QR, PIN, and geofencing start on Pro. Rounding rules are configurable on every plan rather than assumed.
The $19 monthly base fee is the thing to weigh, because it lands hardest on the smallest teams: at ten employees it is about 28 percent of the bill, and at four it is about half. There is no free plan and the trial runs fourteen days.
Scheduling is a $1-per-user add-on on Buddy Punch Starter and included from Pro, so a business wanting both scheduling and verification pays above the entry rate. If time theft is a theory rather than a measured problem, cheaper tools cover the timekeeping.
Formerly TSheets, QuickBooks Time exists to close one gap completely: approved hours land in QuickBooks payroll with no export, no file, and no reconciliation. For a business already running QuickBooks, that removes the step where time and attendance data most often goes wrong, and the GPS, geofencing, and job costing are mature rather than tacked on.
It is also the most expensive field option on this page at both headcounts. The $20 base fee is $240 a year before anyone clocks in, the per-user rate rose from $8 to $10 by early July 2026, and the total reaches $270 a month at twenty-five employees against $24 for Homebase at one location.
The QuickBooks Time premium is worth paying if payroll reconciliation currently costs you hours every pay run, and hard to justify if it does not. Outside the QuickBooks ecosystem the central argument disappears entirely, and Intuit requires a QuickBooks Online account to use it at all.
Dwight SchruteSales3 people
Darryl PhilbinWarehouse1 person
Kelly KapoorCustomer Service1 personWhat 10 and 25 employees actually cost
Two tables, because the tracks are not substitutes. Base fees and seat minimums are included, since those are the lines most comparison tables leave out and the ones that reorder the results.
| Option | How it is priced | Monthly at 10 | Monthly at 25 | What the number hides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clockify Basic | $3.99 per user, annual | $40 | $100 | Approvals and invoicing sit a tier higher |
| My Hours Basic | $4 per user, annual | $40 | $100 | Vendor lists $5 on monthly billing |
| Clockify Standard | $5.49 per user, annual | $55 | $137 | Adds approvals, time off, and invoicing |
| Everhour Team | $8.50 per user, annual | $85 | $213 | Five-seat minimum, so the floor is about $43 |
| Toggl Starter | $9 per user, annual | $90 | $225 | Project estimates and billable rates included |
| Harvest Teams | $9 per seat, annual, plus usage | About $90 | About $225 | Usage fees for invoices, projects, clients, and tasks sit on top |
| Toggl Premium | $16 per user, annual | $160 | $400 | Project profitability and forecasting |
| Timely Starter | $9 per user, max 5 users | Not sold | Not sold | The entry tier caps at five users, so 10 needs a higher plan |
Nothing surprising happens on the desk side. Every product is per-user, so the ordering at twenty-five is the ordering at ten and the only decision is what the extra rate buys. The one thing to catch is Timely, whose entry tier caps at five users, so the advertised $9 does not describe a ten-person team at all.
| Option | How it is priced | Monthly at 10 | Monthly at 25 | What the number hides |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Homebase Essentials | $24 per location, annual | $24 | $24 | Unlimited employees at one site; a second site doubles it |
| Connecteam Basic | $29 flat per hub, annual | $29 | $29 | Covers the first 30 users; a second hub doubles it |
| When I Work with time | $4 per user with the add-on | $40 | $100 | Classic add-on rate, the highest any layout shows for one site; newer cards include time there from $2.50 |
| Deputy Core | $6.50 per user, annual | $65 | $163 | The $30 monthly minimum applies only on monthly billing |
| Buddy Punch Starter | $4.99 per user plus $19 base | $69 | $144 | The base fee is about 28 percent of the bill at 10 employees |
| QuickBooks Time Premium | $10 per user plus $20 base | $120 | $270 | Per-user rate rose from $8 by early July 2026 |
The field table behaves completely differently. Homebase and Connecteam do not move between the two columns while every per-user option more than doubles, so a choice that looks close at ten people is a four to eleven times difference at twenty-five. If you expect to grow, the pricing model is a larger decision than the feature set.
How hours reach payroll
Every vendor claims payroll integration, and they mean three different things by it: native sync, a named connector, or an export that somebody handles every pay run. The table splits exports by how much reformatting they need and adds a row for the tools that were built for invoices rather than payroll.
| Depth | What it means in practice | Which tools here |
|---|---|---|
| Native, same platform | Approved hours are already inside payroll; nothing is exported or imported | QuickBooks Time, into QuickBooks payroll |
| Named connector | A supported integration pushes approved hours to your provider on a schedule | Homebase, Deputy, Buddy Punch, Connecteam |
| Payroll-formatted export | The tool produces a file shaped for payroll; somebody uploads it each run | When I Work, and most field tools outside their named connectors |
| Generic export | A CSV of hours that somebody reformats before it is usable | Clockify, My Hours, Everhour, Timely |
| Built for invoices, not payroll | The output is a client bill; payroll was never the design goal | Harvest, Toggl |
The honest test is arithmetic rather than preference. Count the minutes somebody currently spends moving hours between systems each pay run, multiply by the number of runs in a year, and compare that to the price difference between a tool that eliminates the step and one that does not.
At twenty-five employees, QuickBooks Time costs about $2,950 a year more than Homebase Essentials, which only makes sense if reconciliation is genuinely consuming that much time. For many small businesses on a payroll platform that already works, it is not.
Recent price changes worth knowing
This category re-prices more often than most, and three changes between January and July 2026 have quietly invalidated a large share of the published advice on these tools.
| What changed | When | What it means for a small business |
|---|---|---|
| Clockify free plan capped at five users | By April 21, 2026 | Free workspaces above five people now need a paid tier. Billable rates, CSV and Excel export, kiosk mode, and private projects moved behind the paywall, and free reporting was limited to a one-month range. |
| QuickBooks Time per-user rate raised $2 | By early July 2026 | Premium went from $8 to $10 per user per month, and Elite from $10 to $12, while the $20 and $40 base fees stayed flat. That is a 25 percent increase on the per-user part of a Premium bill. |
| Harvest moved to seat fee plus usage billing | Early 2026, under Bending Spoons | Usage fees now sit on top of the per-seat rate, charged as additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are used. A renewal can rise without a single seat being added, which is a different budgeting risk from a price increase. |
The verdict by team type
A single ranking assumes every small business has the same problem. In practice, the right answer depends on which of these seven situations you are in.
| Your situation | What usually fits | What to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Agency or consultancy billing client hours | Toggl, or Harvest if invoicing lives there too | Field tools; the GPS and shifts go unused |
| Small billable team on a tight budget | Clockify Basic at $3.99 or My Hours at $4 | Premium project tiers; the extra buys reporting depth |
| Team that never remembers to start a timer | Timely, budgeting for a tier above Starter | Cheap manual trackers, which produce guessed timesheets |
| Hourly staff, one location, 10 to 25 | Homebase Essentials at $24 flat | Per-user pricing, which doubles as you hire |
| Deskless crew across job sites | Connecteam, flat at $29 per hub to 30 users | Paying per user for staff who open the app twice a shift |
| Shift work with break and overtime rules | Deputy, despite costing several times the alternatives | Cheap clocks that approximate compliance rules |
| Already on QuickBooks payroll | QuickBooks Time, if reconciliation costs you real hours | QuickBooks Time itself, if payroll already works; the premium buys nothing |
The uncomfortable summary is that a business under about twenty-five people at a single site is usually served well by one of the two cheapest options in its track, and the tools that market hardest in this category are frequently priced for a stage past this audience.
If activity monitoring and screenshots are also under consideration, that is a separate category with its own legal obligations and belongs in a separate decision. Under New York Civil Rights Law section 52-c, for one, employers must give written notice of electronic monitoring upon hiring and post that notice where employees can see it.
Before you choose
The timer, the clock-in, and the timesheet are the job of the twelve tools above. FirstHR covers the employment record underneath them: an HR platform for US small businesses handling onboarding, employee files, e-signature, training records, and document management at a flat $98 to $198 a month.
One connection is worth naming before you buy. Every tool here assumes the person clocking in already exists as an employee: hired, papered, trained, and authorized to work. Adding somebody to a time tracking system is not onboarding them.
The federal deadlines attached to a new hire run from their first day, whatever the timesheet says. Under the Form I-9 regulation, the employee completes Section 1 at the time of hire, and the employer completes Section 2 within three business days. In a business with hourly turnover, decide where that paperwork lives before the next person starts rather than after.
How to choose time tracking software for a small business
Five questions settle this, and the first eliminates half the market before you open a trial.
Before you commit to an annual plan, run one full pay period through your two finalists. Most of these are free or on trial long enough to allow it, and a real cycle surfaces what a feature list cannot, particularly whether your staff record their hours without being chased.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best time tracking software for a small business?
There is no single answer, because the category splits by where your people work. For desk teams tracking billable hours, Clockify at $3.99 and My Hours at $4 per user are cheapest and Toggl at $9 has the best experience. For hourly staff, Homebase at $24 per location and Connecteam at $29 flat are structurally cheaper than anything per-user, while Deputy handles compliance best.
How much does time tracking software cost for 10 employees?
For a desk team, roughly $40 to $160 a month: Clockify or My Hours about $40, Everhour $85, Toggl Starter $90, Harvest about $90 plus usage, Toggl Premium $160.
For ten hourly employees at one site: Homebase $24, Connecteam free for up to ten users or Basic at $29, When I Work about $40, Deputy about $65, Buddy Punch about $69 with its base fee, QuickBooks Time $120 with its base fee.
What is the difference between time tracking for office staff and field staff?
Office tools attach a timer to a project code and answer where the hours went. Field tools attach a clock-in to a place and a shift and answer whether somebody showed up. The features follow: project budgets and invoicing on one side, GPS and clock-in verification on the other. The pricing models differ too, with office tools charging per user and field tools often charging per location or as a flat team fee.
Is there free time tracking software for small business?
Yes, though the free plans have tightened. Connecteam is free with nearly every feature up to ten users, Homebase free for one location of up to ten employees, Toggl free for three users, and My Hours for five. Clockify capped its free workspaces at five users by April 2026 and moved exports and billable rates to paid tiers, so older articles are out of date.
Does time tracking software integrate with payroll?
Most do, but the depth varies and that is the question to ask. QuickBooks Time is the tightest case here: approved hours land inside QuickBooks payroll with no export. Homebase, Deputy, Buddy Punch, and Connecteam offer named connectors. Desk and project tools are usually built around client billing, so a CSV export is often the whole integration. Confirm against your specific payroll product rather than a general compatibility claim.
How long does time tracking software take to set up?
Simple per-user trackers go live the same day. Shift and field platforms take longer, because somebody has to build schedules, set geofences, and configure overtime and rounding. A free plan or one of the 30-day trials gives you time to run a full pay period through a finalist before paying. The slow part is rarely the software; it is building the clock-in habit.
Do I need time tracking software if I only have salaried staff?
Often not for payroll, as long as the staff are exempt from overtime, but frequently yes for cost visibility. Federal rules excuse exempt executive, administrative, and professional employees from hours-worked records, while salaried non-exempt staff still need them.
For exempt salaried staff, what remains is knowing which clients or projects consume the time you already pay for, which points at the desk tools. If nobody would act on the resulting report, you do not need the software.
Do small businesses have to keep time records by law?
Yes for non-exempt employees, and the requirement concerns the record rather than the method. The Department of Labor recordkeeping fact sheet confirms that employers may use any timekeeping method, including a time clock, a timekeeper, or workers writing their own hours.
The required record is hours worked each day and each workweek, with payroll records kept three years and time cards two. A spreadsheet satisfies that until hours are disputed.
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