Between switching tasks, juggling clients, and trying to remember exactly how long that “quick” email reply took, trying to keep an accurate record of your work hours as a consultant can be a serious pain.
Guesswork? That’s not a solid strategy. Especially when you need to track billable hours for your invoices. Instead, you need a robust time tracking app to do the legwork for you.
This guide lists 10 time tracking apps that might be a good fit for your consultancy. We’ll look at some essential features, pricing, and real-life reviews to help you select the right tracking and billing software for consultants.
What is the best time tracking app for consultants?
Here’s our pick of the best time tracker tools consultants can use to track time:
- Toggl Track: Best for consultants requiring an easy-to-use and powerful time tracker for tracking time, billing accurately, and increasing profitability.
- Hubstaff: Best for employee monitoring and productivity management in remote teams that don’t mind surveillance features.
- Clockify: Best for consulting firms that need a timesheet app with invoicing features.
- Timecamp: Best for consulting agencies looking for a time and billing app with employee surveillance features.
- My Hours: Best for consulting firms that need an easy-to-use project time tracking app and billing tool.
- Timely: Best for consulting teams who require an AI-powered automatic time tracking tool
- Time Analytics: Best for consulting teams that want to track time, productivity, and billable hours for multiple clients and projects.
- Harvest: Best for consulting teams that want a simple approach to tracking billable time, invoicing clients accurately, and receiving payments.
- DeskTime: Best for consultants requiring an automatic time tracker that focuses on employee surveillance features.
- Apploye: Best for consultancy agencies requiring an affordable time tracking and timesheet app to understand how employees spend work hours.
Free Time Tracking App for Consultants
Track billable time, bill clients seamlessly, hit your revenue goals.
1. Toggl Track
Price: Free plan available for up to five users.

Toggl Track is a GDPR-compliant time tracking software for consultants with time tracking, billing, and reporting features. These features include online and offline one-click timer, idle time detection, time audit, billable rates, and time rounding.
If you’ve ever struggled to persuade your consultants to adopt a time tracking tool, you’ll love Toggl Track. With its intuitive interface and seamless tracking between desktop and mobile apps, you’ll quickly reach 100% adoption and start improving productivity across your entire organization.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
Toggl Track is a powerful time tracking tool and an equally powerful profitability tool. With Toggl Track, consultants can calculate billable hours, monitor labor costs, analyze project and employee profitability, and forecast future revenue. | Creepy surveillance features aren’t part of Toggl Track and never will be. |
Here’s how one PR consultant describes our platform: “I work as an external consultant in different projects and it allows me to perfectly track the time I spend on each task. It’s simple and easy to use.”
Similarly, another user says, “The reporting makes it easy to see where I am with each client’s hours for the current month. And also easy to see the client’s total hours for the previous month, for invoicing.”
Top features
- Billable time tracking: Record every minute, bill clients accurately, and get paid what you worked for.
- Flexible billable rates: Set flexible billing rates for the entire workspace or at the project, team member, or task level.
- Summary, Detailed, and Weekly Reports: Choose the data you want to see and analyze time usage.
- Multi-platform time tracking: Track work hours across web, mobile, and desktop apps online and offline.
- Saved reports: Generate a live-updating permalink for particular reports and share this link with your clients so they can monitor your progress in real-time.
- Team member audits: Quickly see which team members forgot to log their time, logged too much, or too little.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Toggl Plan, Google Calendar, Jira, and other 100+ popular apps.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Personal use |
Starter | $9 per user per month | Teams with basic time tracking needs |
Premium | $18 per user per month | Teams who need online and offline functionality for tracking time and profitability |
Enterprise | Custom pricing | Enterprise teams |

Try Toggl Track free for 30 days to see how easy it is to manage billable hours and boost productivity. Visit the pricing page for more information.
2. Hubstaff
Price: Free plan available.

Hubstaff is a time tracking, employee monitoring, and productivity management app for consultants. It empowers consultants to keep track of their work through accurate multi-platform time tracking and actionable productivity data.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
Hubstaff simplifies payroll with features like timesheet approvals and payroll reports. While it doesn’t offer everything you need under one roof, it does offer powerful integrations with payroll solutions like PayPal, Wise, Gusto, and different types of project management software, too. It also has workforce management features, including time off management, attendance tracking, and payments. | Trust is missing from this platform. Instead, Hubstaff offers employee surveillance features that some find intrusive and counterproductive. It tracks app and URL activity, takes random screenshots, and registers activity levels. |
For example, one SEO consultant describes, “I love that this software integrates seamlessly with Asana and allows me to track my time from anywhere. It’s been a great help to me as an SEO consultant, helping me be mindful of how I spend time on growing/maintaining my business.”
Surveillance is a concern, too, though. Here’s how one person describes this ‘feature’: “I feel some element of surveillance when the program takes screenshots of my screen. I need to work a certain number of hours, and sometimes, knowing that I can complete a project faster than planned, I have to simulate cursor activity. I don’t particularly appreciate being watched.”
Top features
- Multi-platform timer app: Consultants can track time on the go using multiple devices like laptops, mobile phones, and tablets.
- Client invoicing: Create client invoices from your tracked time in minutes.
- Expense tracking: Upload receipts, organize expenses, and link them to projects for accurate invoicing.
- Detailed timesheets: See total hours tracked, manual time entries, activity rates, and more to understand productivity and simplify payroll.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Asana, Slack, and Quickbooks.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Free | $0 | For individual use |
Starter | $4.99 per user/month | Small teams who need a basic time-tracking solution |
Grow | $7.50 per user/month | Teams who need more complex time-tracking and time-management features |
Team | $10 per user/month | Teams with advanced time-tracking needs |
Enterprise | Contact Hubstaff for prices, starting at $25 per user/month | Enterprise companies |
3. Clockify
Price: Free plan available.

Clockify is a comprehensive timesheet and time tracking app that helps consultants track their work hours and productivity and simplify invoicing.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
There’s a lot you can do with Clockify’s invoicing features. For example, you can create invoices directly from tracked time, include billable expenses, set custom currencies, and send them to your clients directly from Clockify. Pretty handy, eh? | Unfortunately, Clockify is another platform that prioritizes employee monitoring features over trust and autonomy. These encourage micromanagement and impact employee privacy and productivity. |
As a bonus, this user describes how they enjoy the platform’s set-it-and-forget functionality. “I can track everything so well and create tags for specific types of work within a particular client project. It’s efficient and saves me so much time in the end. The timer is so handy, I don’t even have to remember when I started something.” You can also track time for on-site employees by using clock-in and clock-out kiosks.
However, some also report issues with user-friendliness, as described here: “The interface can feel a bit confusing at first, especially for new users. The mobile app sometimes doesn’t sync right away, which can be frustrating when switching between devices. With a few tweaks it can be much better for user experience.”
Top features
- Billable and non-billable time tracking: Track time accurately in the office or on the go and make sure you get paid for every working minute.
- GPS tracking and screenshots: Clocify tracks your team’s location and takes random screenshots when the timer is on.
- Time reports: Analyze how your team spends work hours with summary, weekly, or detailed reports.
- Time off management: Standard, Pro, and Enterprise plan users can track and manage time off for better scheduling and resource planning.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Trello, Google Calendar, and Quickbooks.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Starter | $3.99 per user/month | Solo users with basic time-tracking needs |
Grow | $5.49 per user/month | Small teams with more complex time-tracking needs |
Team | $7.99 per user/month | Teams who need a robust project and time tracking tool |
Enterprise | $11.99 per user/month | Teams with complex client projects that require advanced time-tracking features |
4. TimeCamp
Price: Free plan available.

TimeCamp is a time tracking, attendance, and billing software that consultants can use to simplify their billing and invoicing process and track project and team profitability. Plus, it connects with other tools you’re probably already using, so it fits right into your workflow.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
TimeCamp offers many time tracking features for consultants in its free plan, like multi-platform tracking, 80+ tool integrations, and idle time tracking. | Yet again, TimeCamp is another tool that doesn’t believe in empowering employees with trust. Instead, the platform includes employee surveillance features like GPS location tracking, activity levels, and screenshots, so TimeCamp can feel like an intrusive app. |
Despite this user describing the surveillance features as “micromanaging in a sense,” here’s how one small business consultant finds TimeCamp valuable in their work: “As a consultant, I work on multiple mandates simultaneously. I needed a tool to help me capture my time spent on various projects directly from iCalendar on my Macs. Using Keywords in my Calendar time entries, the time gets associated automatically to the proper project. Generating invoices at the end of the month for my various mandates becomes kids-play. And to top it all off it syncs those invoices with Quickbooks which saves me time.”
Top features
- Multi-platform time tracking: Track time through TimeCamp’s web, desktop, and mobile apps.
- Billable rates: Set specific billable rates for different projects or clients.
- Time rounding: Round up your time entries to the nearest specified increment for easier invoicing and payroll.
- Data security: Secure your data with Single Sign-On Login and Two-Factor Authentication features.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Xero, Google Calendar, and ClickUp.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Individual users with minimal time tracking needs |
Starter | $2.99 per user/month | Teams with more complex time-tracking needs |
Premium | $4.99 per user/month | Large teams that need advanced time-tracking features |
Ultimate | $7.99 per user/month | Multiple teams |
Enterprise | $11.99 per user/month | Enterprise teams |
5. My Hours
Price: Free plan available for up to five users.

MyHours prides itself on being an easy-to-use project time tracker app with powerful billing and reporting features. It lets you log the time you spend on different tasks and break it down by projects or clients, so you always know where your effort is going.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
My Hours provides a clear view of the time spent on billable projects with comprehensive reports. The Dashboard shows an overview of your billable hours and time tracked, and the detailed report provides an in-depth analysis of time billing data. | With only two pricing plans, some users find they don’t have enough features, while others have too many. For example, My Hours doesn’t have a time-rounding feature that simplifies invoicing and payroll. It also doesn’t have custom reporting or timesheet approval features. |
The Dashboard feature seems to be particularly valuable to small business consultancy founders like Michael O., who says, “We love the ability to manage project budgets directly against time spent on them so that the whole team is clear if we are running ahead or behind.”
But for some consultants, the breadth of features may be overkill, as one person describes, “As a solo consultant, I don’t need the additional features such as billing and breaking out by team member.”
Top features
- Customized billing: Add hourly rates by project, task, or team member, set monthly retainers, and create budgets for every project.
- Expense tracking: Set expense categories, add receipts, and generate expense reports.
- Custom reports: Customize your reports to show the needed information, export them in PDF or XLS, and share them with clients.
- Timesheets and invoicing: My Hours creates weekly timesheets automatically from your tracked hours. It also generates invoices directly from your time tracked.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Zapier and PowerBI.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Solo users with basic time-tracking needs |
Pro | $8 per month | Consulting firms with more complex time-tracking needs |

You can’t set billable rates per task or team member in the freemium plan.
6. Timely
Price: Starts at $9/month.

Timely is a private and secure AI-powered time tracker that helps consultancies track billable time and increase profitability. It’s a good shout if you prefer the idea of a timer running in the background so you don’t need to stop and start the clock.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
Timely automates time tracking by capturing everything you work on. Using AI, it then creates timesheets for you that you can approve in just one click. | You can’t create invoices in Timely. But can manage your invoices through Timely’s QuickBooks Online invoicing integration. |
Here’s why one small business user finds Timely to be convenient, “Timely makes time tracking extremely easy and accurate. Since it’s tracking every activity you do during work and groups these activities with machine learning, I don’t need to manually start and stop timers to measure how long I worked on a particular project. It gives teams and clients more transparency when it comes to invoicing and project reviews. I also like the Planning feature, which helps me set the hours and project I want to work on the following days.”
Crucially, Timely is also on the same page as Toggl Track when it comes to anti-surveillance. The platform is committed to providing users with the privacy to capture their own “memories” and then do what they want with them, whether that’s downloading them, sharing them, or keeping them under locks.
Top features
- Automatic time tracking: Timely automatically captures every second of your work in the background.
- AI timesheets: Timely uses artificial intelligence to draft your timesheets based on the time it tracked.
- Billable rates: Set hourly rates for each project or team member and keep your invoices accurate.
- Multiple currencies: Timely lets you add different currencies for your international projects.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Google Calendar, Microsoft Excel, and Quickbooks.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Starter | $9 per user/ month | Freelancers and small teams |
Premium | $16 per user/ month | Midsize teams |
Unlimited | $22 per user/ month | Midsize and large teams |
Unlimited+ | Contact for more pricing | Large teams |
7. Time Analytics
Price: Starts at $4.99/month.

Time Analytics is a time tracking app that consultants can use to track and manage their time across multiple projects and clients and analyze their efficiency. Think of it as a no-fuss way to stay on top of your time and boost productivity.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
With Time Analytics, you can manually track time by task, project, or client by using a timer or clocking in time. You can also set hours as billable and add labor and billing rates for your consulting team. | You can’t track time via browser extension with Time Analytics which might lead to inaccurate time tracking data. Additionally, some users experience challenges with loading and exporting data. |
This small business user gives an overview of how adding billing rates for consulting works, “It prepares data for the invoice, based on hard facts and time utilization so you could control all tasks and services suitable for billing and review which activities are billable/unbillable.”
Top features
- Auto-generated invoices: Time Analytics automatically generates invoices based on your tracked time data.
- Daily and weekly timesheets: Keep track of employee work hours, manage workloads, and analyze productivity.
- Revenue, cost, and profit reports: Get key data on revenue generated, costs incurred, and overall profit margins.
- Mobile app (Android and iOS): Track time and manage tasks on the go from Android and iOS platforms.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Microsoft Excel and Google Chrome.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Starter | $4.99 per user per month | Teams who want to track time and employee productivity |
Optimum | $6.99 per user per month | Teams who want to streamline time tracking, increase profitability, and transparency |

Time Analytics’ invoicing features are only available in the Optimum plan.
8. Harvest
Price: Free plan available.

Harvest is a consultant time and billing tool that tracks billable hours online and offline. But it’s not just about tracking — Harvest also lets you create invoices right from the time you’ve logged and even tracks expenses.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
Harvest lets consultants do many things without leaving the app: track time and expenses, create invoices, generate client reports, and collect payments. This end-to-end workflow simplifies and accelerates client billing and payment processing. | Harvest is a simple tool that doesn’t embrace some of the advanced functionality you’ll find in other tools. For example, you can’t create custom reports and dashboards in Harvest, which one user considers a downside, saying, “It would be nice if they offered more robust reports.” |
Here’s how one Harvest user reviews the platform, “It works very well and is very intuitive. It facilitates time tracking for users who need to work on sending invoices to clients and track multiple projects, from multiple devices, complementing several applications.”
Top features
- Billable and non-billable time tracking: Track your paid and non-paid time and share billable reports with clients for transparency.
- Expense tracking: Track project and task expenses, add receipts, and add them to client invoices.
- Online payments: Harvest’s Stripe and PayPal integrations mean clients can pay you easier, faster, and safer.
- Invoicing: Create invoices based on your tracked time in just a few clicks.
- Project and team reporting: Visualize project progress, track internal costs, and see how your team spends time with Harvest’s detailed reports.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Stripe, Google Calendar, and PayPal.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best |
---|---|---|
Free | $0 | Solo users |
Pro | $11 per user per month | Small teams |
Premium | $14 per user per month | Teams with advanced reporting and administrative needs |

Harvest’s freemium plan has a limit of 1 seat and 2 projects.
9. DeskTime
Price: The Lite plan is free.

DeskTime is a multi-platform automatic time tracking app for consultants with employee monitoring features. DeskTime tracks URLs and app usage and takes random screenshots. So, if you’re managing a team, you’ll definitely gain insights into everyone’s workday to help with planning and balancing workloads. Or you may just think this functionality is too invasive — you decide!
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
Solo consultants who aren’t being spied on by a team leader will likely love the level of insights that DeskTime delivers. | We’ll say it again. Tools equipped with employee monitoring features like URL tracking and screenshots aren’t bringing any positive functionality to the table. Instead, they’re artificially inserting toxicity into their company cultures — and that’s a loss in our book. |
For example, this user describes, “The level of configuration that DeskTime allows is perfect for me. I can see how I use my time, how productive I am and the number of hours I dedicate to each thing. It helps me keep track of how I am doing and to set limits.”
However, the surveillance features are pretty…invasive. One employer describes, “We use it in our office to check the time on which every individual arrives, and the time they spent productively in the office.”
Another enjoys it for similar reasons, “As project lead, I can measure the productivity of my employees with its in-depth application usage details, such as which sites they have visited in browser and other applications.” Yikes — scary much?
Top features
- Automatic time tracking: DeskTime can automatically track your work hours in the background without manual input.
- Offline time tracking: Track time when you’re not connected to the internet, and DeskTime syncs it once you’re online again.
- Employee surveillance: DeskTime can track URLs and apps and take random screenshots as proof of work.
- Multiple platform time tracking: With DeskTime, you can track time from your browser, iOS, and Android devices.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Outlook Calendar, Google Calendar, and Asana.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Lite | $0 | Solo users |
Pro | $6.42 per user/month | Teams who need a basic time-tracking app |
Premium | $9.17 per user/month | Teams with more complex time-tracking and project-scheduling needs |
Enterprise | Custom | Enterprise teams with over 200 users |

You can’t track time offline with DeskTime’s free plan.
10. Apploye
Price: Starts at $2.50/month.

Apploye is an affordable time tracking and timesheet app that helps consultants improve their billing and productivity.
✅ What we like | ❓What’s missing |
---|---|
Apploye has five types of timesheet views showing a real-time view of employees’ tracked time to help you understand their work habits. You can view daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly timesheets or select a custom date range you want to check. | By now, you’ll know where we stand on tracking employee activity. And yep, Apploye is another tool that doesn’t empower companies with trust. |
Although there are other tools with entirely free plans, Apploye still offers a reasonably affordable price which many consultants will be happy to pay for.
In fact, one user doesn’t even feel the need to sync the platform with other tools, as they explain here: “The most remarkable thing about Apploye is it has many features with a very minimum monthly subscription fee. Apart from time tracking, it also provides a Task Management feature that helps organizations monitor employees’ productivity. I don’t need to use any other project management tool like Trello or Asana when Apploye came with all the features in one single step.”
Consider the level of surveillance when choosing the best software for your needs, though. Here are some thoughts from Peter P., a small business founder, on why he doesn’t need the employee tracking feature: “There needs to be a level of trust between employer and employee, since no one (even the superstars) works at 100% focus during all working hours. Everyone needs a mini break to surf the web or do something not work related, so if a screenshot captures that, it caused friction.”
Top features
- Daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and custom timesheets: Choose how you want to see each team member’s time data.
- Random screenshots: Apploye takes screenshots every ten minutes for proof of work.
- Apps and URL usage: See the total time and percentages of the apps and URLs your team uses.
- Invoicing: You can quickly generate client invoices based on your tracked work hours.
Tool integrations
Integrations include Asana, Trello, and ClickUp.
Pricing
Plan | Cost | Best for |
---|---|---|
Standard | $2.50 per user/month | Consultants who need basic time tracking, invoicing, and budgeting features |
Elite | $3.50 per user/month | Remote teams who need screenshot monitoring, URL tracking, and app usage tracking |

The Standard plan doesn’t have idle time detection.
A quick comparison of the best consultant time tracking apps
Tool | G2 Rating | Best for | Cheapest Paid Plan |
---|---|---|---|
Toggl Track | 4.6 | Accurate time tracking, powerful reporting, and profitability analysis | From $9/user/month |
Hubstaff | 4.5 | Monitoring remote employees | From $4.99/user/month |
Clockify | 4.5 | Simple and powerful invoicing | From $5.49/user/month |
TimeCamp | 4.7 | Billing, invoicing, and profitability tracking | From $2.99/user/month |
My Hours | 4.6 | Easy-to-use invoicing and reporting | From $8/user/month |
Timely | 4.8 | Automatic and non-invasive time tracking | From $9/user/month |
Time Analytics | 4.9 | Monitoring employee activity and productivity | From $4.99 per user/month |
Harvest | 4.3 | Invoicing and payments | From $11/user/month |
DeskTime | 4.5 | Automatic time tracking and employee monitoring | From $6.42/user/month |
Apploye | 4.5 | Billing and employee productivity | From $2.50/user/month |
How do I choose the best consultant time tracking software?
When choosing consultant time tracking software, you should look at your specific needs. Do you need just time tracking, or do you also need a project profitability tool? How about invoicing and payroll?
Here are some general things to consider when choosing your time tracking software:
- Ease of use: Your consultant time tracking software should have a user-friendly interface. You should be able to easily log hours, view reports, and manage tasks. If it’s too complicated, it can waste more time than it saves.
- Features: The best consultant time tracking apps accurately track time online, offline, and on multiple devices. Other relevant features include billable and non-billable hours tracking, productivity analysis, expense tracking, and detailed reporting.
- GDPR compliance: Depending on your industry, you might need to ensure your employee time tracking methods comply with legal standards.
Try Toggl Track for consultants
Time tracking for consultants is now a non-negotiable. The data speaks for itself: accurate time tracking drives better billing practices, optimizes project management, and ensures you’re not leaving money on the table. Whether you’re managing a packed client roster or chasing tight deadlines, the right tool can be the difference between chaos and control.
The must-haves? Billable time tracking, profitability reports, cross-platform access, and rock-solid data security. And while free plans can be a decent starting point, premium versions unlock the real power with advanced features designed to save you time and maximize profits.
Still wondering where to start? Toggl Track is one of the best time tracking tools for consultants. It’s simple yet robust, giving you all the insights you need to stay on top of your game. If you’re serious about scaling your consulting business and making every second count, Toggl Track is the obvious pick.
Free Time Tracking App for Consultants
- Track time easily and accurately across multiple projects and clients
- Create detailed time reports and share them with clients for transparency
- Analyze and improve your consulting business’s profitability

Rebecca Noori is a freelance writer specializing in HR, productivity, and remote work topics. With a knack for turning complex ideas into practical advice, she helps businesses and professionals navigate modern workplace challenges.