Five Seats Is the Line That Decides This
- ● Clockify free covers up to 5 users
- ● Toggl Starter is $9 per user monthly
- ● Count seats before you compare features
Under five people, Clockify wins on price alone. Its free plan covers up to 5 users with unlimited tracking, while Toggl Track Starter costs $9 per user per month as of September 2026. Past five seats, Clockify Basic is $3.99 per seat on annual billing, still less than half of Toggl. Toggl earns that premium only if someone reads the reports every week.
Most small teams pick a time tracker on the demo and regret it on the invoice. The tracking itself is a solved problem in both tools, and neither will lose your hours. Confirm current pricing on the official site before you commit.
What separates them is what happens after the timer stops. One tool is built to analyze the hours, the other covers more of the surrounding admin for less money.
What Each Free Tier Actually Covers
Clockify publishes a hard number on its free plan. Up to 5 users get unlimited time tracking, timer and timesheet entry, the auto tracker, calendar view, and reports.
For a founder plus four contractors, that is a complete setup at $0. Toggl Track also runs a free tier, but describes it only as a limited number of users.
Toggl free includes tracking across web, desktop and mobile, more than 100 integrations, and productivity reports. The gap is not the timer.
Toggl holds billable rates, project estimates and alerts behind Starter. Any team that bills clients hits that paywall on day one, which explains most of the price difference below.
Toggl Track and Clockify Side by Side
Prices below are the published rates as of September 2026 and should be re-checked before you buy.
| What you are comparing | Toggl Track | Clockify |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan user cap | Limited users, not published as a number | Up to 5 users |
| Entry paid tier | Starter, $9 per user per month | Basic, $3.99 per seat annual |
| Entry tier on monthly billing | $9 per user per month | $4.99 per seat per month |
| Mid tier | Premium, $14 per user first year annual | Standard, $5.49 per seat annual |
| Mid tier alternative rate | Renews at $18 per user per month | $6.99 per seat on monthly billing |
| Top published tier | Enterprise, custom pricing | Enterprise, $11.99 per seat annual |
| Free trial | 30 days, no credit card | 7 days on paid features, no card |
| Native invoicing | Not offered | Standard tier and above |
| Billable rates | Starter and above | Included from Basic |
| Screenshots and GPS | Not offered | Pro, $7.99 per seat annual |
Two things stand out. Clockify has five paid steps between free and enterprise while Toggl has three, and Toggl publishes a renewal price 29 percent above its first-year rate.
Where the Money Goes Once You Pass Five People
- ● Basic $3.99 vs Starter $9 per seat
- ● Invoicing sits one tier up on Clockify
- ● Premium renewal jumps from $14 to $18
Take a six-person team that bills clients. On Clockify Standard, the first tier with invoicing, you pay $5.49 per seat per month on annual billing, or about $395 a year.
The same six people on Toggl Starter cost $9 each, roughly $648 a year, and you still have no invoicing. Add an invoicing subscription and the gap widens further.
Now push to Toggl Premium for profitability analysis and timesheet approvals. The first year runs $14 per user, then $18 on renewal, which is $1,296 a year for six seats.
That renewal step is the number teams miss during a trial. Budget for the second year, not the first.
Contractors Are the Line Item That Surprises People
Both tools price per seat, and a contractor who logs six hours a month costs the same as a full-time employee. On Toggl Starter that is $108 a year for a person who barely opens the app.
Clockify softens this at the low end because the free plan carries five users. A studio of three staff plus two rotating freelancers can stay at $0 until the sixth person arrives.
Once you pass that line, run the count honestly. List everyone who will ever need to log an hour, including the bookkeeper and the occasional subcontractor, then multiply.
Budget for the headcount you will have in twelve months, not the one you have today. A seat added in month three is billed for the rest of the term.
Reporting Is the Real Split, Not Tracking
- ● Both track time competently
- ● Toggl sells analysis, Clockify sells breadth
- ● Confirm plans on the official sites
Toggl Track sells analysis. Premium adds profitability analysis, fixed fee projects, scheduled reports, customizable reports, and data accuracy features that flag suspicious entries.
If your business is billable project work on thin margins, those features answer a question you actually have. Which projects lost money, and why.
Clockify sells breadth instead. Pro adds activity monitoring, scheduling, forecasting, expenses, labor cost and profit, budgets, GPS tracking and screenshots at $7.99 per seat annual.
That is a wider surface for less money, but the analysis is shallower. You get more dials and fewer answers.
Invoicing, Approvals, and Time Off
Clockify folds several admin jobs into Standard at $5.49 per seat. Time off tracking, invoicing including recurring invoices, approvals, attendance and overtime, and a QuickBooks integration all arrive at that tier.
For a small agency, that can retire a separate leave tracker and an invoicing subscription. Compare the combined cost of what you would drop before you call Toggl expensive.
Toggl keeps approvals at Premium and never adds invoicing. Its assumption is that billing lives in your accounting stack, not your tracker.
If you already run accounting software you are happy with, that assumption is reasonable and the missing invoicing costs you nothing.
The Surveillance Question You Should Settle First
Clockify Pro includes screenshots, GPS tracking and activity monitoring. Toggl Track does not offer them at any published tier.
This is less a feature gap than a stance. Whether you want that capability present in the tool at all is a people decision, not a procurement one.
Teams that switch on monitoring after the fact usually pay for it in trust. If you are unsure, pick the tool that cannot do it and remove the temptation.
Which Tracker Fits Your Team
Five or fewer people, no client billing: Clockify free. Five seats, unlimited tracking and reports at $0 covers the whole need without a card.
Freelancer who invoices clients: Clockify Standard at $5.49 per seat annual. Billable rates and invoicing arrive in one subscription instead of two.
Agency chasing project margin: Toggl Track Premium. Profitability analysis and fixed fee projects answer the margin question directly, but budget the $18 renewal rate.
Team already inside a project tool: neither, yet. Check the native timer first, because our comparison of built-in tracking against a separate app usually settles this on seat count alone.
Team of twenty or more: Clockify Enterprise at $11.99 per seat annual buys SSO, SCIM provisioning and an audit log. Toggl puts the equivalent behind custom Enterprise pricing.
The Switching Cost Between Them
Both tools export time entries to CSV, so the raw hours are portable. That is the easy half of a migration.
What does not transfer is project and client structure, saved report views, billable rate history, and any approval rules you configured. Rebuilding that for a mature workspace is a day of work, not an afternoon.
Because of that, the cheapest moment to choose is now, before a year of history accumulates. If you are still comparing categories rather than specific tools, the wider field in our time tracking software roundup is a better starting point.
What Neither Tool Can Fix
A time tracker records what people tell it. If half the team enters yesterday from memory on Friday afternoon, no feature in either product recovers the accuracy you lost.
Toggl attacks this with data accuracy features on Premium that flag suspicious entries, and Clockify attacks it with required fields on Basic and lock time on Standard. Both are nudges, not solutions.
The habit is the product. Agree what counts as billable, agree when entries are due, and write it down before anybody installs anything.
Teams that skip that conversation end up blaming the software within a quarter, then switching to the other one and blaming it too.
Run Both on the Same Real Week
Trial windows differ, so plan around them. Toggl gives 30 days with no credit card, and Clockify gives 7 days on paid features, also without a card.
Track one identical week in both tools. Same projects, same people, same client work, then run the report you would actually send to a client or read on a Monday.
The tool that produces that report with fewer clicks is your answer. By then the seat price is the only thing left to argue about.
FAQ
Does Toggl Track or Clockify have a better free plan?
Clockify has a free plan for up to 5 users with unlimited time tracking, reports, and apps. Toggl Track also has a free tier, but it is capped at a smaller number of users and holds back billable rates and project alerts.
How much cheaper is Clockify than Toggl Track?
Clockify Basic is $3.99 per seat per month on annual billing as of September 2026. Toggl Track Starter is $9 per user per month. On a six-seat team that difference is about $360 a year before any upgrade.
How long are the free trials?
Toggl Track keeps its trial open for 30 days with no credit card required. Clockify gives 7 days on paid features, also without a card. Neither window is long enough to judge reporting, so track a full billing cycle if you can.
Can either tool invoice clients directly?
Invoicing sits on Clockify Standard at $5.49 per seat per month on annual billing. Toggl Track has no native invoicing at any tier and expects you to export billable hours into an accounting tool instead.
Is it hard to migrate between the two?
Both export time entries as CSV, so the raw hours move cleanly. What does not move is project structure, saved report views, and billable rate history, which you rebuild by hand in the new tool.
Sources
- Toggl Track pricing — checked 2026-09-05
- Clockify pricing — checked 2026-09-05
Some links may be affiliate links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
How this article was made: it was drafted with AI assistance from the official sources listed above, and its figures were checked against those pages on the dates shown. It is not based on personal hands-on testing.
Comments
Post a Comment