Toggl Track vs Clockify for Freelance Developers

For a solo developer, Clockify is the better pick if you want invoicing inside the tracker and the lowest paid price, and Toggl Track is the better pick if you want a cleaner timer and you will build the invoice somewhere else. Both have a free plan that covers a one-person practice. Neither free plan is where the real difference sits. The difference is what happens after you stop the timer: how rates are applied, whether hours get rounded before the client sees them, and how many manual steps stand between a tracked week and a sent invoice.

Pricing and plan limits below were read from each vendor's pricing page in October 2026. Plans change, so treat the numbers as a snapshot and confirm on the live page before you commit to an annual plan.

What does each free plan give a solo developer?

Both free plans let you track as much time as you want, which is the only thing a one-person practice needs from a timer.

Clockify. The free plan is built around unlimited tracking: a timer, a timesheet, a calendar, mobile and desktop apps, idle detection, reminders and reports. Clockify's pricing page says the free plan is for up to five users, and its FAQ says you can track as much time as you want and invite up to four people. For a solo developer that cap never matters.

Toggl Track. The free plan covers manual and real-time timers, focus mode, calendar integrations, task boards and individual reports. Toggl's own pricing page describes it as free for a limited number of users, and says the free plan is free forever with a 30-day trial on paid plans.

The catch with both is the same: the free tier is for tracking, and the paid tiers are for billing. If you bill by the hour, you will probably end up on a paid plan sooner or later, or you will export the data and do the billing step by hand. That is a fine trade. Just know which side of it you are on before you pick.

Here are the paid entry points as of October 2026. Prices are per user per month.

	Toggl Track	Clockify
Free plan	Yes, limited number of users	Yes, up to 5 users
First paid tier	Starter, $9 billed annually ($12 monthly)	Basic, $3.99 billed annually
Invoicing tier	No invoice builder listed on the plan page	Standard, $5.49 billed annually ($6.99 monthly)
Next tier up	Premium, $16 billed annually ($24 monthly)	Pro, $7.99 billed annually ($9.99 monthly)

For one person, Clockify's Standard plan costs roughly $66 a year billed annually, which is the cheapest route to tracked time plus an invoice in one product. Toggl's Starter is about $108 a year billed annually. Neither number is large next to a single billable day, so price should not be the deciding factor unless you are trying to stay at zero.

Which handles billable rates and rounding the way clients expect?

This is the section that decides most developer comparisons, because a billable rate is not a minor field. It is the number that turns hours into money, and it needs to be settable at the level you actually work at: per client, per project, sometimes per task.

Toggl Track lets you set billable rates at the workspace, member, project, or project-member level. It lists billable rates as a feature of the Starter plan and above, so on the free plan you track hours and do the arithmetic yourself. The plan comparison also lists rounding, which rounds time entries up, down, or to the nearest interval in reports.

Clockify puts billable rates on its first paid tier, Basic, and adds hourly rates per task, invoicing and rounding at Standard. Rounding on Clockify works the same way as the other tool: it rounds time in reports, up, down, or to the nearest number of minutes you choose.

That last detail matters more than it looks. Both tools round in the report view. The underlying time entries stay exact. So if a client contract says "billed in 15-minute increments, rounded up," you need to make sure the number on the invoice came from the rounded report, not from the raw entries. A 52-minute debugging session shows as 52 minutes in the timer and as an hour or 0.75 in a report, depending on your rule. If you copy hours from the wrong screen, your invoice and your contract disagree, and the client will notice the one time it costs them money.

Two habits prevent this:

Write the rounding rule into your contract or statement of work before the first invoice, not after.
Pull invoice hours from the same rounded report every time, never from the live timer.

If you have not settled the rule yet, the logic is covered in how to track billable hours as a developer, including how the quarter-hour convention plays against minute-level billing.

Can either one produce the client invoice?

This is where the two tools stop being interchangeable.

Clockify builds invoices from tracked time and expenses, lets you download them as PDF and track their status, and supports recurring invoices. That is on the Standard plan. If you want one login that holds the timer, the rates and the invoice, that is the shortest path.

Toggl Track is a tracker with strong reporting. Its plan comparison has a billing section covering billable rates, rounding, profitability and fixed fees, but it does not list an invoice builder. In practice you set the rate, track the time, export the report, and then create the invoice in another tool.

Here is the "hours to invoice" path for each, step by step:

Step	Toggl Track	Clockify (Standard)
1. Set the rate	Billable rate on project or member (Starter and up)	Billable rate on project, user or task
2. Track the week	Timer or manual entry	Timer or manual entry
3. Apply rounding	Rounding in the report view	Rounding in the report view
4. Make the invoice	Export CSV or PDF, build the invoice elsewhere	Create the invoice inside Clockify from tracked time
5. Send and follow up	Whatever tool holds the invoice	Status tracking inside Clockify
Manual steps left	Export, copy hours, format invoice	Review and send

Which path is better depends on what you already use. If your invoicing lives in a separate tool for good reasons (a tax setup, a client portal, a template you like), Toggl's export-and-paste step is a small cost. If you do not have an invoicing tool at all, Clockify's built-in route saves you from adding one.

If you go the export route, a free hourly invoice template handles the last step: drop the rounded hours in, set your rate, and download the PDF. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing leaves your browser.

How do exports and APIs compare for developers?

Developers care about this more than most freelancers, because a developer can script around a tool's limits. Both products give you the raw material.

Toggl Track lists an API on its plan comparison and says you can use it to integrate with third-party apps and customize workflows. Its pricing page also lists an MCP and command-line option for tracking from a terminal or connecting to an AI assistant. The API documentation lives at Toggl's engineering docs.

Clockify has a documented REST API as well, covering time entries, projects, clients and reports, at Clockify's API documentation. It also lets you import timesheets and users from a file, which is useful when you are switching tools and do not want to lose a year of history.

A scorecard for the things a developer actually checks:

Feature	Toggl Track	Clockify
Free tier for one person	Yes	Yes
Billable rates	Starter and up	Basic and up
Rounding	Listed in plan comparison, in reports	Standard and up, in reports
Built-in invoicing	Not listed	Standard and up
Public API	Yes	Yes
CSV export	Yes	Yes
PDF export	Yes	Yes
Offline tracking	Apps sync when online, data syncs automatically	Mobile and desktop tracking, including offline
Import time from a file	CSV import listed	Yes, timesheets and users

Treat the scorecard as a checklist, not a verdict. A row you do not need should not move your decision. If you never script anything, the API row is irrelevant. If you work on planes and in cafes with bad wifi, the offline row is the one to test during a trial week.

The practical point on exports: whichever tool you choose, run one export in your first week. Pull a report as CSV, open it, and confirm that the columns you need (date, project, description, hours, rate) are all there. The worst time to discover a missing column is the day before an invoice is due.

When is your commit history a better record than either?

Sometimes neither tool is the right answer, and it is worth saying so.

A timer records intent: "I started working on the Acme project at 9:14." Your commit history records output: "I merged the checkout fix at 11:42, and these are the files I changed." For a lot of developer work, especially focused feature work billed by the hour, the commit log is a more defensible record than a timer you remembered to press. It is timestamped by the tool, it is already written, and it lists what changed.

The weakness is everything that does not produce a commit: calls, planning, code review, reading documentation, debugging that ends in "no change needed." Those hours are real and billable, and a git log will never show them.

The setup that holds up best for most developers is a hybrid:

Use a timer (Toggl or Clockify, whichever you prefer) for meetings, review and research.
Use your commit history to cross-check and fill in coding blocks when you forgot to start the timer.
Reconcile both into one set of hours before you invoice.

If you want the cross-check without doing it by hand, turning your git log into an invoice walks through the process, and the git log to invoice tool does the formatting. For the git side, the git log documentation shows how to filter commits by author and date range, which is all you need to pull a billing period.

Which one should you pick?

A short decision rule, based on how you work:

You want everything in one place and the lowest cost: Clockify on the Standard plan. Timer, rates, rounding and invoicing in a single product.
You already have an invoicing setup you like: Toggl Track. The timer experience is clean, and the export step is small. Start on the free plan and move to Starter when you want billable rates in the tool.
You are not sure yet: start both on their free plans for a week and track the same work in each. At the end of the week, export from both and see which export you would rather paste into an invoice.
You mostly bill fixed-price or milestone work: you may not need a timer at all. Track hours for your own estimating, and invoice from the contract. Hourly vs fixed-price billing covers when hours matter and when they do not.

If you outgrow either tool's free plan, the comparison above is the one to revisit. If you are comparing against Harvest, our look at Harvest alternatives for freelancers covers that tool the same way.

Whichever timer you pick, the last step is the same: take the hours, apply the rule you agreed with the client, and send the invoice. Export the hours and drop them into the free hourly invoice template at billable.dev. It runs in your browser, so the numbers stay on your machine.

Frequently asked questions

Is Clockify really free forever?

Clockify's pricing page lists a free plan with unlimited time tracking for up to five users, and its FAQ says the free plan has no time-tracking cap. There is no stated end date on it. What you pay for is the extra features: billable rates start at Basic, and invoicing and rounding start at Standard. Plans and limits do change, so check the page before relying on it long term.

Does Toggl Track work offline?

Toggl's plan comparison says its web, mobile and desktop apps sync automatically when you are online, and it describes apps for users who want to work on the go. If offline tracking is a hard requirement for you, test it directly: turn off your connection, start a timer, stop it, reconnect and confirm the entry appears. Do that during the trial rather than during a client week.

Can I import Toggl or Clockify hours into an invoice?

Yes, by exporting. Both tools can export reports as CSV, and both list PDF export. Pull the report for the billing period, apply the rounding rule from your contract, and copy the totals into your invoice. Clockify can also build the invoice inside the tool on its Standard plan, which skips the copy step. If you use the export route, an hourly invoice template takes the numbers directly.

Which one rounds to 15 minutes?

Both can. Each offers rounding that goes up, down or to the nearest interval, and each applies it in reports rather than changing the stored time entries. Toggl lists the option in its plan comparison, and Clockify includes it from the Standard plan. Agree on the rounding rule with your client in writing, then pull invoice hours from the rounded report so the invoice matches the contract.