Is Clockify still free in 2026?

What changed with the Clockify free plan in 2026?

The biggest change is that Clockify moved several everyday features off the free plan and added a hard limit on team size. According to Clockify's own help pages, the free plan is now capped at 5 active users, where it used to allow effectively unlimited people. That single change reshapes who the free plan is actually for.

On top of the user cap, a group of features that many small teams treated as standard now require a paid plan. Billable rates, whether set per project or per person, are gone from the free tier, which means the free plan can no longer tell you what your tracked hours are worth. Invoicing is paid. Excel and CSV export are paid, so free users are limited to PDF export. Scheduled reports, kiosk mode, and time off and scheduling also sit behind the paid plans now.

There are smaller limits too. On the free plan, report and dashboard date ranges are capped at one month at a time, so pulling a quarter of history in one view is a paid feature. If you compare that to how the free plan looked a year ago, the pattern is clear: the core timer stayed free, but almost everything connected to billing and reporting moved up a tier. Paid plans start at $4.99 per user each month for Basic and climb from there, which you can check on the Clockify pricing page.

What is still free and what is now paid?

Here is the short version of where the line sits now. The free plan still handles basic time tracking well, but the features tied to money and larger teams are the ones that moved.

Who does the free Clockify plan still work for?

The free plan still works well if your needs are simple and internal. If you are a solo user or a team of five or fewer, you mostly want to see where hours go, and you never send an invoice from the tool, then very little has changed for you. The timer still runs, projects still keep things organized, and a PDF summary still exports without paying.

This covers a real set of people. A freelancer tracking focus time for their own review, a small studio watching how long internal projects take, or a two-person team logging hours for a rough capacity check can all stay on the free plan comfortably. The common thread is that none of them depend on billable rates, invoices, or spreadsheets built from exported data.

A quick way to test it: if you can describe what you need as start a timer, tag it to a project, and glance at a PDF later, the free plan is still enough. The moment your description includes the words rate, invoice, or export to a spreadsheet, you have crossed into paid territory.

Where do the new limits start to hurt?

The new limits hurt most for anyone doing client work, because billing is exactly what moved to paid. If you bill by the hour, the free plan can now track the time but not attach a rate to it, so you are back to calculating what the work is worth somewhere else. The tracking is only half the job when the numbers still have to be turned into money by hand.

Invoicing is the sharpest example. A common small-team workflow was to track billable hours in Clockify and generate an invoice from them at the end of the month. That path is now a paid feature, so free users either upgrade or rebuild the invoice manually from tracked time, which is the kind of double work that turning tracked hours into invoices is supposed to remove in the first place.

The five-user cap bites in a quieter way. A team of four on the free plan is fine until it hires a fifth and sixth person, and then the plan that felt free suddenly has a bill attached to growth. The one-month report window and PDF-only export add smaller frictions on top: pulling a quarter of history or handing a client a clean spreadsheet both now point toward a paid plan. Individually these are minor. Together they change the free plan from a full workspace into a starting point you are expected to grow out of.

What should you do if the free plan is not enough anymore?

The honest answer is that it comes down to one question: do you need billing built in, or just tracking? Group the decision around what you actually do each week, not around which brand you already know, and the right move gets clearer.

If you only track internal time

Stay put. If nobody bills clients and the team is small, the free plan still covers the basics and there is no reason to pay. This is the one case where the changes barely matter, and switching tools would be more disruption than it is worth.

If you mainly need more users, not more features

Upgrading Clockify to Basic is reasonable when the only thing you outgrew is the five-user cap and you are happy with everything else. At $4.99 per user each month it is not expensive for a small team, and you keep the workflow people already know. The question worth asking first is whether you are paying mostly to undo a limit that used to be free.

If billing and tracking should live in one place

This is where it makes sense to look wider, because billable rates and invoicing are exactly what moved to paid. A tool that includes them by default can be simpler and cheaper than paying to add them back. Timen is the clearest example: it is free for the full product, with the timer, calendar, reports, exports, and built-in invoicing all included, no user cap, and no pricing tiers to climb. The features Clockify just moved behind a paywall - invoicing, billable rates, and unlimited users - are simply part of what you get, so tracked hours turn into a client invoice without a second tool or a bigger bill. If you want to see how the two line up feature for feature, the Timen and Clockify comparison is the direct read.

If you just want to weigh the options

Start with a shortlist rather than a single swap. A roundup of Clockify alternatives is a faster way to see which tools include billing for free, which are cheaper past five users, and which are simply simpler to run day to day.

In short: keep the free plan if your work is internal and small, upgrade Clockify if the user cap is your only problem, and move to a tool that already includes billing if the parts that went paid are the parts you use most - a fully free one like Timen if you would rather not pay to get them back at all.

Common questions about the Clockify free plan

Is Clockify still free in 2026?

Yes, Clockify still has a free plan in 2026, but it is smaller than before. It is now capped at 5 users, and billable rates, invoicing, and Excel and CSV exports have moved to paid plans.

What did the Clockify free plan lose?

The free plan lost unlimited users and is now capped at 5. It also moved billable rates per project or user, invoicing, scheduled reports, and Excel and CSV export to paid tiers. PDF export and basic project time tracking are still free.

What is a good free Clockify alternative for billing?

If you need billable rates and invoicing without paying extra, look for a tool that includes them by default. Timen is free for the full product, with no pricing tiers or user caps, and it includes billable hours and invoicing - the parts Clockify moved to paid plans.

How much does Clockify cost after the free plan?

Paid plans start at $4.99 per user each month for Basic, then step up through Standard, Pro, and Enterprise depending on the features and controls you need.

The short answer on Clockify in 2026

Clockify is still free, but the free plan is now a starter tier rather than a full workspace. It fits small, internal setups that only need tracking, and it gets thin fast for anyone who bills clients or grows past five people, since billing is exactly what moved behind the paywall.

If the features you lost are the ones you use most, it is worth trying a tool that includes them for free before you pay to get them back. Timen is one option - the full product is free, with invoicing and unlimited users included and no tiers - so you can start a simple timer that already turns hours into an invoice without watching for the next paywall.