Clockify's free export is one month at a time
Clockify exports reports in PDF, CSV and Excel, but only the PDF is available on the free plan. CSV and Excel are a Basic plan feature or higher. Two further limits shape what a free workspace can actually pull: a PDF file holds up to 3,000 rows, and a free-plan report covers a maximum of 31 days, or one month, at a time. That combination is what people run into when they try to pull a year of history out of a free account. Everything here was checked against Clockify's own help documentation on 14 August 2026.
What can each Clockify plan export?
Clockify is unusually generous about what it lets you record for free, and noticeably less generous about letting you take it away. The tracking side has no user cap. The export side has three separate ceilings, and they interact.
| Limit | Free plan | Basic and above |
|---|---|---|
| PDF export | Available | Available |
| CSV and Excel export | Not available | Available |
| Report date range | Maximum 31 days, or one month, per report | No stated limit |
| Rows in a PDF | Up to 3,000 | Up to 3,000 |
Read those together and the free-plan picture is specific rather than vague. You can get your data out, one month at a time, as a document. A year of history is twelve exports, none of which a spreadsheet can total for you. If the team is busy enough to log more than 3,000 entries in a month, the PDF becomes the binding constraint instead of the date range, and you are splitting by fortnight.
The 3,000-row ceiling applies to the PDF itself, so it does not go away on a paid plan. It just stops mattering, because on Basic and above you would take the CSV instead.
How do you export a Clockify report?
Open Reports, choose the report you want, set the date range and filters, and use the export control to pick your format. The choice that matters most is which report you start from, because the two main ones carry different things.
Detailed reports keep your timestamps, summary reports do not
Clockify states plainly that the summary report export does not contain timestamps, and that you should export a detailed report if you need them. A summary is the right file for "how many hours went to this client last quarter". It is the wrong file for anything where the time of day matters, including most audit questions and any dispute about when work was done.
A detailed export can carry project, client, description, task, user, email, tags, billable status, start date, start time, end date, end time, duration including overnight entries, billable rate, billable amount and currency. That is a genuinely full row, and it is more than most trackers in this category put in a file.
You can customise what lands in the file
Clockify has a customise-export feature that controls what appears in the output: you can suppress information such as the user column or the charts, rename the report, and add your company logo. That is useful for anything client-facing, where a PDF with your own branding is the point rather than a limitation.
What does a Clockify export leave out?
The export is a report, and a report is a list of rows. Your project, client and tags appear on each row as text. They do not come out as the project, client and tag records themselves, with their own billable rates, their archived state, their colour, and the members assigned to them. If you are exporting for a spreadsheet that is fine, because a spreadsheet wants rows. If you are exporting in order to rebuild the same setup somewhere else, everything around the hours is the part you will be re-entering by hand.
Commas in tag names split them on the way back
One documented quirk is worth knowing before it happens. Clockify notes that when you export a tag whose name contains a comma from one workspace, then import that file, you get two tags instead of one. It is a small thing, and it is the whole flat-file problem in miniature: the file has no way to say that this comma is part of a name and that comma is a separator. Check your tag names before a round trip, and rename any that contain commas first.
How do you import data into Clockify?
Clockify's own import is the most capable of any tool in this group, which is worth knowing whether you are arriving or leaving. It accepts projects, clients, tasks, tags, time entries, timesheets and users from CSV.
- File size and rows: The file must be a CSV of up to 10 MB, and imports are limited to 200,000 rows.
- Headers must match exactly: All column headers must be in English and match Clockify's naming conventions exactly. This is the step that catches people arriving from another tool.
- Dates follow your profile: Date and time formats must match your profile settings rather than a fixed standard.
- Duration takes either shape: Clock format such as 1:30, or decimal such as 1.5.
- Timesheets need four fields: Email address, start date, start time and duration must all be present.
The header requirement is the important one. It means no other tracker's export will import into Clockify as it comes out of the box, because no two of them name their columns the same way. The work is not difficult, but it is manual, and it has to be repeated for every file if you are splitting a large history into batches.
Where can Clockify data go next?
Assuming you are on a paid plan and have a CSV, here is what each destination will do with it. As with every tool in this category, none of them reads the file unmodified.
| Destination | Takes a CSV import? | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Jibble | Yes, with a dedicated tool | Jibble publishes a free Clockify import tool and describes it as transferring historical time records, timesheets and projects. Its page does not document what is excluded, so check the result rather than assuming completeness |
| Toggl Track | Yes, with a much smaller ceiling | Toggl caps a CSV import at 1 MB, allows only workspace admins to run it, and accepts data for active users only. Clockify's 10 MB export will usually need splitting |
| Harvest | Yes, but reshaped | Eight columns, admin only, and it cannot import start and end times at all, only durations. Re-importing a corrected file creates duplicates rather than updating. It creates clients, projects and tasks automatically, but not people |
| Timely | Not from Clockify | Timely imports projects and clients directly from Toggl and Harvest. Clockify is not one of its direct sources |
| Hubstaff | Not documented | Hubstaff documents importing team members and time off balances, but no route for importing time entries |
The gap between Clockify's 200,000-row import ceiling and Toggl's 1 MB one is the practical headline here. Data moves out of Clockify into most places more easily than it moves back the other way, which is a reasonable thing to know before you commit to a direction.
Two of those are worth reading before you commit: Toggl puts CSV behind the same paid wall, and Jibble publishes a Clockify import tool whose contents it does not document.
How do you move Clockify data into Timen?
There is no file step. Timen connects to Clockify with an API key, reads the workspace directly, and creates the matching records. That means the plan gate does not apply: a free Clockify workspace that cannot produce a CSV can still be read through the API.
In Timen, open Settings, go to the Import tab and choose Clockify. Paste an API key, which you generate on Clockify's Manage API keys page, then pick the workspace and choose what to bring across.
Clockify is the one source where everything Timen tracks comes over. Nothing on the list below is skipped or approximated.
| In Clockify | In Timen | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Clients | Clients | Created as client records with their projects attached |
| Projects | Projects | Created under their client where one exists |
| Tags | Tags | Carried across and reattached to the entries that used them |
| Tasks | Tasks | Imported as tasks rather than flattened |
| Team members | Team members | Matched to your Timen team so entries keep their owner |
| Time entries | Time entries | Imported with their start and end times |
| Invoices | Invoices | Imported, which is not the case for every source |
The comma-in-a-tag-name problem does not apply here either, because nothing is being parsed out of a text file: the API returns the tag as a tag.
If you are weighing the move rather than making it, the alternatives worth considering covers the shortlist, and a direct comparison covers where the two differ on billing and reporting.
Common questions about exporting Clockify data
- Can you export Clockify data to Excel on the free plan?
- No. Clockify documents CSV and Excel export as a Basic plan feature or higher. The free plan exports PDF only, and a free-plan report covers a maximum of 31 days at a time.
- How many rows can a Clockify PDF export hold?
- Up to 3,000. A busy team can pass that inside a single month, and there is no warning that the file is the limiting factor rather than the date range.
- What does a Clockify export actually contain?
- A detailed export can carry project, client, description, task, user, email, tags, billable status, start and end date and time, duration including overnight, billable rate, billable amount and currency. The summary export carries no timestamps.
- What are the limits on importing a CSV into Clockify?
- A CSV of up to 10 MB and 200,000 rows. Column headers must be in English and match Clockify's own naming exactly, and dates and times must match your profile settings. Timesheet imports need email, start date, start time and duration.
Working around the 31-day window
On a paid plan none of this is difficult: take a detailed report as CSV, and the file will carry more detail than most of its competitors manage. On the free plan, decide first whether you need data or a document. If a PDF per month genuinely answers your question, the free export is fine. If anyone needs to total, filter or re-import the numbers, a month of PDF is not the format for it.
And if you are leaving, check the destination before you start splitting files. Whether it accepts your timestamps, how large a file it will take, and whether it wants its own column names are the three things that decide how long the move takes, and all three vary more than you would expect.