Timen vs Clockify: which tool is better?

What does Clockify's free plan still cover?

Clockify Free is still a good timer for a small team. Up to five users get unlimited tracking, the timer and timesheet, a calendar view, desktop and mobile apps that work offline, idle detection and reminders, a Pomodoro timer and tracking inside other web apps. Reports are included too, but each one covers at most a month and exports as PDF only.

Where it stops is the point where tracked time turns into money. Billable rates, CSV and Excel export, shared report links, private projects, time estimates, required fields and the kiosk all start on Basic. Invoicing, timesheet approval, locking past time, time off and attendance start on Standard. We covered what changed in April separately.

The seat rule matters as much as the cap. Clockify charges for every active or invited user on the team page, owner and admins included, so a sixth person does not add one paid seat. It moves all six onto a paid plan.

How do Timen and Clockify compare feature by feature?

The table sets Timen's free product against the Clockify plan where each feature starts. Where Clockify has something Timen does not, the table says so plainly.

What would a team of 12 pay for each?

Timen costs nothing at 12 people, or at 50. Clockify's bill depends on which plan holds the feature you need, multiplied by every seat on the team.

Take a 12-person agency that tracks billable hours and invoices its clients. Billable rates and CSV export need Basic, which comes to $47.88 a month billed annually, or $59.88 month to month. Invoicing from Clockify needs Standard: $65.88 a month billed annually, which is $790.56 a year, or $83.88 paid monthly. If the same team also wants scheduling, budgets or activity monitoring, Pro comes to $95.88 a month billed annually, or $119.88 monthly.

Prices are in US dollars. Paying annually is Clockify's only discount, at 20% off, and new accounts get a 7-day trial of Pro with no card needed. Clockify does not refund payments, so run the trial before you pay.

Timen has no plans or seats to compare. It is made by the team behind Breeze, and a team can make an optional contribution from inside the app that unlocks nothing extra. Timen's pricing page says the same in more detail.

When is Clockify the better choice?

Consider Clockify when any of these requirements is essential to your team:

• Shared clock-in: Clockify's kiosk turns a shared tablet or computer into a time clock, from Basic. People who only clock in there can be added as limited seats from $0.79 a month billed annually. Timen has no kiosk.
• Attendance and leave: Standard adds attendance and overtime reports, time off policies and holidays. Timen tracks work time, not attendance or leave balances.
• Formal approval: Standard lets people submit weekly or monthly timesheets for a manager to approve. Timen can lock a past period so nobody edits it, but there is no approval step.
• Planning and cost control: Pro adds scheduling, forecasting, project budgets, expenses and a view of labor cost against what you bill. Timen has none of these.
• Company sign-in: Enterprise adds single sign-on through SAML, Okta or Office 365, SCIM provisioning and an audit log. Timen offers Google and Apple sign-in.
• A desktop app: Clockify has its own apps for Windows, Mac and Linux with idle detection, even on Free. Timen runs in the browser, on phones and through a browser extension.

And if your team is five people or fewer and only needs to see where the hours went, Clockify Free is a perfectly reasonable place to stay. Its free plan runs out when you need to bill those hours, not before.

Does Clockify monitor your team?

Only if an admin sets it up, and only on certain plans. Clockify's activity monitoring is available on Pro, Enterprise and the CAKE.com Bundle, and during the free trial. Free, Basic and Standard do not include it.

When it is switched on, each person installs a desktop agent from a link their admin sends, and the admin assigns it to their device. It records which apps and websites are used, keyboard and mouse activity levels (not keystrokes or typed text) and screenshots, which are blurred by default and deleted after 60 days. Pro also offers optional GPS tracking while people are on the clock. The auto tracker on Clockify's free plan is a different thing: it logs apps and websites for the person using it, and only they can see the result.

Timen has no monitoring, screenshots or GPS on any account. That can matter if your team wants an account with no monitoring capability. It is also true that a Clockify team on Standard or below never meets the agent at all.

Who gets the most out of Timen?

Timen suits teams that need client rates, reports and invoices, and can manage without budgets or formal timesheet approval. That includes solo businesses as well as larger teams.

For example, a 12-person agency could use this monthly workflow. People start the Timen timer in the browser, from the Chrome or Firefox extension, or in the iPhone and Android apps, and mark time as billable as they go. On Fridays, anyone who forgot fills the gaps on the weekly calendar. At month end, the account lead runs a report for one client, sends them the PDF, builds the invoice from the same filtered time and sends it to QuickBooks Online or Xero. An owner or admin can then lock the month so members cannot edit hours that have already been billed.

Main tradeoff: Timen is deliberately narrow. If the list in the Clockify section describes your team, Timen does not have those features, and Clockify is the better fit.

How do you move from Clockify to Timen?

You can trial Timen with one active client project before changing the team’s daily workflow. The Clockify import copies selected resource types from a workspace; it does not select a single project. To keep the trial small, create the project manually first, or import your history and choose one project for the team to use.

1. Generate an API key in Clockify, on its Manage API keys page.
2. In Timen, open Settings, then Import data, choose Clockify and paste the key. Clients, projects, tags, team members and time entries come across, and Clockify tasks arrive as tags. On a free Clockify workspace the import can take longer, because Clockify limits how many API requests a free plan can make, and it pauses and resumes on its own.
3. Invite the team. Tick the option to email the imported members when you start the import, or invite people later from People and give them access to the project.
4. Pick one active client project and have the people on it track that project in Timen for two weeks.
5. Run the project's report and build its invoice in Timen. If it matches what you would have sent from Clockify, move the next project.

Importing adds to what is already in Timen and does not delete anything in Clockify, so both stay usable while you compare. Timen's import steps cover each source in more detail.

Where should your team start?

If you need rates, reports and invoices, try Timen with one client project and check the result before moving more work. If attendance, approvals or budgets are essential, use the feature table to choose the Clockify plan that covers them.

Still weighing other options? The Harvest comparison covers a billing-first rival, and the Toggl Track comparison a timer-first one.