Timescanner vs Clockify: what free actually costs

Clockify is the obvious first stop when you’re looking for a time tracker. It’s free, it works on desktop and mobile, and it covers more features than most solo freelancers need.

The problem isn’t the price. It’s the model.

The timer fails the same way every time

Clockify runs on start/stop timers. Select a project, click Start, work, click Stop. Log anything you missed manually at the end of the day.

This fails structurally for most freelancers — not because of bad intentions, but because of how freelance work actually happens. A client call starts before you click anything. An email thread pulls you away for 20 minutes mid-session. At 6pm you open the timer and realize you’ve been billing the wrong client for two hours.

The free plan doesn’t change that math. The cost shows up elsewhere: in sessions never logged, hours estimated down when you couldn’t remember, clients invoiced for less than the work was worth.

One forgotten 90-minute session per week at €80/h is €5,760 over a year. The work happened. It just wasn’t clicked.

Built for employers, not freelancers

Clockify was designed around teams. Its most prominent features — employee monitoring, screenshot capture, idle detection, activity rate tracking — are built for managers watching their staff, not for a solo freelancer who needs clean billing data at month end.

That’s a fundamental mismatch. A freelancer doesn’t need surveillance. They need records. Clockify is an employee management infrastructure that added a “solo plan” as a use case. Timescanner was built the other way around.

How calendar tracking works differently

Timescanner doesn’t run timers. It reads the calendar you’re already filling.

If you block time for client work in your calendar — meetings, focus blocks, project sessions — those blocks become your billing records. Add one naming convention: [ClientName] at the start of each billable event.

[Acme] Strategy call — 1h, billable to Acme. [Acme][Brand] Design review — 2h, project Brand. [NordCo][O] Kick-off — offered, not invoiced.

The bracket method takes 5 seconds per event. Timescanner reads your iCal feed — from Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, Proton Calendar, or any iCal-compatible app — and generates a billing summary per client per month. No timer running in the background. No app to open mid-task.

The data is more accurate than reconstructed timer logs because the event exists before the work starts: created when you plan, not pieced together from a fading memory. Turning month-end into a 15-minute invoice only works when the tracking has been continuous — and the calendar method is the only one where continuous is the default.

Where Clockify holds up

Clockify is the right tool in specific situations.

For teams where a manager needs to see logged hours across multiple employees, Clockify’s reporting and project budgets work well. For freelancers who bill through a platform that integrates with Clockify — some agencies require it — the connection has value. For internal tasks, personal projects, or time you’re not billing, the free plan covers it cleanly.

If you’re billing a corporate client who requires time logs with timestamps, Clockify produces those. Some enterprise procurement processes won’t accept a calendar export.

Pricing

Clockify: free plan (functional for solo), paid plans from $3.99/user/month.

Timescanner: €79/year, flat. Unlimited calendars. 30-day free trial, no credit card.

The price gap is real. The workflow gap is more significant. One requires a separate tracking habit, ten times a day. The other reads a calendar you’re already maintaining.

For other options: Toggl alternatives for freelancers who keep forgetting to track.

Timescanner works with Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, Proton Calendar, Notion Calendar, Fastmail, and any iCal-compatible calendar.