Toggl Track review 2023 [Windows & Mac]

Formerly known as Toggl, Toggl Track is an intuitive time-tracking tool that lets you know how much time you spend on various projects. The app is popular with freelancers and small businesses that want to know where their billable hours go. However, it’s also popular with individuals who want to improve their productivity.

Toggl Track has a generous free version that is adequate and beneficial to freelancers and microbusinesses with light needs. Nonetheless, paid subscriptions come with advanced features that benefit groups in particular.

The intuitive software works on your desktop apps, web apps, browser extensions, and mobile apps. Moreover, it syncs data in real-time, updating information regardless of the app used.

On mobile apps, Toggl Track is available for Android and iOS devices, while desktop apps are available for MacOS and Windows. In this Toggl Track review, we highlight what the software has to offer in terms of pricing, advanced features, and more.

Learning to use Toggl Track is easy and straightforward; no training is required. Its intuitive and welcoming features make it easy to navigate. Basically, Toggl Track is just a timer; once you launch it, it will start counting seconds, minutes, and hours.

For each session, whether you’re working for a client or starting a new project, you simply log what you’re doing and start the timer. At the end of each timing session, the time spent is saved in your Toggl account.

When it comes to freelancers who want to bill their clients, Toggl Track helps them capture billable hours easily. Although it doesn’t offer invoicing features, Toggle Track lets you import your time-tracking reports to your accounting software.

In businesses, managers can understand how much time team members spend on one client, thereby gauging whether they are inefficient or overserving. This is helpful when re-strategizing to increase profitability. To ensure you track time in an orderly fashion, you can create categories for clients, projects, teams, tags, and workspaces.

Using Toggl Track, you can opt for desktop apps, phone apps, web app, and a browser extension. While you can do everything in the web app, other apps have specific functionality and added features.

All the apps work and sync well together. For instance, when MacOS is launched while the web app is running, Toggl Track will recognize that a timer is active, and the two apps will run efficiently as mirror versions of each other.

This time tracking software is available for MacOS and Windows. While there is a free plan available, you will need to create an account to get started. Unlike other apps, Toggl records idle hours when you’re offline and syncs the information once you make a reconnection.

Other features include:

• Offline time tracking mode – When you lose your internet connection, this version will continue tracking time while saving all the data that will be available when you are back online.
• Reminders – You can easily set time tracking reminders for specific times or days so you don’t forget to track time.
• Idle detection -Toggl Track lets you know when you are inactive and gives you options on whether to discard idle time.
• Timeline -This feature allows you to view records of each website and program on which you spent more than 10 seconds. The information is presented with a side-by-side view of the log-in times. However, it’s only available for Windows.
• Dark mode – With this feature, you can enjoy a UI with reduced brightness. It is available for MacOS and Windows.
• One-click timer – You can start tracking time and keep track of it with one click.
• Menu bar display – This feature allows you to know how much time you are spending by displaying the timer and project on the menu bar display.

With these applications, you can easily track time while on the move. The application is available for Android and iOS devices. Features included in this version are:

• Easy time tracking – You can start with a single click. In case you forget to start your timer, you can manually add time and account for each second.
• Suggestions – The mobile version gradually generates suggestions for time entry based on your work habits.
• Graphs and Pies – Through different chart formats, you can easily visualize the hours and minutes you use in each project or client.
• Calendar integration – This enables you to connect your calendar to Toggl Track and add events as a time entry.
• Widgets, live activity, and dynamic islands – You can easily view and manage your time entries using widgets for Android devices. For iOS devices, use live activity and dynamic islands.
• Shortcuts – Add tasks and new clients using @ and hash.

For members who prefer the Pomodoro time management technique, they can opt to use the in-built Pomodoro timer. It installs a start timer on productivity-related websites such as Google Docs.

Although the Pomodoro time management technique uses time frames of 25 minutes, you can easily customize your time lengths. The app will nudge you when it’s time to switch between breaks and focus sessions. This allows you to stay focused and increases your productivity.

There are four payment plans for Toggl Track. Each payment package has different benefits and features. The first plan is free, and it’s available once you create an account. It’s limited to up to 5 users, and offers intuitive time tracking and reporting best suited but not limited to freelancers.

This is followed by the Starter plan, which costs $9 per user/month and works well for small teams. The third-level package, known as the Premium Package, costs $18 per user monthly and is designed to help growing organizations. Lastly, there is the Enterprise package, which has custom pricing and offers customized solutions for large and complex organizations.

Pricing plan features include:

• Free Plan – Unlimited time tracking, projects, and clients; Pomodoro timer, automated time tracking triggers, exportable reports, and integration with over 100 popular tools.
• Starter – This covers everything in the free plan in addition to billable rates, time rounding for reports, project time estimates, tasks, project templates, and a calendar view
• Premium – This pricing plans offers the same features as the Starter with the addition of time tracking reminders, project forecasts and analysis, and scheduled saved reports sent via email.
• Enterprise: On top of the Premium features, Enterprise offers customizable solutions, priority support, and expert training and assistance.

Compared to other time-tracking alternatives, Toggl Track’s price is within a reasonable range. For individuals, it may suffice for simple time tracking. Here is a comparison to similar platforms.

At $10.80 per user/month, Harvest is a major competitor. Like Toggl Track, Harvest offers more than simple time tracking. It offers clear visual reports of your projects to help you stay on track in terms of budgeting, capacity, and costs. While it is a little pricey, it offers invoicing, expense tracking, and online payments, which Toggl lacks.

Through this, you can automatically turn tracked time and expenses into invoices and also accept online payments. However, Toggl Track compensates by offering integration with 140 apps, while Harvest integrates with just 57 apps.

Although Freshbooks is a tracking tool, it can best be described as an accounting tool. It includes accounting, invoicing, payments, project management, and expense reporting. Freshbooks has three packages that include $8.5 for the lite package, $15 for the plus package, and $27.5 for the premium package.

The lite package caters to time tracking needs that are included in Toggl Track’s free plan. In addition, even when using the Plus package, you are limited to 50 clients, while Toggl has unlimited clients and projects. You will need to opt for the premium package or custom pricing to have unlimited access and tailored solutions.

Best known for employee monitoring, Hubstaff is also a time tracking tool. It offers employees tools to clock in and out of their workplaces while giving managers insight into how they spend their time at work. Through integrations with PayPal and Payoneer, it includes automated payments based on bill rates.

While the free package is adequate for solo workers, teams need to pay for at least the Desk Starter package, which starts at $5.83 per month for 2 members. On the free plan, you get time tracking and timesheets. However, reports and payments are limited, whereas Toggl Track gives you unlimited reports and integrations, plus features such as automated time tracking triggers, idle time detection, and exportability for free. Other packages include the Desk Pro package priced at $8.33 for 2 members with unlimited perks and the Enterprise package for a customized plan.

Apart from time tracking, Paydirt allows freelancers and agencies to get invoices and estimates for their projects. Pricing starts at $8 per user per month, but it’s only limited to three clients. Plans for teams with 3, 6, and 10 members are set at $29,$49, and $79 per month. For an agency with more than 20 team members, Paydirt’s agency package costs $149 per month.

While this is quite high compared to Toggl, you get timesheets approval, task management, online payment, and more. Nonetheless, Paydirt lacks a free version for solo workers.

More than just tracking time, RescueTime offers you insight into your productivity level. This is done through visual displays such as bar charts and pie charts of time spent on various apps and websites. Depending on your activity, your time is categorized on a five-point scale, ranging from productive to very distracting.

To ward off any distractions, the app has a Focus Time distraction blocker that blocks all distracting websites. RescueTime has two payment plans: one is free and the other is $12 per month. Even so, Toggl offers more time tracking features, such as billable hours, and integration with more than 140 apps.

Unlike, the desktop and mobile apps that have special use cases, Toggl Track’s web application allows you full access to all the features based on your payment plan. Here is a review of all the features to expect.

With Toggl Track, you can start your timer with a single click and add details later. The mobile and desktop apps offer easy and accurate records of time.

You can pin your most frequently used entries to the top of your timer page for easy access. In addition, you can view your time entries in calendar view by integrating with Google Calendar. When offline, the web app will track your offline time and sync it later when you reconnect.

Toggl Track has three types of reporting that give you an insight into how you spend time. These can be kept for future references by creating saved report tabs. Also, they can be shared with clients and your team. For paying subscribers, you can schedule to have your reports sent via email. Moreover, Toggl can calculate how much your billable hours are worth, though you have to set pay rates. It generates the following:

• Summary – This report entails the total time tracked. You can filter it by clients, projects, user, date, and other options.
• Detailed – This report lets you see individual time entries.
• Weekly – entails all records made throughout the week.

Although Toggl Track is not a project management tool, you can get some features using the paid version. Toggl allows you to create sub-projects or tasks below major tasks to allow teams to assign workloads easier and create precise reports. Still, on project-based work, you can easily track the progress, budgets, and forecast timeline of more than one project.

Better still, you will get an estimation of how long a task will take and get alerts when the project is at a certain percentage. With recurring tasks, you set them as recurring in order for the projects to reset regularly. On top of billable rates, the app provides you with an overview of your past billable rates so that you can stay accurate when you need to change your rates.

This is among the features reserved for paying subscribers. It allows team leaders to assign team members working on the same task to the same user group in order to grant permissions at the same time.

Moreover, team members get automated reminders if they have tracked less time than their weekly targets. For premium subscribers, there is more control for managers as they can prevent changes to time entry, thus ensuring accurate reporting after a set date.

If you need to track time from inside other productivity apps and tools, chances are you can do it with ease with Chrome and Safari browser extensions. Toggl Track integrates your account with a long list of apps and tools via a browser plugin that embeds the Toggl Track timer into the interface of enabled apps.

These are apps common among freelancers and small businesses. It also offers APIs to organizations that have programming know-how so that they can customize whatever integrations they need. Here is a list of some apps plus their categories:

• Calendars – Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, and Email
• Communications and email apps – Slack, Gmail, and ProtonMail
• HR and Accounting – Spidergap, Zohobooks
• IT and web development – Githu, GitLab, Jira
• Project management – Asana, Toggl Plan
• Sales and customer support – Freshdesk, Salesforce
• Writing and documentation – Evenote, DevDocs