Clockify vs Toggl Track vs Homebase: Best Time Tracking Software for a Small Team
“Time tracking software” actually covers two different jobs depending on how a business pays people. A consultancy billing clients by the hour wants a stopwatch tied to projects and clients — that’s Clockify and Toggl Track’s territory. A retail shop or restaurant scheduling hourly staff wants shift scheduling with a time clock built in — that’s Homebase’s. Picking the wrong shape wastes time forcing a tool to do a job it wasn’t built for, so the real decision here is less “which is better” and more “which job do you actually have.”
Quick take
- Billing clients hourly or tracking time against projects, freelancer/consultancy-style: Toggl Track or Clockify
- Want built-in invoicing/expense tracking and the lower-cost paid tiers: Clockify
- Scheduling hourly staff shifts with clock-in/clock-out, retail/restaurant-style: Homebase
The three options
Clockify’s free tier covers up to 5 users — timer, timesheets, auto-tracker, and basic reporting, with no cap on projects or time entries. That’s the same seat cap most competitors use (despite Clockify’s reputation, from an earlier unlimited-free-users era, as the generous one), so the real free-tier draw today is feature breadth rather than headcount. Paid tiers layer on from there: Basic at $3.99/user/month (annual billing) adds admin controls like adding time for others and bulk editing; Standard at $5.49/user/month adds invoicing, time-off tracking, and approval workflows; Pro at $7.99/user/month adds scheduling, expense tracking, labor-cost analysis, budgets, and GPS tracking; Enterprise at $11.99/user/month adds SSO, custom subdomains, and audit logging. For a team of 5 or fewer that mostly needs a timer and basic reports, Clockify’s free tier alone often covers it — beyond that headcount, or once you want invoicing or approval workflows, the paid tiers start mattering.
Toggl Track caps its free tier at a small number of users rather than staying unlimited, but is widely regarded as having the fastest, most frictionless timer UI of the three — a deliberate design focus for consultancies that live in it all day. Starter is $9/user/month and adds team-level reporting, billable rates, and project estimates; Premium is $14/user/month for the first year (renewing at $18/user/month) and adds profitability analysis, timesheet approval, custom reports, and integrations with tools like Jira and Salesforce. Toggl Track doesn’t include built-in invoicing the way Clockify’s Standard tier does — pair it with dedicated invoicing software like Invoice Ninja, Wave, or QuickBooks if billing clients directly off tracked hours matters to you.
Homebase solves a different problem entirely: hourly-staff scheduling with a built-in time clock, aimed at retail, restaurants, and other shift-based small businesses rather than project-billing consultancies. The free Basic tier covers up to 10 employees at one location with basic scheduling, basic time tracking, and point-of-sale integration — genuinely usable for a small single-location shop. Paid tiers scale by feature depth rather than by seat, and are priced per location: Essentials at $30/month per location (or $24/month billed annually) covers unlimited employees at that location with advanced scheduling and team messaging; Plus at $70/month per location ($56 annual) adds AI-assisted scheduling and PTO controls; All-in-One at $120/month per location ($96 annual) adds onboarding and HR/compliance tools, with an optional payroll add-on at $39/month base plus $6/employee. A multi-location business pays the per-location rate at each site, not one flat fee company-wide. There’s no per-project time tracking here at all — Homebase is built around shifts and attendance, not billable hours against a client.
Cost and scope compared (2026)
| Clockify | Toggl Track | Homebase | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Up to 5 users, basic features | Limited users | Up to 10 employees, 1 location |
| Cheapest paid tier | $3.99/user/mo | $9/user/mo | $30/mo per location (unlimited employees) |
| Built for | Project/client time billing | Project/client time billing | Hourly shift scheduling + attendance |
| Built-in invoicing | Yes (Standard tier+) | No | No |
| Shift scheduling | Only on Pro tier+ | No | Core feature, all tiers |
| Payroll integration | No | No | Add-on, paid tiers |
Which one fits your setup
If you’re billing clients by the hour or tracking time against projects — a consultancy, an agency, a small dev shop — this is really a two-horse race between Clockify and Toggl Track. Clockify’s free tier (up to 5 users) and built-in invoicing make it the lower-cost default; Toggl Track’s faster timer UX and deeper integrations (Jira, Salesforce) are worth the higher per-seat price if your team already lives in those tools. If you’re instead scheduling hourly staff for shifts — a shop, a restaurant, a small office with front-desk coverage — neither Clockify nor Toggl Track’s project-based model fits well, and Homebase’s free single-location tier or $30/month Essentials tier is the more natural pick regardless of headcount, since it prices per location rather than per seat.
Which one should you actually pick?
- Freelancer or small consultancy billing hourly, want it free: Clockify’s free tier (up to 5 users).
- Same, but want the fastest timer and deeper tool integrations, willing to pay: Toggl Track Starter or Premium.
- Need invoicing tied directly to tracked hours: Clockify Standard, or pair Toggl Track with dedicated invoicing software.
- Scheduling hourly retail/restaurant staff at one location: Homebase’s free Basic tier.
- Multiple locations or need PTO/HR tools on top of scheduling: Homebase Essentials or Plus.
Homebase referral placeholder — swap for a real Homebase, Toggl, or Clockify affiliate/referral link once a program is confirmed, per CMT-54’s monetization decision.
Bottom line
This isn’t really a three-way comparison of equivalent tools — it’s two categories wearing the same “time tracking” label. Clockify and Toggl Track both track billable hours against projects and clients, with Clockify winning on lower-cost paid tiers and built-in invoicing, and Toggl Track winning on timer speed and integrations. Homebase solves an entirely different problem — hourly-staff shift scheduling and attendance — and is the right pick if that’s what you actually need, regardless of how it compares feature-for-feature against the other two.