Freelancers
Time tracking for freelancers who bill by the hour
You are the tracker, the biller and the person who has to chase the invoice. The tracking is the part that can be handed off entirely.
In short
Time tracking for freelancers means recording billable hours accurately enough to invoice from, without adding an administrative job to a day that already has one. Automatic tracking captures the work as it happens so nothing depends on remembering a timer, and invoicing from the same tool removes the monthly export between tracked time and the bill.
- Forever, for one person
- Free
- Timers to remember
- 0
- Hours to sent invoice
- 4 steps
- To start
- No card
The month-end reconstruction
It goes like this. It is the 30th, you open a spreadsheet, and you try to remember what you did on the 8th. Calendar helps for the calls. Git helps if you write code. Email helps a little. The rest is a shrug and a number that feels about right.
The number that feels about right is always lower than the truth, for a reason that has nothing to do with honesty: an hour you cannot picture is an hour you will not put your name to. So you write down the hours you can defend and you write off the ones you cannot, and the write-off happens silently, every month, forever.
Automatic tracking does not make you more honest. It makes more of your work defensible, which is a different thing and the one that shows up in the bank.
What changes on a freelance week
- The Tuesday you cannot remember is already written down
- App, window, how long, how much activity. You are reviewing a record rather than performing an act of recall, and reviewing is a job you can do accurately at five on a Friday.
- Small jobs stop falling through
- The twenty-minute favour, the quick call, the "can you just" that turns into an afternoon. These are the ones a manual timer never catches, and collectively they are not small.
- Non-billable time becomes visible
- Proposals, invoicing, admin, unpaid revisions. Nobody bills them, but not knowing how many there are is how a full year turns out to be a thin one.
- The invoice is built from the tracking
- Pick the client, pick the period, the entries become lines with the hours and amounts already computed. Brand it, send a PDF or a link.
Work out your own numbers
We are not going to tell you how much you are losing. Any figure we published would be an average of other people, and you would be right to ignore it.
What is useful is your own arithmetic, so the tools below run it on your figures and nothing leaves your browser. If you have never worked out your utilisation or checked your rate against the income you actually need, those two numbers change more decisions than any tracker will.
- Billable hours calculator: your billable share and utilisation, from your own week.
- Hourly rate calculator: work back from the income you need to the rate that produces it.
- Free invoice generator: build and download an invoice PDF without an account.
The free plan is not a trial
One person, free, permanently: automatic and manual tracking, unlimited history, and reports. Invoices are capped per month on the free plan and unlimited on the paid one.
There is no card at signup and no expiry date after which your data becomes read-only leverage. If you stop paying later, your history stays readable and exportable.
Questions
What is the best time tracking app for freelancers?
The one that removes the most administration from your week. If you bill hourly and forget to start timers, an automatic tracker that also invoices removes both the recall problem and the monthly export. If you already run books in an accounting tool, a tracker that exports cleanly may suit you better.
Is there a free time tracker for freelancers?
Stunda is free forever for one person, with automatic and manual tracking, unlimited history, reports, and a monthly cap on invoices. No card is required to start.
How do freelancers track billable hours accurately?
By recording the work as it happens rather than reconstructing it later. Automatic capture produces a timeline with the evidence attached, which you review and assign, so accuracy stops depending on memory.
Can I invoice clients directly from my tracked time?
Yes. Selected time entries become invoice lines with hours and amounts computed from the tracked minutes, then go out as a branded PDF or a shareable link.
What about work I do away from my computer?
Add it as a manual entry. Client calls, meetings and thinking time are invisible to every tracker, so automatic capture is the floor rather than the whole picture.