RescueTime tells you where the day went. Stunda tells you who to send it to.
RescueTime has been doing automatic tracking longer than anyone, and its
focus sessions and distraction blocking are better than ours. What it does
not do is produce the document you get paid against.
No card required. RescueTime facts checked
against
their own pages.
Stunda and RescueTime, line by line
The original automatic tracker, built around focus and distraction blocking. Rows are marked for whichever product actually wins them.
Feature comparison between Stunda and RescueTime, checked 24 August 2026
Feature
Stunda
RescueTime
Automatic tracking
Sessions, per app, with active and idle split
Yes, and the longest track record in the category
Invoicing
Every plan, stored, shareable, PDF
Not offered. Billable rates, but no invoice document
Distraction blocking
Not offered
Focus sessions with site and app blocking
Mobile
Not offered. Desktop and web
iOS and Android
Free plan
Free forever for one user
None
Price for one person
$4.49 per person a month
$7 a month on annual billing, $9 monthly
Cheapest tier with timesheets
The free one, then $4.49 per person a month
Solo+ at $12 a month. Solo Focus at $7 is focus tooling without timesheets
Team rate with timesheets
$4.49 per person a month, billed yearly
Team+ at $16 per seat a month annually. Team Focus at $10 has no timesheets
Attention and distraction reporting
Not offered. Counts are shown, never scored
The core of the product, with a focus score and blocking
Works offline
Desktop app keeps tracking if the internet drops
Buffers locally, built around the cloud dashboard
MCP server
First-party, hosted, on every plan
Community-built wrappers over the REST API
One person RescueTime: $7 Stunda Pro: $4.49
5 people RescueTime: $50 Stunda Team: $22.45
RescueTime at $7 per seat a month, billed annually.
Solo Focus is $9 a month billed monthly. Timesheets are a separate line: Solo+ is
$12 a month on annual billing and $15 monthly. Team Focus is $10 per seat annually
and $12 monthly; Team+, which is the one with timesheets, is $16 per seat annually
and $18 monthly. Paid plans carry a 14-day trial, and a Lite free plan exists after
a paid subscription ends. Stunda Team is $4.49 per person a month, with no seat cap.
That is where the two models separate: 2.2x at 5 people.
Billable rates are not an invoice
RescueTime can attach a rate to time and report what that time was
worth. What it will not do is produce the document: numbered, dated,
addressed to a client, itemised, branded, with a link you can send and a
record of whether it was paid. That last mile is where freelancers actually
lose money, because it is the part that gets done at 11pm on the last day
of the month from memory. Stunda's invoice is assembled from the sessions
themselves, so what you bill and what you tracked cannot drift apart.
Two different definitions of a good day
RescueTime scores your day against focus. Stunda scores it against
billability, which sounds cynical and is really just a different question:
not "was that deep work" but "is that hour on an invoice yet". Both numbers
are useful and they are not substitutes. If you want the first one,
RescueTime measures it better. If the reason you are tracking at all is
that you invoice for it, the second one is the one that pays.
The cheap tier is the one without timesheets
RescueTime sells Focus and Timesheets as two things, and the entry price is
for Focus alone. Solo Focus at $7 a month is a distraction-blocking and
attention-reporting product; timesheets arrive with Solo+ at $12, and on the team
side the split is the same, $10 per seat for Team Focus against $16 for Team+.
So the figure to compare against a tracker you intend to bill from is the plus
tier, not the headline one. This is not a criticism of the packaging, which is
coherent for what RescueTime is actually good at. It is just that "from $7"
and "the plan that produces hours" are two different numbers here.
Your time, inside the assistant you already use
RescueTime ships an assistant inside its own product, and the MCP
servers you can find for it are community projects wrapping its public API,
which means an unofficial dependency and your key in somebody else's code.
Stunda ships its own, which is a different bet: that the model you talk to
should be the one that also sees your repository, your calendar and your
issues, rather than a separate one that only sees your time.
Your hours, readable from your own AI client
Stunda hosts an MCP endpoint, so Claude, Cursor, Codex and VS Code can answer
questions about your tracked week without an export. It runs strictly as you,
on every plan including Free, and it uses no AI quota.
Focus sessions that actually block the sites you asked to be blocked, a
productivity model refined over more than fifteen years, mobile tracking,
and the longest continuous history most people have of how they spend their
attention. If your problem is that you lose two hours a day and cannot see
where, RescueTime is a better tool than Stunda and always will be, because
that is the product. RescueTime has also added billable rates and shared
clients and projects, so the gap is narrower than it once was.
Moving over from RescueTime
Nothing here is a migration project. The honest version is that tracking
starts fresh and your history comes across as a file.
Export your history from RescueTime as CSV and keep it. It is your
record of what you already billed, and it does not need to live in Stunda
for that to be true.
Install Stunda and let it run for a week alongside RescueTime. The
two do not conflict, and a week is long enough to see whether the sessions
it records match what you would have typed in.
RescueTime has no free plan, so the overlap week runs on its trial. Start Stunda first and you will not be racing a clock.
Re-create your active projects and rates, which for most people is
a handful of rows. Historical entries can be posted through the API or
logged by an assistant through MCP if you want them in one place.
Invoice from Stunda once before you cancel anything. If the number
it produces matches the number you would have sent, the switch is done.
RescueTime and Stunda: common questions
Can RescueTime create invoices?
No. RescueTime supports billable rates and, on team plans, shared clients and projects, so it can report what your time was worth. It does not generate an invoice document to send a client. Stunda does, on every plan.
How much does RescueTime cost?
Solo Focus is $7 a month on annual billing, which is $84 a year, or $9 billed monthly. Solo+ is $12 a month on annual billing, or $15 monthly. Team plans start at $10 per seat a month on annual billing. There is no free plan. Checked 30 July 2026.
Does Stunda block distracting websites?
No, and there are no plans to. Stunda measures and bills; it does not intervene. If you want a tool that closes the tab for you, RescueTime’s focus sessions do that well and the two run side by side without conflict.
Does Stunda track my phone?
No. macOS and Windows desktop apps, plus the web dashboard. RescueTime has iOS and Android apps, so if phone time is part of what you bill, that is a real gap on our side.
Which RescueTime plan includes timesheets?
Solo+ at $12 a month on annual billing for one person, or Team+ at $16 per seat for a team. The cheaper Focus tiers, $7 solo and $10 per seat, are distraction blocking and attention reporting without timesheets. Checked 24 August 2026.
Does RescueTime have a free plan?
There is a Lite plan, which RescueTime describes as what an account falls back to after a paid subscription ends, and paid plans carry a 14-day trial. Stunda's free plan is a starting point rather than a fallback. Checked 24 August 2026.
Can I run both?
Yes, and some people do: RescueTime for the attention picture, Stunda for the billing record. They measure independently and neither interferes with the other.
Where these numbers come from
Every RescueTime figure on this page was read off RescueTime's own
public pages on , and we quote
their cheapest advertised rate rather than their most expensive. Prices
change; if you find one here that no longer matches theirs, it is our
mistake and telling us fixes it for everyone.
Stunda's own prices come from our pricing page, and the plan
limits described here are the ones the API actually enforces rather than
marketing copy about them.
Still measuring, since the moment you opened this page
You've been here 2:40.
That's $3.78 unbilled.
That's how it slips away: a few quiet minutes at a time, on every project.
Stunda catches them all day, silently, and turns them into invoices that
send in four steps.