Best Free Time Management Software for 2024

  • Kate Borucka
  • January 5, 2024
  • 14 min read

Time management software is currently one of the most popular programs. According to the survey commissioned by AffinityLive, tracking time spent on daily tasks can decrease productivity leaks by 80%. The same paper also states that in the USA, 19.3 million people in professional services are leaking 59 million hours at $150 per hour, which results in 8.8 billion lost each day.

It’s mostly because of wasting time on phone calls and unnecessary meetings, but also because of not implementing proper time management tools and techniques.

The numbers are staggering. No wonder time management software is becoming more and more popular. When used properly, it can help save time and money and improve employee engagement.

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What to Look for in Time Management Software?

There is no simple answer to this question. The sector of time management tools is so wide that many apps fall into different categories – from classic time tracking tools, through goals trackers to extended project management suites.

Some tools are dedicated primarily to specific niches. So a medium that works for a team may not be the best solution for an individual. Sometimes it’s possible to operate in different ways within one tool. Everything depends on your needs, business size, field of work, and other aspects you may find important.

However, it’s worth considering such elements as flexibility, so how you can use the app and what the features let you do as well as integrations with other apps to streamline processes across different platforms or complement the features the time management apps lack.

It’s also a good idea to look for the free trial as it helps to discover the time management tool before purchasing paid versions and learn whether it is suitable for you, your business, and your employees. Unfortunately, not all the tools offer it.

These are the basics to consider when looking for a proper solution.

What Is The Best Time Management Software?

If you start looking for productivity software, you’ll get inundated with thousands of tools. It’s not easy to choose from all the available options. The market for time management tools offers various software solutions.

Some of the most popular you must have heard about include the following tools with time management features:

  • Time tracking tools (many time trackers come with extra functionalities)
  • To-do lists
  • Note-taking apps
  • Focus boosting tools and goals trackers
  • Calendars
  • Project management apps
  • and many, many more — check Capterra’s inventory for more categories

Here are some of the finest time management software a project manager can find out there. Choose the one you like the most, boost your performance, and take control of your time!

👉 Check also our favorite weekly schedule templates!

Let’s take a look at the best time management apps!

TimeCamp

💚 Best for: freelancers, remote teams, and organizations of all sizes

👉 Focused on: automated time and attendance tracking, measuring project profitability and team’s productivity

How it works: Nice and easy-in-use software for accurate time tracking and time management, TimeCamp automatically tracks your time (and, if you wish to, daily activity) and fills your timesheets automatically. Robust reporting is its forte, but if you can’t find a report that suits your analysis style, it allows you to easily prepare the custom one. TimeCamp is a free time tracker for an unlimited number of users and with unlimited projects; no doubt that small and larger teams will be satisfied.

🧰 Flexibility: TimeCamp is a very flexible time tracking app with many useful task management features. It helps teams and individuals track work hours, manage their budgets, and allocate resources. It aligns with your organizational structure, allowing you to establish a smooth workflow.

What’s more, thanks to accurate time tracking reports, project managers get insights into their team’s productivity progress and track projects’ profitability.

🔌 Integrations: TimeCamp offers a variety of integrations with the most popular productivity apps, project management tools, CRM software, and accounting tools to make sure you’re paying employees fairly.

The tool is available as a web app, desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), mobile device apps (iOS and Android), and browser extensions for Chrome and Edge. A free trial is available.

Other features: TimeCamp features allow you to automate processes and optimize work. Its other functionalities include adjustable timesheets with approvals, GPS tracking, a rich attendance module, colorful graphs, tracking billable time and billing clients, productivity tracking, attendance, invoicing, and many more. Besides, thanks to unlimited project/task structure, it can serve as a basic task manager for managing multiple projects.

Become a time management superhero! ⏳

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Trello

💚 Best for: teams of all sizes and individuals who need a lightweight app to manage projects with Kanban boards

👉 Focused on: simple project management and organizing personal and work assignments with an extensive list of power-ups

trello time management software screeshot

How it works: Trello is a task management tool designated to help you organize your time and tasks. It can help track your time as it allows you to follow all your tasks and track time on them with time tracking integrations. With Trello, you can create a space for your entire company. There is also an option of allocating people to different groups (e.g., marketing, IT, support).

In every group, you can organize tabs for each member and assign tasks to them, depending on what’s their role in the team.

🧰 Flexibility: Trello is a simple tool, but thanks to the well-supplied repository of apps, you can mix it and combine it with other software to adjust it as you need.

🔌 Integrations/availability: A web app, desktop app (macOS, Windows), mobile app (iOS, Android). Trello is supported in browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari). Its app marketplace allows you to integrate it with various online time management tools to track time spent on project tracking.

But that’s not all! You can effectively measure the time spent on tasks allocated to Trello cards with the  TimeCamp + Trello Power-Up to increase your productivity. Make sure to check it out and always stay on top of your work!

Check our list of the best Trello Power-Ups

TimeCamp Planner

💚 Best for: small teams, medium-sized businesses, or startups that need a flexible tool to plan and collaborate on work in one place

👉 Focused on: streamlining communication and collaboration in a team

timecamp planner chat

How it works: TimeCamp Planner is a task management software with chat. It’s a great solution, especially for Kanban users. The software is also great for everyone who works in the agile methodology.

This tool allows you to exchange information with other employees, teams, and even lets you invite people from outside of your organization to work on a common project. You can use TimeCamp Planner to freely plan your work schedule, employee shift, and all tasks you need to perform. It replaces long, messy email threads and allows teams to gather all the important information in one place.

🧰 Flexibility: TimeCamp Planner lets you plan and organize your workflow in several ways—Kanban, Calendar view, different spaces for different teams, or There are more features to come so teams will have much more flexibility to use the tool.

🔌 Integrations: TimeCamp Planner task management software integrates with TimeCamp, Gmail, Zapier, Google Calendar, Trello, and Google Hangouts. And there’s more to come as the tool is still developing. It’s available as a web app, desktop app, and for mobile (Android, iOS).

Other features: the flexible design lets you see three boards at once—your team and spaces (different channels), chat, list of cards with tasks. You can easily convert part of your conversation into a task and automate repetitive tasks. Every task can be adjusted – you can set a date, assign people to it, add tags, checklists, descriptions, and files, comment on it, and make tasks recurring.

Harvest 

💚 Best for: small and medium-sized teams who need to track billable hours

👉 Focused on: tracking billable time for tasks and projects

harvest website screenshot

How it works: Harvest tracks estimated and actual costs so you always know if you’re exceeding the budget. Next to the automatic time tracking, it is also a timesheet app as it allows you to see everyone’s work and idle hours, also, how much time was spent on particular activities. It’s easy to use.

🧰 Flexibility: Harvest is a classical time tracking solution with rather non-flexible functionalities. You have separate modules but you’re limited to tracking expenses and time for certain projects.

🔌 Integrations: Harvest offers integrations with many tools. Available as a web app, for desktop (macOS, Windows), and for mobile (Android and iOS).

Other features: simple timesheets with approvals and for your team weekly, invoicing and tracking billable hours, scheduling, reports, budgeting.

👉 See the comparison between Harvest and TimeCamp

MyHours

💚 Best for: people who want to keep track of time spent on work. If you’re looking for a similar solution to track employee attendance, you can also check AllHours by MyHours as an alternative

👉 Focused on: project time tracking and simple project management.

How it works: MyHours offers automatic seamless time tracking in real time. It helps to gather all the necessary data on team time, performance, and the company’s finances. It also helps to manage attendance and manage small and larger teams.

🧰 Flexibility: MyHours is quite flexible as it incorporates time tracking and simple project management features. Its free plan lets you have unlimited team members and projects. However, if you want to manage attendance, you’ll need to switch to AllHours—timesheet and attendance app created by MyHours. That may be a bit cumbersome if you don’t want to switch between different time management tools.

🔌 Integrations: MyHours time management tool offers integration with QuickBooks (in the Pro plan), and Zapier. It’s available as a web app, and for mobile (iOS, Android).

Other features: You can track time automatically or add entries manually, categorize and label important tasks, and customize them, roundup time, or delegate a particular task.

👉 See the comparison with TimeCamp – great MyHours alternative.

Remember The Milk

💚 Best for: organizing your ideas, tasks, projects, and thoughts in to-do lists

👉 Focused on: managing tasks with to-do lists

remember the milk time management software

How it works: To-do lists are an inseparable part of successful time management. So if you have a problem remembering your tasks, Remember The Milk can help you stay on track. The tool has nice extra features to help you stay productive:

  • Task’s properties (due date, priority, repeat, tags, and more),
  • Reminders
  • Tags
  • Subtasks for subtasks (yes, you got it right 😉 )
  • You can attach files
  • Filters
  • Notifications
  • Smart list

🧰 Flexibility: Remember The Milk is a simple app but its granular features let you use it as flexibly as you need to, be it managing a grocery list or complex project management.

🔌 Integrations: You can add and manage your tasks from Gmail, Google Calendar or Twitter. Check also Remember The Milk integration to boost your productivity. Apps for the web, Mac, Windows, Linux, Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Android phones & tablets, BlackBerry 10, and Fire.

Clockify

💚 Best for: free online time tracking

👉 Focused on: time tracking with visual reports and timesheets

clockify employee timesheet app screenshot

How it works: Clockify is a free time tracking software for everyone. All your team can use it, no matter how many people it counts. It’s a time tracker and timesheet app. You can use it to track hours across different projects and synchronize the work of your team.

🧰 Flexibility: Clockify is rather flexible; however, users complain that the modules are not streamlined which makes it difficult to automate work. Other than that, it comprises some project management functionalities to help you manage your team.

🔌 Integrations: Clockify integrates with several of the most popular apps. Also, you can connect your favorite tools via Integromat or Zapier, add your own tool, or use the APIBrowser extension (Chrome, Firefox), desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), mobile app (Android, iOS)

Other features: Clockify has timesheets and reports that let you see all the information about every project and team in a transparent way. Comprehensive reports give you insight into the status of work, budget, and work time. Clockify has many minor features that allow for precise financial estimates and calculations.

👉  Check our article with the best free Clockify alternatives

ClickUp

💚 Best for: project management & team collaboration in one app

👉 Focused on: streamlining granular tasks and unifying data in one place

clickup time management software

How it works: ClickUp is an all-encompassing platform for simple project management and collaboration. In ClickUp You can share information with team members in various formats.

It also replaces long messy email threads by providing you with a convenient chat space for group and individual conversations.

In ClickUp, you can distinguish several modules, including Process Management, Task Management, Time Management, Reporting, and Customization. But since all the features nicely interface, altogether, they create a unified hub for organizing work.

🧰 Flexibility: The tool also gives you the flexibility to organize work and projects the way you like.

🔌 Available for web, desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux), mobile (Android, iOS), Amazon Alexa enabled, works with Google Assistant. ClickUp easily integrates with other apps directly or via Zapier.

Other features: You can plan every step, and make quick changes and integrate ClickUp with 3rd party apps. You can also schedule workflow, manage team capacity, and track all processes. It has many smallish proprietary features so it’s possible to personalize every aspect of a project.

✨Check our ClickUp Time Tracking integration!

focus booster

💚 Best for: busy people who like minimalistic solutions

👉 Focused on: working with the Pomodoro technique

time management software

How it works: focus booster is a simple yet powerful tool for time tracking. It lets you track time with the famous Pomodoro technique. The tool is a perfect solution if you’re looking for a simple Pomodoro timer to track time in 25-minutes intervals or if you want to try out the technique.

The free version of the focus booster includes 20 Pomodoro sessions per month, simple time tracking, and productivity reporting.

🧰 Flexibility: The app has the basic features necessary to manage and track time—a to-do list, simple time tracking, mini and minimalistic timer, light and dark modes, reports with date, client, or label. You can see your progress in a neat dashboard that visualizes all data and add entries manually to your timesheet.

🔌 Integrations: desktop (Windows, Mac), mobile, web. No integrations with other software are available.

👉  Read also: 15+ Time Tracking Software for Mac OS X

Everhour

💚 Best for: teams who want to streamline workflow

👉 Focused on: team time tracking

How it works: Everhour is a cloud-based time tracking software dedicated to teams. It combines simple team and project management features to help you keep track of time and organize projects and workflow.

The free version of Everhour has all the features except add-ons and is available for up to 5 members. Choose the free trial if you want to test all features in a larger team. And in the main dashboard in the “home” section, you can quickly view all the key information to plan a future project and organize workflow.

🧰 Flexibility: Everhour has 8 modules that help to manage all aspects of the team—scheduling with a Gantt chart, time tracking module, projects, clients, team information, rich reports, invoices, and expenses. That allows you to gather all the important information about work and your company.

🔌 Integrations: Everhour integrates with several of the most popular apps such as Jira, Asana, Zapier, and more. It’s available as a web app and an iPhone app (in beta).

Bite15

💚 Best for: minimalistic habit tracking

👉 Focused on: tracking time and habits of individuals

How it works: Bite15 is a time tracker for iOS that helps you discover effective time management.

It’s a fantastic solution for people who struggle with performing tasks. You simply create a task or a goal, start with small bites of time, e.g., 15 minutes, and watch your productivity skyrocket. And in the meantime, you get alerts and notifications to stay on top of your work. At the end of the day, all your time is summed up so you can see how much of it you spent on your tasks and goals.

🧰 Flexibility: It’s a minimalistic app for people who want to improve productivity, stop wasting time on distractions, and focus on the most important tasks.

🔌 Integrations: If you need an extended version of Bite15, you can try the free Eternity Time Log made by the same creator.

AquaSnap

💚 Best for: developers, programmers, and people who often switch between different windows

👉 Focused on: helping users tile windows to achieve work comfort and boost productivity

time management software

How it works: Good time management techniques aren’t not only about tracking time spent on tasks. It’s also about organizing your workspace visually. Especially if you work with many tabs or tiles.

AquaSnap is a tiling window manager that helps to organize your desktop layout in the most convenient way so you can save time on switching between tabs and different apps. Now you can have everything in one spot.

The free version is available only for personal use.

🧰 Flexibility: The app allows for windows docking to split the desktop, snapping to align windows, stretching with one click, making a window transparent, or to stay on top. Additionally, there are keyboard shortcuts to make using the app easy.

🔌 Integrations: not available.

Beeminder

💚 Best for: time management based on goals tracking

👉 Focused on: Achieving goals based on the risk of losing the money

How it works: Beeminder is one of these specific online management tools that use risk-based time management techniques. It’s a goals tracker that charges you money each time you fall off track. Sounds kind of scary, right? But there are people who need to feel some risk to accomplish better results.

The tool allows you to add your own goals, set the initial rates, and track them if they’re according to the goal’s desired outcomes, the Bright Red Line. For each goal, you pledge a certain amount of money, and if you derail a goal and the data you input crosses the Bright Red Line, you need to pay the tool that pledges.

The pledges start at $0 and increase each time you go off the track up to your pledge cap.

🧰 Flexibility: Services that involve charging for mistakes are risky in general – luckily, Beeminder allows you to freeze or stop a goal if you decide you’re not ready to achieve it. You can also set “the days of mercy”, a period that won’t get you back to the previous step. You also get a week of safety after each derailing.

🔌 Integrations: Beeminder works on multiple devices and integrates with the services that also help achieve goals, like Duolingo for language learning, Trello for Kanban-based task management or Todoist for to-dos tracking. For those in need of a comprehensive solution, exploring an open source CRM can enhance your project management and client tracking capabilities.

Other features: Beeminder offers Ratchet, a feature that makes it harder to complete tasks and achieve goals – for example, it makes the trial to achieve the next step of the goal shorter.

Focus by Meaningful Things

💚 Best for: Professionals who want to stay concentrated on their task priorities

👉 Focused on: Improving time management skills by proper work organization

time management software

How it works: If you appreciate the simple yet beautifully designed time management tools that help to improve concentration and motivation in both work and personal life, take a closer look at Focus. It’s a product that belongs to the Meaningful Things, a suite that also offers tools that block distracting websites and reduce mindless screen time.

The tool’s based on the Pomodoro time management technique and organizes work in intervals that work as a focus booster and help stay concentrated on tasks from the beginning to the end, reducing the hours spent on them to the minimum.

Focus also reminds you about taking breaks regularly and provides you with automated data that help track the progress of your work in a visual way.

🧰 Flexibility: Focus offers quite limited features, but they’re enough to improve one’s motivation and concentration at work. You can get it as desktop apps and mobile apps, but they’re available only for Apple products.

🔌 Integrations: Focus doesn’t integrate with any other time management tools

Other features: Focus ensures you basic task management and activity tracking with in-depth stats generated for the selected period.

Bordio

💚 Best for: organizing weekly and daily schedules, managing tasks, projects, recurring events, and to-dos

👉 Focused on: planning and time-management

How it works: Looking for a highly convenient and customizable time-management tool? Bordio planner is here to help. Bordio is a highly convenient and customizable time-management software that simplifies your daily routine. You can subscribe to the Bordio website and choose the necessary solution, whether it’s a daily or weekly planner or a to-do list.

Bordio also allows you to set notifications to stay on track with your tasks and monitor your overall workload. In addition, the ‘Blog’ section on Bordio provides useful resources on various topics such as productivity, time management, and team management.

🧰 Flexibility: Bordio’s intuitive interface allows you to keep all your commitments in a single place, making it easy to switch between tasks. 

🔌 Available as: Computer software and a mobile app, Bordio is accessible on any device, making it convenient for you to manage your schedule on the go.

Other features: color coding, waiting list, task duration estimation, project management, calendar templates 

Additionally, if you don’t want to use one of the existing apps and have specific requirements, you can outsource a nearshore software development company and start making your app exclusively for your company. 

Conclusion

There are thousands of time management apps to help you manage your time and projects. On the above list, you can find the most popular tools highly ranked by customers. 

Maybe we missed some of the best time management tools? Or maybe you have your own way of efficient time management, tracking time, and improving productivity? Let us know in the comments!

Your best time management tool is here - manage time with TimeCamp for free!


Co-author: Ola Rybacka, Content Specialist at TimeCamp

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4 Comments

  1. Anchal Sharma
    December 29, 2021 at 11:33
    (Edit)

    Great Article !!Thanks for sharing such an amazing article with us. Keep sharing !!

  2. Russell Schuppenhauer
    January 28, 2022 at 02:09
    (Edit)

    There is clearly a lot to know about this. I suppose you made various nice points in features also.

  3. Vivian Bell
    November 22, 2022 at 09:45
    (Edit)

    Nice Explanation for best time tracking software..thanx for sharing

  4. Vivian Bell
    November 22, 2022 at 09:50
    (Edit)

    Superb, Thanks for posting this! It is exactly what I was looking for. Keep the awesome content coming!