The Best Clock-In Clock-Out App: 19 Free & Paid Options
Written by Eric Czerwonka
Last updated on November 19, 2024
Time clock apps help companies track employee hours effortlessly and run payroll quickly. But with hundreds of apps on the market, choosing the right one for your business can be difficult. To help, we’ve compiled this list of the 19 best clock-in clock-out apps, including both free and paid options.
For each app on our list, we’ve provided information about their features, pricing, reviews, and — most importantly — exactly what types of businesses they’re best for.
10 best paid clock-in clock-out apps
Buddy Punch is our top pick overall due to its range of features, affordability, ease-of-use, and exceptional customer support.
- Buddy Punch – Best overall
- Hubstaff – Best for healthcare companies
- Timely – Best for agencies
- QuickBooks Time – Best for traveling employees
- ADP – Best for enterprise companies
- Insightful – Best for fully remote companies
- Hellotracks – Best for logistics companies
- Time Tracker by eBillity – Best for law firms
- Hour Timesheet – Best for government contractors
- BigTime – Best for professional services
Looking for free options instead? Jump to our list of the best free clock-in clock-out apps.
1. Buddy Punch – Best overall
Buddy Punch tops our list of the best clock-in and out apps for small businesses because of its wide range of features, low costs, simplicity of use, and high customer ratings. Its intuitive interface — evidenced by its 4.8 out of 5-star rating on Capterra — means that even your least technically inclined employees won’t struggle to use it.
Clocking in and out with Buddy Punch
When your staff logs into the Buddy Punch platform, they’re presented with the option to clock in, clock out, or view their current time card. This makes it easy to get your team up and running using the system — no training is required.
Buddy Punch is a web-based tool, which means you and your team can use it on any internet-connected device. Access Buddy Punch on a computer that uses any operating system, or download its apps that are available for iOS, Android, and ChromeOS. This makes Buddy Punch work for you no matter where or how your employees spend their working hours:
- If all employees work in the same location, you can download Buddy Punch onto a tablet and use it as a central time clock kiosk. Employees can clock in/out using a username and password, 4-digit PIN, facial recognition, or QR code.
- If your employees work in the field, they can download the Buddy Punch app on their mobile phones to clock in and out. And if they can’t download the app, they can clock in and out by sending a text message.
- If your employees work in different offices or from home, they can log into Buddy Punch on their computers to clock in at the start of their day and clock out at the end.
Setting up Buddy Punch
For administrators, setting Buddy Punch up is also as easy as possible. You can add employees manually if you have a small team, or you can simply send Buddy Punch a spreadsheet that includes employee names and pay rates to have them onboard your entire team for you.
If you do run into issues, Buddy Punch is there to help with excellent live chat customer support. Their customer support is also rated 4.8 out of 5 stars, with customers citing quick response times and personalized support.
Key features
Multiple clock-in options
Employees can clock in and out using usernames and passwords, PINs, facial recognition, SSO, and QR codes. Add it to a tablet to create a time clock kiosk.
Overtime management
Create custom rules to calculate overtime based on location, work week, or policies. Plus, get notifications when employees are nearing overtime.
Payroll integrations
Send timesheets directly to your payroll provider. Buddy Punch integrates with platforms like QuickBooks, ADP, Gusto, Paychex, Workday, and more.
Reports
Generate a payroll report, and then download it as an Excel, CSV, or PDF file. Everything you need to run payroll is already computed for you.
GPS tracking
Capture employees’ GPS coordinates when they clock in/out, or use real-time GPS tracking to see where everyone is located on a map.
Photo clock-ins
Capture a picture of employees when they clock in and out to prevent buddy punching, or use Face ID to enable facial recognition identification.
Geofences
Create digital, location-based radiuses that prevent employees from clocking in and out unless they’re on site within the geofence’s radius.
Timesheet approvals
Require administrators or employees’ managers to approve submitted timesheets before sending the work hours data to payroll.
Alerts & notifications
Remind employees to clock in/out, send managers alerts when employees are nearing overtime, alert administrators of approval requests, and more.
The variety of simple and more complex features in Buddy Punch makes it ideal for both single-location businesses with a handful of employees and client-based businesses with hundreds of employees working in different locations.
If you want to see everything you can do with Buddy Punch, you can view all of its features here.
Pricing
Buddy Punch is one of the lowest-cost apps on this list given its breadth of features, with pricing starting at $4.49 per user per month plus a $19 base fee. Administrator users are free, and payroll integrations are included on every plan.
Try Buddy Punch for Free
Stay on top of time, attendance, PTO, and overtime in real-time.
2. Hubstaff – Best for healthcare companies
Hubstaff is perhaps the most feature-rich of all of the time clocks on this list. With it, you get accountability features like GPS tracking and geofencing, payroll integrations with major accounting software, and productivity tracking features like idle detection and keyboard/mouse activity monitoring.
Hubstaff’s time clock includes automatic time tracking, which starts and stops based on computer activity, eliminating the need for manual clock-ins. It also supports project-based time tracking, allowing employees to allocate their billable hours to specific projects or tasks.
This makes Hubstaff usable by any type of company — its features will cover you if you manage field workers or remote workers and if your team works on projects for your business or for your clients.
However, where Hubstaff really stands out is that it’s one of the few time-tracking tools that has a HIPAA-compliance feature. This makes it a more compelling option for employers in the healthcare industry who may have timecard entries that include protected patient data.
Key features
- Time and productivity tracking
- HIPAA compliance
- Employee scheduling
- Payroll
- Billing and invoicing
Key integrations
- FreshBooks
- QuickBooks
- PayPal
- Gusto
- Deel
Pros
- Has employee accountability features for all types of work models (on-site, off-site, fully remote, etc.)
- Easy to use and has good customer service
Cons
- The plan with HIPAA-compliance is far pricier than most of the other tools on this list
- No offline mode for workers without an internet or data connection
Pricing
Hubstaff’s basic plans start at $4.99 per seat per month with a two-seat minimum. To get access to its HIPAA compliance features, you’ll have to be on the $25 per seat per month Enterprise plan.
3. Timely – Best for agencies
If you run an agency or consulting business where you have employees working on tasks for multiple clients over the course of the week, Timely might be the right option for you. Its time-tracking app captures every second of your employees’ work days, ensuring no billable time goes unbilled.
While Timely excels in automatic tracking, it also supports manual time entries. Employees can track time by project, client, or task, and the platform automatically prompts employees to complete their timesheets when needed.
The platform also supports billing and invoicing so you can quickly create invoices based on the hours your employees spent on client work. Finally, it integrates with a wide range of tools that agencies use daily, including Asana, GitHub, QuickBooks, Gmail, Office 365, Photoshop, Salesforce, and Stripe.
Key features
- AI-driven automatic time tracking
- Activity history
- Project budgeting and timelines
- Team capacity reports
- Productivity trends reports
Key integrations
- Asana
- GitHub
- Photoshop
- Salesforce
- Stripe
Pros
- Features an anti-surveillance message, which can reassure employees of their privacy
- Features both automatic time tracking and automatic scheduling
Cons
- Customers report that it has a very steep learning curve for its users
- Doesn’t have an app available for Android devices
Pricing
Timely’s pricing starts at $9 per user per month for a max of five users and 20 projects. To get access to its integrations with other project management tools, you’ll need to be on the $16/user/month Premium plan.
4. QuickBooks Time – Best for traveling employees
QuickBooks Time comes with features like time clock kiosks, GPS and mileage tracking, and geofencing — features that are great for businesses with traveling employees or where everyone works on-site.
QuickBooks Time supports automatic time tracking based on work schedules or geofencing, where clocking in and out can be triggered by location-based boundaries. Its smartphone apps can record time entries even when employees are offline, syncing the data once reconnected.
The platform also provides reminders for employees to clock in and out, reducing the chance of missed entries. And employees can allocate their billable hours to specific jobs or projects.
Another great feature of QuickBooks Time is its API. The API allows you to make quick, bulk changes to your data — adding or deleting employees, geofences, locations, job codes, and more. This is a great benefit for large companies with deep technical resources that can help automate payroll via the API.
And while most of the other tools on this list offer integrations with QuickBooks Online, Desktop, and Payroll, because QuickBooks Time is also an Intuit product, these tools all work together seamlessly with no integration required.
Key features
- Mobile apps
- GPS tracking
- Employee scheduling
- Project tracking
- PTO management
Key integrations
- QuickBooks Online
- QuickBooks Payroll
- Square Payroll
- ADP
- Justworks
Pros
- Seamlessly connect time-tracking data to QuickBooks Online and Payroll
- Track employee drive times and work times separately
Cons
- One of the pricier options on the market
- Fewer customization capabilities than other apps
- Not as user-friendly as some of the other apps on this list
Pricing
It’s important to note that you have to have a QuickBooks Online subscription to use QuickBooks Time.
For the first three months of your subscription, QuickBooks Time’s base plan is $8 per user per month plus a $10 per month base fee. After that initial discount, the base monthly fee jumps to $20/month.
5. ADP – Best for enterprise companies
If you’re looking for time-tracking software for an enterprise company and need advanced biometric login features like facial recognition, fingerprint scanning, or voice recognition, ADP is worth considering.
ADP is one of the only tools on this list that offers biometric features natively — most others only offer facial recognition, and even at that, it’s usually done via integration with another app. Additionally, employees can use their ID badges to clock in and out on compatible ADP devices.
Other ADP time clock features include GPS tracking and geofencing, employee scheduling, and overtime calculations. The platform also integrates seamlessly with ADP’s payroll services for efficient payroll processing.
Key features
- Mobile apps and kiosks
- Face and fingerprint recognition
- Location tracking
- Employee scheduling
- Real-time cost predictions
Key integrations
- Intuit QuickBooks
- ClockShark
- Trusaic
- Points North
- Zay Zoom
Pros
- Integrates quickly with ADP’s other services
- Offers multiple features that streamline scheduling and make predictions for you
Cons
- No accessible pricing, making it difficult to compare potential costs at a glance
- Mostly catered to large businesses
Pricing
No public pricing is available for ADP; you have to talk to someone on their team to get a quote.
6. Insightful – Best for fully remote companies
If most or all of your employees do knowledge work from home, Insightful is a great time-tracking platform to consider. It’s built around time and productivity tracking, allowing you to see what employees are working on and when they’re wasting time — as well as compare your performance to benchmarks from other companies like yours.
The platform captures real-time data on workers’ activities, including active and idle times, applications used, and websites visited so you can see how employees spend their time and identify potential productivity issues.
As far as its time clock, employees can track time manually or automatically, and they can allocate their hours to specific projects and tasks. Managers and administrators can also create custom rules to dictate what specific activities are tracked for each employee.
Key features
- Time and productivity tracking
- Focus tracking
- Productivity analytics
- Productivity dashboards
- Benchmarks
Key integrations
- Asana
- Zendesk
- Workday
- BigQuery
- API
Pros
- Automatically track time and attach it to projects
- Measure productivity of remote employees
- Great customer support
Cons
- Tracking features must be applied to everyone rather than setting them up for individuals
- No mobile application
Pricing
Customers get all of Insightful’s time clock and productivity features on its Productivity Management plan, which starts at $6.40 per user per month.
7. Hellotracks – Best for logistics companies
Hellotracks is specifically built for logistics, delivery, and transportation companies. It not only tracks employee time, it also tracks their location in real-time on a map, capturing employees’ routes across their entire shifts and logging exactly when they arrive at and leave locations.
Where some of the other apps on this list offer employee scheduling tools, Hellotracks takes things a step further with route scheduling and dispatching. You can create routes for your employees, ensure they’re optimized, and then send them to employees. Employees then use the Hellotracks app to guide them on their routes.
Additionally, the app can collect signatures from customers when deliveries are completed, consolidating all of your data into a single platform.
Key features
- Real-time GPS tracking
- Route scheduling and dispatching
- Route optimization
- Geofencing
Key integrations
- Google Calendar
- Slack
- Microsoft Excel
- API
Pros
- Eliminates paperwork and streamlines data collection with digital forms
- Dispatching and route optimization are simple
Cons
- Lacks certain advanced features found in other fleet management software
- Not very customizable
Pricing
Hellotracks’ base plan starts at $10 per user per month and includes real-time GPS location tracking, geofencing, on-site time recording, and unlimited location history.
8. Time Tracker by eBillity – Best for law firms
As far as time tracking goes, Time Tracker by eBillity has all of the basic time clock features: employee time tracking, GPS tracking, geofencing, employee scheduling, and project tracking. However, as a simple time tracker, it’s one of the more expensive options on this list.
Where Time Tracker shines is with its LawBillity plan that has additional features for lawyers and legal teams. You can use the platform to check for conflicts, run realization reports, use LEDES and LAA invoice formats, add ABA codes, and create trust accounts. Additionally, you can track expenses and attach them to client invoices.
Key features
- Realization reports
- ABA codes
- Legal invoicing format
- Trust accounts
- Conflict checker
Key integrations
- LawPay
- Clio
- ADP
- QuickBooks
- SAP Concur
Pros
- Quickly provide monthly accrual estimates to clients
- Memorized reports feature speeds up month-end and billing processes
Cons
- Can be difficult to learn how to use
- No integration with Microsoft Outlook
- Specific features and reports can be difficult to find and navigate to
Pricing
Time Tracker by eBillity’s basic time-tracking plan is $9.60 per user per month plus a $16/month base fee. For the legal-specific features, you’ll need to be on the LawBillity plan, which is $30 per user per month with no base fee.
9. Hour Timesheet – Best for government contractors
Hour Timesheet is a great time-tracking app if your company often works on government or defense contracts. It provides a detailed audit trail of all timesheet entries, including usernames, IP addresses, and date and time stamps. Charge codes can be limited to only the employees approved to work on them.
Automated timesheet reminders make sure everyone remembers to record their time daily, and users can track time for both billable and non-billable tasks. Employees and managers can both sign submitted timesheets.
Finally, supervisors and admins receive alerts when timesheets are edited, and the person editing the timesheet must provide a reason why it was edited.
Key features
- Audit trail of timesheet entries
- Track non-billable time
- Required “reason late” entries
- Timesheet correction process
Key integrations
- QuickBooks Desktop
- QuickBooks Online
- ADP
- Paychex
Pros
- Easy to use with good documentation
- QuickBooks integration works well
- Great DCAA-compliant features
Cons
- The system has occasional glitches and outages
- Reports are slow to load
- Features can be difficult to find in the interface
Pricing
Hour Timesheet has only one plan, which is $8 per user per month and includes all of its DCAA compliance features.
10. BigTime – Best for professional services
BigTime is a professional services automation platform that has both time tracking and everything else you need to run a professional services business. Its time-tracking features connect directly to its project management features, allowing you to easily tie employee hours to billable and non-billable tasks.
As far as project management features, you can create budgets, schedules, and scopes for projects; view project progress on Gantt charts; set project KPIs and monitor progress toward them; track time and expenses toward projects; and identify who on your team is available to work on new projects.
On BigTime’s higher-cost plans, there are also features that allow you to adhere to FAR and DCAA compliance, track expenses and send invoices in multiple currencies, and set up multi-level approval workflows.
Key features
- Resource management
- Project management
- Invoicing
- Performance modeling
Key integrations
- QuickBooks
- Sage Intacct
- Salesforce
- Jira
Pros
- Easy to use and very intuitive
- Seamless QuickBooks Online integration
- Great customer support
Cons
- Occasionally glitchy
- Some features are released as standalone products that require additional costs
Pricing
BigTime’s plans start at $20 per user per month and include time tracking, expense management, and project management features.
9 best free clock-in clock-out apps
If you’re running a small business, just getting started with time clock software, or have really basic time-tracking needs, you may not need all of the bells and whistles of the subscription-based apps. In that case, one of the nine free clock-in clock-out apps below might suit your needs better.
1. Connecteam – Best free time clock with HR features
Connecteam has a great free plan that includes both time tracking and more HR-specific features that are helpful for small businesses.
With its free time clock, you can track employee hours overall and by locations, projects, and customers. Log employee locations when they clock in and out to make sure they’re clocking in while on-site. Set up Connecteam on a tablet to create a central time clock kiosk, and send your timesheet data to payroll services like QuickBooks, Gusto, Paychex, and Xero with the platform’s payroll integrations.
On Connecteam’s free HR platform, you can track employee time-off and automatically calculate PTO accruals. Create unlimited training courses for your team, and add quizzes with up to eight questions. Use Connecteam as a document storage tool to store unlimited files and documents and attach them to employees’ profiles. And keep track of employees’ anniversaries and birthdays with both a company timeline and notifications.
Free plan features
- Time tracking and timesheets
- Payroll integrations
- GPS on punch
- PTO tracking
- Courses and quizzes
- Company timeline
Free plan limitations
Connecteam’s free plan is only available for businesses with up to 10 employees.
2. Clockify – Best free option for freelancers
If you’re a freelancer looking for a simple, free employee time-tracking app, consider Clockify. Clockify is a time- and project-tracking tool that lets you track the time you spend on specific tasks and projects. This is helpful for properly invoicing your clients and identifying how much time you’re spending on tasks you don’t get paid for.
You can export your time card data in CSV, PDF, or XLS formats, and you can set custom hourly rates for different projects and tasks. You can also create an unlimited number of projects and tasks on the free plan.
Free plan features
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited tasks and projects
- Timesheets
- Pomodoro timer
- Idle detection and reminders
- Billable rates
- Report exporting
3. TimeCamp – Best free app with geofencing
TimeCamp is one of the few time-tracking tools that offers geofencing as part of its free plan. With it, you can create virtual borders around your job sites that prevent employees from clocking in and out when they’re not within the border. Employees use their mobile phones to clock in and out, and the location-detection technology on their phones identifies if they’re at the right locations. This can help you prevent time theft and keep your employees accountable.
Free plan features
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited projects
- Mobile apps
- Timesheets
- Time clock kiosk
- Geofencing
4. Homebase – Best for single-location restaurants and retail stores
Homebase is a great free option for restaurants and retail shops with only one location. With it, you get access to basic time tracking and employee scheduling, and you can also use the platform as a messaging tool to send employees notifications and reminders. The highlight of Homebase, though, it that its free plan integrates with point-of-sale (POS) systems like Square, Toast, Clover, and Shopify, meaning you can use your existing POS system as a time clock.
Free plan features
- Employee scheduling
- Time tracking and timesheets
- POS system integrations
- Team messaging
Free plan limitations
Homebase’s free plan is only available for businesses with one location and up to 20 employees. Additionally, you can only access up to 90 days of historical timesheets.
5. Paymo – Best free app with client invoicing
Paymo is a combined time-tracking and project management platform that’s great for agencies. Like many of the free apps on this list, you can add unlimited users, though there are some limits to the number of clients and projects you can create.
The standout free feature of Paymo is that you can also use it to create invoices for your clients. This makes client invoicing easy since you have all of your project time data in the same place where you create invoices.
Free plan features
- Time and project tracking
- Unlimited users and tasks
- Unlimited invoices
Free plan limitations
Paymo’s free plan limits the number of projects (up to 10) and customers (up to 5) that you can create in its system.
6. Jibble – Best free app with facial recognition
Jibble’s free plan is one of the most generous on this list. While there are some usage limits, it gives to access to a lot of features that are more common in paid apps, such as GPS on punch, facial recognition, and geofences. You can also use its free plan for productivity tracking — the app will take screenshots of your employees’ computer screens throughout the day while they’re working.
Free plan features
- Unlimited users
- GPS on punch
- Geofencing
- Facial recognition
- Screenshots
- Employee scheduling
Free plan limitations
There are a number of limitations on Jibble’s free plan features. You can only access timesheets for a single pay period, so you won’t have a historical record of employee hours. The resolution on screenshots is low, and they’re only stored for three days. Facial recognition is included but does not provide spoofing prevention. You can only create two geofences, and you can only use Jibble as a time clock kiosk on one device.
7. busybusy – Best free option for construction
Built specifically for construction companies, busybusy’s free plan contains more of the types of features that construction businesses need than the other apps on this list. With it, you can track the locations of your employees when they clock in and out, and you can also track the locations of your equipment. You also get usage and machine hours reports for your equipment, and you can see which pieces of equipment are on active projects.
Free plan features
- Unlimited users
- GPS on punch
- Equipment location tracking
- Job costing
- Equipment usage reports
8. Deputy – Best free app for work scheduling
While many of the apps on this list are time-tracking software with employee scheduling features, Deputy is the opposite. It’s employee scheduling software with time tracking included. It stands out in that way with features like automatic scheduling — which creates schedules for you using AI — and demand scheduling, which shows you your average demand on different days and at different times so you can schedule staff properly.
Free plan features
- Time tracking
- Employee scheduling
- Auto-scheduling
- Demand planning
- Facial recognition
- Geofencing
Free plan limitations
Deputy’s free plan is limited to 100 shifts scheduled per month and 100 employee timesheets approved per month.
9. My Hours – Best option for expense tracking
If you need to track time, projects, and expenses, My Hours is a great free option to consider. It’s one of the only free apps that includes a feature for tracking expenses. This is great for businesses that have costs for clients that go beyond just time costs. You’ll be able to pull reports showing all of your time and other expenses to create client invoices easily. However, it’s worth noting that you cannot create invoices on My Hours’ free plan.
Free plan features
- Unlimited projects and clients
- Expense tracking
- Task and project templates
- Billable rates
- Downloadable reports
Free plan limitations
My Hours’ free plan is only available for up to five users.
Runner-up apps
If you’re looking for a clock-in clock-out app that’s somewhere in between the limitations of free apps and the more expensive premium products, check out TimeTrakGO (notable for its unique graphical interface), When I Work (notable for its team communications features), and ezClocker (notable for its interface that’s similar to a spreadsheet).
These three lower-cost options will provide more flexibility than the free options but aren’t as feature-rich as some of the tools on our best paid apps list.
Is a free time clock app right for your business?
Free time clock apps can be a great fit for small businesses with small budgets.
They generally provide basic features like clock-in and clock-out functionality and reporting, making them a good option if all you need are online timesheets.
However, before you decide to opt for a free option, there are some things you should consider that could become problems down the line.
Most time clock apps with a free plan are designed solely to get people integrated into the system so it’s difficult to migrate to another system. Time clock apps are so intertwined with your business operations that migrating to another system is often exceedingly complex.
This can become a problem down the line if you end up needing more advanced features. You may end up paying a much higher per-user per-month cost on the app that was previously free than you would on another tool with the same set of features.
Additionally, most free options have limited customer support. You may only have access to a chatbot or the company’s knowledge base to get help when you need it.
