DoneThat vs Clockify

The short answer

Clockify is a timer and a timesheet, available free for up to five people and cheap after that. DoneThat is automatic capture with a coach on top, and it is not free.

That is close to the whole comparison. If you need people to log hours against projects so someone can bill or report on them, Clockify does that for less money than anything else here. If you need to know where your week actually went without anyone logging anything, a timer cannot answer that no matter how cheap it is.

What each tool actually is

Clockify is timesheet infrastructure. The unit is a time entry someone creates — by timer or by hand — against a project and a client. Around it sits an unusually complete administrative stack: invoicing, approvals, time off, attendance, expenses, scheduling, SSO. It is priced to be adopted by whole organisations.

DoneThat is an automatic work tracker with an AI coach. The unit is captured activity, reconstructed into a day you review rather than build, feeding goals, coaching, and AI assistants through an API and MCP server.

How each one records your time

Clockify: a timer, plus an auto tracker that assists it

Clockify's primary flow is manual: start and stop a timer, or enter hours afterwards. It also ships an auto tracker — included even on the free plan — that records the apps and websites you use in the background.

The distinction that matters, and that most comparison pages skip: the auto tracker is a memory aid, not automatic timesheet creation. It shows you what you were on so you can build entries you would otherwise have forgotten. The entry is still yours to make. So Clockify is automatic in the sense that the recall is automatic; the timesheet is not.

DoneThat: reconstruction instead of entry

DoneThat has no timer. Capture runs continuously, the day is reconstructed, and you review and correct rather than produce. That is the difference in one line: with Clockify you write the record with help; with DoneThat you edit a record that already exists.

Being precise about the ask, which is larger than Clockify's: screenshots are never stored. They are processed in real time and immediately deleted, and only the structured activity derived from them persists. Excluded apps are redacted on your machine before anything is sent. With your own Gemini or OpenAI-compatible model, raw activity never reaches our servers. The desktop app is open source.

A word about the Pro tier

Worth flagging plainly, because it is the sort of thing that should inform a purchase: Clockify's Pro tier adds screenshots and GPS tracking.

Those are monitoring features. They exist to let an administrator see what staff are doing and where they are. That is a legitimate product decision and plenty of organisations want it — but it is the opposite end of the design space from where DoneThat sits, and anyone comparing the two on privacy should know the capability is there and is enabled by whoever administers the workspace, not by the person being recorded.

DoneThat's team model is built the other way: dashboards on high-level summaries rather than raw feeds, relative trends shareable instead of absolute per-person hours, and visibility chosen per summary by the person it belongs to. Optional mood tracking means the signal a lead gets is about burnout risk rather than activity volume.

Pricing compared

Clockify pricing, as of 11 August 2026. Prices shown are the annual rate; monthly billing costs roughly $1–3 more per user.

Two things to weigh:

• The free tier is genuinely usable. Unlimited tracking, timesheets, reports and every app for up to five users is more than most competitors give away, and for a small team that only needs hours logged it may be the correct answer outright.
• Features are spread across five tiers. Invoicing is Standard. Approvals are Standard. SSO is Enterprise at 3x the Basic price. One missing capability can move you two tiers, so price against the feature you need rather than the headline $3.99.

DoneThat is subscription-based with a 14-day free trial; current prices are on the DoneThat pricing page rather than restated here.

Platform support

Clockify's coverage is the widest of anything compared here.

Where Clockify is the better choice

• Budget is the constraint. Free for five users, $3.99 after. Nothing else here competes.
• You need timesheets someone will bill or audit from. Invoicing, approvals and locking exist and work.
• You need workforce administration, not just tracking: time off, attendance, scheduling, expenses.
• You need SSO and SCIM. DoneThat has no equivalent.
• You track on mobile.
• A timer is what you want. For work that is already organised into client projects, a timer is a perfectly good instrument.

Where DoneThat is the better choice

• You will not reliably log hours. This is the failure mode a free timesheet does not fix — an unused timer produces no data at any price.
• You want to know what you worked on, not what you remembered to record.
• You want coaching, not records. Don nudges you onto goals, blocks calendar time, flags low-value work while you can still fix it, checks your mood, reminds you of meetings, suggests breaks.
• You want AI tools to have your work history. MCP and an API make it queryable as long-term memory; Clockify has no AI layer at all.
• Your team wants shared signal without surveillance. Particularly relevant here, given what the Pro tier includes.
• You want peer accountability. Follow others, share summaries, Slack and Discord, accountability groups — all opt-in.

Can you run both?

Yes, and it is one of the more sensible pairings in this set — precisely because they overlap so little. Clockify for the hours the business needs recorded; DoneThat for understanding the work behind them. Clockify's free tier makes the combination cheap, and DoneThat's CSV export means the two records can be reconciled when they disagree.

How we compared these

Everything stated about Clockify comes from its public pricing and product pages, read on 11 August 2026 and linked below. Feature claims about DoneThat are first-hand: we build it, which is a bias to read this with.

Clockify is cheaper than DoneThat, covers more platforms, and has a free tier we do not offer — all said plainly above. The Pro-tier screenshot and GPS capability is described because it is material to a privacy comparison, not as a criticism of a product that is upfront about selling it. Vendors change pricing without notice; check the source links.

Questions people ask about Clockify

Is Clockify really free?

Yes, for up to 5 users, and the free tier is unusually generous: unlimited tracking, timer, timesheets, the auto tracker, reports and every app on every platform. Paid tiers start at $3.99 per user per month billed annually, the cheapest paid entry point in this comparison.

Does Clockify track time automatically?

Partly. Clockify includes an auto tracker, even on the free plan, that records the apps and websites you use in the background. It is a memory aid rather than automatic timesheet creation — you still build the time entry from what it shows you. With DoneThat there is no entry to build: the day is reconstructed and you review it.

Does Clockify take screenshots?

On the Pro tier, yes. Clockify Pro at $7.99 per user per month adds screenshots and GPS tracking, enabled by whoever administers the workspace rather than by the person recorded. DoneThat never stores screenshots — they are processed in real time and immediately deleted — and visibility is chosen per summary by the person it belongs to.

What is Clockify missing compared with DoneThat?

An AI layer of any kind: no auto-categorisation, no assistant, no MCP server, and no coaching, goals or pattern feedback. Clockify records what you entered and reports on it well. It will not tell you anything about how you worked.

Which Clockify plan do I actually need?

Depends on one feature at a time, because they are spread across five tiers. Invoicing and approvals need Standard at $5.49; scheduling and expenses need Pro at $7.99; SSO and SCIM need Enterprise at $11.99. All billed annually — monthly adds roughly $1 to $3 per user.

A team that made the switch

How Ambitious Impact's Operations Team Replaced Timesheets with Automatic Time Tracking

AIM's three-person operations team tracked 1,853 hours over 22 weeks with DoneThat, and found the answers to questions it had been arguing about for months.

Dilan Fernando, Senior Operations Manager

Read the story

Customer stories from teams that moved to DoneThat from Clockify or evaluated both.