DoneThat vs Laurel

The short answer

These two products barely compete, and the useful thing this page can do is say so clearly.

Laurel is enterprise AI timekeeping sold to law firms, accounting practices and consultancies. Its job is to make sure the firm bills every hour it actually worked, with narratives that survive a client's billing guidelines. DoneThat is bought by an individual who wants to understand their own week.

Same underlying trick — passive capture of work — pointed at completely different problems, for completely different buyers, at completely different prices.

What Laurel actually does

It is worth describing properly, because it is genuinely impressive at a job nothing else here attempts.

Laurel passively captures work across email, documents, browsers and video calls, then uses firm-specific AI models to produce structured time entries with billing narratives. Before submission, entries are checked against client billing rules and outside counsel guidelines — a legal-specific problem that no general time tracker addresses at all.

Above that sits firm-level reporting: utilisation, matter profitability, capacity planning.

The business case is recovery rather than volume. Laurel reports capturing 28+ minutes of missed billable time per day, and firms using AI timekeeping capturing 4–11% more revenue than those on manual entry — by billing hours already worked but previously unrecorded, not by billing more hours. For a firm with expensive people, that arithmetic makes an enterprise price easy to justify.

It is a substantial company behind it: 100+ clients globally and a $100M Series C in June 2025.

Why this is not really a comparison

Different buyer. Laurel is sold to firm leadership with white-glove deployment. There is no self-serve tier, so an individual professional cannot sign up even if they wanted to. DoneThat is bought by the person whose work is being captured.

Different question. Laurel asks "did we bill everything we worked?" DoneThat asks "was this week spent on the right things?" A firm can be perfectly efficient at the first and terrible at the second.

Different price bracket. Enterprise custom pricing, positioned well above per-seat tools. Compared against a personal subscription, the numbers are not in the same conversation.

Different scope. Laurel is built around the billable hour. Outside professional services, most of what it does has nothing to attach to.

If you found this page looking for one of them

You are at a firm and want billing recovery. Laurel, or one of its legal-specific competitors. DoneThat will not do this — we export CSV and are not built to bill from.

You are an individual professional wanting automated timesheets. Laurel is not available to you. Timely's AI-drafted timesheets or Toggl Track are the realistic options at that scale.

You are at a firm and the problem is not billing. If your people are billing fine but burning out, or working on the wrong matters, that is a different tool. DoneThat's team model runs on high-level summaries rather than per-person hours, with visibility set per summary by the person it belongs to and optional mood tracking so what a lead sees is burnout risk rather than activity volume.

On capture and control

Both tools capture passively, and it is worth noting who holds the switch.

Laurel is deployed by the firm, so capture scope is a firm decision. That is appropriate for a system of record that feeds client invoices, and it means an individual timekeeper is not the one configuring it.

DoneThat: screenshots are never stored — processed in real time, immediately deleted, only derived structured activity 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. Visibility is set per summary by the person it belongs to. The desktop app is open source.

Where Laurel is the better choice

• You are a billable-hour firm. This is what it is for and it does it better than anything else here.
• Revenue leakage is the problem. Recovering unrecorded time is a measurable return.
• Client billing guidelines must be enforced before submission.
• Firm leadership needs utilisation and matter profitability reporting.
• You want firm-specific models, not a generic categoriser.

Where DoneThat is the better choice

• You are an individual. Laurel is not sold to you.
• Nobody is billing anybody, or billing is already handled elsewhere.
• You want to understand your work, not invoice it.
• You want coaching. 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 through MCP and an API.
• You want peer accountability. Follow others, share summaries, Slack and Discord, accountability groups — all opt-in.

How we compared these

Statements about Laurel come from its public site and published material, read on 11 August 2026 and linked below. The revenue-recovery figures are Laurel's own published claims, presented as such rather than as independently verified numbers. Pricing is not quoted because none is published.

Claims about DoneThat are first-hand: we build it. We have not tried to frame Laurel as a rival we beat — it is a more expensive, more specialised product that solves a problem we do not attempt. If billing recovery at a firm is your question, we are the wrong tool.

Questions people ask about Laurel

Who is Laurel for?

Law firms, accounting practices and consultancies that bill by the hour. It is sold to firms with enterprise custom pricing and white-glove deployment, not to individuals — there is no self-serve tier, so a solo professional cannot simply sign up.

How much does Laurel cost?

Not published. Pricing is enterprise and custom, positioned well above per-seat tools, and requires a sales conversation. The business case rests on recovered billable time rather than on a low seat price.

Is Laurel a competitor to DoneThat?

Barely. Both capture work automatically, and there the resemblance ends. Laurel exists to make sure a firm bills every hour it worked, checked against client billing rules. DoneThat exists to help an individual understand and improve how they work. Different buyer, different problem, different price bracket.

What if I want Laurel's automation but I am not at a firm?

For billing automation at individual or small-team scale, Timely's AI-drafted timesheets or Toggl Track are the realistic options. DoneThat exports CSV but is not built to bill from — it is aimed at understanding the work rather than invoicing it.