DoneThat vs Timely

The short answer

Timely and DoneThat both capture your work automatically and both put AI on top of it. They point that AI at different jobs.

Timely's AI drafts your timesheet. DoneThat's AI coaches you on the work. If the output you need is a billable, client-ready record you barely had to write, Timely is built for precisely that and does it well. If nobody is invoicing anybody and the output you need is "what should I change about how I'm working", most of Timely is machinery you will not use.

What each tool actually is

Timely captures activity automatically across apps, calendar and documents, then uses AI to turn that capture into a categorised timesheet. Around it sits the agency toolkit: projects, clients, budgets, team reporting, and the invoicing pipeline that all of it feeds.

DoneThat captures screen-first and reconstructs the day, then uses that history for goals, coaching, and as long-term memory an AI assistant can query through an API and an MCP server.

Both remove the timer. The question is whether the reconstructed day is an input to a bill or an input to a decision about your own work.

Where Timely is genuinely ahead

Timely has the strongest automatic-capture-to-invoice pipeline in this whole comparison set, and it is worth being specific rather than vague about it.

Most "automatic" time trackers hand you raw activity and leave the timesheet as your problem. Timely drafts it — AI categorises the captured activity into entries against projects and clients, and you review rather than write. For an agency or a consultancy billing by the hour, that is the entire value proposition of the category, executed properly. DoneThat exports CSV; it is not built to bill from, and against Timely on this axis we lose outright.

It also covers the cases pure auto-capture misses: idle detection, a manual timer when you want one, and location tracking on mobile.

How each one records your time

Both run automatic capture, so the honest comparison is about what gets captured and what it becomes.

Timely captures app activity, calendar events and document activity, and resolves them into timesheet entries. The record is oriented around billable units — it is answering "what should this hour be charged to?"

DoneThat captures screen-first and reconstructs what the work was about. The record is oriented around the work itself, which is what makes goal coaching possible: Don can tell you that you drifted onto something that was not the priority, because the reconstruction knows what you drifted onto.

On the ask: screenshots are never stored. Processed in real time, deleted immediately; only the derived structured activity persists. Excluded apps are redacted locally before anything is sent. Bring your own Gemini or OpenAI-compatible model and raw activity never reaches our servers. The desktop app is open source.

Pricing compared

Timely pricing, as of 11 August 2026:

14-day trial on every tier. No free plan. The Tasks add-on, for project assignment and progress tracking, starts at a further $5 per person.

The structural thing to understand: Timely's tiers are capped by seats and projects, not only by features. Starter stops at 5 users and 20 projects. An agency that adds a sixth person or a twenty-first project upgrades, regardless of which features it uses. Price the tier you will be on in a year, not the one you start on.

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

Platform support

A straight trade: Timely has mobile, DoneThat has Linux.

Privacy and data control

Timely's positioning here is credible — captured activity is private to the individual until they decide what goes onto the timesheet, which is the right default for a tool a team installs together.

DoneThat's model is different in kind. Capture is broader, so the controls are more specific: no screenshot archive, per-app exclusions applied on your machine, your own LLM as an option so raw data never reaches us, and an open-source desktop app so the capture path is inspectable rather than trusted.

For a team rollout the question worth asking of either tool is not "does it capture?" but "who can see what, and who decides?" Timely answers it at the timesheet boundary. DoneThat answers it per summary, with visibility set by the person the summary belongs to — private, team, org, or public.

Where Timely is the better choice

• You bill by the hour. The AI-drafted timesheet into client-ready invoicing is the best in this set.
• You run an agency or consultancy. Projects, clients, budgets and team reporting are mature.
• You track on mobile, including location. DoneThat has no mobile app.
• Someone else needs to approve or review the hours. That workflow exists here.
• You want automatic capture without screen-first capture. App, calendar and document activity is a smaller ask.

Where DoneThat is the better choice

• You are on Linux. Timely has no Linux desktop app.
• Nobody is billing anybody. If the data is for you, the invoicing machinery is cost without benefit.
• You want coaching during the work. 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. Timely's AI writes your timesheet and stops there.
• You want AI tools to have your work history. MCP and an API make it queryable as long-term memory; Timely has no equivalent.
• You do not want to be capped on seats or projects.
• Your team wants shared signal without surveillance. Summary-level dashboards, relative trends rather than per-person hours, per-summary visibility, optional mood tracking.
• You want peer accountability. Follow others, share summaries, Slack and Discord, accountability groups — all opt-in.

Can you run both?

Yes, and unusually for this category it can make sense. Timely for the hours that become invoices; DoneThat for understanding and improving the work itself. Both run as desktop apps on the same machine. The cost is two background capture agents and two subscriptions, so it is worth it only if you genuinely have both jobs to do.

How we compared these

Everything stated about Timely comes from its public pricing and product pages, read on 11 August 2026 and linked below. Note that Timely's pricing has moved domains — memory.ai/timely now redirects to timely.com — so older comparisons may cite figures from a previous structure.

Feature claims about DoneThat are first-hand: we build it. Timely's billing pipeline is better than ours, it has mobile and we do not, and both are said plainly above. Vendors change pricing without notice; check the source links before deciding on numbers.

Questions people ask about Timely

Does Timely write my timesheet for me?

Effectively yes, and it is the best in this comparison at it. Timely captures activity automatically across apps, calendar and documents, then uses AI to categorise it into entries against projects and clients. You review the draft rather than write it. DoneThat exports CSV and is not built to bill from.

How much does Timely cost?

As of 11 August 2026, billed annually: Starter $9 per user per month, Premium $16, Unlimited $22. Monthly billing is $11, $20 and $28. Every tier has a 14-day trial and there is no free plan. The Tasks add-on costs a further $5 per person.

Does Timely have user limits?

Yes, and it is the thing to check before committing. Starter caps at 5 users and 20 projects; Premium at 50 users. Adding a sixth person or a twenty-first project forces an upgrade regardless of which features you use, so price the tier you will be on in a year.

Does Timely work on Linux?

No. Timely has desktop apps for Windows and macOS, plus iOS, Android, web and a Chrome extension. DoneThat supports Linux but has no mobile app — a straight trade in both directions.

Timely vs DoneThat: which should I choose?

If you bill by the hour, Timely — its AI-drafted timesheets feed client invoicing and that is the whole point of the category done properly. If nobody is invoicing anybody and you want to understand and improve how you work, DoneThat, because Timely's AI stops once the timesheet is written.