DoneThat vs Toggl Track

The short answer

Toggl Track asks you to start a timer. DoneThat reconstructs your day from what actually happened on your screen. Everything else about these two products follows from that one difference.

If your time data has to leave the building — on an invoice, in a client report, against a project budget — Toggl Track is the more complete tool and has been for years. If your time data is for you, and the point is to see where your attention went without doing any bookkeeping to find out, that is what DoneThat is built for.

What each tool actually is

Toggl Track is time tracking software for billing and reporting. The unit of work is a time entry: it has a start, a stop, a project, and often a billable rate. Around that, Toggl has built the surrounding machinery — clients, projects, budgets, team dashboards, exports, and reports you can hand to someone who is paying you.

DoneThat is an automatic work tracker with an AI coach on top. The unit of work is captured activity: what was on screen, in which app, for how long, and what it appears to have been about. There is no timer to start. The day is reconstructed after the fact, and the history then feeds goals, coaching, and AI assistants through an API and an MCP server.

Both call themselves time trackers. They are answering different questions. Toggl answers "what do I bill for this?" DoneThat answers "where did my week actually go, and what should I change?"

How each one records your time

Toggl Track: a timer first, with a private timeline behind it

The primary flow in Toggl Track is manual. You start a timer when you begin, stop it when you finish, or add the entry afterwards from memory. Toggl is explicit that you can "switch between timer mode and manual mode to track as you go or add time later."

There is also a Timeline. When the desktop app is running and recording is enabled, it captures every website and program you view for longer than 10 seconds, and shows them in your calendar view. This is a genuinely useful memory aid, and its privacy design is better than most of the category — more on that below.

The important detail is what Timeline does not do. It does not create time entries. Toggl's own wording: "Only you decide which activity turns into time entries." The recorded activity sits there as visual pills until you convert it yourself. Timeline reduces the amount you have to remember; it does not remove the step where you tell the system what you were doing.

DoneThat: capture first, no timer

DoneThat inverts that. Capture runs continuously on the desktop app, screen-first, and the day is assembled for you. There is no timer to forget and no end-of-day reconstruction from memory, because the reconstruction is the product. You review and correct what it produced rather than producing it yourself.

The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly: DoneThat needs to see your screen to do this. That is a bigger ask than starting a timer, and it is why control over what gets recorded, which model processes it, and what is shared sits in the foreground of the product rather than in a settings sub-menu.

It is worth being precise about what the ask actually is, because most people assume worse. Screenshots are never stored. They are processed in real time and deleted immediately; what persists is the structured activity data derived from them, not the images. Apps you exclude are redacted on your machine before anything is sent for analysis. And if you would rather our servers never saw the raw data at all, you can bring your own Gemini or OpenAI-compatible model — the raw activity and our prompt go to your model, and only the structured result comes back to us. The desktop app is open source, so none of that has to be taken on faith.

Which of Toggl's automatic features actually create entries

"Automatic time tracking" covers several different mechanisms in Toggl Track, and only some of them produce a time entry without you doing anything. This is the distinction most comparison pages blur.

So Toggl can be automatic, for work that happens on a calendar or inside a known window or webpage. Work that does not fit a rule you wrote in advance still goes through a timer or your memory. DoneThat does not need the rule, because it is not matching activity against triggers — it is capturing the activity itself.

Pricing compared

Toggl Track pricing, as of 11 August 2026, from Toggl's pricing page:

Two things worth knowing before you budget:

• Premium renews higher than it sells. The $14 figure is a first-year rate. From year two it is $18, roughly 29% more. Nothing is hidden about this — it is on the pricing page — but it does not appear in the headline number, and annual budgets built on $14 will be short.
• You pay per license, not per usage. Cost scales with headcount. For a solo user that is fine; for a team where only some people need billing-grade tracking, you are still buying seats.

DoneThat is subscription-based with a 14-day free trial, and current plan prices are on the DoneThat download page — we deliberately do not restate them here, because a hardcoded number on a comparison page is a number that goes stale.

Privacy and data control

This is the section where a comparison page normally claims a clean win. It is not one.

Toggl's Timeline has a better privacy design than its category reputation suggests:

• Timeline data is private to the individual user. Toggl states that other workspace users, including admins, do not have access to it.
• Cloud sync can be turned off entirely in the desktop apps. With sync off, Timeline stays on your machine.
• Retention is deliberately short — roughly 8 weeks locally, and 10 days for synced data.

If you are evaluating Toggl Track for a team and worried it becomes surveillance, that concern is better addressed than you might expect. Note the flip side of the same design: short retention and local-only storage mean the activity record is not a long-term archive you can analyse later, which is precisely the thing DoneThat is trying to be.

DoneThat's position is different rather than strictly better. Capture is broader, so control matters more, and the controls are correspondingly specific:

• No screenshot archive. Raw screenshots are processed in real time and immediately deleted. Only the structured activity derived from them is kept.
• Per-app exclusions applied locally. Excluded apps are redacted on your machine, before anything is sent for analysis.
• Bring your own LLM. Point DoneThat at your own Gemini or OpenAI-compatible model and the raw activity never reaches our servers — only the structured result does. API keys, including BYO keys, are encrypted locally.
• Open source desktop app, so the capture path can be inspected rather than trusted.

Export is a first-class feature too — CSV for spreadsheets and finance, an API for custom workflows, and an MCP server at mcp.donethat.ai so AI assistants can reason over structured work history instead of screenshots.

The honest contrast with Toggl: their Timeline keeps less data for less time, which is the stronger position if your goal is that nothing persists. DoneThat keeps more, deliberately, because a long-term record is the thing coaching and AI memory are built on — and then spends its privacy design on controlling what enters that record rather than on discarding it quickly.

Platform support

Neither tool is a Mac-only product, which is worth saying because much of this category is.

Toggl's Linux desktop app is a real one, with Timeline, idle detection and Pomodoro, not a token port. If mobile tracking matters to you, Toggl wins outright — DoneThat has no mobile app.

Where Toggl Track is the better choice

Pick Toggl Track if any of these describe you:

• You invoice from your time data. Billable rates, project budgets, client reports and exports are mature here and are not the point of DoneThat.
• You need a broad admin reporting surface today. Toggl's team dashboards and shared reporting are mature and wide. DoneThat's team views are narrower and still filling in — though see below, because the approach differs as much as the breadth does.
• You track on your phone. DoneThat has no mobile app; Toggl has iOS and Android.
• You want a free tier for a small team. DoneThat is trial-then-paid.
• You want a timer. Some people genuinely prefer the deliberate act of starting one. It is a focus ritual as much as a measurement, and automatic capture removes it.
• Policy genuinely rules out screen capture. If it does, Toggl's timer-plus-optional-timeline model fits inside that constraint and DoneThat does not. Worth checking what the policy actually prohibits first, though — it is usually the storage of screenshots, which DoneThat does not do.

Where DoneThat is the better choice

Pick DoneThat if any of these describe you:

• You forget to start timers. Not as a moral failing — it is the single most common reason time tracking data is wrong. Automatic capture removes the failure mode instead of reminding you about it.
• You want the analysis, not the log. DoneThat turns captured history into coaching, goals and pattern feedback. Toggl reports what you logged; it does not tell you anything about how you worked.
• You want something that reaches out during the work. Don nudges you onto your goals, blocks calendar time, flags low-value work while you can still fix it, checks your mood, reminds you of meetings and suggests breaks. Toggl's reporting is good, but you have to go and look at it.
• You want AI tools to have your work history. The MCP server and API make captured work queryable as long-term memory for an assistant. Toggl has no equivalent.
• The data is for you. If nobody is invoicing anybody, most of what you pay Toggl for is machinery you will not use.
• You want fine-grained reconstruction without writing rules. Toggl's automatic modes need a calendar event, a page rule or a window rule defined in advance. DoneThat needs none.
• Your team wants shared signal without surveillance. Dashboards run on high-level summaries, teams can share relative trends instead of per-person hours, each person sets visibility on their own summaries, and optional mood tracking makes the signal burnout risk rather than activity volume. Toggl's team reporting is wider, but it reports logged hours.
• You want peer accountability, not a manager checking up on you. Follow others, share summaries with followers, push updates to Slack or Discord, join accountability groups — all opt-in, staying private is supported. Toggl has no equivalent.

Can you run both?

Yes, and for some people it is the honest answer. Toggl Track for the hours that turn into invoices, DoneThat for understanding where the rest of the week went. Both run as desktop apps on the same machine, and DoneThat's CSV export means the two data sets can be reconciled if you ever need to.

How we compared these

Everything stated about Toggl Track here comes from Toggl's own public pricing page, feature pages and knowledge base, read on 11 August 2026 and linked below. Where Toggl's marketing pages and knowledge base disagree — the Premium price, for instance — both figures are given rather than the more convenient one. Feature claims about DoneThat are first-hand: we build it.

DoneThat makes one of the two products on this page, which is a bias you should read this with. What we have tried to avoid is the usual failure mode of these pages, where the competitor's strengths are described in the vaguest possible terms. Toggl Track's billing workflow is better than ours, its platform coverage is wider than ours, and its Timeline privacy model is genuinely good. Vendors also change pricing and features without notice; check the source links before you make a decision on the numbers.

Questions people ask about Toggl Track

Is Toggl Track fully automatic?

Partly. Toggl Track creates time entries automatically from calendar events, from an 'always track this page' rule in the Chrome extension, and from window-based autotracker rules on Windows. Its Timeline feature records every app and website you view for more than 10 seconds, but it does not turn those into time entries — you convert them by hand. Anything that does not match a rule you wrote in advance still needs a timer.

Does Toggl Track record my screen?

No. Toggl Track's Timeline records which applications and websites you viewed, not the contents of your screen. DoneThat does read the screen, but never stores screenshots: they are processed in real time and immediately deleted, only the derived structured activity is kept, and apps you exclude are redacted on your machine before anything is sent.

Can my manager see my Toggl Track Timeline?

No. Toggl states that Timeline data is private to the individual user and that other workspace members, including admins, cannot access it. Cloud sync can also be disabled entirely in the desktop apps, and retention is short — roughly 8 weeks locally and 10 days once synced.

How much does Toggl Track cost?

As of 11 August 2026: Free for a limited number of users, Starter at $9 per license per month, and Premium advertised at $14 per license per month for the first year and $18 from year two. Enterprise is quoted case by case. Paid plans include a 30-day trial with no card required.

Does Toggl Track work on Linux?

Yes. Toggl Track ships a native Linux desktop app with Timeline recording, idle detection and Pomodoro, alongside Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, a web app and Chrome, Firefox and Edge extensions. DoneThat also supports Linux, but has no mobile app.

Can I use Toggl Track and DoneThat together?

Yes. They do different jobs: Toggl Track for the hours that turn into invoices, DoneThat for understanding where the rest of the week went. Both run as desktop apps on the same machine, and DoneThat's CSV export means the two records can be reconciled if they disagree.