Clockify's Free Plan Changed in 2026: What You Lose and What to Use Instead
For years, Clockify was the easy answer to "which time tracker should I use if I don't want to pay?" Unlimited users, unlimited projects, billable rates included, exports included. It was the free plan every other tool got measured against. In April 2026, that plan changed, and if you relied on it to bill clients, the changes land squarely on you.
Clockify is still a good tool. It's just no longer the free billing tool it used to be, and that distinction matters enormously if your invoices depended on it.
What actually changed in April 2026
On April 21, 2026, CAKE.com, the company behind Clockify, announced a round of changes to the free plan. Several features that used to be free moved to the paid plans: billable hours, CSV and Excel report exports, shared report links, kiosk mode, project time estimates, and the ability to make projects private.
Alongside the removals, the plan itself got smaller. Free workspaces are now capped at five users, where they used to be unlimited. Reports can only be filtered to a one-month date range. Webhooks are limited to three per workspace, and the API is throttled to thirty requests per hour. Existing paid customers were not affected; the changes fall on free workspaces.
The company's stated reason is straightforward enough: it's bootstrapped, free users at that scale are expensive, and paying customers fund the product. That's a fair business call. It just changes the maths for everyone who chose Clockify precisely because billing was free.
What that means day to day
The feature list understates it, so here is the practical version for anyone who bills by the hour.
Your hours no longer have a value. Billable rates were the feature that turned a list of time entries into a number you could invoice. Without them, Clockify's free plan tells you that you worked 34 hours last week, but not that 26 of them were billable at your rate. The difference between those two numbers is the whole job. If the distinction is fuzzy, our guide to billable versus non-billable hours covers it.
You can see your data but not take it with you. CSV and Excel exports moved to paid, so the route most freelancers used at invoice time, export the month and total it up, now prompts an upgrade. Shared report links went the same way, which was how many people sent a client a live view of hours worked.
Longer reports are gone. With the date filter capped at one month, quarterly summaries, year-to-date totals, and "how much did I actually work for this client in 2026" are no longer questions the free plan can answer in one screen.
What the free plan still does
Clockify's free plan remains a capable timer. You still get time tracking on web, desktop, and mobile, unlimited projects, the calendar view, idle detection, the Pomodoro timer, and basic reporting inside a one-month window, for up to five people. If you track time to understand where your day goes, rather than to bill anyone, very little has changed for you.
That's the clean way to think about it: the free plan now tracks time, and the paid plans price it. The people squeezed are the ones in between, freelancers and small teams who need the pricing part but built their workflow on it being free.
Should you just pay for Clockify?
Maybe. If you like the timer and your workflow lives in it, upgrading is the lowest-friction fix. Clockify's paid plans start at a few dollars per seat per month billed annually, which is cheap by category standards, and existing paid users kept everything. Check which tier restores the specific features you lost, since billable rates, exports, and sharing do not all sit on the same rung.
Two things are worth weighing before you do. For a team, per-seat pricing multiplies: five seats at even a modest rate is real money every year for features you had for free in March. And a free plan that changed once can change again. Neither is a reason to refuse to pay for good software. Both are reasons to know what the alternatives look like first.
The free alternatives, honestly compared
The short version: most big-name free plans have the same shape as Clockify's new one, a good timer with the billing maths held back. We compared the field in detail in our roundup of free timesheet apps that still track billable hours; here is how it applies to Clockify switchers.
Toggl Track has a genuinely pleasant free plan for up to five users, but billable rates have never been part of it. They arrive on the Starter plan at $9 per user per month billed annually. If you left Clockify because billing went paid, Toggl's free plan doesn't solve your problem; it's the same trade with a nicer timer.
Harvest includes invoicing, which is more than most, but its free plan is capped at one seat and two active projects. Fine for trying it out; outgrown by anyone with a third client.
A spreadsheet is the one option no pricing update can touch. Date, client, project, billable flag, hours, rate, and a SUMIF to total the value. Free forever, and you do all the remembering and all the typing. It works if the discipline holds; it's where accuracy quietly leaks when it doesn't.
VibaCloud is the option built for exactly this gap. It connects to your Outlook or Google calendar and turns the meetings and appointments already sitting there into a draft weekly timesheet. You tag each entry to a client and project, mark it billable, and the hours and their value total automatically, because every project carries its own hourly rate. Weeks export to Excel or PDF, and you can turn a submitted week into an invoice without leaving the app. All of it is free, including the parts Clockify just moved behind the paywall: billable hours, exports, and the billing maths.
How to switch without losing your data
Get your history out first. If you still have a paid seat or a trial, export your full history to CSV while you can. On the free plan, the one-month report window still displays your data, so worst case you can work through it month by month and copy what you need. Your entries aren't gone; they're just harder to carry.
Recreate the skeleton, not the history. In whatever you move to, set up your clients, projects, and rates first. You rarely need two years of old entries in the new tool; you need the structure that makes next week easy. Keep the exported history in a folder for reference and start fresh from Monday.
Run one week in parallel. Track a normal week in the new tool before you commit. If the new system builds from the calendar you already keep, that trial week mostly fills itself in, which is rather the point.
The bottom line
Clockify's April 2026 changes aren't an outrage; they're a clarification. The free plan is now a personal timer, and billing is a paid product. If that's worth a few dollars a month to you, pay it and move on. If you chose Clockify because tracking billable hours was free, the honest options are a spreadsheet you own outright or a free tool that still treats billing as the point rather than the upsell. Our guide to tracking billable hours for free walks through that decision in full.
Frequently asked questions
What changed in Clockify's free plan in 2026?
In April 2026, Clockify moved billable hours, CSV/Excel exports, shared report links, kiosk mode, project time estimates, and private projects to its paid plans. The free plan was also capped at five users with reports limited to a one-month date range.
Is Clockify still free?
Yes. The free plan still includes time tracking on web, desktop, and mobile, unlimited projects, calendar view, idle detection, and basic one-month reporting for up to five users. What it no longer includes free is anything to do with billing or getting data out.
Did Clockify remove billable hours from the free plan?
Yes. Billable rates and billable-hours tracking moved to Clockify's paid plans in April 2026. On the free plan you can record that you worked, but the app will no longer total what that time is worth at your rate.
What is the best free alternative to Clockify for billable hours?
It depends on your workflow. A spreadsheet is free forever but entirely manual. Toggl Track's free plan has a great timer but has never included billable rates. VibaCloud keeps billable hours, per-project rates, and Excel/PDF export free, building the timesheet from your Outlook or Google calendar.
Were existing paid Clockify users affected by the changes?
No. Clockify stated that existing paid plan customers keep their features unchanged. The April 2026 changes apply to free workspaces.
