Market overview

Free time tracking in 2026: what is genuinely free

Permanently free, with no trial period, there are six providers with seven offerings in the German market, and each one ends at a limit: five or fifteen users, missing features, or servers whose location the provider does not name. For a business with employees that is the decisive point, because the record-keeping duty does not depend on the price. Anyone who has to satisfy it checks the limits below before the first employee clocks in. For the same reason MetronHR has no free plan but 14 days with the full range of features and no credit card, and 5 euros per person per month after that.

As at:September 2026

The six offerings that really cost nothing

Free here means: usable permanently, with no expiry date and no payment details stored. A trial phase does not count, not even a six-week one. All details are as of 02/09/2026, in each case from the provider's pricing page.

  • Shiftbase Free

    What is included
    Drag-and-drop rostering, time recording, an app for iOS and Android
    The limit
    at most 15 users
    Where the data sits
    "European servers", operator not named

  • askDANTE Starter FREE

    What is included
    Working time recording, leave, an attendance calendar, working time accounts
    The limit
    no user limit named, but no shift planner, no requests, no reports
    Where the data sits
    "our servers, in a data centre", no country named

  • askDANTE Enterprise FREE

    What is included
    the full range of features including project time and rotating shift systems
    The limit
    exactly 5 users
    Where the data sits
    as above

  • Clockodo Free

    What is included
    almost all the features of the Pro plan
    The limit
    one user, no absences, no team features, no editing lock, reports carrying the Clockodo logo
    Where the data sits
    Microsoft Azure, Frankfurt and Berlin

  • Clockify Free

    What is included
    unlimited time recording, apps for desktop, mobile and browser
    The limit
    at most 5 users
    Where the data sits
    predominantly the USA, the data region only selectable on the Enterprise plan

  • Toggl Track Free

    What is included
    Time recording on the web, on the desktop and on mobile, reports, more than 100 integrations
    The limit
    a limited number of users
    Where the data sits
    Provider Toggl OUe, Estonia; data centre not named

  • timr Free

    What is included
    one of three features: working time, project time or a mileage log
    The limit
    one user, one feature
    Where the data sits
    Servers in Germany, ISO 27001 certified data centres

Details from the pricing pages of shiftbase.com, askdante.com, clockodo.com, clockify.me, toggl.com and timr.com, each retrieved on 02/09/2026. Contrary to older comparison articles, Timebutler no longer has a free plan; the Starter plan costs 29.95 euros a month for up to five people, while at MetronHR five people cost 25 euros.

What "free" usually means in the small print

Free plans are not charity but the entry point to a subscription. That is legitimate, and it does not make them worse. You just need to know where the limit is drawn, because that is exactly where the paid plan begins.

  • User limit: the most common barrier. Five people is quickly reached, and so is fifteen.
  • Feature limit: askDANTE Starter FREE lacks requests, the shift planner and reports; Clockodo Free lacks absences and all team features.
  • Visible branding: Clockodo puts its own logo in reports on the free plan. Anyone passing an evaluation to a client is advertising with it.
  • Server location: the free plan uses the same infrastructure as the paid one. At Clockify that means processing predominantly in the USA, and the choice of data region only exists on the Enterprise plan.
  • Support: free plans usually come with a help centre instead of a contact person. When something goes wrong in time management, that is where it gets expensive.

The free option every business already has: Excel

A spreadsheet costs nothing, anyone can use it, and it is set up in ten minutes. For sole traders, for very small teams and as an interim step until a system is introduced, it is an honest answer.

Its limits lie elsewhere: a spreadsheet can be changed retroactively without anyone seeing it. Anyone not documenting corrections traceably has a problem of proof in a dispute over overtime or in an inspection under section 17 MiLoG. Then there is the effort: with ten people that is ten files a month that somebody has to collect, check and add up.

If a spreadsheet is enough for now, take one that already contains the calculation logic instead of building an empty file.

What even a free system has to be able to do

The duty does not depend on the price. Since the Federal Labour Court order of 13 September 2022 (1 ABR 22/21), employers have had to record the start, the end and the duration of daily working time; the duty follows from section 3(2) no. 1 of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, following the judgment of the European Court of Justice of 14 May 2019 (C-55/18).

From that follows a short checklist that a free tool should also pass.

  • The start, the end and the duration of the daily working time, plus the breaks, because they are deducted. A target time entered in advance is not a record: what is recorded is what was actually worked. It is kept for at least two years (§ 16 (2) ArbZG).
  • Breaks reported separately, because section 4 ArbZG requires them from six hours.
  • Traceable corrections: who changed what and when.
  • Retention: two years in the industries under section 2a SchwarzArbG, recorded within seven days of the work (section 17 MiLoG).
  • An export that payroll can read.
  • Access only for authorised people, and an answer on where the data sits.

Why MetronHR has no free plan

MetronHR costs 5 € per person per month on the Team plan and 10 € on Professional. There is no permanently free plan.

The reason is simple: a free plan that takes the record-keeping duty seriously costs us the same as a paid one. Servers in Germany, backups, checks against the Working Hours Act, an answer to an email on the next working day. We would cross-subsidise it from paying customers or save somewhere else, and we want neither.

Instead there are 14 days with the full range of features, with no credit card and no automatic renewal, plus the templates above, which cost nothing permanently and require no account.

Further reading:Pricing pages of Shiftbase, askDANTE, Clockodo, Clockify, Toggl Track, timr and Timebutler, retrieved on 02/09/2026 · Federal Labour Court, order of 13/09/2022, 1 ABR 22/21 · ECJ, judgment of 14/05/2019, C-55/18 · Section 3 (2) no. 1 ArbSchG, section 5 (3) nos. 4 and 6 ArbSchG

Information about competitors comes from their publicly available pages and can change. This is not legal advice; for a specific case in your business it is better to ask someone with a licence to practise.

Frequently asked questions

What we get asked about this most often.

For a small team yes, with limits: Shiftbase Free covers rostering and time recording for up to 15 people, askDANTE Enterprise FREE the full range for exactly five, Clockify Free time recording for five. Anything beyond that costs. Before starting you should check two things that appear on no pricing page: where the data sits and whether corrections are documented traceably. Both are decisive for the record-keeping duty, and MetronHR answers both with servers in Nuremberg and Falkenstein and a change history of time entries visible on the Professional plan.

No, at any rate not any more. That claim circulates in older comparison articles. On Timebutler's pricing page on 02/09/2026, the Starter plan costs 29.95 euros a month for up to five people; only the trial phase is free there. For five people MetronHR costs 25 euros a month on the Team plan and is terminable monthly.

In principle yes. The Federal Labour Court requires a system for recording without prescribing the form. In practice a spreadsheet has two weaknesses: it can be changed retroactively without a trace, and it does not scale. Anyone working in an industry under section 2a SchwarzArbG has to keep the records for two years and produce them within seven days of the work (section 17 MiLoG); that is hard to demonstrate with files in a folder.

Usually none that needs hiding. The limit is stated openly: user numbers, range of features, or both. What deserves attention appears less often on the pricing page: the server location (predominantly the USA at Clockify), the provider logo in reports (at Clockodo), and the support, which on a free plan usually consists of a help centre.

Within the same provider almost always by upgrading. To a different provider you need an export. All the providers named offer CSV or Excel exports, and several also an API. What cannot be carried over is master data that did not exist on the free plan, such as a personnel file.

Because a free plan that takes the record-keeping duty seriously incurs the same running costs as a paid one: servers in Germany, backups, checks against the Working Hours Act, support. We would cross-subsidise it from paying customers or save elsewhere. Instead there are 14 days with the full range of features and no credit card, and permanently free templates with no account.

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