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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.
| Offering | What is included | The limit | Where the data sits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shiftbase Free | Drag-and-drop rostering, time recording, an app for iOS and Android | at most 15 users | "European servers", operator not named |
| askDANTE Starter FREE | Working time recording, leave, an attendance calendar, working time accounts | no user limit named, but no shift planner, no requests, no reports | "our servers, in a data centre", no country named |
| askDANTE Enterprise FREE | the full range of features including project time and rotating shift systems | exactly 5 users | as above |
| Clockodo Free | almost all the features of the Pro plan | one user, no absences, no team features, no editing lock, reports carrying the Clockodo logo | Microsoft Azure, Frankfurt and Berlin |
| Clockify Free | unlimited time recording, apps for desktop, mobile and browser | at most 5 users | predominantly the USA, the data region only selectable on the Enterprise plan |
| Toggl Track Free | Time recording on the web, on the desktop and on mobile, reports, more than 100 integrations | a limited number of users | Provider Toggl OUe, Estonia; data centre not named |
| timr Free | one of three features: working time, project time or a mileage log | one user, one feature | 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.
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 in principle satisfies the record-keeping duty, because the Federal Labour Court prescribes no electronic system. To start with, for very small teams and for a single month, it is an honest answer.
Read in detail
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).
Read in detail
From that follows a short checklist that a free tool should also pass.
- The start, the end and the duration per day, not just a total of hours.
- 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.
Read in detail
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.
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.