A Toggl alternative for people who forget to press start
Toggl Track is a well made timer: you start it when you begin a task, stop it when you finish, and sort the time into projects and clients. That works when you remember. If your timers keep running over lunch or never get started at all, the problem is not the tool, it is the habit it depends on.
Hourly turns this around. It does not wait for you to press anything. Once every hour of real activity it opens a small window and asks what you just did. You type one sentence and carry on.
| Toggl Track | Hourly | |
|---|---|---|
| How time is recorded | You start and stop a timer | It asks you once an hour |
| What you get | Durations per project, client and tag | A short log of what you did, in your own words |
| Forgetting | A timer left running, or never started | Nothing to forget: the prompt comes to you |
| Time away | Counted until you stop the timer | A locked screen and sleep pause the clock |
| Account | Required, your data is in the cloud | None, entries stay on your computer |
| Best for | Billing clients and reports | Knowing where your day actually went |
When Toggl is the better choice
If you bill clients by the hour, or need exact durations, team reports or invoices, keep using a timer. Hourly has no projects, rates or reports, on purpose.
When Hourly fits better
- You have tried timers before and stopped using them within a week or two.
- You want an honest record of the day, not a stopwatch.
- You keep daily notes in Obsidian, or would like a plain file you own.
- You want to review a week with an AI assistant: Hourly exports your entries as Markdown, text or JSON.
Some people use both: Toggl for billable work, Hourly for everything in between. Hourly is free, needs no account and runs on Windows 10 and 11.