A free forever alternative to Clockify

Clockify is the name most teams already know. It covers a lot: timers, projects, reports, and a long list of extras that grow with paid plans. That breadth is useful when you need it. It is noise when you only wanted a place to write hours.

Timer4 is a free forever alternative for that second case. Same job on a Tuesday: start a timer, type a duration, see the week. No subscription gate on the daily tracker. This is not a feature dump of Clockify. It is a line for teams that already pay in attention.

What Clockify is good at

Clockify earned the default slot. The catalog is wide, the brand is familiar, and a lot of agencies already have a login. If you need approvals, advanced billing, or a tool that tries to be the whole operations stack, look there first and read their current plans.

• You already run Clockify and nobody is fighting the UI.
• You need extras Timer4 does not ship: approvals, advanced billing, a large marketplace of add-ons.
• The team is fine shopping a plan page when a new feature appears.

Where the smaller tool wins

A tracker fails when people stop opening it. That happens when the home screen is a product tour, when yesterday’s hours sit behind a plan badge, or when importing last month takes a support thread. Timer4 stays on timer, manual entry, clients, projects, team, and reports.

What free forever means here

Clockify also advertises a free tier. Plans change; check their site. Timer4’s offer is simpler: the workspace you use to track time is not a trial and not a feature teaser. No subscription required for the daily log. If we ever charge, it will not be by locking the timer you already rely on.

That is the whole pitch. Not “more modules.” A tracker that stays a tracker.

What you keep, what you leave

Bring the hours with you

Leaving a tracker is ugly when history dies. Timer4 imports a Clockify CSV with a preview so you can see rows before they land. Description cells can be long. Duplicate lines in the file stay separate entries instead of collapsing into one.

Export from Clockify, drop the file in, reconcile, keep working. You do not retype last quarter.

Stay on Clockify if

• Approvals or advanced billing are already how you invoice.
• The team is trained and the cost is not the problem.
• You need a wide platform more than a quiet daily log.

Try Timer4 if

• You wanted hours, not a second ERP.
• A plan page now sits between the person and the timer.
• You have a Clockify export and want a workspace that stays free.