Clockoli vs Toggl Track
Sergey NikolaevCo-founder at Clockoli
Toggl Track is the one we point people at most often when Clockoli is the wrong answer. Its browser extension has around 400,000 users at 4.4 stars — the largest and best-rated of every tracker we reviewed — and its calendar is the best piece of time-editing UI on the market. If you are choosing between the two, you should know what you would be giving up.
What Toggl does better
One page, three views of the same data. Calendar, List and Timesheet share a timer bar and a date range, so switching representation never loses your place or stops the clock. Most trackers put the calendar on a separate page; Toggl does not, and it is noticeably better for it.
The calendar gestures are complete. Click an empty slot to create, click-and-drag to create with a range, drag an edge to change start or stop, drag the block to move it, click to open a popup that edits everything. It zooms to 5–10 minute granularity.
Overlaps are shown, not hidden. Two entries covering the same minutes render as narrow side-by-side columns rather than stacking or shading. That sounds like a detail until you have tried to untangle a double-logged afternoon somewhere else.
Keyboard and syntax. N starts, M is manual, S stops, C continues the last
entry, 1–9 are favourites, and you can type @project and #tag straight into
the description.
It works for people who are not developers. Toggl assumes nothing about how you work. Clockoli asks everyone tracking time to have a GitHub account, which is a fine assumption in an engineering team and a bad one across a whole company.
What Clockoli does that Toggl cannot
 Clockoli |  Toggl Track | |
|---|---|---|
| Where your hours live | Plain JSONL files in your GitHub repo | Vendor-hosted service |
| Writing to several places at once | One install, a repository per client, each one owned by that client | Several workspaces, one account; all of it in Toggl |
| Own your data without running a server | GitHub is the backend; no separate tracker server or database | No customer-controlled backend in SaaS |
| Source code | Open source (GPL-3.0 or later) | Proprietary service |
| Free plans and team costs | Core is free; no seat or usage limits. GitHub limits apply | Limited free plan; paid team features |
| Reporting | Cross-repo team reports; browser-local billable rates | Basic reports free; advanced/team features paid |
| Who can read task titles | Anyone with repo read access; hosted by GitHub | Workspace access and roles |
| Hourly rates and teammate access | Browser-local, not in shared time files; protect browser access and exports | Service-stored; role-controlled visibility |
| Getting your data out | Canonical files already in Git; clone, CSV/JSON, print to PDF | Report exports and API; plan limits apply |
| Corrections kept as history | Git commits, not an immutable compliance audit log | Audit log: Premium/Enterprise |
| Tracking while on GitHub | In-page issue/PR timer; any URL via popup | GitHub browser-extension integration |
| Invoicing | Built in and free; rendered in your browser, never committed | PDF invoices even on Free; paid branding options |
| Mobile app | None | iOS and Android |
| Browsers and desktop | Chrome Web Store extension; Firefox and Safari builds in testing | Web, browser extensions and desktop apps |
Checked September 10, 2026. Kimai and solidtime columns describe self-hosting unless marked Cloud; Tempo describes Timesheets Cloud. Free core software does not make hosting or paid add-ons free. Sources and details.
The row that matters is the first one. Toggl is a well-run company with a good product, and your hours are in their database on their retention policy at their next price. Clockoli writes JSON Lines into a private GitHub repository you already own, and there is no Clockoli server in the path at all — so “can the vendor read my task titles” has a different answer, not a better privacy policy.
The consequences are concrete rather than philosophical:
- Clone the time repository to read its canonical files locally. Toggl also provides exports and an API; the distinction is the storage format, not whether you can leave.
- Corrections are Git commits, not an immutable compliance log. Toggl offers an audit log on Premium and Enterprise.
- Hourly rates are stored locally, not in shared time records. Share an hours-only report when rates must stay private; financial exports can include amounts.
- Clockoli Core has no seat or usage limits. Toggl has a limited free plan with paid team features. GitHub limits still apply to Clockoli.
Toggl also supports PDF invoices on Free. Current plan and integration details are linked in the full comparison, which includes the self-hosted open-source alternatives Kimai and solidtime.
Which to pick
Take Toggl Track if the people tracking time are not all developers, if someone needs a mobile app, or if the calendar editing is the thing you will use every day. It is more polished than Clockoli and will stay that way for a while.
Take Clockoli if you bill your hours and object to those hours living in a vendor’s database — or if you want to point an agent at a year of your own time data and ask it which client was unprofitable.
Both are free to try, and Clockoli stays free.
Clockoli is free and open source. See what it does or read the code.