a Toggl alternative that stays on your Mac
updated · by Anton Shakirov
Toggl Track is built for hours that get reported to someone: billable rates, invoices, team dashboards, over a hundred integrations. hop keeps a quiet log of your own hours, on this Mac, with no account at all. those are two different tools, not two prices for the same one.
if you bill clients, work in a team or need reports, keep Toggl — that is what it is built for and none of it is here. this page is for the person tracking their own hours who does not want a workspace and a login for it.
what Toggl Track is built for, and when to keep it
start here, because it is the part most «alternative» pages skip. Toggl Track is not an expensive personal timer. it is machinery for turning hours into money and into answers for other people, and if that is the job in front of you, nothing below replaces it.
on this side there is one module in a menu-bar app — tasks, projects and a to-do list beside the clock. it has its own page: a time tracker in your Mac menu bar
reports, invoices and billable rates
billable rates per project and per person, project estimates, profitability analysis, timesheets someone else signs off, invoices that come out of the tracked hours instead of being retyped from them. the freelancer charging by the hour and the lead explaining where a month went are buying one thing: a number that survives being questioned.
hop has none of it. no rate field, no client, no invoice, no export for an accountant.
the team, the phone, the integrations
a workspace where several people track against the same projects. the same timer on a phone, a browser and a second computer, picked up where it was left. over a hundred integrations putting a start button inside the tool where the work happens, and single sign-on for the companies that require it.
all of that needs a server, and hop has no server. that is the shape of the product rather than a gap in it.
the timeline that catches the hour you forgot
with activity recording switched on, the Toggl Track desktop app keeps a timeline of every program and website you looked at for more than ten seconds, so an untracked afternoon can be rebuilt from what was on screen. hop has no equivalent. nothing here watches what you do, which cuts both ways and is why this appears twice in the table below.
what Toggl Track costs, checked 10 september 2026
the free tier is real, and narrower than the phrase suggests: three users, manual and real-time timers, calendar integration, simple planning. past three people, Starter is $9 per user a month on annual billing and Premium $16, both checked at the vendor on 10 september 2026; month-to-month costs more, Enterprise is quoted rather than listed.
for one person counting one person's hours, that free tier never runs out. so price is not the argument here.
if what you resent is one more monthly line on the card rather than this tracker in particular, that argument has a page of its own: Setapp alternative
the difference is not price — Toggl Track has a free tier
so «it is free» buys nothing here. what the free tier costs is not money, and naming that honestly is the only way this comparison is worth reading.
what you pay before the first minute is counted
an account, a password, a workspace, an email confirmation, then a decision about which work belongs to which project inside somebody else's data model. none of it is hard, and all of it happens before a single minute is tracked — which is why so many people set a tracker up and never open it again.
in hop you open the panel, press start, and the row counts. there is nothing to sign into.
where the hours actually live
on Toggl's servers, which is what makes the phone, the teammate and the report possible. that is a trade rather than a scandal, and it includes the activity timeline if you switched it on.
in hop the log is a plain file on your disk. nothing uploaded, nothing synced, and an offline Mac makes no difference because there is nothing to reach.
| what you are doing | Toggl Track | hop |
|---|---|---|
| billing a client, or reporting to a team | this is the job it was built for | not here — keep Toggl, honestly |
| reconstructing an afternoon you forgot to track | the timeline recorded what was on screen | nothing watched — you fill it in from memory |
| starting the timer on your phone, stopping it on the Mac | yes, that is what the account is for | no — this Mac only |
| counting your own hours on one Mac | free for you, after the account | free, no account at all |
| keeping what you worked on off other people's servers | hours live on Toggl's servers | a file on your disk, never uploaded |
| tracking on a plane, or on bad hotel wifi | tracks, syncs when it gets back | no difference — there is nothing to sync |
| a fourth and fifth person joining you | $9 per user a month past three | free, but they each get their own log, not a shared one |
the other axis people leave Toggl on is automatic tracking — a tracker that records the day for you instead of waiting to be started. hop does not do that either, and the comparison with the Mac app that does is next door: Timing alternative
what a Toggl alternative looks like on the Mac in hop
tasks group into projects, each carrying the sum of its own, and one switch above the list shows today, this week or all of it. a running task counts the stretch you are in from zero; the tick beside it closes that stretch and the row goes back to the period's total.
the hour you forgot to press start on
open a task and every stretch it collected is listed. change how long one ran or when it happened, add a session nobody pressed play for, delete a mistake — hand corrections sit in the same list, so the lines always add up to the total above them. leave one running too long and a banner reminds you after eight hours, which is almost always a timer left going overnight.
this is parity, not an advantage: Toggl's free tier does manual entry too. the only difference is where the correction lands — a file you own rather than a record on a server.
the log is a file, and you can read it
the task list is plain JSON on your disk, and hop picks up changes to it while it runs. a script, a text editor or your own AI agent can append a task and watch it appear. hop also answers «hop://» links, so a Shortcut can start a timer or read back what is running.
on a hosted tracker the equivalent is an API key and a rate limit. here it is a file path — the same reason there is no team dashboard.
what an agent or a Shortcut can drive, written out in the app's own repository: hop — automation
what macOS gives you for free, and why it is not this
there is no task timer anywhere in macOS. people reach for Screen Time instead, and it answers a different question: how long an app was in front of you, not how long a piece of work took. if «where did today go» is really the question, it is already installed.
Apple describes exactly what it counts: Apple Support: track app and device usage
and if the hours you want to count are focus sessions rather than project time, the timer beside the tracker is the better half of the app: pomodoro timer for Mac
how to try a Toggl alternative on your Mac without deciding anything
you do not have to close the Toggl account to find out. run both for a week — they do not conflict.
- install hop, about 6 mb, with no sign-up and no licence key
- track a week of your own work in it while Toggl keeps running
- at the end, ask what you needed: a number for yourself, or a number somebody else was going to read
- if it was the second, keep Toggl — the answer really is that simple
- if it was the first, that account is one more login you no longer need
hop is downloaded from the site rather than the App Store, and that difference is worth thirty seconds before you install anything: the App Store version versus the one from the site
the same comparison, done the same way, against fifteen other Mac apps: all Mac app alternatives
frequently asked questions
- is there a free alternative to Toggl for Mac?
- hop is free with no paid tier. Toggl Track has one too — up to three users, checked 10 september 2026 — so for one person the honest difference is the account and the server, not the bill.
- do i need an account?
- no. there is no sign-up, no workspace and no server. everything lives on your Mac, in a file you can open.
- can i invoice from it?
- no. billable rates, invoicing and reports are what Toggl is for, and none of it is here. if you invoice, keep Toggl.
- can i add time i forgot to track?
- yes — add the stretch by hand, fix a length, or move one to another day. Toggl's free tier does this too, so it is parity rather than a reason to switch.
- does it track my time automatically?
- no. nothing here watches which app you are in. Toggl's desktop app can record that timeline and rebuild a forgotten afternoon from it; hop waits for you to press start.
- does it sync to my phone?
- no. hours stay on this Mac. if you start timers on a phone, this is the wrong tool.
- does it work offline?
- always, because there is nothing to sync. a plane, a dead router or a hotel captive portal make no difference.
- what does Toggl Track cost in 2026?
- free for up to three users, then $9 per user a month on Starter and $16 on Premium with annual billing, both checked at the vendor on 10 september 2026. month-to-month is higher, Enterprise is quoted.
the hop side of this
time tracker — where the hours went, kept on this Mac and nowhere else.
about the author
Anton Shakirovmakes hop
makes hop and every page on this site. eighteen tools under a single menu bar icon, MIT licensed and open source. reads and answers issues and email himself.