Freelance Time Tracker With Earnings (Free and Private)

Most freelancers can tell you what they charge and roughly what they earned last month. Far fewer can tell you what a particular job really paid per hour once the emails, revisions and admin are counted. A time tracker answers that, and it only works if it is easy enough to use every day. This one is a timer, a manual entry box and a set of totals, with no account to create.

How to use the tracker

1. Enter a project or client name and your hourly rate.
2. Choose Start timer when you begin work, and Stop and save when you finish.
3. If you forgot to start it, use Add time you already worked with hours and minutes.
4. Watch the totals build up by project, and download a CSV when you need it.

How the numbers are worked out

• Session length = the time between start and stop, in whole seconds
• Value of a session = hours × hourly rate at the time, rounded to the cent
• Total value = the sum of each session's value, so a change of rate never rewrites history
• Time by project = the sum of session lengths for each project name

The timer works from the clock, not from counting ticks, so a busy or sleeping browser tab does not make it drift. The maths is covered by automated tests, including the duration formatting, rounding and the checks on saved data.

Why track unbilled time

The rate on an invoice is a promise, not a measurement. What you earn per hour is what a client paid divided by every hour the work took, including the ones nobody pays for. Create projects for the things that eat time: "Admin", "Proposals", "Client emails", "Learning". Add the real hours to each job's own project as well. After a few weeks, compare what you were paid with the total time, and feed the numbers into the effective hourly rate calculator. The result is often lower than people expect, and that is the point: it shows where your time goes and which work is worth taking.

Using it to price better

Estimates improve when you compare them with reality. Log each job's real hours, then look at them next to your original estimate. If jobs regularly run over, raise your contingency in the project price calculator. If one kind of work takes far more unpaid time than others, price it accordingly or decline it. When it is time to bill, the CSV gives you the hours, and the invoice generator turns them into an invoice.

Where your data lives

The tracker keeps sessions in your browser's local storage, on this device, and it never sends them to us. That protects client information, but it means the data is only in that browser. If you clear your browser data, change browsers or use a private window, sessions can disappear. Download a CSV backup now and then. If your browser blocks saving, the tracker tells you.

Common mistakes

Tracking only billable time. You will overestimate your real hourly rate.

Forgetting to stop the timer. Delete or correct a session that ran too long, or add time by hand instead.

Mixing clients under one name. Use separate projects so the totals mean something.

Never looking at the totals. Review them weekly.

Skipping the backup. Download a CSV regularly.

Assumptions and limits

The tracker records elapsed clock time and a rate you enter. It does not sync between devices, send reminders, split sessions across days or create invoices. It cannot edit a session, so delete and re-add if you need to correct one. It holds up to three thousand sessions. It is a record-keeping aid, not accounting software or tax advice. For tracking money as well as time, see the income and expense tracker, and for how to find and price client work, our freelancing guide.