Compare
Kairos and Clockify, side by side
Clockify has a wide free tier and a long list of paid features aimed at managers. Kairos is the smaller, calmer tool for one person or a small team who bill by the hour.
Kairos and Clockify compared
| Feature | Kairos | Clockify |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.99 a month for Basic, $1.99 for Pro: founding prices, locked for life for the first 500 workspaces. Pro covers up to five members; nothing per seat. | $3.99 per user per month on Basic and $5.49 on Standard billed annually, $4.99 and $6.99 month to month. Every seat is paid. |
| Invoicing | Built in, on every plan. Unbilled hours and expenses become an invoice with your tax line, due date and logo. The client gets a PDF and a page to read and pay it, through your own Stripe account or your bank details. Monthly retainers draft themselves, and invoices sync to QuickBooks Online and Xero. | On the Standard plan and above, with recurring invoices. Time can be sent to QuickBooks. |
| Free tier | No free plan. Every workspace starts with 14 days of Pro, no card, and a sample workspace can be tried without signing up. | Free for up to five users, with the timer, timesheet, calendar and reports. |
| Monitoring | None. No screenshots, activity scores or location. Just the hours you track. | Activity monitoring, GPS tracking and kiosk photo capture on the Pro plan and above. An auto tracker on every plan records apps and sites, visible only to the person tracking. |
| iPhone app | Yes, on Pro. Works offline; entries sync when you are back online. | Yes, with an offline mode. |
| Assistant and API | Yes. Claude connects to Kairos as a connector, signed in with OAuth, and can start, stop and log time and draft invoices. A token-scoped API does the same for scripts. | A REST API for developers. |
Clockify prices checked October 19, 2026, per user per month on annual billing, from public pricing pages and comparison guides. They are rounded and they change; Clockify’s own site has the current figures.
The difference, in plain terms
Clockify’s free plan covers up to five people with the timer, timesheets and reports, which is most of what a small team asks. The paid plans add invoicing, approvals and scheduling and, on Pro, project budgets and the monitoring features that larger teams ask for.
Kairos is built for the other end of that: a freelancer or a studio of a few people who want the hours tracked and invoiced with as little in the way as possible. There is no monitoring to turn off because there is none. Invoicing and project budgets are on every plan, and the invoice is built from the unbilled hours, with your tax line and due date.
Basic is $0.99 a month for one person on the web; Pro is $1.99 with the iPhone app and up to five members included. Both are founding prices, locked for life for the first 500 workspaces. For a team of three that bills its hours, that is one subscription rather than three seats on Clockify’s Standard plan.
If you want a free tool for up to five people, timesheet approvals, or location and activity records as proof of work, Clockify is the better fit.
Fourteen days on us. Then a dollar.
Every workspace starts on a full Pro trial, no card. If it isn’t for you, nothing was charged.