Compare
Kairos and Hubstaff, side by side
Hubstaff is a workforce tool. It tracks time, and it also tracks activity, apps, screenshots and, on mobile, location, for managers who need proof of work. Kairos tracks the hours and nothing else.
Kairos and Hubstaff compared
| Feature | Kairos | Hubstaff |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | $4.99 per seat per month on Starter billed annually, $7 month to month, with a two-seat minimum. One person pays for two seats, about $10 a month. |
| 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. | Built in, from tracked hours, on every plan. |
| 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. | No free plan. A 14-day trial, no card. |
| Monitoring | None. No screenshots, activity scores or location. Just the hours you track. | Central to the product. Activity levels, screenshots and app and URL tracking are on every plan, with the limits lifted on the higher ones. Location tracking on mobile is an add-on. |
| iPhone app | Yes, on Pro. Works offline; entries sync when you are back online. | Yes, with optional location tracking. |
| 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. |
Hubstaff prices checked October 16, 2026, per user per month on annual billing, from public pricing pages and comparison guides. They are rounded and they change; Hubstaff’s own site has the current figures.
The difference, in plain terms
Hubstaff is clear about what it is for. A manager running a remote team can see activity levels, periodic screenshots, which apps and sites were open and, with the add-on, where a phone was. It pays staff and contractors from the timesheets, and it invoices clients from them too. For an agency that bills by the hour and has to show the client the work was done, that is the point, and it is done thoroughly.
Kairos has none of that and will not add it. Nothing runs in the background, no screenshot is taken and there is no score. The product is a timer, your clients and projects, budgets that warn you before a project’s hours run out, and the invoice from the unbilled hours. If a client wants proof, the proof is the entry and the note you wrote against it.
The pricing follows the audience. Hubstaff charges per seat with a minimum of two, so one person pays about $10 a month on the cheapest plan. Kairos 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.
If you manage people you pay by the hour and need activity levels, screenshots or location as proof of work, or you run payroll from timesheets, Hubstaff 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.