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Kairos and TimeCamp, side by side
TimeCamp’s idea is automatic time tracking: a desktop app that notices what you were working on and fills in the timesheet. Kairos is a timer you start and stop yourself, with an invoice at the end of it.
Kairos and TimeCamp compared
| Feature | Kairos | TimeCamp |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Starter billed annually, $5.49 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 Starter plan and above. |
| 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 unlimited users, with timesheets, the desktop and mobile apps and the API. |
| Monitoring | None. No screenshots, activity scores or location. Just the hours you track. | Activity levels and app and website tracking on the Premium plan and above; screenshots on Ultimate. Idle-time detection is on every plan. |
| iPhone app | Yes, on Pro. Works offline; entries sync when you are back online. | Yes. |
| 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, on every plan. An AI time tracker that suggests entries from desktop activity, billed by usage. |
TimeCamp 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; TimeCamp’s own site has the current figures.
The difference, in plain terms
TimeCamp is built around the idea that you should not have to remember to start a timer. Its desktop app records which applications and sites are open and turns that into a timesheet, and the paid plans add invoicing, budgets and, higher up, the activity and screenshot tooling that managers ask for. The free plan is wide: unlimited people, with timesheets and the apps.
Kairos takes the other view. You press start when the work starts and stop when it stops, and write a line about what it was. Nothing on your machine watches what you do, so there is nothing to explain to a client and nothing to turn off. When Kairos suggests an entry, the suggestion comes from your calendar, not your screen: the meetings are already on it, and one click logs each one. The hours go straight to an invoice, on every plan, and the client pays through your own Stripe account or your bank details.
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, so a studio of three pays one subscription rather than three Starter seats. Both are founding prices, locked for life for the first 500 workspaces.
If you want your time filled in automatically from what is open on your screen, or you need a free plan for a larger team, TimeCamp 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.