Which time tracking software do AI answer engines actually recommend?

When an SMB buyer asks an AI assistant which time tracking software to buy, a shortlist comes back. We asked 44 different phrasings of that question across 2 engines, 88 answers in total, and counted every product named. This is the result. Nobody paid to be on it, and no vendor list was written in advance — the 103 vendors below are simply everyone the engines named.

Run 3 Aug 2026 Questions 44 Answers 88 Vendors named 103 Top-10 repeatability 9/10

Free to read, raw data included. What is for sale — $9.99/mo monitoring for a single vendor.

The leaderboard

“Answers” is how many of the 88 answers named that product. Share is the same number as a percentage. The two right-hand columns split it by engine. Every row has its own link — the # beside a vendor name gives you something like connexion.me/c/timetracking/#clockify.

#VendorAnswers ShareGeminiPerplexity
1Clockify#6776.1%3235
2Toggl Track#5259.1%3121
3Harvest#5158.0%3219
4Hubstaff#2022.7%119
5QuickBooks Time#1820.5%99
6Everhour#1314.8%49
7Timely#1112.5%38
8Connecteam#1011.4%37
9Jibble#1011.4%37
10TMetric#1011.4%010
11Time Doctor#910.2%27
12RescueTime#78.0%43
13Rize#66.8%51
14Teamwork#66.8%06
15ClockShark#55.7%32
16Float#55.7%41
17Homebase#55.7%41
18My Hours#55.7%05
19Paymo#55.7%05
20Productive#55.7%32
21TimeCamp#55.7%05
22TSheets#55.7%50
23ShiftFlow#44.5%04
24Apploye#33.4%03
25BigTime#33.4%12
26ClickUp#33.4%21
27Workyard#33.4%03
28BQE CORE#22.3%11
29Buddy Punch#22.3%02
30BusyBusy#22.3%11
31Clio#22.3%11
32Clio Manage#22.3%11
33DeskTime#22.3%20
34ExakTime#22.3%11
35Financial Cents#22.3%02
36FreshBooks#22.3%20
37Insightful#22.3%11
38Jobber#22.3%11
39ManicTime#22.3%11
40Milient Project Flow#22.3%02
41Monday.com#22.3%20
42Monograph#22.3%11
43MyCase#22.3%11
44Raken#22.3%11
45Replicon#22.3%11
46When I Work#22.3%11
47WorkTime#22.3%02
48actiTIME#11.1%01
49Agiled#11.1%01
50Asana#11.1%10
51ATracker#11.1%10
52Autotask#11.1%10
53Bill4Time#11.1%01
54Bonsai#11.1%01
55Buildertrend#11.1%10
56Canopy#11.1%01
57ClearCare#11.1%10
58Clientary#11.1%01
59CoConstruct#11.1%10
60ConnectWise#11.1%10
61ConnectWise ScreenConnect/Manage#11.1%10
62Datto Autotask PSA#11.1%10
63Dayflow#11.1%01
64Deltek Vantagepoint#11.1%10
65Deputy#11.1%10
66Desklog#11.1%01
67ezClocker#11.1%01
68HaloPSA#11.1%10
69HCSS HeavyJob#11.1%10
70HHAeXchange#11.1%10
71Insighful/Insightful#11.1%01
72Jira Work Management#11.1%01
73Kantata#11.1%01
74Keito#11.1%01
75Knowify#11.1%01
76LeanLaw#11.1%10
77Memtime#11.1%01
78MSPbots.ai#11.1%10
79OneSuite#11.1%01
80OnTheClock#11.1%01
81Plutio#11.1%01
82Procore#11.1%10
83QGenda#11.1%01
84Rocketlane#11.1%01
85Runn#11.1%10
86Scoro#11.1%01
87StudioHero#11.1%01
88Super Productivity#11.1%01
89Syncro#11.1%10
90TaxDome#11.1%01
91Teramind#11.1%10
92TimeSolv#11.1%10
93Timing#11.1%01
94Toggl#11.1%10
95TopTracker#11.1%10
96TrackingTime#11.1%01
97WakaTime#11.1%10
98WebWork#11.1%01
99WellSky Personal Care#11.1%10
100Workamajig#11.1%01
101WorkMax#11.1%10
102Wrapbook#11.1%10
103Yamdu#11.1%10

What is free, and what is for sale

Everything above is free and stays free — the leaderboard, the method, all 88 raw answers and the machine-readable ranking, published in full at the bottom of this page. No vendor paid to be listed, no vendor can pay to move, and nothing here goes behind a login later.

What is for sale is one vendor's row, watched: $9.99 a month to be told when your rank moves, who took your mentions, and which phrasings started or stopped naming you — the board is re-run monthly and you get what changed. A one-off $199 deep report on a single row is the other option. What is in each →

Method

Every claim on this page is reproducible from the files linked at the bottom.

The engines

Gemini (gemini-flash-latest), Perplexity (sonar). Each was called through its public API with a near-empty system prompt — “answer the user's question directly and concisely” — and nothing else. The engines were not asked to produce a list, rank anything, or name vendors. Steering them toward a list would have manufactured the thing being measured.

The questions

44 distinct phrasings of one purchase decision, written before any measurement was run. No vendor name appears in any of them.

  1. What is the best time tracking software for a 50-person company?
  2. Best time tracking app for freelancers
  3. We're a 30 person creative agency and billable hours are slipping through the cracks. What time tracking software should we buy?
  4. Recommend a time tracking tool for a team with under 100 employees.
  5. affordable time tracking software for SMB
  6. What time tracking software do small marketing agencies actually use?
  7. Best software to track billable hours for client invoicing
  8. What is the best employee time tracking tool for remote teams?
  9. We are a law firm with 15 attorneys needing to track time by client and matter. What software should we use?
  10. best time tracking software for software developers
  11. Which time tracking app is best for tracking contractor hours?
  12. What software should a small consulting firm use to track employee project hours?
  13. time tracking tools with automatic activity tracking
  14. We are an engineering firm of 20 people moving off Excel timesheets. What time tracking tool should we get?
  15. best employee time tracking software with mobile GPS clock in
  16. What is the most accurate billable hours tracker for freelancers?
  17. What time tracking app works best for managing field service worker timesheets?
  18. affordable time tracker for small business payroll
  19. What is the best time tracking tool for design agencies?
  20. We run an accounting firm with 10 employees. What time tracking software should we buy?
  21. best time tracking software for enterprise teams
  22. What software should we buy to track team time across multiple client projects?
  23. best timesheet app for small business
  24. We have 40 remote workers in different time zones. What is the best time tracking tool?
  25. What time tracking tool integrates best with accounting and invoicing software?
  26. best simple time tracker for sole proprietors
  27. What is the best time tracking software for architectural firms?
  28. We are a digital agency struggling with project profitability. What time tracking app do you recommend?
  29. best time tracking app with screenshot monitoring
  30. What software do construction companies use for crew time tracking?
  31. simple non-intrusive time tracking software for employees
  32. What is the best free or cheap time tracking software for a startup?
  33. best time tracker for Mac and Windows
  34. We need a timesheet software that tracks billable vs non-billable hours. What should we buy?
  35. What time tracking tools are best for managing agency capacity and utilization?
  36. best time tracking software for IT service providers and MSPs
  37. What is the easiest time tracking software for non-tech-savvy employees?
  38. best time tracking software for healthcare and home care workers
  39. We are a 5-person agency. What time tracker should we buy for client billing?
  40. best time tracking app for Android and iPhone
  41. What software should a video production company use to track crew hours and project budgets?
  42. What is the best automated time tracking app that runs in the background?
  43. best time tracking tools for remote team management
  44. We are losing money on fixed-fee projects because we don't track hours. What time tracking app should we buy?

How the vendor list was built

Each of the 88 answers was read back and every named product extracted. The vendor list is discovered: a product appears here if and only if an engine named it. Counted are standalone time trackers, timesheet apps, billable hours tracking tools, employee time tracking platforms, and broader project management, accounting, or HR suites whose time tracking module was named. Excluded, even when named: project management and task tools without native time tracking, accounting and bookkeeping packages, payroll systems, invoice-only tools, website blockers and personal Pomodoro timers, physical punch clock hardware, calendar tools, and companies named only as an example user.

Spelling variants of one product are folded together — “Toggl”, “Toggl Track” and “toggl.com” are one row, and a trailing “by company” is dropped. An edition name is folded into its product when the plain name is at least three times as common, so “Harvest Free” counts as Harvest and “Clockify Pro” counts as Clockify. No pair was merged by hand in this category: every fold above is the rule applied mechanically, with no human judgement about who is who.

A product is counted once per answer, however many times that answer mentions it.

Is this stable, or is it noise?

The entire run was repeated a second time, same 44 questions, same engines, independent calls. The top ten came back 9/10 identical. What moved: Jibble (9 in run A) dropped out of run B's ten and Time Doctor (7 in run B) took that place. by position, Hubstaff was 4 in run A and 5 in run B; QuickBooks Time was 5 in run A and 4 in run B; Timely was 7 in run A and 9 in run B. Run B named 97 vendors over 88 answers against run A's 103. The tail moves; the head does not.

A leaderboard whose top ten reshuffles between runs would not be worth publishing, so this check was run before the page was, and the page ships only because it passed.

What this is not

This measures what two answer engines said on 3 Aug 2026, in response to these questions, through their APIs. It is not a quality ranking, not a review, and not advice on which time tracking software to buy. A product can be excellent and rank low here — that gap is the point.

The raw data

All 88 answers, verbatim, one JSON object per line: run A · run B. The per-answer extracted product names: run A · run B. Machine-readable ranking: ranking.json.