The best offline time trackers in 2026.
Five ways to count your hours without renting a dashboard, two of them ours. We'll say when to pick the others.
Most time trackers want an account, a team plan, and a seat on somebody's server. Your hours say a lot about you: who you work for, when you rest, what you bill. Everything below keeps that record on your side of the glass.
1. Time Tracker (that's us)
One HTML file: log what you did, for whom, how many hours, on which date. No account, no sync, works offline. Best if you want a plain, private log of billable hours and nothing more. See the Tool.
2. Freelancer's Pond (also us)
The Blade where hours feed invoices and invoices feed revenue, all in one file that shares state across its tabs. Best for freelancers who want the whole chain from timesheet to paid, without a SaaS bill. See the Blade.
3. ActivityWatch
Open-source, local-first automatic tracker that watches which apps and sites you use and keeps the data on your machine. Best if you want to know where the time went rather than log it by hand. activitywatch.net.
4. Kimai
Open-source timesheet software you can host yourself. Best for small teams that need shared timesheets and are happy to run a server. kimai.org.
5. A plain spreadsheet
A local spreadsheet with date, client, and hours columns. Free and familiar. Best if you already live in one and only need totals.
Our time tools
Common questions
Does an offline time tracker work without internet?
Yes. Time Tracker and Freelancer's Pond are single HTML files that run in your browser with no connection at all. ActivityWatch also runs locally.
Can I bill clients from my tracked hours?
In Freelancer's Pond, yes: logged hours flow straight into invoices. The standalone Time Tracker keeps the log and totals; you copy them where you need them.
Which one tracks automatically?
ActivityWatch. The others are deliberate: you write down what you did, which many people find more honest anyway.