Switching guide
A Toggl alternative that also gets you paid
Toggl Track is an excellent timer. tab is built for the step after it: turning tracked hours into an invoice your client pays online.
Updated 2026-10-01
Toggl Track’s free plan has real-time and manual timers, calendar integrations and personal reports, and it can make a PDF invoice from a report. What it doesn’t do on the free plan is billable rates (a Starter feature), CSV export, or collecting payment: there’s no built-in way to get paid or mark entries as paid.
If your week ends with copying hours from Toggl into an invoice somewhere else, tab removes that step.
tab and Toggl Track, side by side
| As of October 1, 2026 | tab | Toggl Track |
|---|---|---|
| Price for one person | Free. No tab fee on the first $2,000 collected online each month, then 1% (0.5% above $10,000) | Free; Starter $9/user/mo yearly or $12 monthly; Premium from $16 yearly |
| Billable rates | Free, per client and per project | Starter (paid) |
| Invoices | Free, with your logo, PDF and a client link | PDF from a report; Toggl logo on free-plan invoices; layout can’t be changed |
| Online payments | Yes: bank transfer (Stripe 0.8%, $5 cap) or card, into your own Stripe | Not built in |
| Client approves hours | Yes: weekly work receipts the client approves | Internal timesheet approvals on Premium (team members, not clients) |
| Screenshots or monitoring | Never | No |
| Export | Free CSV of everything | PDF on free; CSV and Excel on paid plans |
Toggl Track details from its own pages, read October 1, 2026: Toggl pricing · Creating invoices in Toggl Track · Exporting data. Prices and plans change; check theirs before deciding.
Why freelancers switch
- Rates and invoices without a paid plan. Every client has its own rate from day one.
- The invoice is a link with a Pay button, not a PDF your client has to act on.
- Clients see the work. A weekly receipt with notes and links to the files, which they approve before you invoice.
Where Toggl Track is the better fit
Toggl has many more integrations, browser extensions and native desktop and mobile apps, and team features if you manage other people. If you never invoice from your tracker, Toggl’s free plan is hard to beat as a timer.
Move your hours to tab
- In Toggl Track, go to Reports → Detailed, set the date range (for example, the whole of last year), then Export → CSV. CSV export needs a paid Toggl plan; on the free plan you can export PDF only, or use Toggl’s workspace data export (Settings → Data Export, admins).
- Sign up for tab free at app.tabwork.app (email only, no card).
- Go to Settings → Your data → Import, and drop in the CSV. tab recognizes Toggl Track, Clockify and Harvest exports automatically; for anything else you confirm which column is the date, the hours and the description.
- Check the preview (clients, projects and hours per client), then import. You can undo an import.
Your history comes with you, so your reports and real hourly rate start from day one.
Questions
Does Toggl Track do invoicing?
Yes, in a basic way: you can create a PDF invoice from a report. Free-plan invoices carry the Toggl logo, the layout can’t be changed, and there’s no built-in payment collection.
Can I import my Toggl history into tab?
Yes. tab recognizes Toggl Track’s Detailed report CSV automatically: clients, projects, descriptions and times come across.
Is tab free?
Tracking, rates, invoices and work receipts are free. Online payments through tab have no tab fee on the first $2,000 a month.
Leaving Toggl Track? Bring your hours.
tab imports your history, tracks time per client, shows clients the work without screenshots, and turns the week into an invoice they pay online. Free until you’re earning.
Start freeFree to startNo cardNo screenshots, ever