AI-powered automatic time tracking that captures work without manual timers
Timely is an automatic time tracking tool powered by AI — it runs in the background, captures every app, document, meeting, and website visited throughout the day, and uses machine learning to suggest categorised time entries. Users review and approve suggestions rather than starting timers manually, dramatically improving both accuracy and compliance for teams who habitually forget to track time.
Timely is a strong fit if its core strengths match your workflow, budget, and support needs. Use the quick signals below before opening the full review.
Timely's core insight is that manual time tracking fails because people forget — forget to start the timer, forget to stop it, forget what they were doing an hour ago. Its automatic capture approach eliminates this failure mode by recording everything and letting users review it rather than recall it.
Timely's desktop app runs in the background and captures every app opened, every document edited, every website visited, and every calendar event throughout the day — building a complete timeline of the workday without any user action. The AI then suggests how to categorise each activity into projects, which users review and approve or adjust.
Timely's Memory view presents the entire day as a scrollable timeline — individual app sessions, document edits, browser tabs, and meetings shown as blocks with duration. Users can see exactly what they were working on at 2:47 PM last Tuesday and log it accurately, rather than reconstructing from memory. For complex, context-switching knowledge work, this visual timeline produces significantly more accurate logs than self-reporting.
Timely's activity capture is private by default — the raw activity timeline is visible only to the individual user. What gets logged to projects and shared with the team is only what the user explicitly approves. This privacy model addresses the discomfort that employee monitoring tools create while still enabling accurate time data.
Score: 8.5/10 — Best automatic time tracking for knowledge workers; higher price point and no free plan limit accessibility.
$11/mo
$132/mo billed annually
$20/mo
$240/mo billed annually
$28/mo
$336/mo billed annually
Timely is best for Knowledge workers who frequently forget to start timers and need retrospective time reconstruction from activity data, Consultancies where accurate billable hour capture directly affects revenue — even 15-minute increments matter, Teams with compliance or audit requirements for time tracking accuracy who cannot rely on self-reported timers.
No. Timely does not currently list a permanent free plan in ToolRankr data.
Paid plans start at $11/mo.
Timely is reviewed using ToolRankr's scoring model for ease of use, value, features, support, and overall quality. Affiliate links may earn a commission, but sponsored labels do not change editorial scoring.
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