140k global users trust Hubstaff for time tracking
Hubstaff is a time tracking software platform with built-in productivity monitoring, real-time budgeting, and automated timesheets and payments. In contrast, Time Doctor concentrates primarily on monitoring and activity verification, aiming to identify and address productivity issues within teams.
TL;DR: Visible workflows or stronger monitoring?
While deciding between these tools, here are a few distinctions to keep in mind:
Choose Hubstaff for:
- A versatile approach to time tracking with timer-based tracking, automatic tracking, and GPS tracking, available for desktop, web, and mobile devices.
- Time data you can convert into automated timesheets for payments, invoices, or client billing.
- Workforce analytics tied to utilization, clients, cost, and project tracking.
- Fully customizable monitoring features, including optional screenshots, idle time, and activity levels.
- High-level productivity tracking that presents work patterns using AI-workforce analytics.
- Transparency controls that don’t include keystroke tracking or screen recording.
- Staff scheduling options, time-off, and PTO management for operational visibility.
Choose Time Doctor for:
- Stronger monitoring and activity tracking with screenshots, optional screencasts, app and URL usage, and alerts.
- Payroll integrations to help export payments to external workflows.
- Desk-based tracking.
Hubstaff vs. Time Doctor: Compared
| Category | Hubstaff | Time Doctor |
|---|---|---|
Starting price | Starts at $4.99/user/month (billed annually) | Typically $6.67/user/month (billed annually) |
Free trial | 14-day trial | Free trial available |
Core focus | Time tracking, AI workforce analytics, and payments | Time tracking and employee monitoring for activity tracking |
Time tracking | Timer-based, automatic, and GPS tracking for desktop, web, and mobile | Project and task tracking from desktop and mobile apps |
Productivity monitoring | Activity levels, apps/URLs usage, and optional screenshots | Screenshots, app usage, automatic screenshots, video recording, and alerts |
Workforce analytics | Utilization, capacity, benchmarks, performance trends | Activity-based insights, productivity metrics, and time use |
Time off and attendance | PTO, attendance, overtime, scheduling | Doesn’t have PTO or time-off features |
Payments and payroll | Global payments, invoicing, multiple pay rates for tasks and projects, and streamlined payroll workflows | Includes payroll integrations, but no client invoices or bill vs pay rates calculations functionality |
Integrations | Integrates with PM, payroll, accounting, and CRM tools like Salesforce | Integrates with a wide range of project management tools |
Best fit | Managing global team workflows, payroll, and operations | Activity monitoring for improving productivity across teams |
Hubstaff vs. Time Doctor: Key feature breakdown
When it comes to time tracking software platforms, Hubstaff and Time Doctor are industry-leading options. Below, we’ll explore how each tool's offerings can benefit your business needs.
Structured time tracking vs. visibility
Hubstaff
Hubstaff is a well-rounded time tracking platform that offers flexible manual and automatic time tracking for projects and tasks that can then be tied to structured, operational workflows. Tracking flows seamlessly into automatic timesheets, real-time budget planning, invoicing, and more.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor helps teams stay accountable by offering flexible time tracking for projects and tasks through both manual timers and automatic tracking. Its power lies in detailed activity monitoring to identify inefficiencies.
Summary: While Hubstaff’s structured time tracking is integrated into operations, Time Doctor’s focus is on activity tracking and employee monitoring.
“Time keeping is a breeze and inspecting timesheets is really easy [with Hubstaff].”
Productivity monitoring vs. activity analysis
Hubstaff
Hubstaff’s productivity monitoring features are fully customizable by project and job role for clarity. Teams can enable, disable, blur, or adjust the frequency of monitoring features like activity-level thresholds, screenshots, app, and URL tracking.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor emphasizes monitoring via screenshots, optional screen recordings, and activity tracking to drive accountability and identify unproductive time.
Summary: Hubstaff stands out with transparent, configurable tracking for added flexibility, while Time Doctor’s tracking focuses more on high-intensity monitoring like screen recording.
Test Drive Our Time Doctor Alternative
Explore Hubstaff's full feature set with a guided interactive demo covering time tracking, employee monitoring, payroll, and more.
Workflow insights vs. behavioral analysis
Hubstaff
360-degree AI workforce analytics transform tracking data into actionable decisions by connecting activity, utilization, team capacity, and role-specific benchmarks into a single, clear performance view. Insights adds an additional layer of data with meeting vs. focus time, utilization rates, unusual activity tracking, and more.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor primarily tracks time spent across tasks and projects while keeping activity monitoring at the center. It highlights productivity signals, based on activity levels, idle time, and app and URL usage.
Summary: Hubstaff’s workforce analytics and Insights add-on provides context to work, while Time Doctor emphasizes productivity signals stemming from basic activity signals.
Automated tracking on company devices
Hubstaff
Hubstaff supports automatic tracking on company devices, runs in the background to track activities and time to tasks, then converts them into accurate timesheets for payroll. Company-owned device tracking removes the need for start-and-stop timers that interrupt employee workflows.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor offers automatic time tracking on company-managed devices through its Automatic App, which continuously tracks activity in the background. Deployment visibility may vary depending on configuration and implementation settings.
Summary: Both Hubstaff and Time Doctor support automatic tracking, with Hubstaff offering a more seamless experience and advanced workforce analytics, while Time Doctor uses continuous background tracking that may feel less discreet depending on the setup.
Full payments workflow vs. integrations
Hubstaff
Process payouts to global teams from one platform through integrations with popular platforms like Wise, Gusto, PayPal, and more. Hubstaff also offers automatic client billing with built-in invoicing, budgets, and pay rates for accurate payments and costs.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor supports payroll via integrations but has limited billing support and lacks native invoicing or cost control features.
Summary: While Hubstaff provides a streamlined, all-in-one payment workflow, Time Doctor requires external payroll processing tools.
“Previously, we used Time Doctor to document hours, then translated that into payments manually. Hubstaff brought everything into one system.”
Scheduling and time-off management
Hubstaff
Simplifies team management and gives managers complete visibility into capacity with staff scheduling, attendance, overtime, time-off, and PTO tracking, all connected to time tracking and reporting. You can also set alerts for late or missed shifts to make real-time adjustments.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor includes basic scheduling and attendance tracking features. It lacks a comprehensive leave management system for time-off and PTO, so teams often rely on additional tools to gain full visibility into team availability and planning.
Summary: Hubstaff offers an all-in-one attendance management system, while Time Doctor’s PTO and time-off functions are limited.
“We switched to Hubstaff because Time Doctor didn’t support PTO tracking or give us a clear way to manage time off.”
Integrations and ecosystem overview
Hubstaff
Connects your team’s entire workflow through a broad range of project management, payroll, and HRSM integrations. Users can seamlessly connect time tracking data to their native project management, payroll, and attendance-tracking tools.
Time Doctor
Time Doctor integrates with key communication and workplace essential tools, though many teams rely on additional integrations for more advanced payment workflows.
Summary: Hubstaff’s integrations support daily operations, while Time Doctor’s broader integrations still rely on external tools for payments.
Pricing tiers compared
| Pricing tier | Hubstaff | Time Doctor |
|---|---|---|
Entry | Starter ($4.99/user/month/billed annually) | Basic ($6.67/user/month/billed annually) |
Mid | Grow $7.50/user/billed annually (Advanced tools, reporting, and integrations.) | Standard $11.67/user/billed annually (Expanded monitoring, reporting, and support.) |
Advanced | Team $10/user/billed annually (includes payments, scheduling, unlimited integrations, and more) | Premium $16.70/user/billed annually (Combines advanced monitoring features.) |
Enterprise | Enterprise $25/user/billed annually (Includes security, custom deployment, and dedicated support.) | Enterprise (Custom pricing plan, support, and guided onboarding.) |
Summary: Hubstaff’s pricing is comparatively lower and scales only with added features and functionalities, such as workforce analytics, scheduling, and payments. Time Doctor’s plans are geared toward monitoring and productivity tracking, with higher tiers that are a bit more expensive than Hubstaff but offer stronger monitoring capabilities.
Ease of use and support
When comparing Hubstaff and Time Doctor, the difference in user experience comes down to how hands-on and structured the workflow system is vs. the powerful monitoring that defines how work is done.
Hubstaff
- According to G2 comparison, Hubstaff leans toward a more structured, workflow-driven setup that teams appreciate.
- Verified reviews highlight Hubstaff’s setup process as easy and quick, and the user-friendly dashboard allows teams to start tracking time right away.
- Teams get a clear view of who is working on what, time allocation, and project progress in a simple dashboard.
- Daily operations require manual tracking on personal devices, with automated tracking available to enterprise teams, adding flexibility to tracking needs.
- Managing schedules, approving timesheets, and handling time-off requests can be done from a single platform, reducing operational overhead.
Time Doctor
- Time Doctor comes with an intuitive interface with minimal configuration requirements.
- Reviews mention strong monitoring features for identifying unproductive time.
- Ease of use may be helpful for small teams without external resources.
- Easier to adopt, especially for teams that need to disrupt their existing processes.
“We switched from Time Doctor to Hubstaff because the Time Doctor API was too complex and unreliable, we weren’t able to get the data we needed.”
While Hubstaff is known for offering straightforward time tracking and productivity monitoring, it provides easy tracking and reporting for users looking for a platform that supports daily operations, saves time, and increases efficiency.
Time Doctor's monitoring-heavy experience helps users track unproductive time and activities across teams.
Hubstaff vs.Time Doctor: Which tool best fits your team’s needs?
Choosing between Hubstaff and Time Doctor is about more than features. It comes down to how teams work across different industries, workstyles, and environments.
Hubstaff is best suited for:
- Global teams managing multiple clients or projects, like agencies, BPOs, and outsourcing companies
- Businesses that need to connect time tracking to payroll, billing, and capacity planning
- Teams that rely on well-defined workflows and want detailed, actionable work data
Hubstaff is suitable for organizations that need time tracking as part of a broader operational system to understand how work gets done and optimize it. It’s built for productivity tracking rather than surveillance, helping teams understand how they work, self-evaluate, and optimize their work.
Time Doctor is ideal for:
- Companies that rely on employee monitoring to improve accountability and identify inefficiencies.
- Teams that want a deeper look into productivity, app/URL usage data, and behavior.
- Organizations that prioritize productivity oversight over workflow management.
- Time Doctor is a strong option when the primary goal is visibility into how work is done and pinpointing inefficiency.
What our customers say
“We work in a lot of different industries, so I can’t always know what’s a 45-minute task and what’s a four-hour task. With tools like Hubstaff, you can tell. You then decide if a whole project should’ve taken 16 hours or if someone is just not the right fit.”
OneIMS President and Founder
“We believe — just like Hubstaff — that talent is everywhere and people should be able to work any time, anywhere, even in their pajamas,” says Kothari. “As a company, we believe in the same future of work as Hubstaff, which is great because our values align.”
Co-founder at Tallyfy
Final thoughts: Hubstaff vs. Time Doctor
If your business needs structured time tracking, payroll integrations, and clear operational workflows, Hubstaff is the better value. It turns time tracking into a team management system, helping you plan, allocate, and optimize work across teams.
If your goal is monitoring, accountability, and behavioral insights, Time Doctor is ideal. It provides a clear lens into how time is used, with minimal setup and ongoing effort.
Your decision ultimately depends on whether you want to streamline daily workflows by providing structured time visibility or monitor team productivity to improve efficiency. Select the tool that aligns with that business goal, and you’ll get far more value than simply comparing a list of features.