Best Time and Billing Software for Consultants in 2026
Seven time and billing tools for independent consultants compared on price, invoicing, data ownership and what happens when you stop paying — including free options.
By HourAndBill Team · Updated · 5 min read
A consultant's billing stack has exactly two jobs: capture every billable minute, and turn those minutes into an invoice the client pays without questions. Everything else — dashboards, integrations, team features — is optional weight.
This guide compares seven realistic options for an independent consultant in 2026, from free timers to one-time desktop programs. One of them (HourAndBill) is ours; we flag that clearly and keep the comparison honest.
Quick answer
- Best free timer: Toggl Track — excellent capture, but the free tier does not make invoices.
- Best-known timer + invoicing in the cloud: Harvest — about $11 per user per month.
- Best for consultants who bill like law firms (matters, detailed line items): Bill4Time or TimeSolv — $39–58 per month.
- Best free desktop option: HourAndBill — free, timer + clients/projects + PDF invoices + reports, data on your own PC. (Our product.)
- Cheapest that still works: a spreadsheet — free, fine for 2–3 clients, ages badly past that.
The comparison
| Tool | Price | Timer | Invoices | Works offline | Data lives |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Toggl Track (free tier) | $0 | Excellent | No | Partially (syncs later) | Their cloud |
| Toggl Track (paid) | $9–18/user/mo | Excellent | Basic | Partially | Their cloud |
| Harvest | ~$11/user/mo | Good | Good | Partially | Their cloud |
| Bill4Time | $39–69/mo | Good | Strong | No | Their cloud |
| TimeSolv | ~$58/user/mo | Good | Strong (legal-style) | No | Their cloud |
| NCH Express Invoice | ~$60 once | No | Good | Yes | Your PC |
| HourAndBill | Free | Good | Good (PDF) | Yes | Your PC |
| Spreadsheet | $0 | No | Manual | Yes | Your PC |
Prices are list prices from vendor pricing pages as of late August 2026.
The cloud timers: Toggl Track and Harvest
Toggl Track is what most consultants try first, and the free tier is genuinely good: one-click timer, projects, reports, apps on every platform. The limit appears at invoice time — the free plan tracks, it does not bill. Consultants end up copying hours into an invoice template by hand, which is exactly the busywork software was supposed to remove.
Harvest solves that: timer plus invoicing plus payment links, around $11 per user per month, long track record. For a consultant who wants one simple cloud tool and accepts a permanent subscription and cloud-hosted client data, Harvest is a reasonable default.
The shared caveats: both need connectivity to be fully useful, both hold your billing data on their servers, and both stop working the day you stop paying — roughly $540–1,080 over five years for Toggl's paid tiers, ~$660 for Harvest.
The heavyweights: Bill4Time and TimeSolv
These are law-firm billing platforms that consultants sometimes adopt for their invoicing power: detailed line items, matter-style organization, batch billing, trust features.
Bill4Time starts at $39 per month billed annually. TimeSolv runs about $58 per user per month. Both are capable and both are, frankly, more billing infrastructure than most independent consultants need. You would choose them for a specific reason — a client demanding law-firm-style invoices, or a planned move into legal consulting. Otherwise you are paying $470–700 a year partly for trust accounting you will never open. Our Timeslips alternatives guide covers this category in depth.
The desktop options
NCH Express Invoice (~$60 one-time) makes solid invoices and runs entirely on your PC. What it lacks is the front half of the job: there is no real time capture by client and project, so hours arrive from somewhere else — usually a spreadsheet.
HourAndBill — ours, so weigh accordingly — covers both halves in one Windows program: a timer and manual entries organized by client and project, rates per client or per project, PDF invoices with your numbering and payment instructions, payment tracking, and reports with CSV export. Free, no subscription, no account, works offline, and your client data never leaves your computer. The Early Access Preview shows the real screens; preview users hear about the full version first.
The trade both desktop options share: no phone app, no cloud backup (back up your own files), no online card payments — your invoice carries your bank details or a link from your own payment processor.
The spreadsheet
Do not dismiss it. For a consultant with two or three steady clients and simple monthly invoices, a well-built spreadsheet does the whole job for free, and you can start in the next ten minutes with our free billable hours template.
Its failure modes are predictable: multiple rates need careful formulas, invoice numbering is manual, "which hours have I not billed yet?" requires discipline, and one broken formula in March surfaces in an awkward client email in June. When those costs exceed an evening a month, move up.
How to choose
- Count devices. Bill from one desk? Desktop programs are in play, and they are the cheap and private option. Need to capture time on your phone constantly? Go cloud.
- Follow the invoice. The timer is commodity; the differences live in invoicing. Generate a sample invoice in anything you trial and imagine your fussiest client reading it.
- Do the five-year math. Subscriptions cost their monthly price times sixty. We ran the full numbers here.
- Ask the exit question. Where is the export button, and what still works if you stop paying? The answer separates tools you use from tools that hold your history hostage.
Bottom line
- Want free and simple capture, invoices be damned: Toggl Track free.
- Want one cloud tool that does both and accept the subscription: Harvest.
- Bill like a law firm on purpose: Bill4Time or TimeSolv.
- Want to own your billing tool, work offline and keep client data on your own PC: HourAndBill — that is precisely the consultant we built it for.
Sources
Related guides
- Billable Hours Template: Free Spreadsheet for Time Tracking and Invoicing
A free billable hours template (CSV, opens in Excel or Google Sheets) with the exact columns that make invoicing painless — plus how to use it and when you'll outgrow it.
- Time and Billing Software: Subscription vs One-Time Purchase (the 5-Year Math)
What time and billing software really costs over 5 years: subscription apps vs one-time purchase programs, the read-only trap, and which model fits a solo practice.
- How to Track Billable Hours (Step by Step, Without Losing Time)
A practical system for tracking billable hours: increments, matters, descriptions that survive client review, and the habits that stop hours from leaking.