Time tracking alternatives, compared honestly
- No testimonials we cannot verify
- Every table dated and sourced
- Each page says when the other tool wins
The 13 tools people evaluate against Stintt, one page each: how the tool captures time, what it collects about the people using it, and where it beats us.
Every tracker in this category charges a capture tax. Some ask you to press a button all day. Some ask you to install software that watches the machine. Stintt reads the calendar your team already keeps, server-side, and asks for neither.
Every table dated and sourced. Each page says where the other tool wins.
How does Stintt compare?
Twelve capabilities that decide this purchase, across the five tools people most often weigh against us. Every row is the same on the individual pages — one source, so the tables cannot disagree.
Compared August 2026 from each vendor's public documentation and pricing pages. Products change — check with the vendor before you decide.
Four things Stintt
will never collect.
Not features we switched off — data that is never collected, because there is no agent on anyone's laptop to collect it with. Calendar access is read-only and cannot create, edit or delete an event.
See exactly what we access- No screenshotsThere is no desktop agent, so there is nothing that could take one.
- No activity scoresNobody gets a productivity percentage attached to their name.
- No app or site historyWhat someone opens on their laptop is never recorded.
- No location dataNo GPS, no geofences, no travel history — on any platform.
Thirteen tools, three ways of capturing time
Pick the one you are evaluating. Each page carries the same matrix, why teams move, and the cases where that tool is the better buy.
Start-and-stop timers
Accurate only for as long as somebody remembers to press the button.
Desktop activity trackers
Accurate, but it means software watching every machine all day.
Time tracking inside a bigger suite
Convenient if you already live there, thin if you bill by the hour.
How to choose a time tracker
Three questions that decide this more than any feature list. Ask them of us too.
What does the tool need from a person before it works?
A timer needs a habit that survives a busy week. An activity agent needs an install on every machine and a conversation with the team. A calendar connection needs one authorization, once, and then nothing.
What does it collect about the people using it?
Screenshots, activity percentages, app and website history and location are all normal in this category. Ask what is collected by default, what is optional, and what a manager can turn on without telling anyone.
What stands between a logged hour and a client invoice?
This is the question that costs money. If anyone can edit a billable entry after the fact, and nothing records what was thrown out, a disputed line item cannot be answered six months later.
What people ask when they are mid-evaluation
Because it is the choice that decides everything else. Timers are only accurate while somebody presses the button, activity agents are accurate but have to run on every machine, and calendar-based capture is automatic with nothing installed. Feature lists in this category are near-identical; how the hours arrive is not.
Automatic, but from a different source. Those tools record desktop activity and reconstruct the day from it. Stintt reads calendar events server-side, so capture works with nothing installed and starts with the history already in the calendar — at the cost of seeing less of long heads-down work with no meeting attached.
That work is logged from chat — Telegram, Google Chat or the in-app assistant — in a sentence like "fixed login bug 2h". Reminders chase days that came back empty. It is one line rather than nothing, which is the realistic comparison against a timer nobody started.
Every table on these pages is stamped with the month it was checked — currently August 2026 — and built from each vendor's own public documentation and pricing. Products in this category ship monthly, so confirm anything decisive with the vendor before you buy.
Timely, in intent: both want the timesheet to write itself, and both use AI to draft it. The disagreement is the price of capture — a desktop agent on every machine versus a read-only calendar connection made once.
