9 Best Time Management Apps for Peak Work and Personal Productivity (2024)

You start your day with a to-do list. But then time just slips by you, and at the end of the day, there’s still a pile of work on your desk. If only you’d managed your time better!

It’s not just you. Most working professionals, freelance or on a job, feel overwhelmed at work.

Trust us, we know…

We’ve been in the time management space for over 18 years. So we understand the challenges businesses and individuals face in optimizing their schedules.

We witnessed the evolution of many time management apps that claim to solve those problems over the years but that led to the overwhelming choice of software on the market today. If you’re looking for a time management app, you’ll find hundreds of options — so which one should you choose?

We decided to put our experience to use and help you out.

We explored all kinds of apps, sifted through user reviews, and tested them to put together this list of the 9 best time management apps for 2024. And here’s our verdict!

Best time management apps: Combine these for ultimate productivity

How to choose a time management app

Time management apps are versatile and can be tailored for various needs, including personal organization, team coordination, or family scheduling.

First, figure out where you’re struggling the most with time management. Is it keeping your own schedule on track, or is it more about managing a team? Start with an app that helps with your biggest challenge and expand to others once you master managing one area.

Since time management needs can be so different, the app you choose should match what you or your company needs.

If you need to keep a close eye on how many hours your employees work, pick an app that’s good at tracking and analyzing time. But if you just need a simple way to keep track of tasks, a basic task-focused app will do the trick.

Mix and match your app stack for maximum effectiveness!

Key features to look for in time management apps

1. Everyday Practicality: Pick an app that resolves a real problem, is straightforward, and boosts productivity. Avoid overly complex tools or paying for features you don’t need.

2. Focus on Functionality: Choose apps that excel in one area over those that offer multiple features but lack depth. Simplicity often leads to better performance and ease of use.

3. Compatibility with Existing Systems: Consider whether an app operates independently or integrates with your current tools. Integration-friendly apps enhance your existing workflow.

How we curated our list of time management apps

Time management is a broad term, so many tools can fall into this category. Our approach was to single out a list of apps based on what users on forums and review sites said about them. Then we tested each tool by using it throughout the process of writing this article and gauged how it affected the workflow.

Based on our tests, we noted our experience with each software, picked the 9 best time management apps, and grouped our findings into four categories for a quick overview:

• Ease of Use — how easily you or your team get a grasp of the tool’s functions
• Features — what it offers to achieve its use case
• Analytics — how useful the insights it provides are to increase your or your team’s productivity
• Pricing — how much bang you get for your buck

While some platforms can easily be considered time management apps, others help with time management more indirectly.

We wanted to strike a balance between true time management apps and unique apps that help with time management, so we grouped them into two categories to help you find the best combination.

❗ DISCLAIMER: ❗

Now let’s go through a mini-review of each!

1. Toggl Track – Best time management app with productivity insights

In 2006, Alari Aho and Krister Haav created Toggl to track time and invoice their agency’s clients accordingly. However, over the past 17 years, their mission transcended timekeeping. Two additional products, Toggl Plan and Toggl Hire were added to the lineup, while the original app became Toggl Track.

Toggl Track’s design is engaging and intuitive. Time tracking feels natural and doesn’t intrude on your workflow. Its desktop app, mobile app, and web app are designed to make time tracking seamless. In addition, the web app comes with Reports and Analytics that provide insights into your or your organization’s work efficiency without infringing on privacy. It’s made to be the backbone of meaningful discussions and mentorship in your organization or as a spotlight on your work habits.

Toggl Track is the best time management app for businesses with trust-based cultures that want to equip decision-makers with productivity insights to improve efficiency. It’s also a great choice for solo professionals who want to improve their work habits and productivity.

Time tracking: Comprehensive timesheets and automatic monitoring.

Although it has several features and integrations, Toggl Track is a time tracking and time management app at its core. It gives you a minute-by-minute overview of how much time you or your team spends on each task.

You can track time from any device since, besides the web app, Toggl Track offers a desktop app, a mobile app, and browser extensions. 

The desktop app is made for fast, unobstructed time tracking. If enabled, its Autotracker feature automatically records time based on preset conditions (1), while the Pomodoro timer, available on desktop and mobile apps, helps you form productive habits and do focused work (2).

Meanwhile, the Timeline keeps track of which apps you’re using and helps you fill the gaps in your timesheet with relevant time. Any timeline data on the desktop app is local to your computer — private and inaccessible to other team members or administrators.

It only shows up in Toggl Track if you decide to log it.

Additionally, it supports Time Blocking, a time management feature that lets you block chunks of time for particular tasks. Linking Toggl Track with your Google Calendar makes it even more seamless because you can convert calendar events to time blocks.

Analytics: In-depth reports of your time tracking data.

Toggl Track has three built-in tools to monitor performance: Reports, Analytics, and Insights. 

Reports provide an overview of your team’s tracked time, presented in several ways:

• Bar chart (1) separates your time into billable and non-billable hours.
• Grouping list (2) groups and compares data based on user, client, project, time entry, and more.
• Donut chart (3) shows data from the grouping list in a piechart-like format.

Analytics is a new feature that lets you visualize data in custom dashboards using charts, tables, pivots, bar charts, donut charts, and more.

Meanwhile, Insights peers into your time data to show project and employee profitability trends and efficiency week-over-week. You can also compare them across different date ranges to identify unfavorable trends and spot inefficiencies.

Integrations: Over 145 built-in integrations and web browser extensions.

Toggl offers over 145 native integrations and browser extensions to expand its functionality.

These include Google Calendar, Notion, Trello, Focused Work, Habitica, and many more. If you can’t find a native integration, it also supports Zapier and Integrately and offers the Toggl Track API for custom connections.

Toggl Pricing

Toggl’s pricing plans include a free version that lets you track time for projects and clients with up to 5 team members, making it ideal for freelancers or small teams. We’d say it’s one of the best free time management apps you can find 😉 

Meanwhile, the paid plans for bigger teams start at $10/user/month.

Use Toggl if:

• You want to support a work culture of privacy and trust.
• You’re looking for simple time tracking that doesn’t disrupt your or your team’s workflow.
• You want detailed and actionable analytics to improve your or your team’s productivity and profitability.

Ready to get started with Toggl Track? Sign up for a 30-day free trial and improve your productivity in a  single month!

2. Calendar – Best time management app for managing meetings

John Hall and John Rampton created Calendar in 2018 to change how people manage and invest their time in meetings.

Calendar contains features like:

• Management and syncing of multiple calendars
• Analytics to show how you spend time
• Creating and scheduling events

Calendar is a unified calendar app that combines all your calendars into one. It is ideal for small team managers and business owners looking to optimize the time spent in meetings.

Calendar Features

Calendar connects your personal and work calendars in one place (including shared calendars).

The idea is to add collaborators to see their availability and schedule events. When you attend events, Calendar also keeps track of how much time you spend in them to help you optimize your time.

It also includes an analytics section where you can track and analyze time. You can then use this information to find out where you spend the most hours, make scheduling decisions, and prioritize tasks better.

Calendar is available on both PC and mobile devices, allowing you to manage calendars from anywhere.

Calendar Pricing

Calendar’s pricing plans start with a limited free plan that lets you connect one calendar, create one workspace, and add two workspace users. You can then choose between two paid plans:

• Standard for $25/user/month, 
• and Pro for $30/user/month.

It also offers a custom Enterprise plan, but you have to contact support to set that one up.

Use Calendar if:

• You want to manage events with coworkers.
• You want to see how much time you spend in meetings.
• You’re using multiple calendars and want to combine them on one platform.

3. Freedom – Best time management app for blocking distractions

Freedom was founded in 2011 when college student Fred Stutzman realized he was wasting too much time on Facebook and needed to reduce the daily distractions.

It has several features, including:

• Website and app blocking
• Multi-platform support and syncing
• Scheduling internet block times

Freedom is a software blocking app that helps individuals who want to eliminate procrastination, remove internet and social media distractions, and focus on work.

Freedom Features

Freedom blocks distracting websites and applications like Facebook, YouTube, ESPN, and more — handy when you need to focus. But its signature feature is the “locked” mode that prevents you from ending active focus sessions.

You can also schedule sessions for a custom time or set recurring sessions. Since it syncs across multiple platforms, your sessions apply to all your devices.

Freedom also lets you create different blocklists depending on what you want to do. For example, you could have a study or work list that only blocks social media apps.

Freedom Pricing

Freedom offers a free trial to use the app’s features seven times, after which you can use the basic block mode or pay for full functionality. Its pricing plans follow an access model, giving you access to the app for a limited time.

Use Freedom if:

• You tend to procrastinate a lot and want to focus on work.
• You want to schedule times to limit your access to the internet.
• You want to stay accountable without deleting your social media accounts.

4. Todoist – Best task-based time management app

Todoist was founded in 2007 when Amir Salihefendik, a student at Aarhus University, developed an app to help him manage multiple jobs alongside his coursework.

Todoist boasts features like:

• Task scheduling
• Reminders and notifications
• Filters and labels for task organization

Todoist is a task-based time management app for freelancers looking to keep track of their daily activities. It’s also an excellent choice for small teams needing an affordable platform to track assigned tasks.

Todoist Features

Todoist helps you increase productivity by scheduling and managing personal and work-related tasks.

The Upcoming tab displays all your pending tasks for the week in a list or Kanban-style board view, as shown in the image below. 

It lets you categorize tasks into sections and subtasks and organize them using filters and labels. You can also set recurring due dates for repetitive tasks. These features are great for separating professional, study, and personal activities.

There’s also an option to create filters manually or the AI Assist feature to automate the process.

While Todoist doesn’t offer robust analytics, it allows you to track your daily and weekly productivity. 

A feature called Karma (think of it like experience points in a game) increases when you frequently add and complete tasks on time or use tools like labels and reminders. Meanwhile, it decreases when you have tasks pending for over four days.

You can also share your account with a team of work colleagues or family members. This feature enables you to assign tasks and collaborate on them. Collaborators can also leave comments and get notified when tasks get completed. Collaboration also allows you to add accountability partners.

Todoist Pricing

The Todoist pricing is straightforward, with a free plan and two paid plans.

• The Beginner (free) plan offers five personal projects, three filter views, and a one-week activity history.
• The Pro plan gives you 300 personal projects, 150 filter views, and unlimited activity history.
• The Business plan offers a shared team workspace, 500 team projects, and unlimited team members and guests.

Use Todoist if:

• You want to delegate tasks to a small team of colleagues or family members.
• You’re looking for a task manager to effectively manage work and personal tasks.
• You’re looking for some accountability features.

5. Habitica – Best gamified habit-building app for time management

Habitica was founded in 2013 by Tyler Renelle to help with his habits, following inspiration from self-help books The Power of Habit and The Now Habit. It was called HabitRPG before being renamed to Habitica in 2015.

Habitica includes features like:

• Goal and task tracking
• Rewards for achieving your goals and building good habits
• Gamification elements and a strong social network for motivation

Habitica is a habit-building app that best serves individuals who want to build habits with the power of gamification and a community to keep them accountable.

Habitica Features

Habitica primarily lets you track goals, create to-do lists, and track habits with its pre-built task templates or by building your own from scratch. When you check tasks off your lists, you get streaks and rewards, while, if you don’t complete tasks, you get punished.

It also includes gamification elements to make the process more fun — your avatar levels up and unlocks new features and achievements as you complete tasks and hit streaks. And, if you’re finding it difficult to stay productive, you can join group challenges and guilds to connect with like-minded individuals for accountability.

Habitica Pricing

Habitica is free to use. However, some backgrounds and avatar customizations can only be accessed from the shop using gems. You also need gems to create public challenges and purchase group items.

Gems come with one of the four premium subscriptions:

• $5/month for 25 gems.
• $15 every three months for 30 gems and one mystic hourglass.
• $30 every six months for 35 gems and two mystic hourglasses.
• $48/year for 45 gems and four mystic hourglasses.

There’s also a Group plan that costs $9/month for the owner and $3/member with access to a private task board and chat area.

Use Habitica if:

• You want to stay organized with extensive gamification features.
• You want to collaborate with group members for accountability.
• You want to have fun while building good habits.

Best apps for indirectly improving time management

When you mention time management apps, certain software categories come to mind: time tracking, checklists, project management, and calendar organization. However, there are a lot of unique productivity apps that indirectly help with time management.

These tools offer unique features and don’t fit the traditional mold of time trackers or task trackers, so we included them in the secondary category of time management apps.

6. Focusmate – Best time management app for accountability

Focusmate aims to improve your focus by pairing you with a partner (or mate).

It works by letting you book a 25, 50, or 75-minute session where you get matched with another member of the community. You both join a video call, share your goals, and get to work. Once the session is over, you check in and review your progress to stay accountable.

Focusmate made to this list because it’s a unique way to manage work time and increase productivity with mutual observation and friendly competition.

It offers an option to gender-match your partner. And if you enjoyed working with someone, you can mark them as favorites and work with them again. You also get all the basic features you’d expect from a video meeting app like calendar invites, virtual backgrounds, chats, and so on.

Focusmate is suitable for anyone who wants to get things done while keeping themselves accountable but, realistically, it best serves freelancers or students.

While the concept is simple and effective, the app covers unique use cases, so it didn’t make the main list.

Focusmate Pricing

Focusmate offers three pricing plans:

• Free plan offers three sessions per week.
• Plus plan allows unlimited sessions for $9.99/month.
• Business plan provides a custom solution for enterprises.

7. TimeTree – Best time management app for sharing calendars

TimeTree lets you share calendars with the people closest to you, like family, friends, and coworkers, so you can plan events without anyone missing out.

You can create specific calendars for each group, such as a separate calendar for family and work. The app automatically notifies everyone connected to the calendar when events are created or changed.

The app is great for small teams, individuals, and families in multiple households looking to manage schedules and plan events for everyone.

It has a niche use case, so we put it among the unique apps.

TimeTree Pricing

TimeTree offers two pricing plans:

• Free plan,
• and Premium plan at $4.49/month with additional features.

8. Evernote – Best note-taking app for time management

Evernote is a note-taking app, but its integration with Google Calendar makes it a time-saver when preparing for meetings.

With one click, you can create a note with your event details or link existing notes with calendar events to avoid fragmentation. Meanwhile, its task feature helps you manage time with to-dos within your notes. It’s well thought out, letting you set due dates, recurring assignments, and reminder notifications.

And if you get a professional or team plan, you can add other people and assign tasks to them.

Evernote lets you organize thoughts and ideas using notes, images, files, and voice memos. Because everything syncs to the cloud, you can access it from multiple devices, so you never lose an important idea or show up unprepared.

It’s for anyone who wants a place to quickly record ideas during meetings and keep track of them afterward. Teams can also use it to manage events and tasks simultaneously. The app is on the list of unique apps because it approaches time management from the angle of note-taking.

Evernote Pricing

Evernote pricing consists of a free plan and three paid plans:

• Personal plan costs €12.99/month.
• Professional plan costs €14.99/month.
• Teams plan costs €19.99/month.

9. Noisli – Best sound-based time management app

Noisli helps you focus by drowning surrounding noise with its high-quality ambient sounds like rain, wind, ocean waves, birds, crickets, thunder, and so on. You can mix and match sounds and set timers for a session’s length.

While these are not the main selling points, the app also has an online timer to help you keep track of time and a distraction-free text editor for note-taking.

Noisli is great for anyone used to working or studying with a background sound of their choice. However, we didn’t put it on our main list because it doesn’t do much more for time management than help you stay on schedule.

Noisli Pricing

Noisli has three pricing plans:

• Free plan offers 16 sounds and 15 listening hours per day.
• Pro plan costs $12/month for 28 sounds and unlimited streaming.
• Business plan costs $28/month for two users and team features like centralized billing.

Final verdict: Choosing the best time management apps

To wrap it up, here’s a summary of our findings about time management apps:

1. There’s an app for every time management challenge. Toggl Track is great for team time tracking. Calendar helps you manage meetings better. Freedom cuts down on distractions. And apps like Todoist and Habitica are perfect for to-do lists and building good habits.

2. Some apps like Focusmate, TimeTree, Evernote, and Noisli, aren’t your usual time managers but they still help a lot with staying on track.

3. The best apps are simple to use and work well with other tools you’re already using to make your workflow smoother and less complicated.

4. Whether you’re on your own, with a small group, or part of a big team, the best time management apps have plans that won’t break the bank.

Finding the right mix of time management tools can meaningfully boost how much you get done and how well you organize your day.

The key is to pick the ones that solve your challenges and easily fit into how you already work. But, depending on your schedule, you may find that one tool isn’t enough so we recommend you start with these three:

• Toggl Track is a time tracking app, ideal for large teams and solo professionals looking for advanced analytics features to optimize their productivity.
• Calendar is perfect for individuals, business owners, and small teams looking to better manage their time spent in meetings.
• Freedom is best for individuals who want to eliminate procrastination and zero in on a task.