TimeMagick vs Time Doctor: project visibility without screen capture
TimeMagick gives project-based teams detailed activity visibility without screenshots, then connects that work to project delivery, clients, billing and profitability.
Comparison last reviewed: September 2026
At a glance
TimeMagick
For project-based teams that need detailed activity and productivity visibility without screen images, plus native project delivery, planning, client collaboration, billing and deeper profitability.
- Activity %, apps and URLs
- No screenshots or video
- Project board and Gantt
- Resource planning
- Budgets, alerts and forecasting
- Project messaging
- Client workspace
- Billable-percentage approval and Project Billing
- Invoices, recurring invoices and expenses
- Profitability KPIs and Client Health
Time Doctor
For organisations focused on workforce time, activity monitoring, screenshots, attendance, schedules and productivity analytics.
Feature comparison
Time Doctor plan names show where a feature sits on its pricing page. "No … identified" means the feature is not in Time Doctor's current official documentation.
| Feature | TimeMagick | Time Doctor |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking and productivity | ||
| Automatic time tracking | Windows app with activity tracking | Yes; automatic tracking from Basic |
| Manual and interactive tracking | Yes; manual time requires a written reason and approval | Yes; interactive, online and offline tracking |
| Desktop and mobile | Web, Windows desktop, iOS and Android | Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile |
| Projects and tasks | Yes; every hour carries its client, project, task and member into budgets, billing and profitability | Yes; projects and tasks from Basic |
| Activity % | Yes; Activity % from keyboard clicks, mouse clicks and mouse movement, with a configurable calculation | Activity summary (Standard and above) |
| App and URL tracking | Yes; classified productive, neutral or unproductive per role or member | Web and app usage (Standard and above) |
| Productivity classification | Yes; productive, neutral or unproductive per role or member | Productivity ratings (Standard and above) |
| Idle tracking | Yes; configurable threshold, plus Private Time | Yes |
| Screenshots | No, by design: activity data instead of screen images | Yes; from Basic, at random within 3 to 30 minutes, optional blur |
| Continuous screen video | No screen recording | Video screen recording (Premium or add-on) |
| Project delivery | ||
| Kanban project board | Native drag-and-drop board with custom and automatic statuses | No native Kanban project board identified |
| Custom and automatic statuses | Yes; custom statuses plus automatic In Progress and Inactive | No custom project statuses identified |
| Project Gantt | Native; per project and across the client portfolio | Timeline report of tracked work; no native project Gantt identified |
| Portfolio Gantt | Yes; every client's projects on one interactive timeline | No native portfolio Gantt identified |
| Resource planning | Native project scheduling and resource planning | Work schedules, attendance and leave (Standard and above) |
| Project budget and budget vs spent | Yes; budget vs spent on cards, overview, Gantt, approvals and dashboards | No native project-budget workflow identified |
| Budget alerts and forecasting | Yes; alerts and forecasting connected to project profitability | No budget alerts or forecasting identified |
| Project communication | Native; a channel inside every project | No project communication identified |
| Direct and group messaging | Native direct messages and groups | No direct or group messaging identified |
| Client access | ||
| External client account | Native CLIENT workspace: Dashboard, Projects, Timesheets, Report, Message Channels, Sensai | Client login: free, read-only access |
| Plan required for client access | Included on every plan | Premium only |
| Client project dashboard | Yes; projects, tasks, weekly hours, overdue tasks and team hours | No client project dashboard identified |
| Client project visibility | Yes; the Projects board in the client workspace | Selected projects, read-only |
| Client timesheets | Yes; Member's Timesheet with hours per day | Tracked work for assigned projects, read-only |
| Client reports | Yes; a detailed Report inside the client workspace | Selected reports, read-only |
| Client messaging | Yes; project channels and groups in Message Channels | No client messaging identified |
| Client AI assistant | Yes; Sensai, the AI assistant, in the client workspace | No client AI assistant identified |
| Approval, billing and expenses | ||
| Time approval | Yes; manual time with a written reason, Pending, Approved or Declined | Manual time and leave approvals (Standard and above) |
| Billable % during approval | Yes; e.g. 5 worked hours approved at 80% become 4 billable hours | No percentage-based billability step identified |
| Project Billing: billable vs billed | Project Billing: billable vs billed hours per client and project | No billable-vs-billed view identified |
| Client invoice builder | Duration and quantity lines, tax, notes, PDF, status, multiple entities and billing accounts | No native customer-invoice builder identified in current documentation |
| Recurring invoices | Scheduled recurring invoices with an approval workflow | No recurring client invoices identified |
| Multiple legal entities | Yes; legal entities with their own logo, VAT ID and invoice prefix | No multi-entity invoicing identified |
| Multiple billing accounts | Yes; multiple bank accounts, chosen per invoice | No billing-account selection identified |
| Project expenses | Project-linked, custom categories, approval, Lunch | No native expense tracking identified in current documentation |
| Expense approval | Yes; dedicated Pending, Approved and Declined queues | No expense approval identified |
| Recurring expenses | Yes; schedules, approval and payment history | No recurring-expense workflow identified |
| Analytics | ||
| Workforce productivity reports | Yes; timelines, activity, productivity and app and URL usage per member | Yes; hours, timeline, activity, web and app usage and attendance |
| Project profitability | Profit and margin by client and project | Workforce and payroll data; no project revenue or margin reports identified |
| Client profitability | Yes; most and least profitable clients, Avg Client Profit and Margin | No client profitability identified |
| Low-profit projects | Yes; Low-Profit Projects list | No low-profit project view identified |
| Uninvoiced hours | Yes; Uninvoiced Hours by client | No uninvoiced-hours metric identified |
| Retention metrics | Yes; Repeat Client %, Retention %, Avg Cooperation and Avg Project Gap | No client-retention metrics identified |
| Revenue concentration | Yes; Revenue Concentration % with a risk indicator | No revenue-concentration metric identified |
| Client Health | Active, warm or cold status per client | No native equivalent identified |
| Access and pricing | ||
| Roles and permissions | Yes; custom roles across 40 permission modules on every plan | Five access levels: Owner, Admin, Manager, Regular User and Client |
| Full feature set on paid plans | Yes; no feature tiers or add-ons | No; features tiered from Basic to Premium |
| Pricing model | Per user; every feature on every plan | Per user; features tiered by plan |
Time Doctor information reviewed September 2026 from Time Doctor's public pricing and support pages. Features and plans change; verify before purchasing.
Time tracking that becomes project intelligence
TimeMagick treats the tracked hour as the beginning of the project workflow, not the final reporting output:
- Tracked time, against the project and task
- Activity and productivity detail, without screen capture
- The project budget it burns, with alerts and forecasting
- Approval, with a billable percentage
- Project Billing: billable against billed hours
- An invoice, one-off or scheduled recurring
- Project margin, client KPIs and Client Health
Time Doctor tracks time automatically or interactively, online and offline, against projects and tasks.
Explore TimeMagick time trackingUnderstand productivity without collecting screen images
TimeMagick gives managers structured activity, app, URL, idle and productivity information without creating a visual archive of employees' screens.
A screen capture records whatever is visible at that moment, which can include customer information, documents, private messages or internal systems. TimeMagick avoids collecting the screen image in the first place: no screenshots, no video.
TimeMagick
Activity data, never screen images
- Activity % from keyboard clicks, mouse clicks and mouse movement
- A configurable activity calculation
- Active app and URL, with time per item
- Productivity classification per role or member
- Idle time with a configurable threshold
- Private Time: time counted, app and URL detail withheld
- No screenshots are taken
Time Doctor
Screenshots, with video on higher tiers
Time Doctor includes screenshot monitoring from its Basic plan, with optional blur, and offers continuous video screen recording on Premium or as an add-on for organisations that require visual proof of work.
Run the project, not only report time against it
Time Doctor organises tracked work into projects and tasks. TimeMagick also provides the project operating layer used to plan, move, discuss, budget, bill and analyse that work.
- A drag-and-drop Projects board with custom, default and automatic statuses
- Project cards with due date, tasks, budget, completion and client
- Tasks with assignees, budgets and progress
- The project's own channel, client access, billing and profitability
No native Kanban project board is identified in Time Doctor's current documentation.
Explore project managementPlan future work, not only review the timeline of past work
TimeMagick's interactive Gantt is a planning tool: a project and task hierarchy, drag to reschedule, resizable durations, assignees, completion % in each bar, and budget, spent and status beside the timeline, in Day, Week and Month views, per project and across the client portfolio.
Time Doctor's Timeline report shows the chronology of tracked work; no native project Gantt is identified.
Explore Gantt planningPlan resources around project delivery
TimeMagick's resource planning is centred on what people are delivering across projects: the same projects, tasks, Gantt and budgets the team tracks time against.
TimeMagick
Project resource planning
- Project and task scheduling on the Gantt
- Assignees on every task
- Budgets and spent time beside the plan
- Connected to billing and profitability
Time Doctor
Time Doctor is strong at scheduling when people are expected to work, with schedules, attendance and leave on Standard and above.
Keep the budget visible while the project is happening
Having a budget field is not the same as having budget status embedded throughout delivery. In TimeMagick, budget and spent information stays visible wherever the project is managed:
- Project cards: budget hours against allocated, with a bar that turns red past 100%
- Project Overview: time spent against budget
- Interactive Gantt: budget and spent beside every project and task
- Tracked-time approval: the project budget beside the billable total
- Dashboard: a Project Budgets table across all projects
- Profitability: Projects Over Budget and project margin
Budget alerts and forecasting work from the same numbers.
No native project-budget workflow is identified in Time Doctor's current documentation.
Keep the project conversation with the project
Every TimeMagick project automatically gets its own channel beside its tasks, hours and budget, with attachments, emoji, unread badges and search. The team also has direct messages and groups, and Client Members join project channels and groups too.
Explore project communicationGive clients a project workspace, not only read-only reports
Time Doctor gives clients controlled read-only access to selected reports and projects. TimeMagick gives CLIENT users a broader project-facing workspace: a Dashboard with Total Projects, Total Tasks, Completed, Weekly Hours Logged, Overdue Tasks, Project Status, Task Status Breakdown, Team Members & Hours and Overall Due Tasks, plus Projects, Timesheets, Report, Message Channels and Sensai.
What TimeMagick clients can use, on every plan
- Project dashboard
- Projects board
- Timesheets
- Reports
- Project channels and groups
- AI assistant (Sensai)
Time Doctor's client login is free for clients and available on its Premium plan.
See the client portalApprove time and decide what the client should be billed
Tracked time is approved with a billable percentage and billable time per entry, with the project budget shown alongside: 5 worked hours approved at 80% become 4 billable hours, and those hours flow into Project Billing. Manual time comes with a written reason and goes through Pending, Approved and Declined.
Time Doctor approves manual time and leave on Standard and above; no percentage-based billability step is identified.
Know what is billable and what has already been billed
Project Billing shows billable against billed hours for every client and project, so nothing is invoiced twice and nothing is forgotten. Approved hours, their billable percentage and the invoice form one chain.
Take approved project time all the way to the invoice
TimeMagick invoices have duration-based and quantity-based lines, taxes, notes, PDF download, due dates and statuses, from multiple legal entities and billing accounts, in the client's currency. Recurring invoices are scheduled and go through approval when they become due.
Time Doctor's in-product invoices are for its own subscription; no native customer-invoice builder or recurring client invoicing is identified in its current documentation.
Explore billing and invoicingKeep non-labor project costs in the same system
TimeMagick records company expenses against the project with your own categories and an approval queue. Recurring costs have their own schedule, approval queue and Payment History, and a Lunch workflow covers meal allowances, all feeding the same project margin as the hours.
Explore expensesReporting should connect productivity to project economics
TimeMagick reports answer how the work was performed, how the project is progressing, what is billable, what is billed and whether the client and project are profitable. Reports filter by client, project, member, task, status and date range, show worked or billable time, and export as formatted Excel; the client detailed report includes budget hours, time spent, billable hours and billable amount.
Time Doctor has strong workforce reporting on hours, timelines, activity, web and app usage and attendance.
Explore reportsGo beyond workforce productivity into client profitability
TimeMagick extends management visibility into project economics and client health: 14 headline KPIs including Revenue, Profit, Avg Client Margin, Effective Rate, Utilisation %, Projects Over Budget, Retention % and Revenue Concentration %; revenue, profit, billable and client-activity trends; the most and least profitable clients, falling activity, uninvoiced hours and low-profit projects; and a Client Health ledger with margin, cooperation length, last activity and active, warm or cold status.
Time Doctor's analytics focus on workforce activity and performance; no project revenue or margin reports are identified.
TimeMagick illustration (demo data).
Control access across the whole project workflow
Every TimeMagick plan includes custom roles set across 40 permission modules, with action-level controls where they apply. Reports and Export Report, Projects and All Projects, Project Channel and All Project Channels, and expense and Lunch workflows are separate modules, and clients get the locked CLIENT role.
Time Doctor uses five access levels: Owner, Admin, Manager, Regular User and Client.
Explore roles and permissionsEvery TimeMagick plan includes the full feature set
TimeMagick
- Freelancer$4.50/month, or $3.80 billed yearly; up to 2 users
- Business$9.50/user/month, or $7.60 billed yearly; 30-day free trial
- EnterpriseCustom pricing for 30+ users
- Activity monitoring
- Project board and Gantt
- Resource planning
- Budgets, alerts and forecasting
- Project communication
- Client workspace
- Approvals and Project Billing
- Invoicing and recurring invoices
- Expenses
- Profitability KPIs and Client Health
Time Doctor
Per user/month, billed annually (monthly)
- Basic$6.67 ($8)
- Standard$11.67 ($14)
- Premium$16.70 ($20)
- EnterpriseCustom
Time Doctor's workforce-management and analytics capabilities expand through Standard and Premium.
Time Doctor pricing checked: September 2026. Verify before purchasing.
Time Doctor's client login is on Premium ($16.70 per user billed annually, $20 monthly), while TimeMagick Business includes its CLIENT workspace together with the broader TimeMagick feature set for $7.60 per user per month billed yearly, or $9.50 monthly. See TimeMagick pricing
Why choose TimeMagick over Time Doctor?
Choose TimeMagick when productivity visibility also needs to run the project
TimeMagick is the stronger fit for project-based teams that want activity insights without screen capture and need tracked work to continue into project delivery, client collaboration, billing and profitability.
- Activity visibility without screenshots
- App and URL productivity data
- Native Projects board
- Interactive and portfolio Gantt
- Project-focused resource planning
- Budgets, alerts and forecasting
- Project channels and messaging
- A client project workspace on every plan
- Billable-percentage approval
- Project Billing
- Client invoices and recurring invoices
- Expense workflows
- Multi-entity billing
- Project and client profitability with Client Health
- Every feature on every plan
Where Time Doctor has an edge: fully automatic background tracking · attendance, schedules and leave · payroll-oriented workforce workflows · screenshot and video proof of work where that is required.
See how TimeMagick fits agencies and engineering studios, or compare TimeMagick vs Clockify, TimeMagick vs Toggl, TimeMagick vs Harvest, TimeMagick vs Hubstaff, TimeMagick vs TimeCamp and TimeMagick vs DeskTime.
TimeMagick vs Time Doctor: key facts
- TimeMagick measures Activity %, app and URL usage and productivity classifications without capturing screen images or video.
- TimeMagick has a native project board, an interactive project and portfolio Gantt, and project-focused resource planning.
- TimeMagick shows budget against spent time on project cards, the overview, the Gantt, tracked-time approval and the dashboard, with alerts and forecasting.
- TimeMagick has a chat channel in every project, plus direct messages and groups.
- TimeMagick gives clients a workspace with Dashboard, Projects, Timesheets, Report, Message Channels and Sensai on every plan.
- TimeMagick approves tracked time with a billable percentage and shows billable against billed hours in Project Billing.
- TimeMagick creates client invoices, including scheduled recurring invoices with approval, from multiple legal entities and billing accounts.
- TimeMagick includes project-linked and recurring expenses and a client KPI layer with Client Health.
- TimeMagick includes every feature on every plan.
- Time Doctor's client login is read-only and on its Premium plan; no native customer-invoice builder is identified in its current documentation.
- Time Doctor information reviewed September 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
How TimeMagick compares with Time Doctor. Time Doctor information reviewed September 2026.
Is TimeMagick a Time Doctor alternative?
Yes. TimeMagick is a Time Doctor alternative for project-based teams that want detailed activity visibility without screen capture, plus project delivery, planning, client collaboration, billing and deeper profitability in the same system.
Why choose TimeMagick instead of Time Doctor?
Choose TimeMagick when productivity visibility also needs to run the project: a board and Gantt, project-focused resource planning, budgets that stay visible during delivery, project channels, a client project workspace, billable-percentage approval, Project Billing, invoices and recurring invoices, expenses and Client Health, with every feature on every plan.
Does TimeMagick monitor productivity without screenshots?
Yes. TimeMagick provides Activity %, app and URL use, idle information and productivity classifications without capturing employee screen images. This gives managers operational visibility while avoiding screenshot storage.
What activity and productivity data does TimeMagick track?
TimeMagick tracks worked, idle, manual and private time; Activity % from keyboard clicks, mouse clicks and mouse movement with configurable weighting; a configurable idle threshold; the active application and URL with time per item; and productive, neutral or unproductive classifications set per role or member.
Does TimeMagick include project management with time tracking?
Yes. Beyond organising tracked time into projects and tasks, TimeMagick has a drag-and-drop Projects board with custom and automatic statuses, tasks with assignees, budgets and progress, an interactive Gantt, a portfolio Gantt, resource planning, and budgets with alerts and forecasting that stay visible while the project runs.
Does TimeMagick include Gantt and resource planning?
Yes. TimeMagick's interactive Gantt plans future work per project and across the client portfolio, with drag to reschedule, resizable durations, assignees, progress, budget, spent and status, plus resource planning centred on what people are delivering across projects.
Can TimeMagick give clients their own project workspace?
Yes, on every plan. Client Members get a workspace with a Dashboard, Projects, Timesheets, Report, Message Channels and Sensai, separate from your internal team's experience. Time Doctor's client login is read-only and available on its Premium plan.
Does TimeMagick include project communication and messaging?
Yes. Every TimeMagick project automatically gets its own channel beside its tasks, hours and budget, with attachments, emoji, unread badges and search. The team also has direct messages and groups, and Client Members can use project channels and groups too.
Can TimeMagick approve time and control billability?
Yes. Manual time goes through Pending, Approved and Declined with a written reason, and tracked time is approved with a billable percentage, so 5 worked hours approved at 80% become 4 billable hours, with the project budget shown alongside. Those hours flow into Project Billing.
Does TimeMagick support invoicing and recurring invoices?
Yes. Project Billing shows billable against billed hours per client and project, and invoices have duration-based and quantity-based lines, taxes, notes, PDF download, due dates and statuses, from multiple legal entities and billing accounts. Recurring invoices are scheduled and go through approval when they become due.
Can TimeMagick track expenses and project profitability?
Yes. Company expenses are linked to projects with custom categories and approval, and recurring expenses have their own schedule, approval queue and Payment History. The KPI module then shows revenue, profit, client margin, effective rate, low-profit projects, uninvoiced hours, retention, revenue concentration and Client Health.
Is TimeMagick suitable for agencies and engineering or design firms?
Yes. TimeMagick is built for project-based teams such as agencies and engineering, CAD and design studios that want activity visibility without screen capture plus project delivery, client collaboration, billing and deeper profitability analytics in one connected product.
Project visibility without screen capture
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