Toggl Track for UK Agencies Explained

This article contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

The Tier That Answers the Agency Question Is Premium, Not Starter

The reason an agency buys a time tracker is to answer one question: did we make money on that job? “We quoted £3,000 and we have put in £2,800 of hours” is the sentence you are paying for.

That sentence requires the Premium plan at $18 per seat, not Starter at $9. Project budgets and forecasts sit on Premium. So does labour cost tracking — your internal cost per person, held separately from what you charge the client, which is the only way to see a true margin. Starter gives you time estimates with alerts, which is a useful but much thinner relative.

Two more things to establish before the detail, because both appear in most write-ups of Toggl for agencies.

The prices are in US dollars, not pounds. Starter is $9 and Premium $18 per user per month on annual billing — about £6.77 and £13.53 at the late-October 2026 rate of roughly $1.33, before VAT. Quoting them as “£9” and “£18” overstates the cost by about a third.

And Clockify’s free plan no longer has unlimited users. It has been capped at five since April 2026, the same as Toggl’s, and billable rates left its free plan at the same time. The comparison usually made on that basis does not hold any more — though Clockify remains substantially cheaper on paid tiers, which matters a great deal here and is covered below.

What Toggl Track Is

A cloud time tracker from Toggl, an Estonian company. Start a timer, assign it to a client and project, add a tag, stop it. The simplicity is the selling point and the limitation.

Available as a web app, desktop app for Mac and Windows, mobile apps for iOS and Android, and browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. There is also a Linux desktop app, which is unusual and useful if anyone on your team works that way.

Clients, Projects and Rates

The structure that matters for an agency:

• Workspaces at the top — your agency is one workspace
• Clients are who you work for
• Projects sit beneath clients
• Tasks sit beneath projects, on Starter and above
• Time entries log against projects, and optionally tasks

On rates, the free plan gives you none. There are no billable rates on Free at all — not at project level, not per member. From Starter you can set rates per user, per project or per client. The idea that project rates come free and member rates come later is not how the tiering works: it is nothing, then everything from Starter.

For a multi-phase agency project, tasks are often the upgrade justification on their own — being able to split time across Discovery, Design, Development and Amends is what makes a client report defensible.

Billable vs Non-Billable

Separating the two is non-negotiable for an agency. You need to know what you are selling and what is being eaten by internal meetings, business development and admin.

Toggl handles it with a billable toggle on each entry, and you set a project billable or non-billable by default so nobody has to remember.

Be precise about what the free plan gives you here, because it is usually overstated. You can flag time as billable, but without rates you get no amounts — so you can see that four hours were billable, not that they were worth £400. Billable reporting in any useful sense, including billable hours as a percentage of team capacity, needs Starter or above.

Project Profitability: Which Tier Actually Delivers It

Toggl’s Project Dashboard shows hours tracked, hours estimated, labour cost and billable amount against a project, which gives a basic over- or under-running picture.

The tier map, corrected:

Capability	Plan	Annual	~GBP
Billable rates, billable reporting, tasks, time rounding, saved reports	Starter	$9	£6.77
Time estimates with alerts	Starter	$9	£6.77
Project budgets and forecasts	Premium	$18	£13.53
Labour cost tracking	Premium	$18	£13.53
Team scheduling and workload insight	Premium	$18	£13.53
Project status alerts on budget	Premium	$18	£13.53

So the fixed-fee budget tracking with labour cost comparison — the thing an agency actually wants — is a Premium feature. An agency told it comes with Starter will buy the wrong plan and not get the number it bought the tool for.

What That Costs at Agency Scale

Per year, annual billing, converted at $1.33:

Team size	Starter	Premium
5 people	$540 — £406 (£487 inc VAT)	$1,080 — £812 (£974 inc VAT)
8 people	$864 — £650 (£780 inc VAT)	$1,728 — £1,299 (£1,559 inc VAT)

Premium for eight people is over £1,500 a year including VAT. That is a real line in a small agency’s budget and it needs to be answering a real question — which, to be fair, “which clients are unprofitable” usually is.

The Comparison That Matters for an Agency

Here is the part no Toggl-for-agencies article makes, and it is the one with money attached.

What you need	Toggl Track	Clockify
Billable rates	Starter, $9	Basic, $3.99
Project budgets, labour cost and profit, forecasting	Premium, $18	Pro, $7.99

Clockify delivers the profitability analysis at $7.99 against Toggl’s $18 — 56% less. On eight seats that is a difference of roughly £870 a year including VAT for substantially the same capability: labour cost against billable rates, budget estimates with alerts, forecasting and scheduled reports all sit on Clockify Pro.

That does not settle it, because an abandoned tracker produces no data and Toggl is noticeably the one teams keep using. But an agency should make that trade knowingly rather than being told Clockify is only cheaper at the free tier. Our Clockify pricing guide has the full tier list, and Clockify against Harvest covers the agency end of that market.

One Honest Limit on Both

Neither is project accounting. Neither folds in software subscriptions, contractor invoices or overhead. For a small agency it is a solid approximation of job profitability, not a substitute for management accounts — and the labour-cost figure is only as good as the cost rates you enter.

Team Utilisation

Utilisation — what share of available hours are billable — is the metric that separates agencies that grow from agencies that burn out.

Toggl’s Team reports break time down by member. On Starter and above you can filter by billable status, which lets you calculate utilisation yourself. Premium adds fuller summary and detailed reporting and easier period-on-period comparison, plus the workload view showing who is over- or under-committed.

What it does not do is give you a utilisation dashboard with targets and red/amber/green status. You export and work it up in a spreadsheet, or pull data through the API into your own report. For a handful of people the built-in reports support an informed conversation. Past about fifteen you will want something purpose-built.

Getting Data Out for Invoicing

Toggl is not invoicing software — there is no invoice builder. What it gives you is clean, filterable export: CSV or PDF, filtered by client, project, date range, billable status and team member.

The CSV drops into a spreadsheet template or imports into invoicing software. There are native integrations with QuickBooks and Xero, and the Xero one is the notable one for UK agencies — it pushes billable time into draft invoices without re-entry.

The Real Challenge: Getting People to Track

This is the part most reviews skip, and the draft version of this article gets it right: the tool is only as good as the data going in, and getting ten people to track consistently is a human problem.

Toggl’s answers to it are genuinely its strongest feature set.

Browser extension. Start a timer from inside Trello, Asana, Jira, Linear, GitHub and many others — one click, no tab switching. This is the single biggest driver of adoption in the product.

Idle detection. If someone starts a timer and walks away, Toggl notices the idle period and asks what to do with it on their return. This catches the forgotten-timer problem that pollutes most agencies’ data.

Calendar integration. Connects to Google and Outlook calendars, shows events inside Toggl, and converts an event into a time entry in one click. For meeting-heavy account managers this is often the difference between tracking and not.

Reminders. Optional nudges if someone has not tracked time during the working day.

Pomodoro timer. Mainly for individual focus, but some teams track more reliably when they are already running sessions.

If adoption is your binding constraint rather than cost, this is the honest case for paying Toggl’s premium. A cheaper tracker nobody opens is worth nothing.

MTD and VAT: What Applies to an Agency

Worth getting right, because most agencies are limited companies and the regime is different from the sole-trader case.

MTD for Income Tax does not apply to limited companies. It has applied since 6 April 2026 to sole traders and landlords with more than £50,000 of qualifying income, falling to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028. If you run your agency through a company, it does not catch the company — though it may catch you personally if you also trade on your own account.

MTD for VAT does apply if the company is VAT registered, through compatible software. There is no MTD for Corporation Tax.

Toggl has no HMRC connection in any of these cases, which is what you would expect. It feeds Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, and those file. Our guide to MTD for VAT against MTD for Income Tax sets out which applies to whom.

On VAT for the subscription itself: expect 20% on top of the converted dollar price, recoverable as input VAT if you are registered. Confirm the inclusive figure at checkout, along with whether Toggl bills you in dollars — in which case your card may add a foreign transaction fee — or in sterling. Our Toggl Track pricing guide covers that in detail.

FAQ

Which plan does an agency need?

Premium at $18 if you want project budgets and labour cost tracking, which is normally the point. Starter at $9 covers billable rates, tasks, time rounding and saved reports but not budgets or cost rates.

Are the prices in pounds?

No. Toggl publishes in US dollars — $9 and $18 per seat per month annually, about £6.77 and £13.53 before VAT. Add 20% VAT.

What does Premium cost for a team of eight?

About $1,728 a year, roughly £1,299 before VAT or £1,559 with it.

Can the free plan do billable tracking?

Only partly, and this is usually overstated. You can flag time billable, but there are no rates on the free plan, so you get hours rather than amounts. Useful billable reporting starts at Starter.

Is Clockify’s free plan more generous than Toggl’s?

Not on users. Clockify has been capped at five since April 2026, the same as Toggl, and billable rates left its free plan then too. Clockify’s real advantage is paid pricing: billable rates at $3.99 against $9, and profitability analysis at $7.99 against $18.

Can I track to sub-task level?

Yes, from Starter. The free plan tracks to project level only. For multi-phase projects, splitting Discovery, Design, Development and Amends is often the upgrade justification by itself.

Does Toggl do invoicing?

No. It exports clean CSV and PDF, and integrates with Xero and QuickBooks — the Xero integration pushes billable time into draft invoices.

Does it give me a utilisation dashboard?

Not pre-built, and no RAG status indicators. You get team reports filterable by billable status and export the rest to a spreadsheet or pull it via the API.

Does Toggl handle Making Tax Digital?

No, and for a limited-company agency MTD for Income Tax does not apply anyway. MTD for VAT applies if you are VAT registered, through your accounting software.

Is it GDPR compliant?

Toggl publishes a GDPR statement and a Data Processing Agreement for business customers. As a UK agency you are the controller for your team’s and clients’ data, so review its current documentation and make sure you have a DPA in place.

Is Toggl Track Right for Your Agency?

For most small UK agencies it is a strong choice, and the reason is adoption rather than features per pound. The browser extension, idle detection and calendar conversion solve the problem that actually defeats agency time tracking, which is people not doing it.

Buy Premium, not Starter, if the point is profitability. Project budgets and labour cost rates are the features that answer “did we make money on that job”, and they are not on Starter. At eight people that is around £1,559 a year including VAT, and it should be justified by at least one unprofitable client you would otherwise keep.

Buy Starter if you only need billable rates, tasks and clean reporting for invoicing — about £780 a year for eight people including VAT.

And price Clockify properly before deciding. Its Pro plan delivers labour cost and profit, budgets and forecasting for $7.99 against Toggl’s $18, roughly £870 a year less across eight seats including VAT. Toggl wins on the interface and on getting used; Clockify wins decisively on cost. That is a genuine trade and worth making with the numbers in front of you rather than on a claim about free tiers that stopped being true in April. Our Clockify alternatives comparison covers the wider field, and tracking billable hours as a UK freelancer covers the habit side for smaller setups.

Pricing and features correct at time of writing, published in US dollars; sterling figures are illustrative conversions at $1.33 and exclude VAT unless stated. Monthly pricing varies across sources and Clockify changed its free plan in April 2026 — confirm current details on each provider’s website before purchasing. This article is general information, not tax or legal advice; confirm your MTD and VAT position with HMRC or a qualified adviser.