All three let you say "start a timer for Acme" in Claude Code or Cursor. The difference is what sits behind the tool call. clockify-mcp and timesheet-mcp are clients for an existing time tracking service, so the hours land in that account. Ours writes JSON files under your home directory and never opens a socket. If you already pay for Clockify or timesheet.io, that is a real reason to pick theirs, and this page says so plainly.
| Fact | Ours | clockify-mcp | timesheet-mcp |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tools | 11 plus license_status and license_activate | 112 across 18 domains (48 read-only by default) | 18 |
| Transport | stdio, plus a hosted streamable HTTP endpoint | stdio (pip, uvx, Docker, .mcpb bundle) | stdio (npx) |
| Account or API key needed | No. No account, no key | Yes, CLOCKIFY_API_KEY | Yes, TIMESHEET_API_TOKEN |
| Where the hours live | Local JSON in ~/.local/share/mcp-servers/time-tracker/ | Clockify workspace | timesheet.io account |
| Licence | MIT | MIT | MIT |
| Latest release read | 0.2.3 on the MCP registry | v0.3.2, 2026-06-09 | npm @timesheet/mcp 1.2.0, 2026-06-13 |
| Cost of the server | Free tier, Pro $19 once | Free, some tools need a paid Clockify plan | Free, needs a timesheet.io account |
| Works with no network | Yes | No | No |
Pick it when your team already runs Clockify. It exposes 112 tools across workspaces, users,
groups, clients, projects, tasks, tags, time entries, reports, shared reports, time off, holidays,
expenses, approvals, custom fields, scheduling, invoices and webhooks. Nothing we ship touches team
approvals, time off balances or scheduling, and we do not intend to. It also ships a one click
.mcpb bundle for Claude Desktop and a container image. Its README states that the time
off, holidays, expenses, approvals, custom fields, scheduling, invoice and webhook tools return 402,
403 or 404 on Clockify plans that do not include those add-ons, so check your plan first.
Pick it if you use timesheet.io on a phone and want the same entries reachable from chat. It is the official server for that API, it covers pause and resume of a running task (we have no pause), and it can attach expenses and notes to the task that is running. Eighteen tools, MIT, one npx line plus an API token.
Pick ours when you do not want a time tracking account at all. There is nothing to sign up for and
no key to paste: install it and the first timer works. Client work under an NDA never leaves the
machine, and the server keeps working on a plane. The parts we spent effort on are the arithmetic and
the handoff to billing: hours are stored as seconds and money as integer minor units, the amount is
computed in one rounding step, and invoice_summary turns a project's tracked time into
invoice lines that the invoice server takes as input. Currency is per entry,
so "90 euros an hour" stores EUR.
The time-tracker package carries 7 automated tests, all passing, covering the stdio protocol handshake, currency parsing and two concurrent writers. Across the five servers the suites total 144 tests. A separate scripts/validate.mjs probe suite runs 121 checks against a fresh data directory and is at 121 of 121. In user value round 5, ten fresh scenarios were driven through the real Claude CLI with no tool names mentioned; the suite scored 26 of 30, and the three time-tracker scenarios scored 9 of 9. Two defects that round 5 and earlier rounds found in this server, a dropped currency and a project name that split in two, are fixed in the shipped build.
Ours, Claude Code:
claude mcp add time-tracker -- npx -y @theluckystrike/mcp-time-trackerclockify-mcp:
pip install clockify-mcp
claude mcp add clockify -e CLOCKIFY_API_KEY=your-key -- clockify-mcptimesheet-mcp:
claude mcp add timesheet -e TIMESHEET_API_TOKEN=your-token -- npx -y @timesheet/mcpExact config file paths per client are on the setup pages, and the longer walkthrough is in tracking billable hours in Claude Code.
Yes. MCP clients load several servers at once and the tool names do not collide: ours are timer_start, entry_add and report, the Clockify server uses create_time_entry and generate_summary_report. Nothing is shared between them, so the same hour logged in both is logged twice.
No. It has no network code at all. The export path is export_csv, which writes a CSV you can import elsewhere, and invoice_summary, which produces invoice lines.
clockify-mcp, by a wide margin: 112 tools across 18 domains against our 11 plus two licence tools. Tool count is not the same as coverage of what one freelancer needs, but if you want approvals, time off and scheduling, that server has them and we do not.
clockify-mcp and timesheet-mcp are MIT licensed and free; the services behind them need an account, and the Clockify README notes that several tool groups need a paid Clockify plan. Ours has a free tier with a 7 day reporting window, and Pro is $19 once with no subscription.
Every row comes from the project's own README, its GitHub repository metadata or its npm record, read on 2026-09-03. The source URLs are listed in docs/COMPARE_RESULT.md in our repository.