Compared honestly
Quarter Past vs Rize
Rize watches your focused window and coaches you with AI. Quarter Past asks you, and never watches. Different answers to the same question.
Prices and facts checked 10 October 2026 · Quarter Past 2.3.10 · They change; tell us if one has
What Rize is
Rize is a desktop app for Mac and Windows that automatically captures time spent in your focused window, asks your browser for the current address to categorise web time, and turns that into focus scores, break reminders and AI coaching. Your data is hosted on Amazon Web Services, encrypted, behind your account. Plans are priced by AI credits, from $9.99 a month on annual billing for Basic, with a 7-day trial and no free tier.
If what you want is a coach that nudges you to focus and take breaks, built on an automatic record, Rize is good at that and Quarter Past does not try to be.
What Rize does better than Quarter Past:
- Focus coaching, break reminders and session timers.
- Windows as well as Mac.
- Automatic categorisation, including web addresses.
- AI features that grow with the plan.
Side by side
| Rize | Quarter Past | |
|---|---|---|
| How it tracks | Automatically, from the focused window and browser addresses | Asks what you have been doing every 5 to 60 minutes; one tap logs the interval that just passed, to the minute, with a start and an end |
| Reads your screen | Yes, by design; it says it does not screen-record or log keystrokes | Never. No screen-recording or accessibility permissions |
| Where your data lives | On Rize's servers (Amazon Web Services), behind your account | A file on your Mac. No account, no server, no sync |
| Platforms | macOS and Windows | macOS 10.15 or later, Apple silicon and Intel |
| Price | Subscription. Billed annually: Basic $9.99 a month, Pro $23.99, Max $39.99. Paid monthly: Basic $12.99; Rize’s own pricing FAQ puts the monthly range at $12.99 to $39.99. No free tier | £54, once |
| Cost over five years | $599.40 on Basic | £54 |
| Trial | 7 days with every feature, no card | 14 days, no card |
| Says how each entry was captured | Everything is measured automatically; nothing is asked or recalled | Yes: every entry says whether it was measured live or recalled later |
| Plan against actual | No plan against actual in the Quarter Past sense | Yes: a weekly plan set against the record, difference shown, nothing scored |
| What an AI gets | An official MCP server on the Pro plan and above, alongside API, webhooks and Zapier, plus AI coaching and chat over the automatic record. The record it hands over is one the machine made; it does not mark which parts you confirmed | A written brief you read before you send it: the fortnight, the plan against the record, and how much of it was measured rather than recalled. You choose the assistant and the moment |
| Export | CSV | CSV, and a full backup file |
| Teams | Yes, on team plans | No. One person, one Mac |
Prices, plans, the trial and the MCP line read from rize.io/pricing on 18 September 2026, monthly and annual toggled separately. Prices were unchanged from the previous check; the monthly figures and the MCP server on Pro were missing before. The trial wording is from that page's own FAQ. Quarter Past facts from this site. Subscriptions are judged forwards: five years is what you will actually have paid.
Which one, honestly
Choose Rize if
- You want to be coached: focus scores, breaks, nudges.
- You are on Windows.
- You are happy for your activity to live on a server behind an account.
Choose Quarter Past if
- You want nothing watching your window or your browser.
- You want your record on your own Mac, in a file you can open.
- You want one payment. Five years of Rize Basic is about $600.
- You want to bring your own AI: the brief is yours to paste wherever you like.
What Quarter Past does not do
So that this page is worth trusting:
- Mac only. No Windows, no phone, no web version yet.
- One person. No team view, no shared projects, no manager reports.
- No invoicing, no integrations, no Zapier. It exports a CSV and stops there.
- Not on the Mac App Store, by choice; it is signed and notarised with Apple and downloaded from this site.
Try it for a fortnight. Decide then.
Free for fourteen days, no card and no account. If it earns its place, it is £54 once, paid from inside the app. If not, nothing to cancel.
Version 2.3.10 · 7 MB · macOS 10.15 or later, Apple silicon and Intel · Checked by Apple