Compared honestly
Quarter Past vs Timing
Timing is the best automatic tracker on the Mac. It gets a complete record by reading what you have open. Quarter Past gets one by asking.
Prices and facts checked 10 October 2026 · Quarter Past 2.3.10 · They change; tell us if one has
What Timing is
Timing runs in the background and records which apps, documents and websites you have in front of you, then builds a timeline and lets you assign that activity to projects, with rules to do it automatically. It syncs and backs up to its own cloud, and the higher plans add a second and third Mac, team features and more. It is Mac only, sold direct rather than through the App Store, with a 30-day trial.
If you want zero effort and you are comfortable with software reading document titles and web addresses all day, Timing is excellent at it.
If the reading is the part you want to leave behind, six Timing alternatives that don’t read your screen sets the others beside this one.
What Timing does better than Quarter Past:
- Completely automatic. You never answer anything.
- A timeline of every app and document, minute by minute.
- Rules that file activity to projects for you.
- Cloud sync across Macs, and team plans.
Side by side
| Timing | Quarter Past | |
|---|---|---|
| How it tracks | Automatically, by recording the apps, document titles and web addresses in use | 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. Reading what is open is how it works | Never. No screen-recording or accessibility permissions |
| Where your data lives | Synced and backed up to Timing's cloud | A file on your Mac. No account, no server, no sync |
| Platforms | macOS only, sold direct | macOS 10.15 or later, Apple silicon and Intel |
| Price | Subscription. From £84 a year on the Professional plan (about £7 a month paid annually; £108 paid monthly). Expert and Connect cost more | £54, once |
| Cost over five years | £420 on the cheapest plan | £54 |
| Trial | 30 days, no card | 14 days, no card |
| Says how each entry was captured | Everything is measured; nothing is recalled, because nothing is asked | 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 for Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT and Codex, plus AI summaries and insights. Needs Timing Sync and a Connect subscription | 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, Excel, PDF, and integrations | CSV, and a full backup file |
| Teams | Yes, on the Connect plan | No. One person, one Mac |
Prices read from timingapp.com/pricing on 18 September 2026, which shows GBP to a UK visitor: Professional £7 a month billed annually or £9 monthly, Expert £9 or £11, Connect £14 or £18 per user. Unchanged from the previous check. The trial is that page's own wording, “free for 30 days, no credit card required”. Mechanism from timingapp.com. Quarter Past facts from this site. Subscriptions are judged forwards: five years is what you will actually have paid.
Which one, honestly
Choose Timing if
- You want a record without ever being asked anything.
- You need to know exactly which document or site had your attention at 10:42.
- You want sync across two or three Macs, or a team view.
Choose Quarter Past if
- You do not want software reading your documents and web addresses, or your clients would not want it.
- You want one payment rather than £84 every year.
- You want to plan the week and see it against the record.
- You want a brief an AI can read, honest about how much of the fortnight was measured.
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