Final Verdict:

The 5 Best FREE Employee Monitoring Software

Jibble is designed to give you advanced employee monitoring while maintaining the right balance of employee privacy. This way, you can get a clearer picture of your employees’ performance based on actual data, not mere guesses.

Attendance and time tracking are made secure and straightforward through the app. Employees can easily clock in with a tap or a quick selfie if facial recognition is enabled. What’s more convenient is that users can use Jibble on any device they’re on – be it mobile, desktop, or laptop. This way, you can track time on your mobile when you’re out of the office and then switch back to your desktop when you get back.

The dashboard acts as a central hub, offering a bird’s eye view of all team activities. No need to sift through extensive data. Right from the dashboard, you’ll get to see who’s in, who’s out, project activities, and total tracked hours.

Aside from time and attendance, Jibble also lets you keep tabs on employee location while with its GPS tracking feature. This is especially useful if you have employees working in the field or at different work sites. And if you need enhanced location accuracy, try setting up geofences around company work sites and offices so employees can only clock in when they’re within the designated locations. This provides an extra layer of security and accountability.

On top of all of these, Jibble also released its newest employee monitoring feature, screen monitoring – after several user requests (yes, Jibble listens!). With the new feature, employers will get to monitor screen activity through screenshots taken at random 10-minute intervals. These screenshots are uploaded on the web app in real time for easy access. As a safeguard against sensitive data leakage, Jibble automatically blurs screenshots containing sensitive information.

And unlike employee monitoring systems that log keystrokes, Jibble employs a more non-intrusive approach to monitor employee activity, focusing on activity rates derived from mouse and keyboard usage. This way, companies can get detailed insights into team productivity without compromising the privacy of individual employees.

So whether you need to monitor work hours, attendance, activity levels, or even screen activity, Jibble is your all-in-one employee monitoring solution. It’s a solution that has proved itself time and time again to its user base, garnering positive ratings on reputable review platforms like Capterra (4.8/5) and the App Store (4.8/5).

Oh, and have I mentioned that Jibble is 100% FREE for unlimited users? That’s definitely the cherry on top of an already stellar employee monitoring tool.

ActivTrak is a handy free employee monitoring software that focuses on analyzing and boosting worker productivity.

The app provides a detailed view of essential work metrics through its productivity dashboards. There’s an Executive Summary dashboard that offers insights into workload balance and staffing issues. There’s also a Technology Usage and Adoption dashboard that maps application usage, giving employers an idea of which apps employees use the most and for how long.

Users can designate websites, applications, and activities as productive or unproductive, allowing ActivTrak to measure the time spent on each. It then uses these designations to assess individual and team productivity.

Aside from monitoring site and app usage, ActivTrak also keeps tabs on mouse movements and keyboard activity to provide an accurate overview of employee behavior. The app doesn’t log keystrokes, though, so as not to compromise sensitive information.

With ActivTrak’s latest versions, you can access detailed analytics on productive versus unproductive behavior, employee focus and efficiency, tool and application use, and workload balances. Side-by-side analyses help identify high-performing individuals and teams, enabling managers to provide guidance or assistance where needed. The software also allows you to use past behavior to set future usage and performance goals.

Next on my list of employee monitoring software is Clockify.

Clockify is an intuitive, versatile platform for businesses and freelancers that need clear visibility into hours, attendance, and project work. Its well-structured team management tools make it especially useful for companies, since they allow managers to track multiple projects in parallel and keep productivity on pace.

The free version of Clockify includes a broad set of features, so it remains reliable even without paid add-ons. With unlimited user access, it scales smoothly from small teams to large organizations.

Clockify also offers four paid tiers—Basic, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise—that unlock additional controls and functionality.

Overall, Clockify stands out as an affordable and comprehensive employee monitoring option for most businesses, particularly those focused on time and attendance oversight tied to real project work.

Homebase is an innovative cloud-based solution that simplifies employee schedule management, timesheets, and payroll. With Homebase, the impressive feature of multi-device clock-in and out options, including PIN codes, pictures, and GPS, makes attendance tracking easy and hassle-free.

The software’s user-friendly interface allows businesses to calculate wages, monitor employee performance, approve leave requests, and efficiently track overtime and breaks.

I also like that Homebase is pretty flexible, particularly in the scheduling system. Managers can easily create personalized schedules that cater to employees’ preferences and availability.

Another free employee monitoring software worth checking out is Traqq.

Traqq simplifies time tracking by recording billable hours through one-touch timers for tasks and projects. The platform offers online timesheets, a more efficient alternative to traditional paper-based or manual entry systems, which not only track time but also record productivity and performance.

Beyond time tracking, Traqq is also equipped with comprehensive employee monitoring tools. It enables users to track website and app usage without delving into specific pages or content, observe mouse and keyboard activity (without recording keystrokes), and safely review blurred screenshots and recordings. This approach allows managers to pinpoint issues and provide coaching for improvement while maintaining ethical boundaries.

Traqq captures random screenshots within 10-minute windows, attaching them to corresponding time entries. Users can delete specific screenshots if needed, but this action also removes the associated work time.

For detailed analysis and reporting, Traqq’s web app offers weekly summaries that break down time-related metrics into PDF or CSV files. Whether executives need a high-level overview or granular details, Traqq provides insights into how teams spend their time.

Traqq currently doesn’t have a mobile app, though, limiting its use to desk jobs and requiring manual time entries for off-desk work.