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Free Hours Calculator Apps for iPhone and Android

By Frame Sixty Labs · Last updated: September 2, 2026

What does "free" actually mean in an hours calculator?

"Free" is doing a lot of work in the app stores. It covers at least six arrangements, and they cost you very different things.

None of these is dishonest on its own. A free tier that funds a real product is a fair deal. The problem is only that they all appear under the same word in a search result, so "free hours calculator app" returns a list where the first result may want your email and the third may want $9 a month after next Tuesday.

Which free hours calculators can you get on iPhone and Android?

Here are the options most people actually end up choosing between, on both platforms.

Two columns you will see on other "best free apps" pages are deliberately missing: star ratings and download counts. We cannot verify anyone else's, and printing them would be decoration rather than information.

The row worth staring at is the second one. The calculator already on your phone is the most-used hours calculator on both platforms, it is completely free, and it is the only one in the table that gets the arithmetic wrong.

What does a free hours calculator still have to do?

Free is not a feature. Before the price matters, the tool has to survive an ordinary week:

• Add and subtract in base 60. 8:45 + 7:30 is 16:15, not 16.75 and certainly not 15.75.
• Cross midnight. A 22:00 → 06:00 shift is 8:00, not a negative number.
• Convert to decimal on demand. Payroll wants 8.25; you want to type 8:15. Both, without retyping.
• Keep what you entered. A total you cannot look up next Friday is not a record.
• Get the numbers out. CSV for payroll or a spreadsheet, PDF for a person who has to read it.
• Work with no signal. Time cards get filled in in stock rooms, basements and car parks.

Most free options fail at least one of these. The built-in calculator fails the first. Web calculators fail the last three. Free tiers of cloud trackers usually do all six, but only while you are signed in and connected.

A real week, run through each kind of free

Here is an ordinary five-day week with unpaid lunches, the kind that produces a suspiciously round number at the end.

Check the totals two ways, because a total you have only computed once is a guess. Adding the paid column in H:MM: the minutes are 15 + 50 + 0 + 0 + 55 = 120, which is 2:00; the hours are 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 6 = 38; so the week is 40:00. Going the other way, elapsed minus breaks is 42:45 − 2:45 = 40:00. Same answer.

Now the same week through each kind of free tool:

1. The built-in calculator. You type the paid column as it looks: 8.15 + 8.50 + 8.00 + 8.00 + 6.55. It answers 39.20. That is 0.8 of an hour short — 48 minutes — because 8:15 is 8.25, not 8.15. At $22.00 an hour the week is $880.00 and the calculator says $862.40. Repeat that every week for a year and it is 41.6 hours and $915.20.
2. A free web time card calculator. It will get 40:00, because it is built for this. Then you close the tab and it is gone, and next week you type all ten clock times again.
3. Google Sheets or Excel. Also 40:00, provided the total cell is formatted [h]:mm rather than h:mm. Leave it on the default and the sheet shows 16:00, having quietly wrapped past 24 hours. To get 40.00 for payroll, multiply the total by 24.
4. A free tier of a cloud tracker. Correct too, if you remembered to start and stop the timer at each of those ten moments. Tuesday's 17:20 finish is the one that does not get pressed.
5. An H:MM calculator. You type 8:15 + 8:50 + 8:00 + 8:00 + 6:55 the way it is written on the card, get 40:00, tap once for 40.00, and tap again for $880.00 at $22.00 an hour.

One more detail worth knowing, since payroll usually wants the decimal column filled in per day: rounding each day to two places here gives 8.25 + 8.83 + 8.00 + 8.00 + 6.92, which comes to exactly 40.00. That is luck. Tuesday's 8:50 is really 8.8333… and rounds down; Friday's 6:55 is 6.9166… and rounds up; the two errors happen to cancel. Convert the total rather than the days and you never have to rely on that — the method is in how to convert minutes to decimal hours.

Which free option should you actually pick?

Match the tool to how your day goes, not to the word on the store listing.

• You write times on paper or a card and total them later. An H:MM calculator. This is the majority of shift work, and it is what Hours is for.
• You sit at a desk and can press start and stop. A free tier of Clockify or Toggl Track. The timer is genuinely better than remembering, when you can actually use it.
• You need one total, once, and will never look at it again. A free web calculator. No install, no account, nothing kept — which is the point.
• You need per-project rates, formulas or an invoice. A spreadsheet. Format the totals as [h]:mm and multiply by 24 for decimal hours.
• Someone else has to approve the hours. Whatever your employer's system is. Yours is the copy you check it against — see how to read a timesheet.

Where Hours is the wrong tool

It is a calculator, so it does calculator things and nothing else. Hours has no live start/stop timer, so if you want the app to run in the background while you work, use a tracker instead. It has no projects, no clients and no invoicing. It has no team features: no approvals, no manager view, no shared rota. And nothing syncs between your phone and anything else, which is the direct consequence of it having no account and no server — the same reason it works with no signal and keeps your pay data on your own device. If you need any of those, one of the other rows in the table is the better answer.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best free hours calculator app for iPhone and Android?

Whichever is free in the way you need. To type times in after the shift and get a correct total, you want an H:MM calculator — Hours is free with no ads, no tracking and no account, works offline, converts to decimal in one tap and exports to CSV or PDF. For a running timer with projects and team reports, a free plan from Clockify or Toggl Track does more, at the cost of an account and a connection.

Is there an hours calculator that works without an internet connection?

Yes — anything that does the arithmetic on the device. Hours runs entirely on the phone, so it works in a basement or on a plane, and nothing you type leaves the device. Web calculators need a connection by definition, and cloud trackers can queue entries offline but expect to sync.

Why does my phone calculator say 39.20 when I worked 40 hours?

Because it is adding base-10 numbers, not time. Typing 8:15 as 8.15 claims fifteen hundredths of an hour, but 15 minutes is 0.25. The week above is exactly 40:00, and typed as decimals it comes to 39.20 — 0.8 of an hour, or 48 minutes, gone. The full explanation is in why your phone's calculator can't add time.

Do free time card apps show ads or sell my data?

Some do — which is why the word free is worth interrogating. Ad-supported apps and free web calculators are paid for by advertising, which usually means an ad SDK or page trackers. Free tiers of cloud trackers are paid for by the customers who upgrade, and your timesheet sits on their servers under their privacy policy. Hours has no ads, no tracking and no account, and keeps everything on the device. Read the privacy label of anything you are about to trust with a pay record.

Can I export a timesheet to CSV or PDF for free?

Yes, though export is the feature most often held back on a free tier, so confirm it before you rely on it. Hours exports CSV and PDF at no cost — CSV for payroll or a spreadsheet, PDF for a person who has to read and sign it. See how to export a timesheet to CSV or PDF for which format goes where.

Is Hours free on both iPhone and Android?

Hours is free on the iPhone App Store, where it has been available since 2015, with no ads and no in-app purchases. The Android build is on Google Play, and the badge on our download section goes live with the public listing. Both versions do the same job.