Time Tracking for Freelance Developers
Built for solo freelance developers working on a mix of hourly contracts and fixed-price projects.
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Where the rate slips
Freelance developers live in a constant tension between hourly and fixed-price work. Hourly contracts are easy to bill, but they cap your upside. Fixed-price projects promise more, and then punish you hard when an estimate is wrong. The problem is that without tracking, a fixed bid can go underwater for weeks before you feel it. You just feel busy.
CronLoom keeps your floor in view. Set the floor rate you decided your time is worth, track across clients and projects with a one-click timer (and offline mobile for when you're debugging away from the desk), and CronLoom keeps an eye on the work that doesn't map to an hourly rate at all: the moment a fixed bid's real rate drifts below your floor, it flags it.
The leak
The fixed-price trap
You quote $8,000 for a project you estimate at 80 hours, a tidy $100/hour. Then the scope creeps, the integration fights back, and you spend 140 hours. The real rate is $57/hour, not $100, and the fee never moves to warn you. Set your floor at, say, $85, and CronLoom flags that bid the moment it drifts under — while there's still room to renegotiate scope or price the next one for the truth, instead of finding out at year's end that you trained yourself to chase the wrong work.
The numbers you'll see
What CronLoom shows you
- Every fixed-price project whose real rate (fee ÷ hours) has slipped below the floor you set.
- Which clients and project types actually pay your floor per hour, hourly vs fixed.
- Billable vs non-billable time, so you can see what code reviews, meetings and setup really cost you.
- Projected income for the month as contracts run.
Not sure what to charge in the first place? Try the free rate calculator. Already invoicing? See what an hour really pays with the effective hourly rate calculator.
Questions, answered straight
Frequently asked questions
- Can I track time across multiple dev clients?
- Yes. Structure entries by client and project so you can bill and analyze each separately, and see which ones stay above your floor rate and which slip below it.
- Does it work for fixed-price work, not just hourly?
- That's the point. Log the hours even when the project is fixed-price, and CronLoom computes its real rate (fee ÷ hours) and flags it the moment that rate slips below the floor you set.
- Is there a desktop or CLI timer?
- CronLoom is a web app plus native iOS and Android apps, all with a one-click timer and offline support. There's no separate desktop or CLI app today; the web timer is built to live in an always-open tab.