The Best Jira Timesheet Apps in 2026, Compared

Jira records time spent on issues, but that is where its time tracking ends. There are no timesheets, no approval workflow, no vacation tracking, and no answer to the question every manager asks on Friday: did my team log their hours this week?

So teams go to the Atlassian Marketplace, where the Time Tracking category has dozens of apps that look identical in screenshots. This comparison covers the five most established Jira Cloud time tracking apps plus our own Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals) by Codecove. It focuses on the differences that surface only after you install: how approvals are enforced, where vacations live, where your data is stored, and what the invoice looks like at 50 or 100 users.

A disclosure up front: this comparison is written by Codecove, the team behind Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals). Every fact about the other apps below comes from their public Marketplace listings, vendor documentation and user reviews, with data collected in July 2026.

The short version

Your priority	Best fit
Timesheets, approvals, time off and capacity reports in a single app	Timesheets for Jira by Codecove
AI suggestions that reconstruct your week from calendars and commits	Tempo Timesheets
Timers that start automatically when an issue moves to In Progress	Clockwork Pro
Resource scheduling and workload planning first, timesheets second	ActivityTimeline
Cost and rate reporting with configurable worklog attributes	WorklogPRO
Plain timesheet reports and dashboard gadgets, nothing more	Time Tracker

What we compared

Feature lists on the Marketplace all say "time tracking, reports, approvals". The differences that decide whether an app survives in your company are less visible:

1. Where worklogs are stored. As native Jira worklogs, or in the vendor's own database. This decides whether Jira reports and other apps see your hours, and what happens if you ever leave.
2. How approvals are enforced. Some apps lock approved periods properly, some only lock them inside their own UI while the Jira API and mobile app happily write around the lock.
3. Whether time off is a real feature. Several popular apps track vacations by logging fake hours against a shared "Vacation" issue. That corrupts both your worklog data and your capacity math.
4. Where the app's data lives. Atlassian is splitting the Marketplace into apps that run inside its own cloud (Forge) and apps that ship your data to vendor servers (Connect). Security teams have started asking.
5. What it costs at real team sizes, including the add-on apps some vendors require for a complete workflow.

Feature comparison

	Timesheets for Jira by Codecove	Tempo Timesheets	Clockwork Pro	ActivityTimeline	WorklogPRO	Time Tracker
Native Jira worklogs, no lock-in	✅	❌ stored in Tempo cloud	✅	⚠️ synced copy on vendor AWS	✅	✅
Weekly timesheet grid	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	⚠️ reports only
Calendar with drag and drop	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
Multi-stage approval workflow	✅ sequential and parallel stages, any/all rules	⚠️ single period-based flow	⚠️ single approver	❌ period lock only	⚠️ project-based flow	❌ none
Approval audit trail	✅ immutable snapshots	✅ period close	⚠️ lock bypassable via API	⚠️ lock only	⚠️ enforced only in own UI	❌
Built-in time off and leave	✅ requests, types, month grid	❌ log time on "internal issues"	❌	✅	❌ same workaround	❌
Time off reduces capacity	✅ automatic	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌
Capacity and utilization reports	✅ included	⚠️ separate paid app	⚠️ overtime flags only	✅	❌	⚠️ time balance only
Team compliance report	✅	✅	⚠️	⚠️	❌	❌
AI assistant	✅ Rovo agent	✅	✅ Rovo agent	❌	❌	❌
Jira dashboard gadgets	✅	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅
Export	CSV, Excel, PDF	Excel, CSV, PDF	Excel	Excel	Excel, PDF	Excel, CSV
Runs natively on Forge, data stays in Atlassian	✅	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅
Everything in one app	✅	❌ planning and billing sold separately	⚠️ planning sold separately	✅	✅	✅
Free tier	✅ unlimited users (early access)	❌ trial only	⚠️ up to 10 users	❌ trial only	⚠️ up to 10 users	⚠️ up to 10 users

Annual cost at real team sizes

List prices for Jira Cloud, July 2026:

Users	Timesheets for Jira by Codecove	Tempo Timesheets	Clockwork Pro	ActivityTimeline	WorklogPRO	Time Tracker
10	$0	$100	$0	$100	$0	$0
50	$0	$2,605	$650	$1,250	$950	$455
100	$0	$5,210	$1,300	$2,500	$1,900	$910

Two things the table does not show:

• Apps are licensed for your full Jira user count. Every Atlassian-billed cloud app must match your Jira license size: if 300 people have Jira access and 40 of them log time, you pay for 300. At Tempo's per-user rate this hurts the most, and it is the most cited reason in "Tempo alternative" threads on Atlassian Community.
• Add-on economics. With Tempo, capacity planning and budgets are separate paid apps (Capacity Planner, Financial Manager), so the complete workflow costs a multiple of the timesheet line. Clockwork sells resource planning separately as well.

Timesheets for Jira by Codecove is free for any team size while in early access, with the commitment that users get clear notice long before any paid tier appears.

The apps, one by one

Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals)

The newest app in this list, built from the start on Atlassian Forge and designed around one idea: a timesheet workflow should not require three apps and a security review.

Time is logged where the work happens: in a panel on the Jira issue, in a weekly grid, or by dragging backlog items onto a calendar. The app registers as Jira's native time tracking provider, so every hour lands in Jira's standard time fields and stays visible to native reports, JQL and any other tool. Uninstall the app and your worklogs remain in Jira, untouched.

Approvals go beyond the usual single sign-off. You build stages, sequential or parallel, assign approvers by role or by name, and choose any-can-approve or all-must-approve per stage. Each approved submission is stored as an immutable snapshot, so what the manager approved is exactly what the auditor sees a year later.

Time off is a first-class feature: vacation, sick leave and custom absence types on a team month grid, with leave requests and a status trail. Absences automatically reduce expected hours, so capacity and compliance reports stay accurate without anyone logging fake hours on a "Vacation" ticket.

Reports cover capacity against actuals, time by project and per-user activity, with export to CSV, Excel and PDF and native Jira dashboard gadgets for hours, project breakdown and team compliance. A Rovo AI agent answers questions like "who is on leave next week" in plain language.

Because it runs natively on Forge, worklog data never leaves Atlassian's infrastructure. The vendor cannot read it. For a security questionnaire, that answer takes one sentence.

Pricing: free, all features, unlimited users while in early access.

Tempo Timesheets

The category incumbent, with around 28,000 installs and two decades of history. Its strongest card is AI-assisted time capture: Tempo reconstructs your week from Google and Outlook calendars, Slack, GitHub commits and IDE activity, and suggests worklogs you confirm with a click. For enterprises it brings SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certification, CapEx/OpEx categorization and over 100 integrations.

What to check before committing: worklogs are stored in Tempo's own cloud rather than as native Jira worklogs, so Jira reports and other apps do not see them, and migrating away later means exporting your data out of Tempo. Vacation tracking is handled by logging time on "internal issues". Capacity planning and budgeting are separate paid products. Its Marketplace rating stands at 4.1 across 892 reviews, with cost and complexity the recurring themes.

Clockwork Pro

Clockwork's signature is automatic time tracking driven by the Jira workflow: when an issue enters In Progress, a timer starts for the assignee, and a worklog is written when it leaves. For teams that live on the board and refuse to fill timesheets by hand, this automation is the reason to pick it. Worklogs are stored natively in Jira, and support quality is a consistent theme across its reviews (4.6 average).

What to check before committing: automatic timers follow the assignee only, so two people cannot track the same issue. There is no time off management and no capacity planning (the vendor sells planning as a separate app). Approved periods are locked only softly, since the Jira API and mobile app can still edit them. The backend runs on vendor infrastructure, and the formerly free tier became a paid product in 2025.

ActivityTimeline

ActivityTimeline is a resource management tool that includes timesheets, rather than the other way around. Its per-person timelines with drag-and-drop scheduling, workload heatmaps, skills-based availability and planned-versus-actual reporting are the deepest in this comparison, and it holds the highest rating here (4.7). It also has real vacation tracking that feeds capacity.

What to check before committing: the timesheet side is thin. There is no per-user submission and approval workflow, only period-level worklog locks. It is a Connect app that keeps a synced copy of your Jira data on the vendor's AWS in Frankfurt or Ohio, with a roughly ten-minute sync lag. There is no billing module yet and no AI. Reviewers mention a dated UI and a learning curve.

WorklogPRO

WorklogPRO shares the same architectural posture as Timesheets for Jira by Codecove: native Forge, "Runs on Atlassian", worklogs stored as plain Jira worklogs, full data residency coverage. Its strength is reporting and cost analytics: multi-level grouping including custom fields, pivots, rate tables with cost and revenue, hierarchical accounts with budgets, and scriptable worklog attributes.

What to check before committing: there is no time off feature (the documented workaround is logging hours on shared vacation issues) and no capacity planning. Approval period locks are enforced only inside WorklogPRO's own UI. The app has a small install base (under 1,000 Cloud installs) behind essentially a single developer, and the Cloud edition still trails its Data Center sibling.

Time Tracker (formerly Timesheet Reports & Gadgets)

One of the oldest timesheet apps on the Marketplace, acquired by Tempo in 2020 and now positioned as their entry-level reporter. It offers 13 report types, from timesheets and pivots to time-in-status, all available as Jira dashboard gadgets, plus scheduled report emails. Worklogs are native Jira worklogs and the price is the lowest of the paid options.

What to check before committing: it is a reporting tool only. There are no approvals, no time off tracking, no capacity planning and no rate management. Its REST API was shut down in November 2025, and within Tempo's portfolio the investment visibly goes to the flagship product.

Where your data lives now matters

Until recently every Jira app worked the same way: your data flowed to the vendor's servers and your security perimeter quietly grew by one company. Atlassian's Forge platform changed that, and the Marketplace is now split.

Tempo keeps worklogs in its own cloud (its 2026 move to Forge Remote changes the UI plumbing, not where the data sits). ActivityTimeline maintains a synced copy of your Jira on its AWS. Clockwork's backend and metadata run on vendor infrastructure, and its reviews include outages where timesheets went unavailable together with the vendor's servers.

Timesheets for Jira by Codecove, WorklogPRO and Time Tracker run natively on Forge: storage and processing stay inside Atlassian's cloud, under the data residency and compliance terms you already accepted for Jira itself. If your organization reviews subprocessors, this line alone can shorten the procurement cycle from weeks to a day.

How to choose

1. Map your actual workflow first. If you need logging, approvals, time off and capacity reporting, count how many apps each vendor needs to cover it. Two of the six options cover all four in one app: ActivityTimeline (planner-first) and Timesheets for Jira by Codecove (timesheet-first).
2. Test the approval lock. Approve a timesheet, then try to edit a worklog through the Jira mobile app or REST API. The result differs more between apps than any feature list suggests.
3. Ask where vacations go. If the answer involves logging hours on a shared Jira issue, your capacity reports will always need a mental asterisk.
4. Run the security question early. "Where is worklog data stored and processed?" is a one-sentence answer for Forge-native apps and a subprocessor review for the rest.
5. Start free. Timesheets for Jira by Codecove is free at any team size right now, so the cheapest way to find out what your team actually needs is to run it for a sprint and see which reports people open.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best timesheet app for Jira? There is no single answer; it depends on the shape of your need. For an all-in-one workflow of timesheets, multi-stage approvals, time off and capacity reports, Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals) covers it in a single app. Tempo Timesheets leads for AI-assisted capture at enterprise scale, Clockwork for automatic status-based timers, ActivityTimeline for resource planning.

What is the best free Jira time tracking app? Clockwork, WorklogPRO and Time Tracker are free for teams of up to 10 users. Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals) is currently free for unlimited users while in early access, with all features included: approvals, time off, reports and exports.

What are the best Tempo Timesheets alternatives? Teams usually leave Tempo over its pricing model (you pay for every Jira user, not only those who log time) and its worklog storage outside Jira. Alternatives that store worklogs natively in Jira include Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals), Clockwork Pro and WorklogPRO.

Which Jira timesheet apps keep data inside Atlassian? Apps built natively on Atlassian Forge store and process data inside Atlassian's infrastructure: Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals), WorklogPRO and Time Tracker. Connect-based apps such as Tempo and ActivityTimeline host part or all of your time data on their own servers.

Do Jira timesheet apps support approval workflows? Most offer some form of approval, with very different depth. Tempo and WorklogPRO have period-based submit-and-approve flows, Clockwork a single-approver flow, ActivityTimeline period locks only. Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals) supports multi-stage workflows with sequential or parallel stages, approvers by role or name, any-or-all rules, and immutable snapshots of every approved submission.

Can Jira track time without a plugin? Yes. Jira has a built-in time-spent field and a worklog history on every issue. What it lacks is everything around that field: timesheet views, approvals, time off and capacity reporting. Teams that bill clients or answer to auditors add a Marketplace app for exactly those layers.

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Comparison data collected in July 2026 from Atlassian Marketplace listings, vendor documentation and public user reviews. Prices are list prices for Jira Cloud and change over time; check each vendor's Marketplace page for current figures.

Curious how the integrated approach feels? Timesheets for Jira (Time Tracking & Approvals) installs from the Atlassian Marketplace in about two minutes, is free for any team size, and there is a live demo if you want to click around first.