Timely is an AI-powered automatic time tracker built around its Memory feature. Compare pricing, features, pros, cons, and alternatives.
Timely is an automatic time tracking application built by Memory AS, a Norwegian company founded in 2013 in Oslo by Mathias Mikkelsen. Rather than requiring users to start and stop timers for each task, Timely's core Memory feature runs quietly in the background, capturing every application, document, and website a person interacts with throughout the day and reconstructing a private, visual timeline of their work.
Users review that timeline and convert blocks of activity into logged time entries with a click, rather than remembering to track time in real time. Because the raw Memory data is private to each individual by default and only summarized time gets shared with managers or clients, Timely markets itself as a privacy-respecting alternative to heavier employee-monitoring software that captures screenshots or keystrokes.
The company raised a $14 million funding round in 2021 to expand its AI-driven productivity tooling and operates as a distributed team of roughly 40 people across about 20 countries, serving more than 5,000 businesses across 160-plus countries, with consultancies, agencies, and other client-billing professional services firms as its primary audience.
Timely's Memory Tracker automatically records app usage, documents, meetings, and browser activity on Windows and macOS, using AI to group related activity into suggested time entries that users can approve, edit, or discard, eliminating the need for manual timers. AI Timesheets extend this by auto-generating draft timesheets from the recorded activity for faster weekly time approval.
A project dashboard gives visibility into billable hours, budgets, and team capacity in real time, while planned time tracking lets managers schedule and forecast work against project budgets ahead of time. Team management tools support capacity planning, overtime and undertime tracking, and multi-currency billing for agencies working with international clients.
Because raw activity data stays private to the individual, Timely emphasizes employee trust alongside accuracy, positioning Memory as a way to improve time-tracking completeness without turning tracking into surveillance.
Timely's Starter plan costs around $11 per user per month (annual billing), capped at 5 users, and includes automatic time tracking, AI timesheets, a project dashboard, billable hours tracking, and support for up to 20 projects. The Premium plan costs around $20 per user per month, supports up to 50 users, and adds planned time tracking, team management, and budgeting and cost management tools.
The Unlimited plan costs around $28 per user per month and removes the user cap while adding capacity management, overtime/undertime tracking, and support for 50-plus currencies. Larger teams of 30 or more users can move to an Unlimited+ tier that adds dedicated onboarding and regular check-ins with a customer success team. Annual billing offers up to a 22% discount compared to monthly billing, and a 14-day free trial is available on all plans.
Timely is used for automatic time tracking, primarily by consultancies, agencies, and professional services firms that bill clients by the hour.
Memory runs in the background on macOS and Windows, using AI to record app, document, and browser activity and reconstruct a private, editable daily timeline that users convert into time entries.
Timely's Starter plan costs around $11 per user per month, Premium around $20, and Unlimited around $28, all billed annually with a monthly option available at a higher rate.
Timely is developed by Memory AS, a Norwegian company founded in 2013 in Oslo by Mathias Mikkelsen.
Yes, raw Memory activity data is private to the individual user by default; only summarized time entries are visible to managers or shared with clients.
Yes, Timely offers a 14-day free trial across its plans.
Timely uses private, AI-driven automatic tracking without screenshots, while Time Doctor is a heavier employee-monitoring tool that captures screenshots and detailed activity data visible to managers.
Yes, the Unlimited plan includes capacity management along with overtime and undertime tracking for team workload planning.