Get Thy Bread vs Toggl Track
Both track your hours. The difference is who does the remembering, and whether an invoice comes out the other end.
The short version: Toggl Track is an excellent timer. If you are willing to start and stop it, it is accurate, mature, and works everywhere. Get Thy Bread exists for people who never reliably start the timer, and who want the invoice at the end without a second tool.
The core difference: who remembers
Toggl's model is that you tell it when work begins and ends. That model is precise when you follow it, and it produces nothing at all when you forget. Most freelancers who churn out of time trackers churn for that reason: the tool was fine, the habit was not.
Get Thy Bread inverts it. It reads the trail you already leave, which is the git commits in the folders you point it at plus the Claude and Cursor coding sessions you run, and drafts the day from that evidence. Once a day a menu-bar popover shows you what it saw and you confirm it or correct it. Nothing to start, nothing to stop, and a missed day waits for you instead of vanishing.
Side by side
| Toggl Track | Get Thy Bread | |
|---|---|---|
| How hours get captured | You start and stop a timer | It reads commits and coding sessions, you confirm |
| If you forget | The time is gone unless you reconstruct it | The day queues up and waits |
| Invoicing | Not its main job; most people add a second tool | Built in, and the invoice is the point |
| Built for | Individuals through to large teams | One freelancer with a client or two |
| Platform | Web, desktop, mobile, browser extensions | macOS only, Apple Silicon |
| Where data lives | Toggl's cloud | Your Mac |
| Pricing model | Free tier, then per user per month | One flat price, unlimited clients |
When Toggl is the better choice
Genuinely, often. Pick Toggl if any of these are true:
- You are not on a Mac. Get Thy Bread is macOS only, with no Windows, Linux, or web version. Toggl runs everywhere.
- You work with a team. Toggl is built for shared projects and reporting across people. Get Thy Bread is single player by design and will never have a manager dashboard.
- Your work leaves no digital trail. If you are a photographer, a therapist, or a consultant whose day is meetings and phone calls, there are no commits for Get Thy Bread to read. You can type entries in by hand, but you would be giving up the main advantage.
- You need billable rates per project member, budgets, and approvals. That is Toggl's territory.
When Get Thy Bread is the better choice
- You write code or design in files that live in folders, and that work is most of what you bill.
- You have tried three time trackers and abandoned all three.
- You want the invoice to already exist on the 1st, not to be a second evening of work.
- You would rather your working day not be uploaded to anyone's server.
The honest summary. If you reliably start timers, Toggl is a better and more mature product with a far wider platform reach, and you should keep using it.
If you don't, the accuracy of Toggl's timer is irrelevant, because you are reconstructing the month from memory anyway. That is the specific problem Get Thy Bread was built for.
Common questions
Is Get Thy Bread a good Toggl alternative?
For a solo freelancer on a Mac who bills one or a few clients, yes. Toggl is built around a timer you start and stop, and it is designed to scale to teams. Get Thy Bread has no timer at all: it reads your git commits and your Claude and Cursor sessions, drafts the day, and asks you to confirm it. It also produces the finished invoice, which Toggl on its own does not.
Does Toggl Track have invoicing?
Not as its core job. Toggl Track is a time tracking product, and most people pair it with a separate invoicing tool such as FreshBooks or Harvest. Get Thy Bread builds the timesheet and the invoice in one place, so there is nothing to export between tools.
Can I switch from Toggl to Get Thy Bread?
Yes. There is no import step to worry about because Get Thy Bread starts from your actual work history rather than from previously logged time. Point it at the folders where each client's work lives and it can draft days from the commits already in those repositories.
Get Thy Bread is free for 14 days, no credit card. It runs on your Mac, reads the work you already do, and has the invoice ready when the month turns over.
Download for Mac