Clockify and Toggl Track were the only two time tracking products named in all six of the answers we measured, 6 of 6 each. No other product matched them. We put six buyer-phrased questions to ChatGPT and Gemini, gave each one a single live web search, and recorded every product named and every source cited on August 3, 2026. The six ran from the plain "best time tracking software" to "best free," "most affordable," "best for small teams," "what should I use" and "recommendations."
Two products came one answer short. Harvest and QuickBooks Time were each named in 5 of 6 answers, 83%, and for both the single miss was the same: neither showed up when the question asked for free tools. A middle tier of three business-focused tools, Replicon, Scoro and Timely, landed in 4 of 6 answers, 67% each, and every one of them disappeared from both money questions.
How the shortlist changed with the question
The list AI hands a buyer is not fixed. It rewrites itself around the wording, and the six answers show it in the open.
The bare "best time tracking software" answer named 8 products: Toggl Track, QuickBooks Time, Clockify, TimeCamp, Harvest, Replicon, Timely and Scoro. The "best free" answer named only 6, and it was a different set: Clockify, Toggl Track, TimeCamp, Timesheet, Jibble and My Hours. Five of the eight "best" names, Harvest, QuickBooks Time, Replicon, Timely and Scoro, dropped out the moment the buyer said "free."
The "most affordable" answer named 7: Clockify, Toggl Track, My Hours, QuickBooks Time, Harvest, Paymo and Jibble. QuickBooks Time and Harvest, both absent from the free list, came back for "affordable." My Hours behaved the opposite way, named in 3 of 6 answers but only on the "free," "affordable" and "recommendations" questions, never for the bare "best." TimeCamp split oddly too, named in 2 of 6 answers but only on the plain "best" and "best free" questions.
Two products rode a single question each. Apploye was named in exactly 1 of 6 answers, only on "what time tracking software should I use." Timesheet was named in exactly 1 of 6 answers, only on "best free." If you measured just the bare "best" query, you would never learn that either exists in the AI's vocabulary for this category.
Where the answers came from
Three domains fed all six answers, 6 of 6 each: reddit.com, zapier.com and myhours.com. A community forum, a software roundup and a vendor's own blog, tied at the top. Apploye's site was next at 5 of 6. Beyond Zapier, two more roundups fed answers: thedigitalprojectmanager.com in 2 of 6 and personelle.com in 1 of 6.
The most important pattern is in the vendor domains. Seven companies had their own website cited as a source and their product named in the results: clockify.me fed 3 answers (Clockify named 6 of 6), myhours.com fed 6 (My Hours named 3 of 6), apploye.com fed 5 (Apploye named 1 of 6), paymoapp.com fed 3 (Paymo named 2 of 6), timecamp.com fed 2 (TimeCamp named 2 of 6), quickbooks.intuit.com fed 1 (QuickBooks Time named 5 of 6) and timesheet.io fed 1 (Timesheet named 1 of 6). The pages these vendors publish, usually a "best time tracking software" post that also lists rivals, are read straight into the answer.
There is one clean counter-example. teamwork.com was cited in 2 of 6 answers, yet Teamwork the product was named in 0 of 6. Their roundup helped shape the answer while recommending other people's tools. Being the source is not the same as being the pick.
Review directories barely registered. G2 appeared in 2 of 6 answers, on the "small teams" and "most affordable" questions, and Capterra did not appear once. Quora showed up in 2 of 6 and YouTube in 2 of 6, so a Reddit thread, a Quora answer or a YouTube video was each as likely to feed these answers as the biggest review directory in the category.
What gets a product named here
The pattern across all six answers is blunt: the source list decides the shortlist, not market share. Timesheet is a tool most buyers have never heard of, and it was named in 1 of 6 answers for one reason, timesheet.io sat among the seven sources on the "best free" question. Teamwork is a known brand whose domain fed 2 of 6 answers, and it was named 0 times because the lists that formed the answers left it off.
So a vendor here does not start with a bigger budget. They start with these exact pages. Get into the Reddit and Quora threads that fed 6 and 2 of the answers. Get onto Zapier's roundup, cited in all 6. Get into the comparison posts on myhours.com and apploye.com, which fed 6 and 5 answers between them. Publish your own honest roundup, because seven vendor domains here were read into the results. The answer is built from a specific, findable set of pages, and you can go be present on them.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Clockify | 6 of 6 | 100% |
| Toggl Track | 6 of 6 | 100% |
| Harvest | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| QuickBooks Time | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Replicon | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Scoro | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Timely | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| My Hours | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Jibble | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Paymo | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| TimeCamp | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Apploye | 1 of 6 | 17% |
| Timesheet | 1 of 6 | 17% |
We do not sell time tracking software, so Glotier is correctly absent from all six of these answers, and we would not want it faked in. But this measurement is exactly what we run for a customer's own category: the questions buyers actually ask, a record of who ChatGPT and Gemini name, and the source pages behind each answer so you know what to go influence. If you want to see where your product stands in your own category, the check is free, takes about a minute, and needs no account.