Rize vs ActivityWatch: Which Is Better for Paid Coaching or Free Logging in 2026?

Pick Rize if you want to pay for AI that categorizes your app and website time, gives focus insights and produces client or team reports, starting at $9.99/mo billed annually. Pick ActivityWatch if you want free, open-source logging that stays on your device and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Dayflow, our product, fits Mac users who want an AI-written timeline with a local AI option.

Rize and ActivityWatch both record which apps and websites you use without asking you to start a timer. The real difference is what happens after that: Rize sends the data to the cloud and charges a subscription for AI that sorts it and turns it into focus insights, while ActivityWatch is free, open source, keeps everything on your device and leaves the interpretation to you.

Disclosure: Dayflow, the third tool in the tables below, is our product, and it is labeled as ours wherever it appears. This article compares what each vendor documents on its own pages, checked on October 4, 2026, with Dayflow’s details taken from its 2.2.0 release. It is a comparison of documentation, not a trial of the apps. For longer one-on-one pages, see Rize as a Dayflow alternative and ActivityWatch vs Dayflow.

Quick comparison

Tool	Best for	How it tracks	Price	Platforms
Rize	Paying for AI focus insights, client reports and team plans	Automatic app and website tracking with AI auto-categorization; optional Google Calendar	From $9.99/mo billed annually, or $12.99/month billed monthly; no free tier	Mac, Windows
ActivityWatch	Free, private, raw logging on almost any device	Active app, window title and away-from-keyboard status; browser extensions add tab title and URL; editor plugins add coding	Free	Windows, Mac, Linux, Android
Dayflow (ours)	An AI-written timeline of your Mac day, with a local AI option	One screen frame every 10 seconds; AI writes the day into a timeline	$0, MIT licensed; optional Pro at $20 a month	Mac (macOS 14 or later)

Key takeaways

• Rize is the paid coaching option. It lists AI categorization, AI chat and AI productivity and focus insights, metered in monthly AI credits. There is no free tier, only a 7-day trial with no credit card.
• ActivityWatch is the free logging option. No feature gates, no usage limits, no ads, MPL-2.0 licensed, and the vendor says data never leaves your device. It lists no AI features.
• Only Rize has team plans and client-ready reports. PDF and CSV client reports, an API, webhooks and Zapier all start at Pro.
• Only ActivityWatch covers Linux and Android. Rize lists Linux as not yet available, and neither tool has iOS.
• Dayflow (ours) sits between them on Mac. It is free under MIT, has AI write a timeline from screen frames, and can run that AI locally. It has no invoicing, payroll, team reports or website blocking.

What Rize does better

Rize’s argument is that raw logs are not useful until something sorts them. Its documentation describes automatic app and website tracking with AI auto-categorization and tagging, so a morning spent in an editor, a browser and a chat app becomes labeled blocks instead of a long list of window titles.

On top of the categories sit AI chat and what the vendor calls AI productivity and focus insights. That is the coaching half of this comparison. You are paying for software that interprets your day, not just records it.

Meeting time gets counted

You can connect Google Calendar so meetings show up next to computer activity. ActivityWatch’s pages do not list a calendar integration, so a day full of calls can look emptier in its data than it felt.

Reports you can hand to someone

On Pro and above, Rize produces client reports and scheduled reports in PDF and CSV. If a client, manager or accountant wants to see where hours went, that is a finished document rather than a data export you have to shape yourself.

It connects to other tools

Pro and above also include an API, webhooks, Zapier and MCP server access. MCP is a way for AI assistants to connect to outside data, so Rize data can be pulled into an assistant conversation on those plans.

Teams, Windows and older Macs

Rize has a Team plan at $29.99 per seat per month with annual billing, or $39.99 per seat billed monthly, and an Enterprise tier priced on request. It runs on Mac and Windows, supporting macOS Mojave 10.14.6 or later and Windows 10 or later, which reaches much older Macs than Dayflow does.

The trade-offs are stated plainly in the vendor’s own material. Data is hosted on Amazon Web Services, encrypted at rest and in transit. There is no permanently free tier, and Linux is not available yet.

What ActivityWatch does better

It costs nothing, with no gates

ActivityWatch describes itself as completely free and open source, with no feature gates, no usage limits and no ads. There is one plan and its price is zero. The site mentions an optional “AW Pro” patronage, but no price for it was confirmed; see the vendor’s site if you want to support the project.

Your data stays on your device

The vendor states that all data is stored on your own device and is never sent to any server. For anyone uneasy about a cloud service holding a minute-by-minute record of their computer use, that is the deciding line. We wrote more about that trade-off in time tracking without surveillance.

There is a cost to staying local. Sync between devices is still a work in progress, so if you use two computers, do not expect their histories to merge yet.

It runs almost everywhere

Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. If your week spans a Linux workstation, a MacBook and an Android phone, ActivityWatch is the only tool here that covers all of them. It has no iOS app.

It is built to be extended

The core watchers record the active application, the window title and whether you are away from the keyboard. Browser extensions add the active tab title and URL. Editor plugins add coding activity. You can write custom watchers and query everything through a local API, and the source is public under MPL-2.0.

That is what free logging looks like. ActivityWatch records what it was built to record and stops there. With no AI summaries listed, deciding whether Tuesday was a good focus day means reading the data yourself or writing something that reads it for you.

Head-to-head table

Capability	Rize	ActivityWatch	Dayflow (ours)
Automatic capture	Apps and websites, auto-categorized by AI	Active app, window title, away-from-keyboard; tab title and URL via browser extensions	One screen frame every 10 seconds
AI summaries and insights	AI categorization, AI chat, focus insights; metered by AI credits	None listed	AI writes a timeline of the day; runs locally, through your own provider, or via Pro
Reports and export	Client and scheduled reports in PDF and CSV (Pro and above)	Local API	Markdown export of a date range
Integrations	API, webhooks, Zapier, MCP server (Pro and above); Google Calendar	Custom watchers, local API, editor plugins	Markdown export
Invoicing	Not listed	Not listed	No
Team plans and reports	Team plan and Enterprise	Not listed	No team reports
Website blocking	Not listed	Not listed	No
Data location	Cloud, hosted on AWS with encryption at rest and in transit	Local only, never sent to a server	Recordings and timeline on your Mac; analysis location depends on the mode you choose
Free tier	None; 7-day trial, no credit card	Everything is free	Free app at $0
Platforms and license	Mac, Windows; closed source	Windows, Mac, Linux, Android; MPL-2.0	Mac (macOS 14+); MIT

“Not listed” means the vendor’s pages checked for this article do not mention the feature. It does not prove the feature is impossible, only that you should not count on it.

Pricing compared: what does one person pay per year?

Tool and plan	Listed price	One person, 12 months
Rize Basic, annual	$9.99/mo billed annually (500 AI credits/mo)	$119.88
Rize Basic, monthly	$12.99/month billed monthly	$155.88
Rize Pro, annual	$23.99/mo billed annually (1,000 AI credits/mo)	$287.88
Rize Max, annual	$39.99/mo billed annually (3,000 AI credits/mo)	$479.88
Rize Pro or Max, monthly	See the vendor’s pricing page	See the vendor’s pricing page
Rize Team	$29.99/seat/month annual, or $39.99/seat/month monthly	$359.88 or $479.88 per seat
Rize Enterprise	Custom, contact vendor	Not applicable
ActivityWatch	Free	$0
Dayflow free (ours)	$0	$0
Dayflow Pro (ours)	$20 a month	$240

For the coaching job, the cheapest Rize plan that fits is Basic on annual billing: $119.88 for a year of AI categorization and insights within 500 AI credits a month. If you also need client reports in PDF or CSV, an API or Zapier, the floor moves to Pro at $287.88 a year. One caution: Rize’s own pricing FAQ quotes an annual range that does not match the Max plan card, so confirm the current figure on Rize’s pricing page before you pay.

For the free logging job, ActivityWatch costs $0 a year with nothing held back. Dayflow’s free app also costs $0. If you use its Local AI mode, the cost is your own hardware; if you bring your own cloud provider, that provider’s charges apply. Dayflow Pro at $20 a month comes to $240 over twelve months. Our pricing page has the details.

When to choose Rize: who should pay for it?

Choose Rize if most of these are true:

• You want software to tell you something about your focus, not just hand you a log. AI categorization, chat and focus insights are the product.
• You bill clients or report to someone, and a PDF or CSV client report on Pro would save you building one by hand.
• You work on Windows, or on a Mac older than macOS 14.
• You manage a team and want per-seat plans with a shared view.
• You already automate with Zapier or webhooks, or want an AI assistant to reach your tracking data through MCP.
• You are comfortable with your activity data living on AWS under Rize’s encryption.

Use the 7-day trial with real work before paying. It has full feature access and does not need a card, so a week is enough to see whether the insights change anything you do.

When to choose ActivityWatch: is free logging enough?

Choose ActivityWatch if most of these are true:

• You want a record, not advice. Seeing that you spent three hours in a browser is useful to you without a model explaining it.
• Your data must stay on your device, with nothing sent to a server.
• You use Linux or Android, or switch between several operating systems.
• You write code and want editor plugins to log coding time.
• You like building your own views with custom watchers and the local API.
• You will not pay for time tracking at all.

The honest limit is effort. ActivityWatch gives you clean raw material and nothing on top. If you never get around to reading it, free logging turns into a database you collect and ignore. A quick way to see whether it is worth the effort is to estimate your week first with the where does my week go calculator and then compare that guess with a week of real logs.

Where both fall short: what does neither one tell you?

Both tools work from metadata: app names, window titles, URLs and, for ActivityWatch, away-from-keyboard status. Neither vendor lists any form of screen capture. That is a reasonable privacy choice, but it caps how much either tool can know. A window title like “Untitled document” or the name of a chat channel says where you were, not what you did. Rize’s AI can label that block “writing” or “communication”, yet the label still does not say which draft moved forward or what got decided.

The second gap is the trade between privacy and interpretation. Rize gives you AI interpretation, but in the cloud. ActivityWatch keeps everything local, but has no AI. Neither offers AI that reads your day while the analysis stays on your machine.

The third gap is billing. Neither vendor lists invoicing, and the tool in this article that comes closest is Rize with client reports on Pro. No tool in this comparison creates invoices.

Dayflow, the third option (ours)

Dayflow is our product, so weigh this section accordingly. It records the screen at one frame every 10 seconds and has AI write the day into a readable timeline. Because it sees the screen rather than only window titles, the timeline can describe the work itself, not just the app it happened in. Full recordings and the timeline are stored on your Mac.

You choose where the analysis runs. Local AI uses a supported model through Ollama or LM Studio, so screenshot analysis stays on-device, at the cost of your own hardware resources. Your own provider sends selected screenshots to a provider you configure, under its terms and charges. Dayflow Pro manages cloud analysis; under our privacy policy it deletes screenshots after processing and may retain activity data for sync. The full breakdown is on local and cloud processing. One caveat: if you connect a cloud assistant to your Dayflow data, that conversation is not local just because storage is.

You can export a date range as Markdown from Settings. AI summaries can miss or misinterpret work, so check them before sharing anything with a client or manager.

That covers the first two gaps on a Mac. It does not cover the third: Dayflow has no invoicing either.

Where Dayflow is the wrong pick

Dayflow is the wrong choice in several common situations, and in most of them one of the two tools above is the better answer:

• You use Windows, Linux or Android. Dayflow is Mac only. ActivityWatch covers all three, and Rize covers Windows.
• Your Mac runs something older than macOS 14. Dayflow will not install. Rize supports macOS Mojave 10.14.6 or later.
• You need team reports or per-seat plans. Dayflow has none. Rize’s Team plan is built for this.
• You need client reports in PDF or CSV, webhooks or Zapier. Rize Pro includes them. Dayflow exports Markdown only.
• You do not want any screen capture at all. Even with local storage and local AI, some people will not accept screenshots of their work. ActivityWatch records app and window data only and never sends it anywhere.
• You want raw per-window data to script against. ActivityWatch’s local API and custom watchers are designed for that.
• You need invoices, payroll approvals or website blocking. Dayflow does none of these, and neither Rize nor ActivityWatch lists them. Plan on a separate tool.

The bottom line: which should you install?

If you will pay for coaching, choose Rize. It is the only tool here that sorts your time with AI, explains it with focus insights, produces client reports and supports teams. Start with the 7-day trial, and expect to pay $119.88 a year on Basic or $287.88 on Pro if you need reports.

If you want free logging, choose ActivityWatch. It costs nothing, keeps your data on your own device, runs on four platforms and lets you extend it however you like. You do the interpreting.

If you are on a Mac running macOS 14 or later and want an AI-written account of your day without sending your screen to the cloud, Dayflow, our product, is free to try with Local AI. For a wider look at every time tracker for Mac, including tools built for timesheets and billing, see our roundup.

Frequently asked questions

Is Rize worth paying for compared with ActivityWatch?

It depends on whether you want interpretation or just records. Rize charges from $9.99/mo billed annually, or $12.99/month billed monthly, for AI categorization, AI chat and focus insights, with client reports on Pro and above. ActivityWatch is free and records the active app, window title, away-from-keyboard time and, with extensions, browser tabs. If you will read raw logs yourself, ActivityWatch covers the logging. If you want software to sort and explain your time, Rize is the paid option.

Does ActivityWatch have AI features like Rize?

No AI features are listed for ActivityWatch. It records app, window, browser and coding activity and exposes it through a local API, so any analysis is up to you or a script you write. Rize lists AI auto-categorization and tagging, AI chat, and AI productivity and focus insights, metered in monthly AI credits. Dayflow, our product, has AI write a timeline of your Mac day and can run that analysis locally through Ollama or LM Studio.

Is there a free version of Rize?

No. Rize has no permanently free tier. It offers a 7-day trial with full feature access and no credit card required. After that, the cheapest plan is Basic at $9.99/mo billed annually or $12.99/month billed monthly, with 500 AI credits a month. Pro is $23.99/mo billed annually and Max is $39.99/mo billed annually. For monthly prices on Pro and Max, see the vendor's pricing page at rize.io.

Where does Rize store my data compared with ActivityWatch?

Rize is a cloud service. The vendor states data is hosted on Amazon Web Services with encryption at rest and in transit. ActivityWatch states that all data is stored on your own device and is never sent to any server, which also means device sync is still a work in progress. If keeping activity data off third-party servers is a hard requirement, ActivityWatch fits that requirement and Rize does not.

Does ActivityWatch work on Linux and Android?

Yes. ActivityWatch runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. It has no iOS app. Rize runs on Mac and Windows, with Linux listed as not yet available. Dayflow, our product, is Mac only and needs macOS 14 or later. If any of your work happens on a Linux machine, ActivityWatch is the only one of these three that can record it.

Can Rize or ActivityWatch create client reports or invoices?

Rize creates client reports and scheduled reports in PDF and CSV on Pro and above, starting at $23.99/mo billed annually. ActivityWatch lists no report builder, but its local API lets you pull data into your own tooling. Neither vendor lists invoicing. Dayflow, our product, exports a date range as Markdown and does not create invoices or payroll approvals, so you would still need a separate billing tool for that.

Is Dayflow a better choice than ActivityWatch if I use Windows or Linux?

No. Dayflow is Mac only and requires macOS 14 or later, so it cannot record anything on Windows or Linux. ActivityWatch runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and Android, is free and keeps data on your device, which makes it the better pick for a mixed or non-Mac setup. If you need Windows plus AI insights and team plans, Rize also beats Dayflow there.

Which is better for a team, Rize or ActivityWatch?

Rize, based on vendor documentation. It has a Team plan at $29.99 per seat per month with annual billing, or $39.99 per seat billed monthly, plus a custom-priced Enterprise tier. ActivityWatch lists no team features and stores data only on each person's device. Dayflow, our product, has no team reports either. For a manager who needs a shared view of hours, Rize is the only fit among these three.

Is ActivityWatch really completely free?

The vendor describes ActivityWatch as completely free and open source under the MPL-2.0 license, with no feature gates, no usage limits and no ads. Its site mentions an optional AW Pro patronage for people who want to support the project, but no price for it was confirmed. The software itself has a single plan, and that plan costs nothing.

Can I get AI summaries of my work without sending data to the cloud?

Not with Rize, which processes data in the cloud, and not with ActivityWatch, which lists no AI features. Dayflow, our product, offers a Local AI mode where a supported model runs on your Mac through Ollama or LM Studio, so screenshot analysis stays on-device. That needs your own hardware resources. If you later connect a cloud assistant to your Dayflow data, that conversation is not local.