ClockShark review (2026): pricing, features and who it's for

The three year term, and what to ask before signing

ClockShark's pricing page carries a line that most owners never scroll far enough to read: a contract term of three years applies to all pricing plans. We are reporting it plainly because it is the biggest buying consideration on this tool, bigger than any feature.

Work out what that means for you. Five users on Standard at $85 a month is $1,020 a year. Over three years, that is $3,060 you may be committing to. Ten users on Standard is $130 a month, so $4,680 over the same stretch. Those are not scary numbers on their own. They are numbers you should agree to on purpose.

So ask three questions before you sign. What happens if the crew shrinks in the winter? What does it cost to get out early? Is the term negotiable if you pay yearly? Vendors often flex on this, and a term that is quietly waived for one shop and enforced on another is worth pinning down in an email you keep.

What a five-person crew pays, and what Pro adds

Standard is $40 a month plus $9 per user. Five people cost $85, eight cost $112, and twelve cost $148. Pro is $60 plus $11 per user, which puts five people at $115 and twelve at $192. Billing is per active user and pro-rated for the days each person was active, so a seasonal crew does not pay for people who are not working.

Standard is not a stripped tier. It covers time and attendance, GPS, job and task tracking, drag and drop scheduling, manager roles and approvals, and the connections to other software. Pro adds paid time off, controls across departments, advanced job costing controls, and shift wrap-up and compliance forms.

The base fee is what makes small crews expensive per head. At two users you pay $58 a month, which is $29 per person. At twelve you pay $148, which is $12.33 each. This tool gets better value the more people you put on it, which is the opposite of how most owners assume per-user pricing works.

There is no free plan. The 14-day trial turns on every Pro feature and asks for no credit card, so use it on a real week of work, not a quiet one.

GPS that only runs while they are on the clock

This is the part you have to be able to explain to your crew. ClockShark stamps each punch with a location and, in its own words, only tracks locations while workers are clocked in. It drops a breadcrumb every 10 to 15 minutes during the shift and shows a live map of who is working now. Clock-in works with no signal and syncs when the phone finds one, which matters in a crawlspace or a basement.

Say that out loud at the tailgate meeting. It is on while you are paid, off when you are not. Crews accept location tracking when the boundary is clear and resent it when it is not, and you only get one shot at that conversation.

Geofencing is there too, so a punch from three towns away is visible instead of invisible. None of this makes anyone honest. It makes the argument short.

Crew Clock, job costing, and getting hours out

Crew Clock is the feature that earns its keep on a truck. A foreman builds a crew from a list and punches them all in from one phone, then still clocks or switches any one person on their own. That covers the older hand who does not carry a smartphone and the helper whose battery died at 10am. ClockShark's own pages do not list Crew Clock as a Pro-only feature, so it should come with Standard, but confirm it while you are asking about the contract.

Job costing is the other reason to be here. Labor cost is tracked by customer, job and task, and workers switch jobs and tasks mid-day without clocking out. So a two-stop day comes back split correctly instead of as eight hours in a lump. Pro adds tighter controls on top of that.

Getting hours out is where one owner-side complaint shows up. Timesheets export to QuickBooks, ADP and Sage, which covers most trade shops. But raw exports have caused work for at least one office: "I have a client in the construction space that uses Clockshark and needs help formatting the csv output from the app into something legible. Anybody else use Clockshark and have trouble with the awful output of time data to the csv?" If your payroll runs through one of the named connections, that will not touch you. If you plan to work from a spreadsheet, test the export during the trial.

Where owners push back

Two themes come up in owner discussions, and neither is about whether the software works.

The first is price at crew size. Base fee plus per user adds up in a way that annoys people who feel they are buying a clock: "When you've got 8 guys and each one costs $8-10/month on top of the base fee, it adds up quick for what's basically a clock in/clock out function." Another owner comparing tools landed in the same place, calling it stronger on job costing and dearer for it: "jibble’s decent for gps tracking but its UI feels clunky sometimes, Clockshark’s better for job costing tho it’s pricey". Both of those are fair. You are paying for the job costing. If you do not use it, you are overpaying.

The second is pace of change. A long-time customer watching newer apps in the same threads said the product feels behind: "I noticed a few of the apps mentioned here have some project management and communication features included with them. Makes my current app feel old and outdated. It’s pretty crazy how much they’ve changed in the past 5 or 6 years since we started with Clockshark." Take that as a scope point rather than a defect. This is a time and scheduling tool, not project management. Buying it hoping it becomes your job software will disappoint you.

The crew size this pays off at

The shop that gets full value has four to fifteen people, works at more than one site a day, and wants labor cost attached to a customer and a task. Standard at $40 plus $9 covers all of that. A five-person crew at $85 a month pays for itself if it kills one hour a week of chasing timesheets. Free phone support on the cheaper plan is rarer than it should be in this category.

Three owners should pick something else. If your whole team clocks in at one address and you never need job-level cost, Homebase charges by location instead of by person and a small shop can start free. If your books are already in QuickBooks Online and you mostly want hours to land in payroll, QuickBooks Time keeps it in one account. Check your payroll tier first, because it may already be included there. And if a three year commitment is not something you can sign this year, take that seriously rather than talking yourself into it. A monthly plan you can leave has value that does not appear on any feature list.

What owners actually say