Compare · Employee monitoring
WorkMonitor vs Hubstaff
Time tracking with screenshots, activity rates and GPS, aimed at distributed teams that bill by the hour.
Written from public materials and reviewed September 7, 2026. Check anything here against Hubstaff’s own site before you decide, and everything below about WorkMonitor is read from the same catalogue as our product pages.
Watching people work, or proving the work happened
workmonitor.vsScreenshot-based monitoring
What the evidence is
With WorkMonitor
A work-edge record built from commits, tickets, documents and active-tab URLs, with no pixel capture in the proof path.
Screenshot-based monitoring
Screenshots on an interval, plus an activity percentage derived from keyboard and mouse events.
Showing a client
With WorkMonitor
A signed, timestamped certificate they verify on a public page, disclosing only the fields you choose.
Screenshot-based monitoring
Export the screenshots into a deck, which exposes the client’s own data to prove you worked on it.
What "productive" means
With WorkMonitor
Focus and deep-work stretches with category overrides you control, and every score opens into its breakdown.
Screenshot-based monitoring
Input volume, which rewards fidgeting and penalises reading, thinking and pair work.
When a decision is challenged
With WorkMonitor
A transparency view of their own record, a dispute route with a right to human review, and a log of who looked — so the decision holds up when somebody pushes back on it.
Screenshot-based monitoring
Data collected about a person that the person cannot see and cannot contest, which is where the argument starts.
Capture cadence
With WorkMonitor
Randomised cadence, plus integrity signals that detect simulated input and downgrade any proof built on it.
Screenshot-based monitoring
A fixed interval, which everybody learns within a week and works around.
Operating across borders
With WorkMonitor
Capture policy per region, consent recorded against a version, and written guidance for 32 jurisdictions.
Screenshot-based monitoring
One policy applied everywhere, and a legal review that starts from scratch in each new market.
The question we get asked
Our managers are used to opening a folder of screenshots. Will they trust a record without one?
They get something a screenshot cannot give them: a record that says which repository, ticket or document the hour touched, and a certificate the client can verify without seeing any of it. Screenshot capture is still available if you want it — it just sits under a policy you set per team and per region, and it is not what the proof is built from.
Timesheets — submitted hours against recorded hours
What WorkMonitor ships, with its real status
- WORM-anchored certificates (from a finalized invoice)
- Public no-login verifier
- Selective disclosure
Switching
Your Hubstaff history comes across
Nobody switches tools if it means abandoning a year of history. The importer carries a mapper for Hubstaff exports, so the CSV you already have is the CSV we take — and it lands on the same ledger as everything captured after it.
What the importer reads from a Hubstaff export
emailmemberuserdate- date
timedurationhours- minutes
project- project
taskto-dotodo- task
notenotesdescription- note
Durations arrive as a clock duration like 1:30:00 and are parsed into whole minutes. First matching header wins, so a renamed column still lands.
After the import
Where your Hubstaff history lands
Imported hours sit on the same ledger as everything captured after them, so a week from before the switch and a week from after it are read the same way. Corrections append with an author and a reason rather than overwriting, which is what lets you answer why a number changed long after anyone remembers.
Controls — capture policy, applied on the device
When Hubstaff is the better answer
You want continuous GPS breadcrumbing of a field workforce through the working day. We record presence at a job site when someone clocks in, and deliberately do not trace a route between them.
If that is the deciding requirement, buy that instead. Nothing on this page is worth reading if the unflattering half is missing from it, which is also why every capability above carries its real status rather than a tick.
Questions
Moving from Hubstaff
Answered about what WorkMonitor does, including where the answer is no.
- Can I import my Hubstaff data into WorkMonitor?
- Yes, and without lining columns up by hand. The importer carries a mapper for Hubstaff exports: it reads email, member or user for the person, date for the day, and time, duration or hours for the length, parsing clock durations like 1:30:00 into minutes. Projects, tasks and notes come across on the same pass.
- Does WorkMonitor take screenshots?
- It can, and it does not have to. Capture is a policy rather than a default: you choose blurred, full or off, per team and per region, and the cadence is randomised rather than fixed so nobody can time their week around it. None of the proof layer depends on pixels.
- How does WorkMonitor handle a crew clocking in from a phone?
- Through the browser the phone already has, with nothing to install. The punch carries the device GPS fix, is tested against the radius of every job site you have configured, and stores that verdict on the punch. What it does not do is follow anyone between sites, which is the deliberate difference from a breadcrumbing tool.
- How does WorkMonitor measure productivity without activity rates?
- By focus and deep-work stretches rather than input volume, because counting keystrokes rewards fidgeting and penalises reading, thinking and pair work. Every score opens into the activity behind it, so a number a person disputes can be inspected rather than argued about.
- Can a client verify my hours without a WorkMonitor account?
- Yes. A finalized invoice seeds a signed, timestamped certificate on a public verifier page. Your client checks it themselves, with no login, and sees only the fields you chose to disclose rather than a folder of screenshots of their own work.
- What does WorkMonitor cost per user?
- Two seats are free with no card. Above that it is per seat, published in full on the pricing page with every tier listed — there is no quote-on-request tier, so you can check the number rather than ask for it.
Ask AI
Ask anything about your team
Plain-language answers about your own workforce data, with the figures behind them. Pick a question to see how it reads.
Pick a question above and WorkMonitor AI will answer from your team's real numbers.
Also comparing
Other employee monitoring tools
- WorkMonitor vs ActivTrakWorkforce analytics that classifies app and website use into productivity dashboards for coaching.
- WorkMonitor vs Time DoctorWorkforce analytics and performance reporting built around tracked time and distraction alerts.
- WorkMonitor vs InsightfulTime and activity tracking for hybrid teams, with visible and stealth monitoring modes.
- WorkMonitor vs ProdoscoreA single productivity score derived from activity across the business tools a team already uses.
Take these with you
The software is the easy part of a rollout
Here is what we would send a manager doing one for the first time: how to read a productivity number, what to say to a remote team before anything is installed, and a policy you can adopt as written.
Point it at one team for a week.
Create the account, put the agent on a handful of desks, and leave it alone. On Friday you read the week instead of reconstructing it: hours against their projects, focus and idle per person, and the timesheets already filled in.
Free for two seats. No card, and no sales call to sit through.