Compare · Employee monitoring
WorkMonitor vs WorkTime
Non-invasive monitoring that positions itself on privacy: no screenshots, no keystroke content.
Written from public materials and reviewed September 7, 2026. Check anything here against WorkTime’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
We chose a privacy-first tool deliberately. Does adding capture and proof undo that?
Only if you turn capture on, and the narrow configuration you have now is expressible here: no screenshots, no keystroke content, activity from work edges only. What the proof layer adds is a way for the people being measured to see and contest their own record — which is a privacy property, not a trade against one.
What We See — every person's own view of their record
What WorkMonitor ships, with its real status
- WORM-anchored certificates (from a finalized invoice)
- Public no-login verifier
- Selective disclosure
Switching
Bringing your WorkTime history across
Nobody switches tools if it means abandoning a year of history. Export yours as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns. There is no dedicated WorkTime preset yet, so expect to line the columns up once rather than not at all.
The columns your export needs to line up with
- date
- minutes
- project
- task
- note
Six columns, mapped once on the first import. Rows that cannot be normalised still pass through, so the importer reports exactly which ones need attention rather than rejecting the file.
After the import
Where your WorkTime 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.
Insights — focus, deep work and meeting load, week by week
When WorkTime is the better answer
You want the narrowest possible capture and nothing else, no proof layer, no billing, no payroll.
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 WorkTime
Answered about what WorkMonitor does, including where the answer is no.
- Can WorkMonitor run without taking any screenshots?
- Yes. Capture policy is per team and per region and screenshots can be off entirely, leaving the work-edge record — repositories, tickets, documents, active-tab domains — which is what the analytics and the proof layer are built from anyway.
- Does WorkMonitor log keystroke content?
- No. The agents count key events to derive activity; they do not read or store what was typed. That is a property of the agent rather than a setting an administrator can reverse.
- How do I move my WorkTime data into WorkMonitor?
- Export it as CSV and the importer maps it onto our columns — email, date, minutes, project, task, note. There is no dedicated preset for this vendor yet, so the columns get lined up once on the first import. Only the hours move. Nothing about the import widens what is captured going forward — that stays governed by the policy you set per team and per region.
- What privacy controls does WorkMonitor give employees?
- A view of their own record, the breakdown behind every score, the log of who accessed it, a pause control, and a dispute route carrying a right to human review. Consent is recorded against a policy version, so a policy change is a new consent rather than a silent one.
- Is WorkMonitor GDPR compliant?
- The product ships the mechanisms a lawful programme needs — per-region capture policy, versioned consent, subject access, dispute handling, retention controls and an append-only access log — plus written guidance for 32 jurisdictions. Compliance is a property of your programme, not a badge a vendor can grant you.
- What does WorkMonitor cost if we turn most capture off?
- The same — price is per seat, not per signal, so a deliberately narrow configuration costs what a broad one costs. Two seats are free, and every tier is published.
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 HubstaffTime tracking with screenshots, activity rates and GPS, aimed at distributed teams that bill by the hour.
- 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.
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.