AstrolinksFreelancing with several clients means running a tiny business on the side of your real work. You do the job. Then you also have to remember how long each part took, tell each client what happened, and send the bill on time. Time tracking for freelancers usually means a timer you forget to start. Astrolinks takes a different route: it notices what you work on, and you check it.
The parts of the week nobody pays you for
Most freelancers we picture have three to five clients at once. A retainer here. Two hourly projects there. A small one-off job that keeps growing.
The paid work is fine. It's the admin around it that wears you down:
- "Quick update?" messages that arrive in the middle of a focused hour
- a Friday afternoon spent rebuilding the week from memory for invoices
- the timer that ran through lunch, or never started at all
- guessing whether that 40-minute call belongs to client A or client B
Each of these is small. Together they eat an evening a week.
How Astrolinks works for a freelancer
Your time sorts itself by client
Astrolinks is a desktop app for Mac with one window and an hourglass in the menu bar. While it runs, it notes which app and window are in front every 5 seconds, and the web address in supported browsers. It never records keystrokes, screenshots or your clipboard.
Add your clients under Clients, each with a rule: a word in the window title ("Brightline"), a website, or an app. Today's log then shows whose time each entry was. When something lands in the wrong place, click the name and fix it. Pick Always and the rule learns.
Short breaks are taken back as time away. Calls keep counting if you leave that setting on.
Updates that write themselves
At the end of the day, press Summarize my day. Each client gets a tab with a draft update built from their time and your quick notes. Edit it, then Copy, Send to Slack or open an Email draft. On Friday you can recap the whole week for each client on the same page.
Want it to sound more like you? Press Write with AI: Astrolinks AI is included (Free has 5 AI reports a month, Pro 150 AI writes and edits), or add your own Anthropic key. Then fix the draft by typing what's wrong, like "I also fixed the Calendly links, about 20 minutes". It's optional. Without AI, the summary is still written on your computer.
Hours and one-click invoices
Add an hourly rate per client, in any currency. Hours shows This week on Free, and with Pro, This week, Last week, This month, Last month or any two dates. You see each client's hours, the amount, and a table by day.
With Pro, Make invoice turns one client's hours into an invoice with numbered lines, their billing address and your payment details. Save it as a PDF or a CSV. Each line's amount is its hours times the rate, and the total is the sum of the lines. The hours and invoices page shows the details.
An example week
This is an illustrative example, not a real customer.
Sam is a freelance copywriter with three clients. A SaaS company pays a monthly retainer. A local bakery pays 40 USD an hour. A London agency pays 30 GBP an hour for overflow work.
Sam sets one rule per client: the SaaS company's Notion workspace, any Google Doc with "Crumb" in its title, and the agency's Slack. On Tuesday a call with the bakery owner lands under Not assigned. Sam clicks it and moves it to the bakery.
Each evening Sam presses Summarize my day and sends the agency a two-line Slack update. The retainer client gets the Friday weekly recap by email. On the last day of the month, Sam opens Hours, picks Last month, and makes two invoices, one in USD and one in GBP. They are never added together.
The month-end routine takes about as long as making a cup of tea.
Your data stays yours
As a freelancer, your work history is your business. Astrolinks keeps the log on your computer. We never receive it. There's no account that holds it and no copy on our servers. Days are kept for 14 days by default, and you can change that or delete everything any time. Read more on the privacy-first page.
Good to know before you start
- Astrolinks runs on Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or later).
- The free plan counts up to 4 hours a workday for up to 2 clients, with Hours for this week. Every new copy starts with a 7-day Pro trial, no card.
- Hours are your own notes. They help you bill fairly, but read them before you send an invoice.
Keep reading
- How to invoice hourly clients, step by step
- How to track time across multiple clients
- How to set goals as a freelancer
- Freelance designers might like Astrolinks for designers