Hourbrook or Rize?
Rize is an automatic time tracker for Mac and Windows that sorts your day into categories with AI, with focus insights, and lately a team product for agencies and firms.
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Join the waitlistA fair comparison
Where Rize is the better choice comes first. Facts about Rize are from its own site, read on 4 November 2026.
Choose Rize if you want
- Windows as well as Mac, and an AI assistant built in to ask about your day.
- Focus and break insights, if that's what you want from a tracker.
- Profitability, burn and capacity reports for agencies on its team plan.
- Years of polish and a larger list of integrations.
Where Hourbrook is different
- Your activity stays on your Mac. Rize keeps app names, window titles and addresses in its cloud.
- No Screen Recording permission: Hourbrook reads window titles through Accessibility. Rize asks for both.
- The MCP server runs on your Mac, not as a hosted endpoint, and comes with the app.
- No focus scores, by design, and waiting on an agent counts as work. Invoices are built in.
Side by side
| What | Hourbrook | Rize |
|---|---|---|
| Tracks your work by itself | Yes: the app, window title and page in front, every 2 s | Yes: apps and sites, sorted into categories by AI |
| Where that activity is kept | On your Mac, never uploaded; only entries you log sync | In Rize's cloud (Google Cloud, US); window titles and addresses included |
| Free plan | Everything is free during the beta | No; a 7-day trial, no card |
| Lowest paid price, per person a month | None yet; prices after the beta aren't final | $9.99 (Basic, yearly); $12.99 monthly |
| Platforms | Mac; web for synced time; Windows in the works | Mac, Windows |
| Invoices | Yes, from logged hours | — |
| Team planning | Planning and capacity for teams | Team plan from $29.99 a seat, 2 seats minimum |
| AI assistant or MCP server | MCP server on your Mac, built into the app | AI chat on metered credits; a hosted MCP server from Pro ($23.99, yearly) |
| Waiting on AI agents | Counted as your work, up to 3 h | — |
| Certifications | None yet; it's a beta | SOC 2 Type II under way, not finished |
“—” means no, or nothing we could find on their site. All comparisons
Coming from Rize
There's no import from Rize yet, and we haven't seen its export format. Hourbrook starts filling in your day from the first hour, so you can run both for a week.
Hourbrook starts filling in your day from the first hour it runs, so the brook is there to pick from by the end of it.
What you'd be switching to
A small item in the menu bar, and a main window with your day, week and tasks. A native Mac app, with everything it learns kept on the Mac.
Sources
Read on 4 November 2026. If something has changed, reply to any email from us and we'll correct it.