Stubble vs Rize: AI Time Tracking for Developers and Agencies

Rize and Stubble are both AI-powered time trackers that automatically organize your work. They’re in the same category, priced similarly, and target similar audiences.

So what’s the difference?

How Rize Works

Rize runs as a lightweight desktop app that reads your foreground application and website. It uses pattern recognition to automatically tag sessions by client and project, and provides focus scoring and deep work analytics.

Key characteristics:

• No screen capture — Only tracks app/window names
• Pattern matching — Learns your project associations over time
• Focus analytics — Tracks deep work vs. fragmented time
• Cross-platform — Mac and Windows
• Privacy-conservative — Never sees your screen content

Rize is designed to be as minimal as possible while still providing automatic time tracking.

How Stubble Works

Stubble captures screenshots, extracts text via local OCR, and uses AI to understand what you’re actually working on. It organizes activity into tasks and projects, and exposes that context to AI tools via MCP.

Key characteristics:

• Screen capture — Sees what you see (stored locally)
• Local OCR — Extracts text on-device via Apple Vision
• AI summarization — Generates task descriptions and project groupings
• MCP integration — Connects to Claude Code, Cursor, etc.
• Natural language queries — Ask questions about your work

Stubble is designed to deeply understand your work context, not just which app is in the foreground.

The Depth Difference

Rize knows: “You used VS Code for 2 hours”

Stubble knows: “You spent 2 hours in VS Code working on the authentication module, specifically editing UserService.ts and AuthController.ts, after a meeting about OAuth migration”

This depth difference matters for two reasons:

1. Better Project Detection

Rize learns that “when you’re in VS Code with a certain window title, it’s probably Project X.” This works, but it requires training and can misfire when you switch between projects in the same app.

Stubble actually reads what’s on screen — file paths, document content, browser URLs — and uses AI to understand what project you’re working on. It’s more accurate because it has more information.

2. AI Tool Integration

Rize tracks time. That’s the end of the pipeline.

Stubble tracks time AND makes that context available to your AI tools. When Claude Code asks “what has this developer been working on?”, Stubble can answer with specific files, projects, and time allocations.

This transforms AI assistants from generic helpers into context-aware collaborators.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Stubble	Rize
Automatic time tracking	Yes	Yes
Project detection	AI + screen content	Pattern matching
Screen capture	Yes (local)	No
Focus analytics	Basic	Advanced
AI tool integration (MCP)	Yes	No
Natural language queries	Yes	No
Document generation	Yes	No
Cross-platform	Mac only	Mac + Windows
Price	$10/month	$12.99/month

Privacy Trade-offs

Rize’s “no screen capture” approach is more privacy-conservative. If you’re uncomfortable with any app seeing your screen content, Rize is the safer choice.

Stubble captures screenshots but stores them locally on your Mac. They’re never uploaded. OCR runs on-device. Only sanitized text summaries (with secrets stripped) are sent for AI processing.

It’s a trade-off: less information means less accurate tracking and no AI context integration. More information means better understanding but requires trusting the local storage model.

Who Should Use What?

Choose Rize if:

• You want minimal data collection
• You need Windows support
• You primarily care about focus analytics
• You don’t use AI coding assistants
• Pattern-based project detection is good enough

Choose Stubble if:

• You want accurate, AI-powered project detection
• You use Claude Code, Cursor, or similar tools
• You want to ask questions about your work in natural language
• You need to generate timesheets or documents from activity
• You’re Mac-only and want the deepest context

The Trend Toward Context

The time tracking industry is splitting into two camps:

Minimal trackers like Rize that capture as little as possible and rely on patterns and rules.

Context trackers like Stubble that capture deeply and use AI to make sense of it all.

Both are valid approaches. The question is what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you just need timesheets and focus scores, minimal tracking works fine.

If you want your AI tools to actually understand your work — to give you better code suggestions, smarter answers, and context-aware help — you need the deeper approach.

Try Stubble free for 5 days