ClaimHour

Compare · Updated April 2026

ClaimHour compared, honestly

We build ClaimHour. When you're shopping for billable-hour capture as a US solo lawyer, the comparison you actually run is against a full practice management system — Clio, Smokeball, or MyCase. Those three dominate the market. Each bundles passive time capture as one feature of seven. ClaimHour unbundles just that one feature. Here's an honest side-by-side for each.

The short version

PMS buyers (want matters, docs, calendar, portal, trust, billing, capture under one login): pick Clio for the mature platform, Smokeball for the Word/Outlook integration and document automation, or MyCase for the best price-to-scope ratio. No-PMS buyers (bill out of QuickBooks + LawPay, don't want seven features to get one): pick ClaimHour. The three comparisons below walk through each decision in detail.

Head-to-head comparisons

Clio vs ClaimHour

Clio Manage is the dominant US legal PMS — roughly 150,000 legal professionals, three tiers from $49 to $159/user/mo. Passive capture via Clio Duo starts at the $89 Complete tier. We dig into the 5-question decision ladder of who should pick Clio vs ClaimHour, with full feature matrix and 3-year cost math.

Read Clio vs ClaimHour →

Smokeball vs ClaimHour

Smokeball AutoTime is the closest direct competitor — passive capture of Word/Outlook time with near-100% recall inside those apps. But it's Windows-first and bundled into a full PMS starting at $49/user/mo. If you're Mac-first or don't want the PMS surface, ClaimHour is narrower on purpose.

Read Smokeball vs ClaimHour →

MyCase vs ClaimHour

MyCase is the cheapest full-featured US legal PMS — $39/user/mo for matters, calendar, billing, client portal, trust. Passive capture via MyCase IQ jumps you to the $79 Pro tier. If capture is the one job you need and you already bill elsewhere, ClaimHour Starter at $29/mo is narrower and cheaper.

Read MyCase vs ClaimHour →

The shape of every comparison

Each head-to-head page on this site follows the same structure, so you can skim the section you care about and skip the rest:

  1. TL;DR — three-sentence verdict on who should pick which.
  2. What each product actually is — plain-English description of scope, platform, and data model, with 2026 pricing verified against each vendor's public page.
  3. Feature-by-feature matrix — 12–14 rows covering matter management, capture depth, platform, billing, trust, minimum price, contract flexibility, data portability.
  4. Where the competitor genuinely wins — five specific wins for them, stated without hedging.
  5. Where ClaimHour wins — five or six wins for us, stated with equal honesty (no marketing fluff; we cite the actual mechanism, not a slogan).
  6. 3-year cost math — concrete numbers across common stack configurations, assuming a 1,400-hour/year solo at $250/hr.
  7. 5-question decision ladder — answer honestly, tally yes/no, get a recommendation. No funnel, no obligation.
  8. Our bias, stated plainly — we build ClaimHour. If anything on the page is wrong, email us and we correct it in a visible changelog.

Why only Clio, Smokeball, MyCase?

Those three are the practical choice set for US solo lawyers shopping a PMS in 2026. A few we left out of this comparison index, and why:

Our bias, stated plainly

We build ClaimHour. We are not pretending to be neutral. What we can promise: every price across these pages is verified against each vendor's public pricing page as of April 2026, every feature description is drawn from the vendor's own documentation or a hands-on demo, and every claim about ClaimHour is something we will stand behind at launch. If you spot something wrong, email hello@claimhour.com and we'll correct it with a visible changelog. Join the waitlist if you want to try ClaimHour when early access opens in 2026.

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