Compare · Smokeball vs ClaimHour · Updated April 2026
Smokeball vs ClaimHour: side-by-side, for the solo lawyer trying to decide
Smokeball is a premium, Windows-centric legal practice management system whose AutoTime feature is the closest direct competitor to ClaimHour — passive, deterministic capture of time spent in Word and Outlook, with near-100% recall when you work inside those two apps. ClaimHour is standalone, Mac-first, metadata-only, and priced for the solo who doesn't want the practice-management suite wrapping the capture. This page compares them head-to-head on scope, platform, data posture, and price.
TL;DR
Pick Smokeball if you're a Windows shop, already run Word and Outlook as your core workflow, and want one subscription that does matters, documents, automation, billing, and capture — all with AutoTime tracking near-100% of your Word/Outlook time. Starts at $49/user/mo (Bill, annual). Pick ClaimHour if you're Mac-first, bill out of QuickBooks/LawPay/FreshBooks, don't want a PMS, or want metadata-only capture to keep your privilege posture narrow. $29–$59/month, monthly terms.
What each product actually is
Smokeball
Founded 2010, headquartered in Chicago. Premium-positioned US legal PMS strongest in small-firm and solo markets — often pitched as "the attorney-founded alternative to Clio." Core product is a Windows desktop agent (the Smokeball "launcher") plus web app plus mobile. Deep integrations with Microsoft Word, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft 365 broadly. Three tiers as of April 2026: Bill $49/user/mo (annual — includes AutoTime, time & billing, basic trust), Grow $79/user/mo (adds matter automation and client intake forms), Prosper+ $149/user/mo (adds full CRM, analytics, and automated workflows). Annual contracts are the norm. Free onboarding specialist included in every tier.
ClaimHour
Standalone macOS menubar plus iOS companion. Does one job: watches OS-level billable signals — phone-call metadata via CallKit, email activity via Apple Mail (counts, not bodies), document edit-time bursts in Word and Pages — and presents a 2-minute end-of-day review digest. Approved entries export to QuickBooks IIF, LawPay, FreshBooks, or plain CSV. Metadata-only: no audio, no email bodies, no file contents. Three tiers as of April 2026: Starter $29/user/mo, Pro $59/user/mo, Scale $99/user/mo (2 seats). Month-to-month billing, cancel anytime.
Feature-by-feature comparison
| Capability | Smokeball | ClaimHour |
|---|---|---|
| AutoTime / passive capture | Yes — Word, Outlook, PDF reader active-window duration | Yes — CallKit calls, Apple Mail, Pages, Word, browser app switches |
| Capture data depth | Active-window time + document identity + some content-hint AI for narratives | Metadata only — durations, counts, timestamps, counterparty IDs |
| Primary platform | Windows desktop; some web and mobile support | macOS menubar; iOS companion |
| Mac support | Web app only; no Mac-native launcher or AutoTime | Core platform; CallKit, Apple Mail, Pages, Calendar.app native |
| Matter management | Yes — full matter/contact/document database | No — contact-based inference only |
| Document assembly / automation | Yes — Word-template-based document assembly (core pitch) | No — out of scope |
| Invoicing & billing | Yes — native invoicing, LEDES, trust invoice | No — exports to QuickBooks, LawPay, FreshBooks, CSV |
| Trust / IOLTA accounting | Yes — included Bill tier and up | No — use LawPay or standalone |
| Client portal | Yes — via Grow and Prosper+ tiers | No — out of scope |
| Minimum monthly cost | $49/user (Bill, annual billing) | $29/user (Starter) or $59/user (Pro), monthly |
| Contract | Annual contracts standard; mid-term cancellation does not refund | Month-to-month, cancel anytime |
| Onboarding time | 10–40 hours; free onboarding specialist | ~15 minutes (install + permissions + export target) |
| Export & data portability | CSV and LEDES export; historical capture context lives in Smokeball | One-click CSV/IIF; full event log yours |
Where Smokeball genuinely wins
- AutoTime recall inside Word and Outlook. For a Windows-first, document-heavy practice — say, trusts & estates, real estate closings, transactional work — AutoTime's active-window tracking captures close to 100% of time spent drafting and emailing. ClaimHour's Pages/Word edit-time bursts are comparable for Mac native use, but Smokeball's decade of integration with Microsoft's document stack is deeper.
- Document automation. Smokeball's Word-template-based document assembly is a core product, not a bolt-on. If your practice generates the same five or six document types repeatedly (estate plans, pleadings, real-estate docs), automation there saves more real time than capture alone ever could.
- All-in-one PMS. Matter, document, billing, trust, and capture under one login. The context-switching cost of running ClaimHour + QuickBooks + LawPay + FreshBooks is real; Smokeball eliminates it.
- Onboarding support. Smokeball includes a free onboarding specialist who walks you through setup. ClaimHour is self-serve. If you hate configuring software, that matters.
- Small-firm scale. Smokeball's tiers ladder cleanly from solo to 10+ seats. ClaimHour Scale caps at 2 seats by design.
Where ClaimHour wins
- Mac support. Smokeball is functionally Windows-only for AutoTime; Mac users rely on the web app and give up most of the auto-capture promise. ClaimHour is Mac-native with CallKit, Apple Mail, Pages, and Calendar.app hooks plus an iOS companion. If you're on a Mac today, this is the deciding factor. See Mac time tracking for lawyers for a deep-dive on why legal-tech skews Windows.
- Privilege posture. ClaimHour is metadata-only by design — durations, counts, counterparty IDs, no content. Smokeball AutoTime records document identity and uses some content hints for AI narratives. In family-law, criminal-defense, and immigration practice the defensibility of "we don't read anything" is a live ethical advantage; the ABA Formal Opinion 512 (2024) on generative-AI tool scope makes it more than marketing.
- Price for the no-PMS solo. Starter $29/mo or Pro $59/mo standalone versus Smokeball Bill $49/mo annual. For a solo who only wants capture and bills out of QuickBooks + LawPay, ClaimHour Starter is 41% cheaper than the cheapest Smokeball tier, and you're not paying for six features you won't use.
- Phone-call capture. Smokeball's AutoTime captures Word/Outlook time well; it doesn't track phone calls. ClaimHour's CallKit integration captures call duration and counterparty, which for many solo lawyers is the largest under-captured slice — 15-minute car-ride client calls, parking-lot callbacks, long hearing-debrief conversations.
- Monthly billing and exit. Smokeball's annual-contract default means a bad fit costs you a year. ClaimHour is month-to-month and exports the full event log to CSV on exit. You can run ClaimHour for one busy quarter and keep or drop it based on whether it paid for itself.
- Narrower scope = less migration risk. Switching PMS is a 20-hour project if it's your primary matter system. Adding or removing ClaimHour is a 10-minute decision.
The cost math over 3 years
Numbers below assume one solo lawyer, 1,400 billable hours per year at $250/hr ($350,000 annual gross), running a basic tax + trust stack. Smokeball users can drop QuickBooks in most cases because native billing is built in; ClaimHour users keep their QuickBooks + LawPay stack.
| Stack | Year 1 total | 3-year cumulative |
|---|---|---|
| Smokeball Bill (annual) | $588 | $1,764 |
| Smokeball Grow (annual) | $948 | $2,844 |
| Smokeball Prosper+ (annual) | $1,788 | $5,364 |
| ClaimHour Starter + QuickBooks SE + LawPay | $828 | $2,484 |
| ClaimHour Pro + QuickBooks Simple Start + LawPay | $1,188 | $3,564 |
At list price the cheapest Smokeball stack ($1,764 over 3 years) beats the cheapest ClaimHour stack ($2,484) by about $720. That gap closes or flips if you value the month-to-month cancellation option, Mac-native capture, or metadata-only posture — in which case the "extra" spend is buying optionality Smokeball doesn't offer. See billable-hour capture without a PMS subscription for the non-cash costs of PMS lock-in (data portability, switching risk, platform concentration).
A 5-question decision ladder
- Is your primary work device Windows? Yes → lean Smokeball. AutoTime's Word/Outlook integration is deepest where the OS is deepest.
- Does your practice lean document-heavy — real estate, trusts & estates, transactional, complex litigation? Yes → lean Smokeball. Document automation is a real multiplier on top of capture.
- Do you need built-in trust accounting with IOLTA compliance today? Yes → lean Smokeball (Bill tier includes it). Available with ClaimHour + LawPay but requires bookkeeper discipline.
- Do you work primarily on a Mac, or anticipate switching? Yes → lean ClaimHour. Smokeball's Mac support is a web-app compromise that defeats the native-capture promise.
- Is attorney-client privilege front-of-mind in your daily work? (family law, criminal defense, immigration, privileged appellate work) Yes → lean ClaimHour. Metadata-only is defensibly narrower.
Three or more "lean Smokeball" → Smokeball Bill at $49/month (annual) is the better fit. Three or more "lean ClaimHour" → ClaimHour Pro at $59/month is the better fit. If split, the tiebreaker is contract flexibility: ClaimHour lets you try for a quarter; Smokeball commits you for a year.
Our bias, stated plainly
We build ClaimHour. We are not pretending to be neutral. What we can promise: every price on this page is verified against Smokeball's public pricing as of April 2026, every feature description is drawn from Smokeball's own product documentation or a hands-on demo, and if you spot something wrong, email hello@claimhour.com and we'll correct it in a visible changelog. Join the waitlist if you want to try ClaimHour when early access opens in 2026.
Further reading
- Clio vs ClaimHour — the dominant US legal PMS, head-to-head.
- MyCase vs ClaimHour — mid-tier PMS picked by many solo/small firms.
- Smokeball alternative — essay-style unbundling argument.
- Mac time tracking for lawyers — why legal-tech skews Windows.
- Billable-hour capture without a PMS subscription — pricing-first view.
- Our metadata-only privacy stance
- Why we built ClaimHour — the long-form launch essay.