Is Clio Duo included in every Clio plan?

No. As of April 2026, Clio Duo ships with Clio Complete ($89/user/mo annual) and Clio Elite ($159/user/mo annual). It is not included in the Essentials tier at $49/user/mo. The effective minimum to use Clio Duo is $89/user/month billed annually.

Can I use Clio Duo without the rest of the Clio platform?

No. Clio Duo is a feature layer on top of Clio Manage. It reads your matters, calendar events, emails, and documents from inside the Clio platform — outside that scope it has nothing to see. If you don't use Clio Manage for day-to-day work, Duo cannot capture anything.

Why would I pick ClaimHour over Clio Duo?

Three reasons: you don't want a full practice management system, you work on a Mac and want native capture outside Clio's plugins, or you want metadata-only capture for privilege reasons. If any of those apply, ClaimHour at $29–$59/mo is a better fit than Clio Complete + Duo at $89/mo.

Can I run Clio Duo and ClaimHour at the same time?

Technically yes — they don't conflict at the OS level. Practically, you'll get duplicate entries for the same billable moment (one seen by Duo through Clio, one seen by ClaimHour at the OS level) and have to dedupe manually. We recommend running them in parallel only during a short migration window to validate coverage, not long-term.

Comparison · Updated April 2026

Clio Duo vs ClaimHour: the honest comparison for solo lawyers

Clio Duo and ClaimHour solve the same problem — solo lawyers forgetting to log 5–10 billable hours a week — from two different directions. Duo assumes you already live inside a practice management system. ClaimHour assumes you don't, and never will. Both are valid. This page helps you figure out which one you are.

TL;DR

Pick Clio Duo if you already use Clio Manage, run three-plus matters simultaneously, and bill through Clio's invoice module. The $89/user/month (Complete tier) is paying for the whole platform — Duo is the gravy. Pick ClaimHour if you bill out of QuickBooks, LawPay, or FreshBooks, don't want a PMS, care about metadata-only capture for privilege reasons, or work primarily on a Mac. $29–$59/month, standalone, no migration required.

What each product actually is

Clio Duo

Clio Duo is an AI feature layer on top of Clio Manage. It reads the matter/calendar/email/document activity already flowing through Clio, drafts time entries from that activity, and offers a review-and-approve workflow before they become billable line items on an invoice. It's priced at $0 additional beyond the Clio Complete tier ($89/user/month annual) or Elite tier ($159/user/month annual). Duo is not sold standalone — the Clio subscription is the floor.

ClaimHour

ClaimHour is a standalone Mac menubar app plus iOS companion. It watches system-level signals the OS exposes — phone-call metadata (duration, counterparty, direction), email activity (sent/received counts, subject-line keywords), and document edit-time bursts — without reading bodies, audio, or content. A 2-minute evening review surfaces the day's captured events; approved entries export to QuickBooks IIF, LawPay, FreshBooks, or plain CSV. $29/mo Starter, $59/mo Pro, $99/mo Scale.

Feature-by-feature comparison

Feature	Clio Duo	ClaimHour
Capture scope	Clio calendar, Clio-connected email, Clio-tagged docs	OS-level calls, all email activity, all doc edit time
Data signal depth	Reads body content for AI summarization	Metadata only — durations, counts, timestamps
Matter attribution	Automatic — pulls from Clio's matter database	Contact-based — infers from recipient/caller ID
Primary platform	Web + Windows agent	macOS menubar + iOS
Billing export	Stays inside Clio Billing	QuickBooks, LawPay, FreshBooks, CSV
Minimum monthly cost	$89/user (Clio Complete + Duo)	$29/user (Starter) or $59/user (Pro)
PMS required	Yes — Clio Manage	No
Trust accounting	Yes — IOLTA-compliant	No (use LawPay for trust)
Cancel path	Annual plans non-refundable mid-cycle	Month-to-month, cancel anytime

Where Clio Duo genuinely wins

Matter attribution accuracy. Because Duo sits inside Clio's matter database, it already knows which client an email or calendar event belongs to. ClaimHour has to infer from contact name or counterparty phone number — less deterministic.
Billing workflow. Captured entries flow straight into Clio invoices without a CSV import step. If your billing already lives in Clio, that's a meaningful workflow saving.
Multi-user firms. Duo captures for every seat in the firm, and the supervising attorney can review junior time entries in one queue. ClaimHour's Scale tier ($99/mo) supports two seats but is solo-first by design.
AI-drafted entry narratives. Duo drafts the "Reviewed motion to dismiss — 0.6" narrative from the underlying document content. ClaimHour leaves narrative composition to you (we don't read document bodies, so we can't draft from them).

Where ClaimHour wins

Price for a solo. $29/mo or $59/mo standalone vs. $89/mo for Clio Complete. If you're only buying Clio for Duo, ClaimHour is 34–67% cheaper.
Mac-first. Clio's passive-capture agent is Windows-centric; Mac users rely on the web and browser plugin. ClaimHour's primary platform is macOS and the iOS companion is built in tandem, not bolted on.
Privilege posture. ClaimHour is metadata-only, by design. No email body scanning, no document content reading, no call audio. For family-law, criminal-defense, or immigration work where privilege anxiety is daily, this is a real differentiator.
No platform lock-in. ClaimHour exits to CSV in one click. Clio Duo's captures are locked to Clio's billing system — migrate off Clio and the historical capture context goes with it.
No onboarding. Download the Mac app, grant calendar + contacts permissions, done. Clio Complete onboarding typically takes 10–30 hours of matter migration and template setup.

The cost math over 3 years

Assume a single solo lawyer, billing about 1,400 hours/year at $250/hr.

Stack	Year 1	Year 3 cumulative
Clio Complete + Duo (annual)	$1,068	$3,204
Clio Elite + Duo (annual)	$1,908	$5,724
ClaimHour Starter + QuickBooks SE	$528	$1,584
ClaimHour Pro + FreshBooks Lite	$960	$2,880

Over three years the unbundled ClaimHour stack saves $324–$2,844 versus Clio. Whether that's meaningful depends on your revenue — if Duo recovers one extra billable hour per week at $250/hr, both stacks pay for themselves many times over. The question is which one actually fits the way you work, not which one is cheaper.

A decision framework

Answer these four questions:

Do you already run Clio Manage as your primary work system, and are you billing through Clio today?
Do you run 10+ simultaneous matters, or manage another attorney or paralegal?
Are you Windows-first?
Do you want AI to draft your entry narratives from email/document content?

If you answered yes to three or more, stay with (or start with) Clio Duo. If you answered yes to zero or one, ClaimHour is the better fit.

Our bias, stated plainly

We build ClaimHour. We are not pretending to be neutral. What we can promise: every number on this page is checked against Clio's public pricing as of April 2026, every feature description is drawn from Clio's own product pages or our hands-on demo, and 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.

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