Toggl Track vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Character Designers
Toggl Track
$12/mo ($144/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 23.3 months at Toggl Track's current price.
Does Toggl Track Fit Character Designers? Our Read
What character designers need from their software, from sources outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa:
Character designers need to track cancellation and kill fees by project stage. The Graphic Artists Guild says kill fees are usually negotiated as a percentage of the agreed fee for the finished piece. It reports having seen them range from 20 to 100 percent, depending on how far the work had progressed when the project was killed. It separates a cancellation fee, owed when the art met the client's stated requirements, from a rejection fee, owed when it did not. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Invoicing has to support staged payments and late charges. The Guild's sample letter of agreement says finished work is due on acceptance, net 30 days, with a 2% monthly service charge on late payment. If the job is canceled or postponed before the final stage, 50% of the final fee is due within 30 days. If the art is already complete, 100% is due. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Records should capture which rights were granted for each character and each client. The Guild's sample agreement says all rights not expressly granted stay with the artist, including rights in sketches and preliminary materials, and any use beyond the grant needs a separate fee. On cancellation, the sample says all rights to the art revert to the artist and the original art is returned. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Contract records need to show who owns the copyright, and whether any third-party sublicensing was granted. The Guild says all rights to a work remain with its creator unless they are signed over in a written contract. It also says that assuming an independent contractor's work is work-for-hire is false. If a client asks for the right to sublicense to third parties, the Guild says the artist can demand a percentage of the sublicensing fee. It recommends leaving that right out unless the third-party license terms are spelled out. (graphicartistsguild.org)
Designers who work for themselves must handle self-employment tax. IRS Publication 334 says you pay self-employment tax and file Schedule SE if your net earnings from self-employment were $400 or more. It also lists royalty payments of $10 or more among the payments that require an information return (Form 1099-MISC), which matters for designers who are paid licensing royalties. (irs.gov)
Full disclosure: Nexa is made by the publisher of this page, so check the claims below against the vendors' own pages. Toggl Track covers the hours side of character work well. It has project-based tracking, desktop and mobile apps, reports grouped by project or client, estimated vs. actual time, billable rates and invoicing. That lets a designer see how many hours went into concept sketches, turnarounds and final renders, which is useful when a client kills a job partway through. It does not cover the records the Graphic Artists Guild says this trade depends on. Nothing in its listed features logs a kill fee as a percentage of the agreed fee by project stage, or separates a cancellation fee from a rejection fee. It has no place to record which rights were granted for each character and client, who holds the copyright, or whether third-party sublicensing was granted. It also lists no staged payments with a 2% monthly late charge, and nothing for self-employment tax or royalty information returns.
Nexa covers more of the money side. It has quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans, recurring invoices and a client pay portal that runs through your own Stripe account. It also has expenses, profit and loss, 1099 summaries, and a CRM with notes. Payment plans fit a staged fee, and the notes field could hold a rights summary, but that is a workaround. Nexa has no purpose-built place for rights grants, copyright ownership or sublicensing terms. I can't say it calculates percentage kill fees by stage or applies late charges automatically. Its time tracking is basic and it has no integration library, so it won't connect to other tools the way Toggl Track does. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support or onboarding. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years, Toggl Track at $12 a month costs $432. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. With Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for all 36 months it comes to $458.64, and without sync it runs on one device. If you track hours and want reports, stay with Toggl Track. If your pain is quotes, staged payments and 1099 bookkeeping, Nexa is worth a trial. Either way, the most important records for a character designer are the rights grants, the sublicensing terms and the kill-fee schedule. Neither tool is built to hold them, so keep them in a contract and rights-management record, such as a structured contract tracker.
Our read for character designers: Neither tool tracks rights grants, copyright ownership, sublicensing or kill fees by stage, so use a contract and rights-management tool for those and keep Toggl Track or Nexa for hours or invoicing.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Toggl Track costs character designers $144/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 23.3 months it has cost less than Toggl Track, and you own it after that. What it is not: hosted-for-you software with a support desk and a roadmap you can lobby. That is the trade, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it.
Can it pay for itself?
Nexa is $279 once, about $23 a month over its first year. Its Drain Guard reads your expenses (from a linked bank, an imported statement, or ones you type in), finds the charges that repeat, and adds them up by the month. Keep or Cut then walks you through them one at a time. Cancel $23 a month of charges you'd forgotten about and Nexa has paid for itself inside the first year, before you count the Toggl Track bill you'd stop paying.
It depends on what you find and what you cancel, so we don't promise a number. In our demo data, Drain Guard finds 5 subscriptions adding up to $110.13 a month. That is sample data, not a customer's.
The verdict for character designers: Neither Toggl Track nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with software built for it. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $279 once against $432 for Toggl Track over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need time tracker, invoicing and connect crm in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Toggl Track if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Toggl Track's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
You begin with the brief and the client's mood board, pulling additional reference into PureRef so the silhouette language is consistent, then spend the first hour on silhouette thumbnails because a character has to read in black before it reads in color. The client wants 'approachable but a little mischievous,' so you push the shape language toward rounder forms with one sharp accent. Mid-morning you develop three rough character options at full body, each with a distinct read, and send them off. The client circles option two but asks to see option one's hair on option two's outfit, which is a recombination pass. Afternoon is refining the chosen design: cleaning the line, locking proportions on a turnaround so the character is drawable from any angle, then a flat color pass and a couple of palette options. Around three the client mentions, almost in passing, that they'd like a few expressions for social media, which is an expression sheet nobody scoped. You flag it. Late day is polishing the front-view hero illustration, exporting layered files and flats labeled with version and date, then updating the tracker with the recombination pass and the expression-sheet request so the single-illustration quote doesn't silently grow into a full character package.
Clients fall in love with a rejected early sketch and want it revived after you've already developed a different direction, with no record of which designs were killed and why
A design approved as a single illustration quietly becomes a brand mascot needing turnarounds, expressions, and a style guide, all of which were never quoted
Costume and color variations are requested one at a time ('can we also see her in red?') until a one-character job is secretly five outfits deep
Merch and animation licensing is assumed to be included, so a design sold as concept art ends up on plushies with no licensing fee ever negotiated
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
None of that is a software problem you can buy your way out of in one click — it is why the tool you pick matters more than what it costs. Toggl Track solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Toggl Track Actually Costs Character Designers
Today's list price is $12/month — $144 a year, from Toggl Track's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$144
Year 2$144
Year 3$144
Three years of Toggl Track$432
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $153 less.
If Toggl Track raises its price, the three-year cost goes up; if it cuts it, the cost comes down. We don't guess which. Add-ons, extra seats and card-processing fees are not included, on either side.
Feature-by-Feature
Feature
Toggl Track
Nexa
Invoicing
✗
✓
Scheduling
✗
✓
CRM
✗
✓
Time Tracking
✓
✓
Full Accounting
✗
✓ (SIMPL)
Task Management
✗
✓
Works offline
—
✓
Price
$12/mo
$279 once or 3 × $99
3-Year Total
$432
$279
You own it?
No — stop paying, lose access
Yes — forever
✓ and ✗ for Toggl Track come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Toggl Track lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
Toggl Track's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What Toggl Track Does Better
Straight from Toggl Track's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Simple time tracking
Desktop and mobile apps
Pomodoro timer
Project-based tracking
Good free tier
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Toggl Track before paying anything.
Toggl Track is the better call if you need simple time tracking specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
What Toggl Track Is Built For
Toggl Track's product page lists agencies and professional services teams, software and IT teams, law firms, and accounting and finance teams. It also names three sizes of customer: freelancers and solo users, growing teams, and large organizations. (toggl.com)
The product page lists cross-platform tracking on web, desktop (Windows, Mac), mobile (iOS, Android) and browser extensions. It also lists automated background tracking and a one-click timer. (toggl.com)
The product page lists timesheet and detailed time reports grouped by project, client or team. It also lists financial reports on project, client and team profitability, and estimated vs. actual time tracking. (toggl.com)
The product page lists billable rates, including 6-minute increments for law firms, and invoicing. (toggl.com)
The product page lists Boards, Gantt charts and a calendar planner. It also lists utilization and workload reports, and automatic planning around PTO and public holidays. (toggl.com)
The product page lists integrations with Jira, Asana, Notion and Slack, among others. It also lists an API and an MCP server, which can connect to Claude, Cursor and Codex. (toggl.com)
The pricing page shows a Free plan, with a stated limit of up to 3 users in its FAQ. Starter is $9 per user per month on annual billing, and Premium is $16 per user per month on annual billing. Enterprise is priced through sales. Paid plans and add-ons come with a 30-day trial. (toggl.com)
The product page says it does no screenshots, keystroke logging or webcam monitoring. It also states SOC Type 2 and ISO 27001 compliance and 99.99% uptime. It offers a free 30-day trial of all features with no credit card required. (toggl.com)
What people outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa say:
The Business Dive gives Toggl Track 4.4/5. It calls the interface "beautiful and straightforward" and says offline time tracking is supported. It also says the free version "includes all the basic features they need" for individuals and freelancers, and that invoicing is "quite valuable for agencies and consultancies." (thebusinessdive.com)
The Business Dive criticises the lack of GPS tracking, which it says rules Toggl Track out for construction, real estate and other location-dependent work. It also says "some advanced reporting and analytics tools are locked behind the more expensive plans." (thebusinessdive.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a character designer
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every character designer: find the work, manage it, bill for it, get paid. Each step has a tool — and the right single tool runs the whole loop, so the handoffs are automatic and you get back to the creative work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
1
Find the work
Land the project
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
Job / project tracking
Time tracking
Expenses, materials & add-ons
then ↓
3
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Invoicing
Deposits & credits
then ↓
4
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
Card / online payments
Automatic reminders
You can stitch four separate subscriptions across these four steps, or run one tool that does the whole flow so a booking becomes a job becomes an invoice becomes a payment without re-typing. Either way the goal is the same: less time on the business of the business, more on the creative work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
Watch a job become an invoice
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A character designer's job already holds the services, the hours, the add-ons, and the materials — so the invoice builds itself from the work instead of you re-typing it at 9pm. Toggle an add-on or nudge the hours and watch it recompute.
The job Mascot character design with turnaround
ServiceSilhouette and concept sketches1 × $400$400
Export your data — Go to Reports → Detailed → Export as CSV. Download your full time entry history.
2
Set up Nexa — 10-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV, then set up your projects.
3
Start tracking in Nexa — Use Nexa time tracker for new entries. Import historical data if needed.
4
Cancel Toggl — Cancel subscription. Download a final export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Character Designers
The median Character Designer earns $45,000/year. At $144/year, Toggl Track is a recurring slice of that — paid again every year, whether the year was good or not. Owning the same jobs outright is $279 once, and the slice stops.
Nexa is $279 once. Invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, accounting — all connected, built for character designers. You own it like you own your Clip Studio Paint.
Is Nexa actually right for a character designer?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small team — like the 25,000 character designers in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
You want invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Clip Studio Paint.
Look elsewhere if
You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger platform will serve you better.
You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small character designers business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling into a large team with dedicated admin staff, a bigger platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
What character designers actually deal with
Clients fall in love with a rejected early sketch and want it revived after you've already developed a different direction, with no record of which designs were killed and why
A design approved as a single illustration quietly becomes a brand mascot needing turnarounds, expressions, and a style guide, all of which were never quoted
Costume and color variations are requested one at a time ('can we also see her in red?') until a one-character job is secretly five outfits deep
Merch and animation licensing is assumed to be included, so a design sold as concept art ends up on plushies with no licensing fee ever negotiated
A day in the life of a character designer
You begin with the brief and the client's mood board, pulling additional reference into PureRef so the silhouette language is consistent, then spend the first hour on silhouette thumbnails because a character has to read in black before it reads in color. The client wants 'approachable but a little mischievous,' so you push the shape language toward rounder forms with one sharp accent. Mid-morning you develop three rough character options at full body, each with a distinct read, and send them off. The client circles option two but asks to see option one's hair on option two's outfit, which is a recombination pass. Afternoon is refining the chosen design: cleaning the line, locking proportions on a turnaround so the character is drawable from any angle, then a flat color pass and a couple of palette options. Around three the client mentions, almost in passing, that they'd like a few expressions for social media, which is an expression sheet nobody scoped. You flag it. Late day is polishing the front-view hero illustration, exporting layered files and flats labeled with version and date, then updating the tracker with the recombination pass and the expression-sheet request so the single-illustration quote doesn't silently grow into a full character package.
The tools a working character designer actually owns
Clip Studio Paint
Photoshop
Procreate on iPad for sketching
a pose and anatomy reference library
Pinterest and PureRef mood boards
a character turnaround template
Local character designers on Nexa
Real character designers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a character designer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every character designer on Nexa →
The kit a working character designer owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
Pen display or iPad Pro
$400–$2,500
Core kitEssential
Workstation or high-spec laptop
$1,200–$4,000
Core kitEssential
Colour-accurate monitor
$300–$1,200
Core kitEssential
Monitor calibrator
$150–$400
Core kitEssential
Anatomy and reference library
$80–$400
Core kitEssential
Ergonomic chair and desk
$300–$1,500
Upgrade
Scanner for traditional work
$200–$900
The core kit, bought once$2,430–$10,000
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $2,430–$10,000 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make Toggl Track's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are Toggl Track's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from character designers we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Toggl Track on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Toggl Track's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build a character designer's guide the same way every time, and we'd rather you trust it than take it on faith. Nexa is our product, so the test we hold ourselves to is simple: a tool only "wins" a job here when it genuinely does that job better for a character designer — and where something free, open-source, or buy-once does it better, we say so and link you to it. Where Nexa falls short (payroll is the honest example), we name the alternative outright.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingHoneyBook $432/yr, FreshBooks $516/yr, Toggl Track $144/yr, Harvest $132/yr — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $45,000 median we cite for the typical character designer is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
Found something out of date? Prices change and we don't catch every move the day it happens. This guide is published and maintained by the Nexa team; if a figure here is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it — getting it right matters more to us than the sale.
FAQ
Is Nexa really a Toggl Track replacement?
For solo character designers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Toggl Track may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
What does Toggl Track do that Nexa doesn't?
Toggl Track has features like Simple time tracking and Desktop and mobile apps that some businesses rely on. For most solo character designers, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $12/month, Nexa pays for itself in 23.3 months. After that: $144 saved every year.
Can I pay in installments?
Yes. Nexa is $279 as a one-time payment, or 3 payments of $99 ($297 total). Either way it's a one-time purchase — no subscription, no recurring fees ever.