Toggl Track vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Comic Artists
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 Comic Artists? Our Read
What comic artists need from their software, from sources outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa:
Per-page billing for scripting, pencils, inks, colors and lettering. In a 2023 survey by the Cartoonist Cooperative, average rates were $60/page for scripting, $95 for pencils, $70 for inks, $60 for colors and $20 for lettering. Invoices and job records have to track pages and stages separately for each role. (journal.cartoonist.coop)
Milestone-based advance payments. In the same survey, advances were most often split into fourths, halves or thirds. The report describes a typical four-part split of about a quarter on signing and a quarter at completed pencils. Software needs to schedule and track partial payments tied to page stages. (journal.cartoonist.coop)
Chasing late payments. Of the survey respondents, 63 reported no payment delays. 22 reported delays of 1-3 months, 8 reported 4-6 months, 1 reported 7-10 months and 4 reported 11 or more months. Overdue tracking and reminders matter for this trade. (journal.cartoonist.coop)
Rights and royalty records. 65% of respondents' work was work-for-hire, so the publisher or client owns it. 45% were not offered royalties. Where royalties were paid, the average was 8% of retail price. Artists need to record, for each job, who owns the work and whether royalties are owed. Under U.S. copyright law, a commissioned work counts as work made for hire only if it falls in the listed categories and the parties sign a written agreement saying so, so the signed contract is a key record. (journal.cartoonist.coop)
Sales tax permits for convention and artist-alley sales. In Texas, sellers at arts and craft shows and fairs, including out-of-state sellers, must hold a Texas Sales and Use Tax Permit if they sell taxable items or take orders for them. The occasional-sale exemption generally does not apply when a booth fee is required. Artists who sell prints and books at conventions need to track sales and tax by event and state. (comptroller.texas.gov)
Toggl Track covers time tracking well. It has a one-click timer, project-based tracking, reports grouped by project or client, estimated vs. actual time, billable rates and invoicing, on web, desktop and mobile. That suits a comic artist who bills hourly or wants to know how long a page really takes. It does not match the trade's core need, which is per-page, per-stage billing (scripting, pencils, inks, colors, lettering). Nothing on its list schedules milestone advances such as a quarter on signing and a quarter at completed pencils. It has no record of who owns the work or whether royalties are owed, and no sales tax tracking for convention sales.
Nexa covers more of the money side. It has invoices, estimates and quotes that convert to invoices, payment plans that can mirror an advance split, recurring invoices, and a client pay portal that takes cards through your own Stripe account. It also has jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, sales tax tracking, expenses, and 1099 summaries. It has no page or stage fields built for comics, and no dedicated rights or royalty record. You would have to keep ownership and royalty terms in notes. Its payment reminders, like all its automated emails, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so they are not a dependable way to chase late payers. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device. It is software you own and run yourself, with no vendor-run onboarding or support desk.
Over three years Toggl Track at $12 a month comes to $432. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Stay with Toggl Track if you bill by the hour, work across several devices, or want its reports and integrations. Consider Nexa if your pain is milestone payments, invoicing clients and tracking sales tax on convention sales, and one device is enough. Either way, keep signed work-for-hire contracts and royalty terms in your own files.
Our read for comic artists: Neither tool has page-and-stage billing or rights records built in; stay with Toggl Track for hourly work and multi-device use, or pick Nexa if payment plans and sales tax tracking on one device matter more.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Toggl Track costs comic artists $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 comic artists: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $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?
A comic page is a small factory and I run every station myself. I start the morning thumbnailing the next pages, working out panel layout and the beat of each panel so the eye flows and the page turn lands the cliffhanger. Then I pencil at full size, blocking figures and backgrounds, before moving to inks, where I commit the linework and decide line weight for depth. By midday I'm flatting colors, isolating each area so the rendering pass goes faster, then layering shadow and light to set the mood. Lettering is its own craft and it's last: I place balloons so they guide the reading order without covering the art, and I size sound effects to hit. The whole time I'm fighting consistency, flipping back to my character sheets so the hero's jacket has the same number of buttons in panel four as it did on page two, because readers catch every slip. The serialized deadline is always breathing on me, a page a week with no buffer, and the moment I get sick the buffer I never had bites. Late in the day I prep the issue for print, setting bleed and trim, converting to CMYK and pulling back the neon colors that print muddy, then I export both a print-ready PDF and web-resolution pages for the digital release.
Clients commission 'a comic' with no sense of how long penciling, inking, coloring, and lettering each take, then balk at the page rate
Maintaining a strict serialized schedule, the dreaded page-a-week or update cadence, without burning out mid-arc
Keeping characters, costumes, and environments consistent panel to panel across an entire issue and then across a whole series
Print specs and bleed eat me alive, gutters, trim, and CMYK conversion turn vibrant pages muddy if I'm not careful
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 Comic Artists
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 comic artist
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every comic artist: 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 comic artist'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 Short comic, 6 pages, pencils to colors
ServicePencils and inks, per page6 × $200$1,200
ServiceColors, per page6 × $90$540
→
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$1,890
Deposit credited−$600
Invoice total$1,290
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Calculate Your Full Stack
Toggl Track plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Toggl Track
1
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 Comic Artists
The median Comic Artist 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 comic artists. You own it like you own your Clip Studio Paint (the industry standard for comics).
Is Nexa actually right for a comic artist?
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 comic artists 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 (the industry standard for comics).
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 comic artists 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 comic artists actually deal with
Clients commission 'a comic' with no sense of how long penciling, inking, coloring, and lettering each take, then balk at the page rate
Maintaining a strict serialized schedule, the dreaded page-a-week or update cadence, without burning out mid-arc
Keeping characters, costumes, and environments consistent panel to panel across an entire issue and then across a whole series
Print specs and bleed eat me alive, gutters, trim, and CMYK conversion turn vibrant pages muddy if I'm not careful
A day in the life of a comic artist
A comic page is a small factory and I run every station myself. I start the morning thumbnailing the next pages, working out panel layout and the beat of each panel so the eye flows and the page turn lands the cliffhanger. Then I pencil at full size, blocking figures and backgrounds, before moving to inks, where I commit the linework and decide line weight for depth. By midday I'm flatting colors, isolating each area so the rendering pass goes faster, then layering shadow and light to set the mood. Lettering is its own craft and it's last: I place balloons so they guide the reading order without covering the art, and I size sound effects to hit. The whole time I'm fighting consistency, flipping back to my character sheets so the hero's jacket has the same number of buttons in panel four as it did on page two, because readers catch every slip. The serialized deadline is always breathing on me, a page a week with no buffer, and the moment I get sick the buffer I never had bites. Late in the day I prep the issue for print, setting bleed and trim, converting to CMYK and pulling back the neon colors that print muddy, then I export both a print-ready PDF and web-resolution pages for the digital release.
The tools a working comic artist actually owns
Clip Studio Paint (the industry standard for comics)
an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil or a Wacom Cintiq
Adobe Photoshop for color flats
a lettering setup with comic fonts
InDesign for print issue layout
a scanner for traditional inks
Local comic artists on Nexa
Real comic artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a comic artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every comic artist on Nexa →
The kit a working comic artist owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Clip Studio Paint (the industry standard for comics)
an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil or a Wacom Cintiq
Adobe Photoshop for color flats
a lettering setup with comic fonts
InDesign for print issue layout
a scanner for traditional inks
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
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 comic artists 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 comic artist'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 comic artist — 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 comic artist 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 comic artists 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 comic artists, 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.