Toggl Track vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Storyboard 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 Storyboard Artists? Our Read
What storyboard artists need from their software, from sources outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa:
Storyboard artists need a way to track and document written work-for-hire agreements. Under US copyright law, a commissioned work counts as a work made for hire only if it falls in a listed category. 'As a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work' is one of those categories, and storyboards for film and video often fit it. The parties must also 'expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them' that the work is a work made for hire. Without that signed paper, the artist generally keeps the copyright. So each job needs a stored, signed agreement that states who owns the boards. (copyright.gov)
Storyboard artists need to bill by phase and handle revisions as a separate item. A practitioner thread on Core77 says storyboarding rarely ends at the first draft, because artists often suggest reframing the approach to the client. It also advises a 'costed work breakdown structure' so the client can drop items or defer them to 'phase 2'. Quotes and invoices therefore need to split into stages, such as thumbnails, revisions and final boards, with extra revision rounds billed on their own. (boards.core77.com)
Storyboard artists who work on a freelance basis need to set money aside for tax and pay it quarterly. The IRS says self-employed people generally owe self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare) on top of income tax. They must file an annual return and 'pay estimated taxes quarterly' using Form 1040-ES, because no client withholds anything. Freelance storyboard income arrives in lumps, one project at a time, so the artist has to estimate this tax and plan for it. (irs.gov)
Storyboard artists working on union animation productions need to track which pay classification a job falls under. The Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839) agreement created a separate 'storyboard revisionist' classification in its 2012 contract. That contract ran from August 1, 2012 to July 31, 2015 and provided 2% annual compounded wage increases. Guild productions pay by classification and contract period, so a storyboard artist moving between union and non-union work needs to record which scale applies to each job. (cartoonbrew.com)
Toggl Track covers the time side of this work well. It has project-based tracking, estimated vs. actual time, billable rates, invoicing, and reports grouped by project or client. At $12 a month it costs $144 a year, and the Free plan is an option for one person. It does not cover the paperwork storyboard work depends on. Nothing in its feature list stores a signed work-for-hire agreement for each job. It has no staged quotes that split thumbnails, revisions and final boards. It has no way to set money aside for quarterly estimated tax. It also has no way to record which union scale applies to a job.
Nexa covers more of the business side. Quotes, estimates and proposals convert to invoices, so a job can be priced in phases with extra revision rounds as separate lines. Clients can sign estimates in the pay portal, and payment plans suit lumpy project income. Missions with sub-steps can hold the stages of a job. Expenses, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries help at tax time. It also has time tracking. It does not state that it stores signed work-for-hire agreements, calculates quarterly estimated tax, or tracks union pay classifications, so the artist would still need to keep the signed agreements and the tax and scale records themselves. Card payments go only through your own Stripe account. Nexa is software you own and run yourself, so there is no vendor onboarding or support desk. If you use its automated emails, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years Toggl Track costs $432. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings the three-year total to $458.64. A solo artist who mainly wants hours and reports, and who already invoices elsewhere, can stay on Toggl Track. An artist who wants phased quotes, signed estimates and invoices in one place, and works from one machine, would be better served by Nexa. Either way, keep the signed ownership agreement for each job on file yourself.
Our read for storyboard artists: Stay on Toggl Track if time reports are what you use; choose Nexa if phased quotes, signed estimates and invoicing matter more, and keep signed agreements and tax records yourself in both cases.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Toggl Track costs storyboard 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 storyboard 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?
The morning starts with the latest script revision dropped in the shared drive overnight, so the first hour is reading the new pages and flagging which sequences changed. By 9:30 the director wants thumbnails for the chase sequence, so you rough small panels fast, blocking eyelines and screen direction before any detail. Mid-morning is a notes call: the director wants the reveal held one beat longer, which means inserting two new panels and renumbering the whole sequence. You work in Storyboard Pro because the timeline lets you slap rough timing under each panel and export an animatic the editor can drop into Premiere. Lunch is at the desk, scrubbing the animatic to check whether the action reads. Afternoon is cleanup on yesterday's approved panels: tightening perspective, adding arrows for camera moves, marking which shots are on ones and which hold. Around four the production coordinator asks for a panel count for the budget, and you realize you've drawn forty more panels than the original quote. You note it to raise on the next invoice. The day ends exporting a fresh PDF of the act, labeled with the date and revision letter so nobody boards off a stale version again.
Boards approved on a Friday get rewritten over the weekend, and tracking which panel revision matches which script draft becomes a nightmare by Monday's production meeting
Directors give vague camera notes ('make it feel bigger') and the back-and-forth eats unbilled hours that never make it onto an invoice
Animatic timing changes force re-cutting hundreds of panels, but there's no clean way to log the extra panel count for a per-panel billing rate
Studios pay net-60 on a kill-fee schedule, so a cancelled sequence leaves you chasing partial payment for boards already drawn
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 Storyboard 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 storyboard artist
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every storyboard 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.)
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 Storyboard Artists
The median Storyboard 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 storyboard artists. You own it like you own your Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
Is Nexa actually right for a storyboard 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 storyboard 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 Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
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 storyboard 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 storyboard artists actually deal with
Boards approved on a Friday get rewritten over the weekend, and tracking which panel revision matches which script draft becomes a nightmare by Monday's production meeting
Directors give vague camera notes ('make it feel bigger') and the back-and-forth eats unbilled hours that never make it onto an invoice
Animatic timing changes force re-cutting hundreds of panels, but there's no clean way to log the extra panel count for a per-panel billing rate
Studios pay net-60 on a kill-fee schedule, so a cancelled sequence leaves you chasing partial payment for boards already drawn
A day in the life of a storyboard artist
The morning starts with the latest script revision dropped in the shared drive overnight, so the first hour is reading the new pages and flagging which sequences changed. By 9:30 the director wants thumbnails for the chase sequence, so you rough small panels fast, blocking eyelines and screen direction before any detail. Mid-morning is a notes call: the director wants the reveal held one beat longer, which means inserting two new panels and renumbering the whole sequence. You work in Storyboard Pro because the timeline lets you slap rough timing under each panel and export an animatic the editor can drop into Premiere. Lunch is at the desk, scrubbing the animatic to check whether the action reads. Afternoon is cleanup on yesterday's approved panels: tightening perspective, adding arrows for camera moves, marking which shots are on ones and which hold. Around four the production coordinator asks for a panel count for the budget, and you realize you've drawn forty more panels than the original quote. You note it to raise on the next invoice. The day ends exporting a fresh PDF of the act, labeled with the date and revision letter so nobody boards off a stale version again.
The tools a working storyboard artist actually owns
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
Wacom Cintiq pen display
Clip Studio Paint
Photoshop
FrameForge for 3D camera blocking
a tabbed binder of the shooting script
Local storyboard artists on Nexa
Real storyboard artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a storyboard artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every storyboard artist on Nexa →
The kit a working storyboard artist owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
Wacom Cintiq pen display
Clip Studio Paint
Photoshop
FrameForge for 3D camera blocking
a tabbed binder of the shooting script
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 storyboard 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 storyboard 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 storyboard 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 storyboard 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 storyboard 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 storyboard 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.