Complys vs Jibble

Jibble's headline is simple and genuinely impressive: free time tracking and attendance, with GPS and geofencing - and even facial-recognition clock-in - available on the free plan. For a business whose only need is to know who clocked in, where and when, without paying a penny, Jibble is one of the best free tools going, and it is available in the UK.

Complys also captures geofenced GPS clock-in and has a free tier, so on pure attendance the two overlap. The difference is scope. Jibble is a specialist attendance app and stops there; Complys is a UK construction platform where the clock-in is one part of keeping the whole site compliant - RAMS, COSHH, inductions, the accident book, permits and worker-card tracking all sit alongside it. So the real question is whether a free clock is all you need, or whether you also need the compliance a construction site is legally required to keep.

This is where Jibble is strong and deserves credit. Its free plan includes GPS clock-in and geofencing, and it adds facial-recognition clock-in to stop 'buddy punching' - one worker clocking in for another. Face-ID is a genuinely useful anti-fraud feature that Complys does not have, and if that specific problem keeps you up at night, Jibble does it well and for free.

Complys captures location, accuracy, distance from site and geofence status on every punch, flagging anyone who clocks in outside the radius, with a manager view grouped by job. For proving who was on your site and when, the two are on a par. Complys does not do facial recognition; Jibble does. What Jibble does not do is connect that clock-in to anything beyond a timesheet - whereas in Complys it sits next to the worker's induction, card expiry and the site RAMS.

A free attendance app is a great deal until you remember everything it does not do. Jibble has no RAMS or method statements, no COSHH, no site inductions, no accident book or RIDDOR flagging, no permits to work, no near-miss reporting and no way to track whether a worker's CSCS card or ticket has expired. For a construction business, every one of those is a legal obligation that a clock, however good and however free, does not touch.

Complys was built to carry exactly that load. Generate a site-specific RAMS and COSHH in minutes, get the induction signed on a phone by QR with location captured, log accidents in a book that flags the RIDDOR position and deadline, issue permits with the right precautions, and keep everyone's cards in date with reminders. So the honest comparison is not 'free versus paid' - Complys has a free tier too - it is 'a free clock versus a platform that also keeps you compliant'.

Because both have a free tier, it is worth being precise about what each free plan actually gives a construction business. Jibble free is excellent for attendance: unlimited users, GPS, geofencing and face-ID, which is remarkable value if attendance is genuinely all you need. Complys free gives you the compliance tools and geofenced time tracking, with the AI generation for RAMS and COSHH metered on credit top-ups.

So on Jibble free you have a superb clock and no compliance; on Complys free you have the compliance and time tracking, with AI usage metered. For a firm that only needs attendance, Jibble free is hard to beat. For a construction firm that also has to prove its site is safe and compliant, the Complys free tier is doing far more of the job - and it scales into a platform rather than just a clock.

Moving from Jibble to Complys does not mean losing the thing you liked about Jibble - the geofenced clock-in comes with you. What you add is everything a site needs around it. In practice you set up your projects and site radii, add your people and get the crew clocking in on Complys, and from there the RAMS, COSHH, inductions and accident book are ready to use. Because Complys has its own free tier, you can run the two in parallel for a week or two while the crew gets used to the new app.

The one Jibble feature you would leave behind is facial-recognition clock-in. If stopping buddy punching by face is essential to you, that is worth weighing - though on most construction sites the bigger risk is not a mate clocking someone in, it is the compliance paperwork not being done, which is the side Complys covers and Jibble does not. Many firms happily retire Jibble entirely once the clock-in and compliance live in one place.

Choose Jibble if a free, high-quality attendance clock is genuinely all you need - especially if facial-recognition clock-in to stop buddy punching matters to you - and your compliance is handled elsewhere. Choose Complys if you are a UK construction or trade business that needs geofenced clock-in and the compliance a site is legally required to keep, in one place, with a free tier of its own.

The bottom line: Jibble is one of the best free attendance apps there is, and if attendance is your only problem it is a brilliant, cost-free answer. But a construction site's real exposure is on the compliance side, not the clock, and that is the part Jibble does not do and Complys is built around. You can have a free clock, or a free start on a platform that keeps the whole site legal - for a builder, the second is usually worth more.