Clockify vs Harvest: the free tracker, or the tracker that finishes the invoice?
Clockify and Harvest both start as a timer, then walk in opposite directions. Clockify's bet is that tracking should cost nothing until it has to: its free plan covers up to five users with unlimited tracking and projects, and its paid tiers mostly sell control. Harvest's bet is that the timer is only the first step of getting paid: invoicing is built into every plan, including the free one, so tracked hours become a sent, payable invoice without leaving the tool.
Each free plan hides its limit in a different place: Clockify free tracks everything and prices nothing — no billable rates, no invoices, reports that reach back one month. Harvest free will invoice your client and take their payment, but only for one person running at most two projects at a time. Choosing between them is choosing which limit you would rather grow into.
Who is each one for? Clockify suits a freelancer or small team whose first problem is visibility — where the hours go, across as many projects as you like — and who invoices in a separate step or tool. Harvest suits anyone whose tracked time is the invoice: consultants, studios and micro-agencies billing by the hour, who want the whole chain from timer to payment.
How we tested
We compared both products from their published plans in November 2026, running one freelancer scenario through each: what a solo user gets free, the first invoicing tier, and three seats over a year. Prices and feature gates were checked against clockify.me/pricing and getharvest.com/pricing. All prices are per seat per month in US dollars, before tax or VAT. One asymmetry runs through everything below: Clockify's per-seat price is the whole price, while Harvest's is a starting rate — Flex billing adds usage charges on top, explained in the honest-limits section — so Harvest totals are labelled "base" wherever they appear.
Our verdict
Clockify is the tracker a small team can run on for free; Harvest is the shorter path to a paid invoice. If tracking itself is the job, Clockify free has no rival here — five people, unlimited projects — and its paid ladder is cheap and flat. Choose Harvest if tracked time should become a sent, payable invoice without changing tools: that chain is complete on every Harvest plan, free included, and ends with the client's card payment, which Clockify never takes. But go in with your eyes open: on Flex, Harvest's $9 seat is a base rate, while Clockify's $5.49 is the whole story. Predictability is a feature too — here it belongs to Clockify.
The prices, tier by tier
The two ladders could hardly be shaped more differently. Clockify has five paid tiers — Basic, Standard, Pro, Enterprise, plus a CAKE.com bundle — every one a flat per-seat price. Harvest has two, Teams and Enterprise, each printed as "from", because its billing model decides the rest. Annual prices first, monthly in brackets; checked November 2026.
| Plan | Clockify | Harvest |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | $0 — up to 5 users, unlimited tracking & projects | $0 — 1 seat, max 2 projects, invoicing included |
| Billable rates | From Basic: $3.99 / seat / month billed annually ($4.99 monthly) | On Teams and up — from $9 billed annually |
| Invoicing inside the tool | From Standard: $5.49 annually ($6.99 monthly) — PDF invoices, status tracking | Every plan, free included — send and take payment via Stripe or PayPal |
| Timesheet approvals | From Standard ($5.49) | Enterprise: from $14 annually ($17.50 monthly) |
| Scheduling & planning | From Pro: $7.99 annually ($9.99 monthly) | Via the separate Forecast app (integrates on all plans) |
| Profitability reporting | From Pro ($7.99) | Enterprise (from $14) |
| Pricing model | Flat per-seat price — the price is the price | "From" seat rate + Flex usage charges (rates unpublished), or a fixed Unlimited usage fee |
| Free trial of paid features | 7 days of Pro features, no card required | 30 days, no card required |
| Solo, one year, on free | $0 — reports reach back 1 month | $0 — capped at 2 projects |
| Solo, one year, cheapest tier that invoices | $65.88 (Standard, 1 × $5.49 × 12, annual billing) | $108 base (Teams, 1 × $9 × 12) — Flex usage may add to this |
| Three seats, one year, invoicing tier | $197.64 (3 × $5.49 × 12) — the full price | $324 base (3 × $9 × 12) — Flex usage may add to this |
Read the free row and the invoicing row together: they are the whole argument in miniature. Clockify gives you the wider free tracker and charges $5.49 a seat to finish the billing chain; Harvest gives you the finished chain free and charges $9 a seat — plus a usage meter — for room to grow. Monthly billing barely moves it: Clockify Standard is $6.99 against Harvest Teams at $11 — $83.88 against a $132 base over a solo year.
The step-up tiers tilt Clockify's way on price almost everywhere: approvals arrive at $5.49 on Clockify Standard against Harvest Enterprise at $14, profitability reporting is a $7.99 Pro feature behind the same $14 gate. What Harvest's extra money buys is not more tracking — it is the payment end: online invoice payment, accounting sync and team reporting built around billing. Clockify's counter is breadth at single-digit prices: scheduling, expenses and forecasting all sit inside Pro.
Scores from our tests
Scores are out of 10, from the scenario above — a solo freelancer first, then a micro-team of three. Both overalls match the ones already published on WorkKitly — Clockify's from our Toggl vs Clockify comparison, Harvest's from Harvest vs Toggl — and shared categories carry the same scores.
| Category | Clockify | Harvest |
|---|---|---|
| Ease of use | 7.8 | 8.5 |
| Tracking & reporting depth | 8.0 | 7.9 |
| Free-plan value | 8.8 | 7.2 |
| Billing chain (rates → invoice) | 8.4 | 9.3 |
| Pricing clarity & true cost | 7.5 | 6.1 |
| Overall | 8.1 | 7.8 |
Two scores need a word of explanation. The billing-chain gap is narrower than it looks: Clockify does complete the chain from Standard — rates, timesheet, approval, invoice — which is why it holds 8.4; its chain ends at a PDF and a status, while Harvest's ends with the client's payment landing via Stripe or PayPal, on every plan. And pricing clarity splits three ways across our tracker guides: Toggl's short, flat ladder scored 9.2; Clockify's is just as flat once chosen, but five tiers, a bundle and kiosk seats take study, so 7.5; Harvest stays at 6.1, because nobody can compute a Flex bill from a pricing page — Harvest's own help centre gives an example of a renewal jumping from $44 to $404 once usage charges were added.
Which one fits you?
Pick Clockify if…
- You want a small team tracking free — five users, unlimited projects, $0
- Your invoice can live in a separate step: free records, Basic prices, Standard sends
- You want the year's cost to the dollar before you commit — flat per-seat pricing, no usage layer
- You need scheduling, expenses or profitability reporting at a single-digit per-seat price
- A growing client list is your problem, not billing — Harvest free stops at two projects
Pick Harvest if…
- Tracked hours should become a sent, payable invoice in the same tool — free within two projects
- Getting paid online via Stripe or PayPal, synced to QuickBooks or Xero, beats a flat price for you
- You run a micro-team and need utilisation and capacity reporting for billable work
- You will choose Unlimited billing, or check the usage simulator before renewing
- The timer is a means to an invoice, not a reporting habit — ease of use is Harvest's clearest win here
The honest limits
Clockify's limits are its free plan's memory and its five-tier ladder. Free reports only reach back one month — a real constraint the "unlimited" headline hides — free exports are PDF only, and there are no billable rates on free. The features a growing practice wants are spread deliberately up the ladder: invoicing, approvals and QuickBooks sync on Standard at $5.49; scheduling, expenses and profitability on Pro at $7.99; audit log and single sign-on on Enterprise at $11.99 — with a CAKE.com bundle and separate kiosk seats alongside, the longest price list of the three trackers we cover. The interface also asks more of you than Harvest's — the ease-of-use gap in the scores.
Harvest's limits are its pricing model and its free plan's walls. The seat price is a base, not a total: Flex billing adds usage charges for active projects, clients, tasks and invoicing beyond an included allowance, the per-unit rates are not published anywhere public, and for new accounts those charges begin at the second paid renewal — which is why Harvest's help centre has to explain why a second bill is higher than the first. Two smaller traps deserve naming: Harvest's trial checkout pre-selects Enterprise on annual billing, so check the toggles before you pay; and the free plan's ceiling — 1 seat, 2 projects — arrives fast. If you are on a legacy Pro or Premium plan, your renewal terms are not the ones on the current pricing page.
Questions
Related: put the tracked hours to work
Two free WorkKitly tools complete the chain these trackers start. Set the rate your hours must carry with the freelance hourly rate calculator — taxes, expenses and non-billable time included. Then turn tracked time into a document a client can pay with the free invoice generator: built in your browser, no sign-up, nothing uploaded.
Also compare: the third tracker in this series is Toggl — deeper reporting than either of these, and no invoicing at any price. Our Toggl vs Clockify comparison and Harvest vs Toggl comparison price those pairings with the same published scores.