Harvest vs Clockify (2026): Free Limits, Seat Prices & Invoicing Fees

Quick Verdict for Hourly Freelancers and Small Teams

Harvest and Clockify both start at $0 and both end at an invoice, but they ration the free tier in opposite ways. Harvest's pricing page gives one person 1 seat and 2 projects with time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking included, then charges $11 per seat per month on monthly billing or $9 per seat per month on annual billing for Teams. Clockify's pricing page gives up to 5 users unlimited tracking and unlimited projects for free, but moves billable rates to Basic ($4.99 monthly or $3.99 annual per seat) and invoicing to Standard ($6.99 monthly or $5.49 annual per seat). Which free plan survives contact with your week depends on whether you run out of projects or run out of features first.

Our conditional shortlist: consider Harvest if you bill clients from tracked hours and want invoices, estimates, expenses, Stripe or PayPal checkout and QuickBooks Online or Xero sync inside one subscription; our Harvest review rates that time-to-invoice flow as its strongest quality. Consider Clockify if you need more than one free seat, if you want timesheet approval and time off at $5.49 per seat instead of Harvest's $14 Enterprise price, or if you already invoice from an accounting tool such as FreshBooks or QuickBooks and only need clean timesheets feeding it. Neither is a universal winner, and the accounting and invoicing category lists alternatives if neither fits.

Methodology, October 27, 2026: this is a documentary comparison, not a hands-on test. Every price, cap and fee below comes from Harvest's pricing page and Help Center or Clockify's pricing page and Help Center, read on that date, with the source linked beside the claim. Where a vendor publishes a rule but not a number - Harvest's usage allowances and its per-plan payment surcharge are the main examples - we say so instead of estimating. Use our software evaluation framework to turn the tables below into a trial plan for your own team rather than treating them as a verdict on accuracy, reliability or support quality.

Free Plans: One Seat and Two Projects vs Five Users and PDF-Only Reports

Harvest's free plan is a capacity contract. The free version article states that you can have only 1 active person and are limited to 2 active projects; archived people and projects do not count, which is the lever a solo freelancer uses to rotate finished work out. The same article lists what the free seat cannot do: no logo or file attachments on invoices and estimates, no QuickBooks Online connection, no imports, and - the line most people miss - you cannot send invoices by email or export them as PDFs without connecting Stripe for payments. Harvest's Stripe article repeats that free accounts are required to integrate with Stripe if they wish to send invoices or record payments.

Clockify's free plan is a feature contract. The pricing page lists Free at US$0 for up to 5 users, and its FAQ phrases the same cap as inviting up to 4 people alongside yourself. Projects and tracked time are unlimited on every plan. The free plan update article documents the ceilings: 5 active users, report and dashboard date ranges limited to one month (31 days), CSV and Excel report exports available only on paid plans while PDF exports remain, all projects public, the API limited to 30 requests per hour with up to 3 active webhooks, and billable rates removed from Free. The pricing comparison table shows the same 'PDF only' and 'Up to 1 month' entries, so the two sources agree.

Which cap bites first is the whole decision for a freelancer. A consultant with three retainer clients exhausts Harvest's two active projects in week one but could track all three in Clockify for nothing - without billable rates and without an invoice. A one-person studio that bills everything through Harvest can stay free indefinitely if it archives projects between engagements and accepts the Stripe requirement. Our free time tracking guide covers Toggl alongside these two; this article goes deeper on what happens the month after the free tier stops fitting.

Plans, Seat Prices and Free Limits

Harvest's current public plans are Free, Teams, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. On monthly billing the pricing page shows Teams starting from $11 per seat per month and Enterprise starting from $17.50; switching the toggle to annual shows $9 and $14 per seat per month, billed as $108 and $168 per seat per year. The arithmetic: $11 × 12 = $132 against $108 saves $24 per seat on Teams, and $17.50 × 12 = $210 against $168 saves $42 per seat on Enterprise, so the page's 'Annual 20% off' label is exact for Enterprise and slightly generous for Teams. Enterprise Plus is custom pricing with custom integrations, a dedicated customer success manager, assisted data migration and white labelling.

The words 'starting from' matter. Harvest's pricing plans article explains that Teams and Enterprise can each be billed as Flex, where you pay a per-seat rate plus usage-based charges calculated on the prior period's active projects, active clients, active tasks and invoicing above a free allowance, or as Unlimited, a fixed usage fee. Usage charges begin at the second paid renewal, which is why the article warns that a bill can jump from a seats-only $44 to $404 once usage is added. The allowance sizes, the overage rates and the Unlimited prices are not published on the pages we read; they appear under Settings > Billing inside an account. Budget with that uncertainty in mind and simulate your usage there before committing to annual billing.

Clockify prices five paid tiers per seat. The pricing page and the subscription plans article agree: Basic US$3.99 per seat per month billed annually or $4.99 billed monthly, Standard $5.49 or $6.99, Pro $7.99 or $9.99, and Enterprise $11.99 or $14.99. The CAKE.com Bundle adds Pumble and Plaky to Enterprise Clockify for $12.99 annual or $15.99 monthly per seat against a listed combined value of $27.97, without Clockify data regions. Clockify's FAQ says it offers 20% off for annual payment and no further discounts; Harvest's discounts article likewise rules out nonprofit or educational discounts beyond the annual plan.

How Seats Are Counted and Billed

Harvest bills seats, not people, and the two can drift apart. Its seat management article distinguishes paid seats from active people: when you archive or delete someone, their seat is not automatically removed from the subscription. Seat removals take effect at the next renewal, while additions are prorated immediately. On Flex billing the pricing plans article says you pay only for seats that are active in a period, which rewards teams whose headcount fluctuates but adds the usage charges described above. On Unlimited billing the seat count is the fixed base.

Clockify counts every active and invited user on a paid plan as a paid seat, per its pricing FAQ, and deactivating a user frees that seat for someone else. The subscribe and upgrade article adds the rule that catches growing teams: you are charged each billing cycle for the total number of user seats you have, whether or not they are all used. The free plan update article closes the loop - once you switch to a paid plan the free allowance no longer applies, so every user requires a paid seat. Kiosk-only 'limited users' are billed separately for a fee the pricing page does not state.

Practically, pending invitations cost money on Clockify and archived people can still cost money on Harvest until renewal. Before either annual purchase, count the people who will actually track time next quarter, decide whether a departing contractor should be deactivated or archived, and note the renewal date on which a removed Harvest seat stops billing. Clockify's FAQ also notes that seats added midway through an annual term are prorated for the rest of the year, and its billing help says removed seats are not refunded.

Worked Budget: Solo, Four-Person and Ten-Person Teams

Solo freelancer, six active projects, invoicing required. Harvest Free is out because of the two-project cap, so the entry price is Teams at one seat: $11 per month or $108 per year. In Clockify, billable rates need Basic and invoicing needs Standard, so the comparable plan is Standard at one seat: $6.99 per month or $5.49 × 12 = $65.88 per year. The annual gap is $108 − $65.88 = $42.12 in Clockify's favour. But Harvest's price includes estimates, expenses and online checkout, while Clockify Standard invoices are PDFs sent by email with payments recorded by hand, and Clockify expenses need Pro at $7.99 × 12 = $95.88 per year - at which point the two annual bills are $12.12 apart.

Four-person studio invoicing clients. Harvest Teams costs 4 × $11 = $44 per month, or 4 × $108 = $432 per year. Clockify Standard costs 4 × $6.99 = $27.96 per month, or 4 × $65.88 = $263.52 per year. The annual difference is $432 − $263.52 = $168.48. Two caveats cut in opposite directions: Harvest Teams on Flex billing can add usage charges from the second renewal, and Clockify Standard already includes timesheet approval, time off and a manager role that Harvest reserves for Enterprise. If the studio needs approvals, the Harvest comparison becomes 4 × $168 = $672 per year on Enterprise, and the gap widens to $408.48.

Ten-person team that needs approvals, budgets and profit reporting. Harvest Enterprise costs 10 × $17.50 = $175 per month or 10 × $168 = $1,680 per year. Clockify Pro - the tier with budget and estimates, labor cost and profit, expenses and scheduling - costs 10 × $9.99 = $99.90 per month or 10 × $95.88 = $958.80 per year, a difference of $1,680 − $958.80 = $721.20. If the same team needs single sign-on, Clockify requires Enterprise at 10 × $11.99 × 12 = $1,438.80 per year, still $241.20 below Harvest Enterprise, which includes SAML SSO. None of these figures includes Harvest usage charges, payment processing, tax or Clockify's separately priced kiosk users; our SaaS spending guide explains why the renewal invoice, not the list price, is the number to track.

Invoicing and Online Payment Fees

Harvest includes invoicing, project estimates and expense tracking on every plan, including Free, per the pricing comparison table. Online payment runs through Stripe or PayPal. Harvest's Stripe article quotes Stripe's domestic US rates as 2.9% + $0.30 for credit card payments and 0.8% up to a maximum of $5 for ACH. Then comes the part the pricing page only hints at: the transaction fees FAQ says that for accounts not on Harvest's Premium or Unlimited usage billing plans, Harvest charges a small additional fee on both credit card and ACH payments, with the fees retained by Stripe and deducted from the amount received. The Stripe article adds that free accounts incur notably higher fees than base-level paid plans such as Teams. The exact percentage per plan is not published; the fee pass-through article shows only an illustrative preview, 'Stripe 2.9% + $0.30 + Harvest 0.5% = $4.20 on this invoice', and says applicable fees are shown during invoice creation.

Worked example at the illustrative rate: a $1,000 card payment costs $1,000 × 2.9% + $0.30 = $29.30 to Stripe plus Harvest's 0.5% of $5, a total of $34.30 - if your plan's rate matches the example, which a free account's will not. A $1,000 ACH payment costs 0.8% = $8, capped at $5 by Stripe, plus Harvest's undisclosed share. Through PayPal, the PayPal Payments Standard article says Harvest charges nothing while PayPal's domestic US rate is 3.49% + $0.49, so the same $1,000 costs $35.39. Ten $1,000 card invoices a month at the illustrative rates is $343 in processing, more than the entire annual subscription difference in the four-person scenario, which is why Harvest's pass-through controls matter: Stripe users with a business address in the United States or Canada can have the client cover the fee at checkout, per payment method, in full or in part, shown on the invoice or only at checkout. The online payment article also notes that Harvest does not support partial credit card payments on web invoices.

Clockify's invoicing is simpler and narrower. The create and manage invoices article states that invoicing is a paid feature on Standard, Pro and Enterprise; invoices are built in the web app from imported time and expenses, downloaded as PDFs, and marked Sent, Paid, Partially paid or Void. The send invoice emails article describes emailing the PDF with an optional PIN-protected time report, and payments are recorded manually with a date, amount and note. None of the pages we read describes a client checkout link through Stripe or PayPal; the payment process article mentions Stripe only for paying your own Clockify subscription. Clockify therefore publishes no client-payment fees because it does not process client payments - you collect by bank transfer or through an accounting tool such as Wave, and the invoicing feature page notes that invoices export to CSV or Excel for that hand-off. Our freelancer invoicing guide covers the tools that sit on the receiving end.

Reporting, Approvals and Feature Gates

Harvest's gates are few but steep. The pricing comparison table caps custom reports at 4 on Free and Teams and makes them unlimited on Enterprise; billable and cost rates for teams, team reporting, project and people import, accounting and payment integrations and scheduled phone support arrive at Teams; profitability reporting, timesheet approval, the activity log, SAML-based SSO, custom exports and required notes arrive only at Enterprise. The pricing plans article adds that the Slack integration is Enterprise-only and that downgrading from Enterprise to Teams stops saved and shared reports and approvals, with already-approved entries staying locked. Budgets are not gated: Harvest's features page says budgets update as the team tracks time, and the pricing table lists Time & Materials and Fixed Fee projects on every plan.

Clockify's gates are many but small. From the pricing table: Basic adds billable rates, CSV and Excel exports, private projects, kiosk, time audit, bulk edit, project templates and imports, and lifts the API to 20 requests per second with up to 100 webhooks. Standard adds invoicing, recurring invoices, approval, time off, locked timesheets, attendance and overtime, targets and reminders, a manager role, task rates, rounding and the QuickBooks integration. Pro adds scheduling, forecasting, expenses, labor cost and profit, budget and estimates, alerts, custom fields, multiple currencies, email reports, a forced timer, GPS tracking, activity monitoring and a data region, which the data regions article lists as USA, EU (Germany), UK and AU. Enterprise adds SSO, a custom subdomain, SCIM provisioning, control accounts, an audit log and a 50-request-per-second API.

Read side by side, the gates explain the price gap. Timesheet approval costs $5.49 per seat on Clockify Standard annual billing and $14 per seat on Harvest Enterprise. Expenses are free on Harvest and $7.99 per seat on Clockify Pro. SSO is $14 on Harvest and $11.99 on Clockify. GPS tracking, activity monitoring and kiosk photo capture exist only on Clockify's Pro tier; Harvest lists no surveillance features at all, which matches the evidence-not-surveillance stance in our consultants guide. Virtual assistants who need clients to trust their hours without being watched will find the comparison in our virtual assistants guide points the same way.

Integrations: QuickBooks, Xero, Stripe and PayPal

Harvest's integrations page lists QuickBooks Online and Xero as destinations that receive copies of Harvest invoices and recorded payments, Stripe for card and ACH payments, and PayPal Standard for PayPal checkout. The pricing table places accounting and payment integrations at Teams and above, and the free version article specifically excludes QuickBooks Online from the free seat; Stripe is the exception, because free invoicing depends on it. If you have not yet chosen the ledger those invoices land in, our FreshBooks vs QuickBooks comparison sets out the two most common choices for US service businesses.

Clockify's pricing table lists a QuickBooks integration from Standard upward and tracking integrations on every plan, but Xero does not appear on the pricing page or in any help article we read, so do not assume an invoice sync to Xero exists; confirm it in a trial workspace before committing. Because Clockify invoices are documents rather than payment requests, the realistic finance flow is Clockify timesheets and CSV exports into whichever accounting tool collects the money. That is a perfectly good architecture for a team that already pays for FreshBooks or QuickBooks and wants cheap seats for everyone who only tracks time.

Exports, Cancellation and What You Keep

Harvest's exporting data article lets administrators export all company time as a CSV and all invoices and estimates as zip files of PDFs from Settings > Import/Export, with time, expense, invoice and project reports available in Excel, CSV or PDF from their own sections; custom column exports are limited to plans that support them. The cancellation article sets the clock: a scheduled cancellation keeps the account active until the end of the paid period, an account that is not reactivated after six months is permanently deleted, an immediate closure removes data permanently after 10 days with a download link valid for one week, and cancelling stops the next renewal without automatically refunding anything.

Clockify's pricing FAQ says cancelling downgrades you to the free version when the current subscription expires, with no further charges and no loss of data, since cancellation only affects access to paid features. The deleting account article states that Clockify stores your data indefinitely until you delete the account. The same FAQ says there are no refunds except for system errors, and the subscribe and upgrade article says there are no refunds for removed seats. On Free, remember that report exports are PDF only; the free plan update article describes a workspace-level data export of the current year's time entries as CSV for owners.

Both exit paths are usable, but they punish different mistakes. On Harvest, the risk is a forgotten scheduled cancellation that ends in permanent deletion six months later, so export the time CSV and the invoice PDFs the day you decide to leave. On Clockify, the risk is downgrading below the five-user cap or losing CSV exports and private projects while assuming nothing changed, so take the Excel reports you will need for the year before the paid period ends. Neither export restores a workspace elsewhere; both are archives for your own records and for whichever tool comes next.

Trials, Discounts and Support

Harvest offers a free, fully functional 30-day trial with no credit card, and the pricing plans article says trials carry every Enterprise feature except SAML-based SSO. The same article warns that the post-trial checkout pre-selects Enterprise + Annual by default, so change the plan and billing toggles before confirming if you meant to buy Teams or pay monthly. Clockify's FAQ offers all Pro features free for 7 days with no credit card, activating automatically, and says sales can extend the trial on request. Seven days is tight for testing approvals and invoicing cycles; schedule the trial to span at least one real timesheet week and one invoice run.

Support is one of the few places Clockify's free plan is more generous than its paid rivals: the pricing table lists 24/7 support by email, chat and phone on every plan including Free, with a dedicated success representative for qualified paid accounts. Harvest's table lists scheduled phone support from Teams upward. Neither vendor offers discounts beyond annual billing - Harvest's discounts article rules out nonprofit and educational pricing, and Clockify's FAQ says 20% off annual is the only reduction. Clockify adds VAT where it is legally required to collect it, shown at checkout, and accepts wire transfers and purchase orders for larger annual purchases.

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Harvest when the invoice is the point. One subscription covers timers, estimates, expenses, invoices, Stripe or PayPal checkout and QuickBooks Online or Xero sync, the free seat genuinely works for a one-person practice that can live inside two active projects, and Teams at $11 monthly or $108 annually is a clear price for a billing-complete tool. Accept the Stripe requirement on Free, Harvest's additional payment fee on non-Unlimited plans, a $14-per-seat jump to Enterprise for approvals and profitability, and Flex usage charges that the public page does not quantify. Freelancers weighing the whole toolkit will find Harvest in the same role in our freelancer tools guide.

Choose Clockify when seats are the point. Five people track for free, billable rates cost $3.99, approvals and time off cost $5.49, budgets and expenses cost $7.99 and SSO costs $11.99 per seat on annual billing, with no usage-based charges on top. Accept PDF-and-email invoicing with manual payment recording, no Xero listing, PDF-only reports and one-month ranges on Free, and seat billing that counts every invited user. The team that already pays for an accounting system and needs trustworthy timesheets from everyone else is Clockify's natural buyer; the Harvest review describes the other buyer well.

What we could not verify, so you should: Harvest's Flex usage allowances, overage rates and Unlimited prices, which live inside Settings > Billing; the exact Harvest surcharge on Stripe payments for each plan; whether Clockify offers a Xero integration or a self-hosted edition, since those pages did not render for us; and the price of Clockify's kiosk-only limited users. Harvest's Help Center still uses the legacy names Pro and Premium in places, which correspond roughly to today's Teams and Enterprise. Run both trials on a real week of work, read the renewal preview in each billing screen, and let the second invoice - not the first - decide.