Why users switch from Harvest
You are paying per seat for a timer you barely open.
You bill a fixed project fee, so the hours never reach the invoice.
You want the invoicing half without the time-tracking half.
Your team shrank and the per-seat maths stopped making sense.
You already track hours somewhere else and retype them into Harvest.
You want the invoice side to cost nothing so the budget goes elsewhere.
Top Harvest alternatives compared
| Software | Best for | Starting price | Tradeoffs |
|---|---|---|---|
| InvoiceBloom | Best when you track hours elsewhere and just need the invoice out | $0 — free forever | No built-in timer — the hours have to come from somewhere else |
| Toggl Track | Best free replacement for the timer on its own | Free tier + paid plans | Not an invoicing tool — you still bill somewhere else |
| Clockify | Best free timer once more than one person is tracking | Free tier + paid plans | Invoicing sits on the paid tiers |
| Invoice Ninja | Best single tool that keeps both halves in one place | Free tier + self-hosted | More setup than a hosted tool, self-hosting especially |
| FreshBooks | Best paid all-in-one if you want Harvest's shape from another vendor | Paid only | No free tier, and lower plans cap how many clients you can bill |
| Wave | Best free option when you want bookkeeping next to the invoice | Free invoicing + paid add-ons | No time tracking at all |
* “Free” plans may include add-ons, limits, or payment processing fees depending on the provider.
Details (pros & cons)
#1. InvoiceBloom
Best when you track hours elsewhere and just need the invoice out
Pros
- Unlimited invoices, sending and PDF downloads at no cost
- Bills hours as an ordinary line: quantity, an 'hours' unit, and your rate
- Recurring invoices on a weekly, biweekly, monthly or quarterly cycle
- Card and bank payments through your own connected Stripe account
Cons
- No built-in timer — the hours have to come from somewhere else
- USD only
- 0.5% platform fee on payments accepted online through Stripe
Toggl Track
Best free replacement for the timer on its own
Pros
- The timer itself is the product, and the free tier suits a solo freelancer
- Reports you can send a client as backup
Cons
- Not an invoicing tool — you still bill somewhere else
Clockify
Best free timer once more than one person is tracking
Pros
- Free tier is unusually generous on users and projects
- Timesheets, approvals and CSV exports
Cons
- Invoicing sits on the paid tiers
Invoice Ninja
Best single tool that keeps both halves in one place
Pros
- Time tracking and invoicing in one product
- Self-hosting available if you want to hold the data
Cons
- More setup than a hosted tool, self-hosting especially
FreshBooks
Best paid all-in-one if you want Harvest's shape from another vendor
Pros
- Time tracking, invoicing and light accounting together
- Long track record with freelancers and small agencies
Cons
- No free tier, and lower plans cap how many clients you can bill
Wave
Best free option when you want bookkeeping next to the invoice
Pros
- Invoicing alongside double-entry bookkeeping at no cost
- Useful if you want a balance sheet, not just invoices
Cons
- No time tracking at all
The short answer: what to replace Harvest with
Harvest is two products in one subscription — a timer and an invoicing tool — and the right Harvest alternative depends entirely on which half you actually use. If you live in the timer, replace it with a dedicated one: Toggl Track and Clockify both have free tiers built around time tracking. If the timer is something you open twice a month and what you really need is invoices going out on time, replace the billing half and pair it with a free timer. There is no single tool that is a drop-in Harvest for everyone, and any page that tells you otherwise is selling something.
Free alternatives to Harvest, and what "free" actually buys
"Free" means different things on each of these, and the differences are the whole decision. A free Harvest alternative that covers the timer will usually charge for invoicing; one that covers invoicing will usually not run a timer at all. Here is what each free tier genuinely includes:
| Tool | What the free tier covers | What it does not |
|---|---|---|
| Toggl Track | Time tracking, projects, reports you can export and attach to an invoice | Invoicing — you bill from somewhere else |
| Clockify | Time tracking for more than one person, timesheets, CSV export | Invoicing sits on the paid tiers |
| InvoiceBloom | Unlimited invoices, sending, PDFs, recurring invoices — no paid tier exists | No timer, no timesheets; USD only |
| Wave | Invoicing plus double-entry bookkeeping | No time tracking at all |
| Invoice Ninja | Both halves in one tool; self-hosted edition available | Most setup effort of the five |
Free tiers and per-seat prices change, and several of these have changed more than once. Check each vendor's own pricing page before you commit — this table is about the shape of each free tier, not today's numbers. InvoiceBloom's own terms are on our pricing page: free forever, everything included, with one disclosed exception — a 0.5% platform fee on payments you accept online through your connected Stripe account.
The timer and the invoice do not have to be the same tool
This is the part most "alternatives to Harvest" lists skip, and it is the one that saves people the most money. Harvest bundles tracking and billing because that bundle is genuinely useful to agencies: hours logged against a project roll straight into an invoice, and a project manager can see the budget burning down in real time. If that describes you, keep paying for it.
It does not describe most solo freelancers. If you are one person, the hand-off between timer and invoice happens once or twice a month and takes about a minute: open your time report, read the total for the client, type it as a line on the invoice. Automating that minute is what the per-seat price is buying you. Split the two and you can run a free timer alongside free invoicing indefinitely.
What splitting costs you
- A minute per invoice. Real, but small, and it doubles as a sanity check on the hours before a client sees them.
- Line-item detail from the timer. If you like invoices that itemise every tracked task, you will be summarising instead.
- Live budget alerts. Nothing will warn you at 80% of a project budget. You watch the timer's report yourself.
- One login instead of two. Mild, but it is a real annoyance for some people and worth naming.
What splitting gets you
- The bill drops, usually to zero on the invoicing side, and to zero on the timer side too if a free tier covers you.
- You can change either half without touching the other. Outgrowing your timer no longer means migrating your invoice history.
- Better tools at each job than a bundle that has to be adequate at both.
Harvest pricing: when paying for it is still the right call
Harvest is priced per seat, with a limited free tier for a single user and a small number of projects. That model is the reason most people end up searching for a free alternative to Harvest in the first place: it is fair pricing for a team and awkward pricing for one person who barely opens the timer.
Paying is still the right call when at least two of these are true:
- More than one person logs hours against shared projects.
- You need timesheet approvals before hours become billable.
- You want budget alerts before a fixed-fee project goes over.
- Per-project profitability reporting is how you decide what work to take.
- Expense capture and receipts need to sit with the hours, not in a separate pile.
None of those are replaced cleanly by pairing two free tools. If you are running a small studio, the honest advice is that Harvest is doing something for you and a free stack will not.
How to move off Harvest without losing your records
- Export everything while the account is still live. Access to reporting usually ends with the subscription, so do this first and do it even if you are only considering leaving. Export time entries for the full account history, then invoices and payments, then clients and projects.
- Download PDFs of anything unpaid or recent. A CSV of invoice records is not the same as the document you sent the client. Grab PDFs for everything outstanding and for the current tax year.
- Finish the open billing period where you are. Send the last invoice from Harvest rather than splitting one month across two systems. Reconciling a half-migrated month is miserable.
- Rebuild clients in the new tool, not the whole history. Your client list is short. Retyping it takes ten minutes and gives you a chance to drop the dormant ones.
- Set the invoice number so it continues the sequence. Do not restart at 1 — a sequence that resets mid-year is confusing at tax time. Our guide to invoice numbering covers what to do at a system change.
- Cancel only after the first invoice goes out cleanly from the new tool and the client has paid it. One full cycle is the proof; the subscription is cheap insurance until then.
Billing hours in InvoiceBloom after Harvest
Being direct about what this is: InvoiceBloom has no timer and no timesheets, and it is not a Harvest clone. It is the billing half, and it is free — unlimited invoices, sending and PDF downloads, with no paid tier to move up to. If having the timer inside the invoicing tool is the thing you value, one of the tools above will fit you better than we will.
If the split suits you, hourly work bills like this:
- Hours are an ordinary line item. Put the hours in the quantity field, choose hours as the unit, and enter your rate — the line total is worked out for you. A month of work is usually one line per project, or one per phase if the client wants the breakdown.
- Mixed billing on one invoice is fine. Hourly lines, a fixed project fee and a rush charge can sit on the same invoice; the units available include hours, days, weeks, months, projects, sessions, pages, items and units. If you are still deciding how to charge, hourly vs project-rate billing walks through the trade-off.
- Retainers and monthly work can repeat automatically. Recurring invoices run on a weekly, biweekly, monthly or quarterly cycle and can send themselves, which covers the client who is on the same amount every month.
- Terms go in the payment instructions box. Set the due date to match the terms you agreed and write them out — "Net 30 from invoice date" — in the payment instructions, which prints on every invoice. See what Net 30 actually means if you are setting terms for the first time.
- Clients can pay online by card or bank transfer through your own connected Stripe account, with a 0.5% platform fee on payments taken that way on top of Stripe's own processing fees. Invoices are USD only. Payment methods compares the options.
Two things it deliberately does not do, so you are not surprised later: it does not track a running balance across invoices, so prepaid blocks of hours are drawn down by you rather than by the software; and it does not convert currencies. If either matters to your work, weigh it before you move. You can see the full side-by-side on InvoiceBloom vs Harvest, or build an invoice right now without signing up for anything.
Which Harvest alternative fits which situation
| If this is you | Start with |
|---|---|
| Solo, bills hourly, wants the cost at zero | A free timer (Toggl Track or Clockify) plus free invoicing |
| Solo, bills fixed project fees, never looks at the timer | Invoicing only — the tracking half was never earning its price |
| Wants one tool for both halves, will do the setup | Invoice Ninja |
| Wants bookkeeping and a balance sheet, not just invoices | Wave |
| Happy to pay, wants Harvest's shape from another vendor | FreshBooks |
| A team on shared projects with budgets and approvals | Stay on Harvest — the alternatives genuinely do less here |
Whichever way you go, the habit matters more than the tool: invoice the day the work finishes, put a real due date on it, and follow up when that date passes. If chasing payment is the actual problem rather than tracking time, a late fee policy is worth more attention than a new subscription.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free alternative to Harvest?
It depends which half of Harvest you actually use. If you need the timer, Toggl Track and Clockify both have free tiers built around time tracking, and Clockify's is the more generous one once more than one person is tracking. If you need the invoicing, InvoiceBloom is free with no paid tier at all, and Wave is free if you want bookkeeping alongside it. If you want both halves in one free tool, Invoice Ninja is the closest match, with the trade-off that it takes more setting up. There is no single free tool that replaces all of Harvest for everyone, which is why the honest answer starts with a question about how you bill.
Is there a free Harvest alternative that also tracks time?
Invoice Ninja is the usual answer: it keeps time tracking and invoicing in one product and has both a free tier and a self-hosted edition. The other common route is to pair two free tools — a free timer such as Toggl Track or Clockify with free invoicing such as InvoiceBloom or Wave — and move the total hours across yourself when you bill. That takes a minute per invoice and costs nothing, which is why many freelancers who left Harvest ended up there rather than on another single subscription.
Does InvoiceBloom track time like Harvest?
No. InvoiceBloom has no timer and no timesheets, and it is not trying to be a Harvest clone. What it does is the billing half: you add a line with the number of hours as the quantity, 'hours' as the unit and your rate, and the line total is worked out for you. So the workflow is track wherever you already track, then enter the total when you invoice. If having the timer and the invoice inside one product is the thing you value about Harvest, a tool that does both will suit you better than we will.
How do I get my data out of Harvest before I leave?
Export before you cancel, not after, because access to reports usually ends with the subscription. Harvest lets you export time entries, expenses, invoices and client lists from its reporting screens, and the safe order is: run a full time-entry export for the whole account history, export invoices and payments, export the client and project list, then download PDFs of any invoice that is still unpaid or that your accountant may ask about. Keep those files somewhere you will still find them at tax time. Do this while the account is live even if you are not certain you are leaving.
Is Harvest still worth paying for?
Yes, in the cases it was built for. If several people log hours against shared projects, if you need budget alerts before a project overruns, or if timesheet approvals and per-project profitability reporting are part of how the business is run, that is a real product doing real work and no free pairing replaces it cleanly. It stops being worth it when you are a solo freelancer paying a per-seat price for a timer you open twice a month, or when you bill fixed project fees so the tracked hours never reach an invoice anyway.