Harvest pricing in 2026: plans, Flex billing and what changed

How much does Harvest cost per seat?

Harvest charges per seat, from $9 a month on Teams and $14 on Enterprise when you pay for the year up front. Paying month to month costs $11 and $17.50. The yearly price is a 20% discount, and Harvest lists every price in US dollars.

At the seat price alone, a five-person team pays $540 a year on Teams billed yearly, or $55 a month ($660 a year) on monthly billing. The same five people on Enterprise cost $840 a year, or $87.50 a month. The step from Teams to Enterprise is $5 per seat per month on yearly billing, which for a ten-person agency is $600 a year just to switch on timesheet approvals.

Both paid cards on Harvest's page say "starting from", and both carry the same line underneath: as a team grows, additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks are billed based on use. That line is where most of the confusion about Harvest's pricing comes from, and it is worth reading before any of the numbers above.

How does Harvest's Flex billing work?

Flex is a seat price plus usage charges. Harvest's billing documentation identifies four usage categories from your previous billing period: active projects, active clients, active tasks and invoicing. Each plan includes a free allowance of that usage, and you pay only for what goes above it. Harvest's help centre describes the allowance but does not put a number on it.

A few details decide how big the usage part gets:

• Only tracked items count: a project, client or task is active for billing when someone tracked time to it in the period. Archived, deleted and untouched items are not charged.
• It looks backwards: each bill is worked out from the period before it, so new activity shows up one bill later.
• New accounts get a grace period: usage charges begin at the second paid renewal, which is why the first bill usually covers seats and nothing else.
• Unlimited is the alternative: instead of usage charges, you pay a fixed usage fee. Harvest does not list that fee on its pricing page, so the only way to see it is in your own account.

Harvest's pricing-plan explanation answers "Why is my second bill higher than my first?" with an example: a seats-only bill of $44 that becomes $404 once usage is added. The usage part in that example is more than eight times the seat part. It is one account, not a rule, but it shows why the seat price is a poor guide to what Harvest actually costs.

The shape of your work matters more than the size of your team. Two teams with the same headcount can have different usage totals if one works on a few long projects and the other tracks many small client jobs. Without the allowance and rates for your account, neither example tells you the final bill. Harvest has a billing simulator under Settings, Billing, where you can compare subscription options and model usage changes. Run it with last month's real project and client count before a renewal, not after.

What changed in Harvest's pricing, and when?

Three things changed: the plan names, the way usage is billed, and the owner. Harvest used to sell a Pro plan and a Premium plan at a flat per-seat price. It now sells Teams and Enterprise, each on Flex or Unlimited billing, and the business belongs to Bending Spoons.

Harvest's help centre says accounts that upgraded from a trial before November 7, 2024 may still be on a legacy plan, with pricing and features that differ from the current page. It also says some legacy customers are currently getting free access to Enterprise features, such as profitability reporting and the activity log, for a limited time. If you are on a legacy plan, the in-app upgrade screen can show several options side by side, including a higher-priced Enterprise option. Harvest says that figure is the cost of that plan, not a change to your current renewal.

How big is the Harvest price increase?

Harvest's site identifies Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A. as its owner. Reporting on individual customer renewals, from a Bloomberg report to the BBC, has included much larger increases than the advertised seat-price change: pricing consultant Mark Peacock, who was interviewed for the BBC report, describes a reported example rising from $130 to $2,110 a month. That is a reported account-specific bill, not a price you can apply to another team. Use your own renewal notice and billing breakdown to assess the change.

One smaller change catches trial users. When a Harvest trial ends, the checkout screen pre-selects Enterprise on yearly billing. If you click through without changing the toggles, that is the plan you buy. Trials also run with every Enterprise feature switched on except SSO, so a team that trials Harvest and then picks Teams loses approvals, profitability reports and saved reports on day one of paying.

Is Harvest's free plan enough to run client work?

Only for one person on two projects, and even then sending invoices depends on connecting Stripe. The free plan allows one active person and two active projects at a time. Archived ones do not count, so you can rotate projects, but a freelancer with three live clients is already over the limit.

Invoicing is included, but Harvest's help article on the free plan lists what it leaves out:

• Sending invoices: you cannot email an invoice or export it as a PDF without connecting Stripe for payments.
• Branding and files: no company logo, and no attachments on invoices or estimates.
• Connections: no QuickBooks Online integration, no import from Asana and no data import at all.

Payments carry their own cost. To take online payments, Harvest uses Stripe or PayPal, and their fees apply. On top of that, Harvest's help centre says it charges a small additional fee on card and ACH payments for accounts that are not on Premium or on Unlimited usage billing. It does not give the rate on that page, but it says the fee is shown when you create the invoice.

Put together, the free plan is a way to try Harvest or to invoice one or two clients through Stripe. It is not a free plan for a team, and Harvest does not present it as one.

Which features push a team onto Enterprise?

Approval and reporting features. Teams covers tracking, invoicing, rates and team reports, but anything about checking hours before they are billed, or seeing margin by client, sits on Enterprise. Harvest's own list of what you lose when you move from a trial or from Enterprise down to Teams is the clearest way to see the line.

The Slack line is easy to miss. Harvest's help centre says the Slack integration is only on Enterprise and is disconnected when an account moves to Teams, while Xero and the other Teams-level integrations stay. Recurring reports and exports also stop on Teams, so a report that goes out to a client on a schedule needs Enterprise.

If you need one of those, price the whole team on Enterprise, because Harvest bills every seat on the plan you choose. If you do not, Teams on yearly billing is the cheapest paid way into Harvest, before usage.

Should you stay on Harvest after the price change?

Stay if Harvest still does a job nothing cheaper does for you and your usage is predictable. Rethink it if your renewal arrives before you have modelled the usage charges, or if you pay for a structure you barely use.

Harvest is still a good product, and for some teams the bill is fine:

• Likely fine on Harvest: teams with a handful of long-running projects and clients, teams that take card payments on invoices through Stripe, teams that plan staff in Harvest Forecast, and finance-led firms that need approvals and profitability by client and are happy to pay for Enterprise or Unlimited.
• Likely to pay more on Flex: agencies and freelancers with many small jobs, anyone who splits work into lots of tasks per project, legacy accounts facing their first renewal on the new plans, and teams that only use the timer, a weekly report and a simple invoice.

The second group is not paying for features they use. They are paying for the number of things they track time against. That is the part Flex is designed to price, and it is the part a simpler tracker does not charge for at all.

A practical test: open Settings, Billing in Harvest and note the active projects, clients and tasks from your last period, then compare the Flex and Unlimited options Harvest shows. If neither number is one you would choose to pay again next year, start the comparison now, while your current term still has months left on it.

What should you look for in a Harvest alternative?

Look for the part of Harvest you actually use, at a price that does not move with your project count. For most small teams that means timers and timesheets people fill in without reminders, reports grouped by client and project, and invoices built from billable hours. Everything else is a bonus.

The import row is the one teams forget. Harvest's own export gives you CSV and Excel files, but a tracker that connects to Harvest and pulls clients, projects, people, time entries and invoices in one go saves a weekend of cleanup. The steps and the gaps are covered in our notes on exporting Harvest data.

Timen is one option for teams that need tracking, reports, invoicing and a Harvest import. It is free for the whole team, with no limit on users, projects, clients or time entries, so the thing Flex charges for costs nothing. It covers the timer, a calendar view, reports by project, client, tag and person, and invoices built from tracked time that download as a PDF or CSV or go straight to QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks or Wave. It imports from Harvest by signing in, including clients, projects, people, time entries and invoices, with Harvest tasks arriving as tags.

Choose a different tool if you need formal approvals, expenses, payment collection or resource scheduling. Timen has no timesheet approvals, no expense tracking, no payment collection on invoices and no resource scheduling like Forecast. If those are why you chose Harvest, you will be happier on a paid tool, and the full list of Harvest alternatives compares them by what each one keeps. For the two-tool view, see Timen and Harvest side by side.

Harvest pricing questions

How much does Harvest cost per user?

Harvest Teams starts at $9 per seat per month billed yearly ($108 per seat a year), or $11 billed monthly. Enterprise starts at $14 billed yearly ($168 per seat a year), or $17.50 monthly. On the default Flex billing, usage charges for active projects, clients, tasks and invoicing above an allowance are added on top of the seat price.

Does Harvest still sell the Pro plan?

No. Harvest now sells Teams and Enterprise, plus a custom-priced Enterprise Plus. Accounts that upgraded from a trial before November 7, 2024 may still be on a legacy plan such as Pro or Premium until they change plans.

Is Harvest free?

Harvest has a free plan for one active person and two active projects. It includes time tracking, invoicing and expenses, but invoices cannot be emailed or exported as PDFs unless Stripe is connected, and there is no QuickBooks Online integration or data import.

Who owns Harvest now?

Harvest is owned by Bending Spoons. The footer of Harvest's own website is credited to Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A.

What is a good Harvest alternative for a small team?

It depends on which part of Harvest you rely on. Teams that mainly track hours and invoice clients can use a free tool such as Timen, which has no seat or project limits. Teams that need timesheet approvals, payment collection or resource scheduling should compare paid tools that offer those features.

Reading a Harvest quote

Treat $9 and $14 as the entry fee, not the price. What you pay on Flex depends on how many projects, clients and tasks your team tracks time against, and that number shows up one bill late. Model it in Harvest's billing settings, or ask for the Unlimited figure, before you commit to a year.

If the answer is more than you want to pay for timers, reports and invoices, those three things do not have to cost anything. Timen is free for the whole team, and it can bring your Harvest history with it.