TrackTime vs. Harvest

TrackTime and Harvest are both aimed at people who turn hours into invoices, but they attack the problem from opposite ends. Harvest starts with a manual timer and builds one of the smoothest paths in the industry from tracked time to a paid invoice. TrackTime starts with the observation that most lost billable time never had a timer running in the first place, and it captures that time automatically on Android.

One disclosure before anything else: TrackTime is our product. We have tried to be genuinely fair in this comparison, and there are several situations described below where Harvest is the better choice. If you read to the end, you should have a clear answer for your own situation rather than a sales pitch.

The short answer

• Choose Harvest if you run a team that tracks time against projects, sends a steady stream of client invoices, and wants tight integrations with accounting tools and online payments. Its invoicing workflow is more polished than TrackTime's, and its team reporting is mature.
• Choose TrackTime if you bill by the hour and your lost time consists of phone calls, text messages, and email that never make it onto a timesheet. TrackTime captures those automatically on Android, and its flat per-account pricing does not change with how many invoices you send.

What Harvest does well

Harvest has been a fixture in time tracking for well over a decade, and its core loop is excellent. You start a timer against a client and a project, the time accumulates into clean reports, and when it is time to bill, you generate an invoice directly from the tracked hours. Clients can pay online, and the numbers flow into accounting integrations such as QuickBooks and Xero without manual re-entry.

The team features deserve credit too. Managers can see who tracked what across projects, compare budgets against actuals, and keep an eye on capacity. Harvest also connects to a wide range of project management tools, so teams that live in tools like Asana or Trello can start timers without leaving their existing workflow. For a small agency or consultancy that bills project work, this is a well-worn and reliable path.

Harvest also offers a free single-seat plan, which makes it easy for a freelancer to try the full workflow before paying anything.

What changed at Harvest in 2025 and 2026

Two changes are worth knowing about before you commit. First, Harvest changed ownership in 2025. Second, its 2026 pricing added usage-based fees on top of seat prices for some features. Under the older model, a seat price covered your account activity. Under the newer structure, the seat price covers core access, and parts of your bill can scale with how heavily you use certain features.

We are stating this factually rather than as a criticism. Usage-based pricing is a legitimate model, and for light users it can work out fine. The practical advice is simply to read the current pricing page carefully, estimate your real monthly activity, and confirm what your total bill will be before you build your billing process around the tool. Long-time users who assumed their costs were fixed have been the ones most surprised by the restructuring.

What TrackTime does differently

Harvest, like almost every tracker, records time only when someone starts a timer. That works for planned project work. It fails for the interruptions that make up a huge share of a billable day: the seven-minute client call in the car, the text thread answered over lunch, and the email session that quietly consumed forty minutes. We wrote about these leaks in detail in five ways billable time leaks out of your week, and our guide to capturing every billable hour explains how to close them.

TrackTime runs in the background on Android and captures that work automatically, with your permission:

• Phone calls. Inbound and outbound cellular calls are timed and matched to the right client automatically.
• Text messages. SMS conversations and incoming RCS messages in Google Messages are captured as billable events.
• Email. Time spent working in Gmail and Outlook is tracked and attributed to clients.
• Travel. Drive time and mileage are recorded for client trips.

Captured entries appear in the web dashboard, where you review and adjust them before anything reaches a client. Invoicing is built in, so tracked time becomes a bill without exporting to another tool. Privacy is handled with a metadata-only design: TrackTime stores who, when, and how long, and it never stores message contents or email subject lines.

The honest limitation is the platform. Automatic capture requires an Android phone, because iOS does not allow any app to observe calls, message notifications, or foreground apps at the operating-system level. There is no TrackTime iOS app, and no app on iPhone can honestly promise what TrackTime does on Android.

Pricing compared

Harvest offers a free single-seat plan, and its Teams plan is $9 per seat per month when billed annually. As described above, 2026 pricing added usage-based fees on top of seat prices for some features, so a team's actual monthly cost depends on activity as well as headcount.

TrackTime's Professional plan is $14.99 per month, or $161.89 per year, for a single user. That price includes unlimited clients, automatic capture, built-in invoicing, two-factor authentication, and full API access, with a 7-day free trial. Team plans are available, and the Enterprise plan supports up to 30 users with team control from the dashboard.

On sticker price alone, Harvest's $9 seat is cheaper than TrackTime's $14.99 account. The comparison shifts when you factor in two things. The first is predictability, since TrackTime's price does not change with how many invoices you send or clients you bill. The second is recovered time, because a single captured six-minute call per day, billed at professional rates, pays for either tool many times over. The question is which tool actually captures that call.

Where Harvest is the better choice

We promised fairness, so here it is plainly. Harvest is the better choice in these situations:

• Your team tracks project work at a desk. If your billable time comes from planned blocks of design, development, or consulting work, a good manual timer with team reporting fits the job, and Harvest's is one of the best.
• Invoicing polish and integrations matter most. Harvest's flow from timesheet to online payment, with accounting sync into QuickBooks or Xero, is more mature than TrackTime's built-in invoicing.
• Your team is on iPhones. TrackTime's core advantage is Android-only. An iPhone-based team gets no automatic capture from us, and Harvest's manual apps work the same on either platform.
• You want to start free. Harvest's free single-seat plan lets a freelancer run the full workflow at no cost, while TrackTime offers a 7-day trial rather than a permanent free tier.

Where TrackTime is the better choice

• You bill for communication, not just projects. Lawyers, consultants, accountants, and recruiters spend a large share of their billable day on calls, texts, and email. Harvest cannot see any of that unless you remember to run a timer. TrackTime captures it automatically.
• You carry an Android phone. The capture engine is the whole point, and it requires Android. If you already carry one, you get a category of tracking Harvest does not offer, and our roundup of the best Android time tracking apps shows how unusual that capability is.
• You want a predictable bill. TrackTime's flat per-account pricing does not vary with usage, which is a meaningful difference after Harvest's 2026 restructuring.
• You bill in increments and review before sending. Captured entries land in a review queue in the dashboard, so you decide what is billable before an invoice exists. That workflow suits professionals with six-minute increment habits, as covered in our lawyer app comparison.

Frequently asked questions

Can Harvest track phone calls or text messages automatically?

No. Harvest is a manual tracker, so time is recorded when someone starts a timer or fills in a timesheet. Calls, texts, and email sessions are invisible to it unless you log them yourself. TrackTime captures those automatically on Android with your permission.

Did Harvest raise its prices in 2026?

Harvest changed ownership in 2025, and its 2026 pricing added usage-based fees on top of seat prices for some features. The Teams plan remains $9 per seat per month with annual billing, but total costs now depend partly on account activity, so estimate your usage against the current pricing page before committing.

Does TrackTime work on iPhone?

There is no TrackTime iOS app. iOS does not allow any app to observe calls, message notifications, or foreground apps at the operating-system level, so automatic capture like TrackTime's is technically impossible on iPhone. If your work phone is an iPhone, a manual tracker such as Harvest is the realistic option.

What does TrackTime store about my communications?

Metadata only. TrackTime records who the communication was with, when it happened, and how long it lasted. It never stores message contents or email subject lines, which matters for anyone handling confidential or privileged client communication.

Try the side Harvest cannot see

If your billable day is mostly planned project work, Harvest is a strong and proven choice, and its invoicing will serve you well. If your day is full of client calls, texts, and email that no timer ever catches, that time is worth real money, and only automatic capture will find it. Start a free 7-day TrackTime trial and see what a week of automatic capture recovers, or learn how the Android app works first.