Top 11 Harvest Alternatives (Paid and Free) Review in 2025

If you’ve ever felt that time tracking creates more problems than it solves, you’re not alone. Many agencies using time tracking run into familiar headaches: clunky time entry processes, limited reporting, and difficulty connecting tracked time to real project finances.

One major frustration is how easy it is for time tracking to slip through the cracks. Employees forget to start timers, interfaces feel slow and outdated, and logging hours often turns into a additional chore rather than a quick daily habit.

Time tracking is usually separated from other core parts of business life, like project management, resource planning, and financial forecasting. Without a real-time link between the tracked time, budgets burned, and invoices sent, it’s hard to stay on top of profitability.

Users often find it difficult to pull insightful reports, spot potential budget overruns early, or forecast how current work will impact future cash flow.

Finally, if you’re managing retainers, fixed-fee projects, or multi-phase contracts, Harvest can feel limiting. Tracking hours against evolving budgets, rolling over unused retainer time, and tying actual hours back to invoicing often require manual workarounds—leading to more admin time and potential billing mistakes.

Below, we’ll discuss Harvest time tracking alternatives and give you a detailed comparison. In case you’re running an agency, check out our shortlist about agency software for tacking time.

If you’re looking for a reliable tool that can fully replace Harvest, look no further than Productive.

Why is it better to use Productive as a Harvest alternative?

For one, it’s a one-stop shop for agency and professional service management. Many agencies outgrow Harvest because it separates time tracking from financials, lacks deeper project budgeting, and doesn’t always alert you when budgets run off track.

With Productive you can easily integrate your project management and resource planning with your budgeting and billing in a single platform.

This helps you:

This is combined with advanced reporting and forecasting, so you can gain insights into all your platform activities.

Now, let’s explore some of Productive’s features in more detail:

Productive’s Time Tracking helps you focus your work instead of checking the clock or trying to remember what you did at the end of the day or the week.

In comparison to Harvest, Productive also offers improved visibility into your time-related metrics and every project cost.

You can view integrated tracking data on both full-time employees and contractors in the Company time tab.

Productive solves common issues like clunky time entry, forgotten timers, and messy approvals. Whether you prefer manual entries, calendar-based tracking, or bulk approval workflows, Productive adapts to how your team actually works—not the other way around.

Productive’s different time tracking options improve accuracy and project tracking control. 

With Productive’s Project Management, you can collaborate with your team members and track overall project progress. This is equivalent to Harvest’s services, but with the added benefit of communicating with team members through the comment section.

Unlike older platforms where time tracking feels disconnected or buried behind clunky menus, Productive unifies tasks, time, and budgets into one clean workspace that’s easy for teams to adopt.

Productive’s users can:

You can switch between multiple project views for a high-level overview of your progress. These include: List, Kanban, Gantt, Workload, Calendar, and more.

There are also Docs, which you can use to simultaneously work on the same document with your coworkers. AI is available directly from your pages to help you create and format your pages.

Employee scheduling and resource planning in project management are really important parts of business management. With Harvest, you’d need to get a separate tool, Forecast, to get these essential functionalities.

Additionally, Harvest users often struggle with lacking real-time budget visibility.

With Productive, your budgeting and Resource Planning are already connected in a single platform. You can easily schedule your resources, manage availability, and get insights into utilization.

Another great feature is Forecasting. By combining your scheduling and budgeting data, it predicts budget burn, revenue, and profit margins in a simple chart to help you avoid roadblocks and get successful project delivery.

So yeah, when switching to Productive as your Harvest replacement app, you won’t need to guess if your team is overbooked or if a fixed-fee project is running off-budget—real-time forecasting keeps you updated before problems hit.

Time-off management is another essential feature for resource planning and it’s integrated in Productive’s Resource Planning.

Productive offers a variety of HRIS integrations so you can sync your time-off types and more, such as Breathe, BambooHR, Rippling, Humaans, and many more.

Productive brings together all key aspects of your business in one place. The same goes with finances.

With Productive’s Budgeting, you can set up and track budgets and profitability across projects or on a higher level, which makes it easier to gain valuable insights and optimize business processes.  

You can also split complex projects into multiple budgets for streamlined cash flow management — for example, design, development, and maintenance phases. In Harvest, you’d have to create multiple projects instead, which can be confusing.

With Productive’s Reporting feature, you can easily create detailed reports using data from time sheets and budgets. You can choose some of the preset report templates or customize your own template.

Instead of gathering financial insights after a project’s finished, Productive alerts you to potential overruns early, and shows detailed profitability reports tied directly to tracked time.

This way, you can forecast your metrics (revenue, utilization, profit margins), compare scheduled vs. actuals, control your real-time budget burn, and make sure your project (or company) is on the right track.

Billing dozens of clients and projects doesn’t have to be a pain or take days. With Productive’s Billing feature, you can create brand-friendly invoices, check your invoice history and see if any of your clients have outstanding payments that need to be settled.

Billing needs to be tied to actual operations. And if you manage retainers or fixed-fee contracts, Productive helps you automate recurring budgets and connect billing directly to tracked work.

In other words, no more copy-paste from disconnected spreadsheets. You’re welcome. Productive also includes accounting integrations with Xero and QuickBooks. 

Additional features include: Client Portal, Sales CRM, Revenue Recognition, Automations, Permission Builder

Productive offers various integrations with HR, accounting, and collaboration tools.

Productive’s integrations include Slack, Google Calendar, and Outlook for scheduling and updates; Xero and QuickBooks for accounting; BambooHR, Breathe, and Personio for HRM; Jira and Memtime for time tracking; and more.

The cool thing is that Productive integrates directly with most of these tools, so you can ditch the manual exports/imports.

You can go for a free 14-day trial before you decide to check out a paid plan.

There are some differences between Harvest and Productive. To help you migrate your data and get used to Productive quickly, we’ve created some useful resources, including:

Hubstaff is a time tracking software that allows users to track time, manage projects, and monitor employee productivity. A cool feature is the ability to track time on desktop, web, and mobile apps, which makes it easy to stay productive even if you’re on the go. 

In case you want to learn more about keeping your team productive, you might want to check our different list of the best time management tools and techniques.

Key Features:

All in all, Hubstaff is a fair choice for agencies looking for Harvest alternatives. You have all the basic features and integrations that’ll make your day-to-day project management easier.

Users like Harvest because of its easy-to-use interface and helpful customer support. Some customers complain about occasional glitches in the software and difficulties with payroll integration. 

Wrike is a project management software that includes time tracking features. The software is known for its intuitive user interface, customizable workflows, and lots of integrations. Wrike allows users to keep track of time spent on tasks, create reports, and set up billing rates for each project. 

Key Features:

Wrike is a solid Harvest replacement that offers many of the same features. Customers like the flexibility for various types of teams and the intuitive user interface.

However, users have mentioned issues with customer support response times and the steep learning curve for new users.

Additionally, Wrike only offers budgeting as part of its most advanced pricing tier. Compare Wrike and Teamwork to Productive, where budgeting is available in all of the plans.

Everhour is a simple time tracking Harvest alternative and with budgeting features that integrates with popular project management tools like Asana, Trello, and Jira. The  tracking tool allows users to track time on tasks, set up budgets, and create custom reports. 

Key Features:

Everhour is a good Harvest alternative option since it allows employees to track hours across projects and tasks. Customers are generally happy with the project management software integration and time tracking, but some users mention occasional glitches in the software and difficulty setting up certain features.

Timecamp is a cloud-based time tracking solution with project management features that offers good support for businesses of all sizes. The tracking tool allows users to track work time on tasks, set up budgets, and create custom reports.

Additionally, Timecamp offers features for invoicing, payroll management, and team management so you can monitor your team’s productivity. This makes it one of the more comprehensive Harvest alternatives.

Key Features:

Timecamp is a solid option for tracking billable hours since it offers a free basic plan for unlimited users. Users highlight the user-friendly interface and affordability.

There have been complaints about occasional technical issues and limited integrations, though.

DeskTime is productivity tracking tool that allows users to track time on work tasks, monitor employee activity, and create custom reports. The software offers a variety of features for businesses of all sizes, including employee monitoring which is useful for monitoring remote teams. 

Key Features:

DeskTime is one of the better Harvest alternatives on this list. Keep in mind that it focuses on productivity tracking and alongside customer support. Users like this the most. However, some customers have complained about occasional technical issues and difficulties with work management features.

TMetric is a time tracking software that offers a variety of features for businesses of all sizes. The software allows users to track time on tasks, set up project budgets, and create custom reports.

Additionally, TMetric offers features for invoicing, team management, and productivity monitoring which is especially helpful with assessing employee performance.

Key Features:

TMetric is a solid tool that covers most of the basic features you need for your daily agency operations. Customers like the tool’s ease of use and flexible time tracking options, but have expressed dissatisfaction with software glitches and difficulty with invoice generation.

Clockify is a time tracking software that offers a variety of features for businesses of all sizes. If you’re looking for a free software like Harvest Clockify is porbably the best Harvest software alternative. 

Regarding Clockify’s paid tiers- its users can track time on tasks, set up budgets, and create custom reports. Additionally, Clockify offers features for invoicing, team management, and productivity monitoring. It also has a basic free vesion.

Key features:

Clockify is a good option because the basic time tracking features are free, so if you’re just getting started it’s nice to have the option to try out a tool for free. Customers like its user-friendly interface, time tracking and reporting features.

Other customers have complained about limited customization options for certain features and a lack of project management functionality.

QuickBooks Time is a cloud-based time tracking solution that offers a good balance of many features that adjust to businesses of all sizes.

This harvest software alternative allows users to track time on tasks, set up budgets, and create custom reports. Additionally, QuickBooks Time offers features for team management, scheduling, and productivity monitoring.

Key Features:

QuickBooks is generally one of the best Harvest alternatives when it comes to tracking work time and billing, since it integrates so well with QuickBooks.

Still, customers have complained about its lack of automation features and difficulty with navigation and organization of data.

If you want to learn more about accounting software, we have a detailed comparison of Netsuite vs QuickBooks.

Replicon PSA (Professional Services Automation) is a cloud-based software designed specifically for professional services organizations. Replicon PSA includes features such as tracking work time, project billing, and resource planning.

Key Features:

Replicon PSA is a good choice for organizations that offer professional services thanks to its fair amount of features. Users like the reporting feature and their customer support, but some have complained about the steep learning curve and difficulty with optimization options.

Check out our Replicon competitors article to learn more.

Paymo is a cloud-based project and work management software designed for small and medium-sized businesses. The software offers a range of features that help businesses manage their projects, team collaboration, and finances. 

Key Features:

Paymo is a solid choice for medium-sized companies looking for Harvest alternatives. It covers more than basic tracking of work time.

Customers like the value for money they get, but some have complained about software glitches and customer support taking too long to respond.

When picking a replacement for Harvest, remember that it’s not just about finding another time tracker—it’s about solving the deeper issues Harvest couldn’t fix.

Check out the Harvest competitors and time-tracking tools in this list and look for alternatives that don’t just log hours but tie time tracking directly into budgets, billing, cost management, and resource planning.

Make sure your new solution gives you real-time financial insights, flexible ways to track time (timer, manual, mobile), and built-in alerts for budget overruns.

If you manage retainers, fixed-fee projects, or need strong reporting on billable vs. non-billable hours, prioritize platforms that make these workflows easy.

There are loads of great alternatives to Harvest time tracking, each one with their own unique set of features aiming to help you run your projects more efficiently.

It’s important to consider what your specific needs are, as well as how the tool aligns with your long-term goals and plans before you decide to settle on a time tracking software.

Educate your employees on how to properly use the time tracking software, so they can use it to its full potential. 

There are great apps like Harvest for simple time tracking like DeskTime or Clockify, but if you’re looking for end-to-end project management software, you should consider Productive.

See how easy it is to migrate from Harvest to Productive and book a demo today.

Yes, harvest software comes with a basic free version for a single user only, it does simple tracking of work time with a time or manual time entries.

Harvest is a time tracking and billing software designed for businesses, especially agencies and service providers. It allows users to log hours worked on projects, manage budgets, track billable vs. non-billable time, and create invoices based on time entries. In addition to time tracking, Harvest provides simple reporting and integrates with various project management and accounting tools.

Yes, there are free time tracking tools available similar to Harvest, such as Wrike and Timecamp. These tools offer time tracking and some other features like tracking billable hours, generating invoices, and tracking projects and productivity. 

Harvest is a legitimate software that’s been around since 2006. It offers features that’ll help you with managing the basic tasks and pain points in your daily agency life. The features include: time tracking, invoicing, project management, and reporting to help businesses manage their workflow and finances efficiently.