If you bill clients by the hour or need to understand where your team’s time actually goes, a solid time tracking tool is worth its weight in gold. Two names come up again and again in this space: Harvest and FreshBooks. Both can log hours and connect to invoicing, but they’re built around different priorities. Here’s a plain-language breakdown to help you decide which one fits the way you work.
How Each Tool Approaches Time Tracking
Harvest was built with time tracking as its core feature. Everything else — invoicing, reporting, integrations — was added to support that central job. When you log into Harvest, you see timers front and center. You can track time by project, by task, and by team member, and the interface stays out of your way. It works well for service businesses like agencies, consultants, and contractors who live and die by the billable hour.
FreshBooks, on the other hand, started as invoicing software and added time tracking later. That doesn’t make it bad — it just means the experience feels slightly secondary. You can log hours and attach them directly to invoices, which is genuinely useful. But if time tracking is the main thing you need, you may notice that FreshBooks keeps nudging you toward its billing features instead.
Reporting and Project Visibility
This is where Harvest pulls ahead for most small business owners who manage multiple projects or a small team. Its reports show you at a glance how much time was spent on a project, how that compares to your budget, and whether you’re on track to be profitable. You can spot scope creep early, which saves real money.
FreshBooks offers time reports too, but they’re simpler. If you run a solo operation and just need to know how many hours to invoice a client, FreshBooks does the job cleanly. If you want deeper project-level insights, Harvest gives you more to work with without requiring a spreadsheet detour.
Pricing and What You Get for It
Harvest offers a free plan for solo users with up to two active projects, which is a genuine starting point for freelancers. Paid plans start at around $12 per seat per month, covering unlimited projects and team features. The pricing scales with your team size, so small teams keep costs predictable.
FreshBooks bundles time tracking into its broader accounting plans, which start at roughly $19 per month and increase based on the number of clients you manage. If you already need FreshBooks for invoicing and light bookkeeping, the time tracking comes along for the ride at no extra cost. But if you only want time tracking, you’re paying for features you may not use.
The Bottom Line
Choose Harvest if time tracking and project profitability are central to your business. Choose FreshBooks if you want an all-in-one invoicing and accounting tool and time tracking is a secondary need. Both are reliable — the right pick simply depends on which problem you’re solving first.