Harvest now charges a base rate per seat and bills invoices, projects, clients and tasks on top, at rates it does not publish. Two firms on the same plan with the same headcount can pay very different amounts, and you find out which one you are at renewal.
You have used Harvest for years and never really thought about it, which is the highest compliment you can pay a tool. Then the renewal quote arrives and it is not an increase so much as a different category of number. You go back to the pricing page to check you have not misread something, and the page says starting from.
Tick anything true of your setup today. Two or more and the invoicing half of what you pay for is costing you more than it needs to.
Then the question is whether you are paying agency prices for a freelancer's workflow. Both are real needs and they cost very different amounts. The invoicing software cost calculator works out the seat floor for your team size, and says plainly that it is a floor.
Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025 and repriced in 2026. The per-seat figure is now a base rate rather than the bill. Their pricing page puts it plainly: your base rate includes core features, and as your team grows, additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks are billed based on what you use.
The per-unit rates for that usage are not printed on the pricing page. It points you to a calculator and the help centre instead, and even the free plan carries a note that some features may require payment of fees. So the seat price is a floor you can read and the rest is a number you have to model, which is why two accounts on the same plan with the same headcount can pay very differently.
None of that is hidden, and a usage model is a legitimate way to charge. It just means the one thing a small business wants from a pricing page, a figure it can put in next year's budget, is the thing this page cannot give you.
Harvest's own published tiers. Note the wording on both paid plans: starting from, not a price.
Harvest tiers as of 17 October 2026, from getharvest.com/pricing, which says starting from on every paid tier and bills invoices, projects, clients and tasks on usage at rates it does not list. Prices can change. Billbooks is $7.95 a month flat for the whole business on the entry plan, with nothing billed on usage: see the pricing.
Stay with Harvest if the team reporting is doing real work for you. Timesheet approvals, per-project profitability, team capacity and forecasting, custom exports and SAML single sign-on are all things Harvest does and Billbooks does not. If a manager approves timesheets every week, or you price the next engagement off last quarter's profitability by project, that is a genuine job and moving would cost you more than it saves. Billbooks tracks time against projects and turns it into an invoice. It does not run an agency's reporting, and swapping a tool you use properly for a cheaper one you then work around is not a saving.
Be realistic before you start. Plan an afternoon, and do it at the start of a month so the first invoice run is clean.
Harvest exports both. That list, with addresses and the project names your invoices refer to, is the part that takes longest to retype and the part you must not lose.
Years of paid invoices can stay in Harvest as history. Rebuild only the invoices still outstanding, which for most businesses is a handful rather than hundreds.
If you bill time, you need the unbilled entries, not the whole history. Export the lot for your records and bring across only what has not been invoiced yet.
Downgrade rather than delete until the year is filed. You will want the history reachable even if you never open it.
The point of moving is to stop chasing by hand. Set the reminder schedule before the first invoice goes out, or the new tool inherits the old habit. The quote follow-up planner gives you the timing if you want to run it by hand first.
A price that is the price
A flat monthly cost for the whole business, with nothing billed on invoices, projects, clients or tasks. The only thing that changes it is moving plan.
Priced per business, not per seat
Two users on the entry plan, five on the next, ten above that. Adding a colleague inside your plan limit costs nothing.
Time against projects, then billed
Track time with a timer or by entry, against projects and clients, and turn unbilled time into invoice lines.
Every feature on every plan
Reminders, recurring invoices, quotes with digital signatures, expenses and the Xero and QuickBooks Online push are not gated above the cheapest plan.
To be plain about what Billbooks is: an invoicing tool that tracks time, not a project management and profitability platform. It quotes, invoices, takes payment, chases what is late, tracks expenses and records time against jobs. It does not approve timesheets, report profit by project or forecast capacity. That is the trade, and for a business whose Harvest usage is mostly track-then-bill it is the right one.
If you use Harvest mainly to track time and send the invoice, Billbooks covers that from $7.95 a month for the whole business, with no per-seat fee and nothing billed on usage. If you depend on timesheet approvals or profitability reporting by project, stay with Harvest or move to another tool built for agency reporting.
Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025 and repriced in 2026. The per-seat figure became a base rate, with additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks billed on usage. Both paid tiers now say starting from: Teams from $9 per seat a month billed annually and Enterprise from $14, as of 17 October 2026.
Teams starts at $9 per seat a month billed annually, which Harvest shows as $108 per seat a year, or $11 billed monthly. Enterprise starts at $14 per seat a month billed annually, shown as $168 a year, or $17.50 monthly. Enterprise Plus is custom priced. Those are floors, because usage is billed on top at rates the pricing page does not list.
On the published figures, yes, and the gap widens with team size: Billbooks is priced per business rather than per seat, so ten people cost the same as two on the plan that covers them. The honest caveat runs the other way too. Harvest does team reporting that Billbooks does not, so compare what you actually use rather than the headline price.
It tracks time against projects and clients, with a timer or by entry, and turns unbilled time into invoice lines. It does not do timesheet approvals, profitability by project, capacity planning or forecasting. If those matter to you, Harvest is the better tool and this is not a close call.
Export your clients, projects and invoices from Harvest, then rebuild what is still outstanding and keep the old account as read-only history. Paid invoices and old time entries rarely need moving, which makes it an afternoon rather than a project. We are building a direct importer and will say here when it is ready.
No. There is no per-invoice, per-project, per-client or per-task charge. The plan price covers the plan, and the limits are on users and clients rather than on how much you do.
Nothing, inside your plan limit. The entry plan covers two users, the next five and the one above ten. You only pay more when you cross a limit, and then it is one step in the plan price rather than a per-seat fee.
Yes, 30 days with no card required. The free calculators and generators need no account at all, so you can price the work and send a real invoice before signing up for anything.
A little kit of calculators and generators, on the house.
30-day free trial. No credit card required.
Try Billbooks freeSide by side on price and features: Billbooks vs Harvest. The long version, with the reported cases and what Harvest said: the 2026 Harvest price change. Free and needing no account: the invoicing software cost calculator and the invoice generator. Also worth reading: which invoicing tools put every feature on the cheapest plan.