TimeCamp vs Harvest: Which Is Better for Timesheets and Invoicing in 2026?

Harvest is the better pick if invoicing is the point. Its free plan covers one freelancer with two projects, and invoices come straight from tracked time with online payments. TimeCamp is better if you forget timers or run a team on a budget. It tracks apps and websites automatically, and paid plans start at $3.99 per user per month billed annually. Neither keeps a private, local record of your day.

Harvest is built around a timer you start and stop, and the invoice that comes out at the end. TimeCamp is built around a desktop app that watches which apps and websites you use and turns that into timesheet entries, with invoicing added on its paid plans.

Disclosure: Dayflow, the third row in the tables below, is our product. It is a free, open-source Mac app that records your screen and has AI write your day into a timeline. It does not send invoices, so it is not a contender for the billing half of this job. This article is a comparison of each vendor’s own documentation as checked on October 4, 2026.

Quick comparison

Tool	Best for	How it tracks	Price	Platforms
TimeCamp	Teams that want automatic tracking and low per-seat cost	Desktop app tracks apps and websites, plus timers and timesheets	Free plan; paid from $3.99 per user per month billed annually	Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android
Harvest	Freelancers and teams who bill clients from tracked time	One-click timers, daily and weekly timesheets, calendar	Free plan (1 seat, 2 projects); Teams $9 seat/month billed annually	Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, browser extensions
Dayflow (ours)	Remembering what you did on your Mac, privately	Screen capture at one frame every 10 seconds, AI-written timeline	$0, MIT licensed; optional Pro $20 a month	Mac only (macOS 14+)

Key takeaways

• Harvest is the safer choice when the invoice is the deliverable. Invoices come from tracked time, clients can pay online, and the free plan includes invoicing for a solo freelancer with two projects.
• TimeCamp is the choice if you forget timers. Its desktop app tracks apps and websites automatically and assigns time by keyword, which Harvest does not list at all.
• TimeCamp is cheaper per seat. Starter is $3.99 per user per month billed annually. Harvest Teams is $9.
• TimeCamp’s AI costs extra. The AI Time Tracker is billed by tokens, which TimeCamp estimates at about $6 per user per month. Harvest lists no AI features.
• Both are cloud services. If you want a private record of your working day on your own machine, neither does that, and that is the gap Dayflow covers on a Mac.

What TimeCamp does better

It tracks time without a timer. TimeCamp’s desktop app records which apps and websites you use and assigns that time to projects by keyword. You can still run manual timers and fill in timesheets, but the automatic layer means a forgotten timer does not leave a hole in your week. One caution: a summarized read of TimeCamp’s pricing page puts app and website tracking at the Premium plan and above, and that should be rechecked on the pricing page before you count on it at a lower tier.

It suggests timesheet entries with AI. The AI Time Tracker, which TimeCamp calls the Time Intelligence Center, fills timesheets from your activity. You pay for it by token usage on top of your plan. TimeCamp estimates about $6 per user per month and gives $10 in trial credits, so you can see what your own usage costs before you commit.

It costs less per seat. Starter is $3.99 per user per month billed annually, Premium is $6.99 and Ultimate is $9.99. Ultimate costs about what Harvest Teams does and adds screenshots, timesheet approvals and expenses.

It covers more of the operations side. Starter adds invoicing, attendance and time-off management. Premium adds budgets, billable time and resource planning. If you run a small agency and also track who is on leave next week, TimeCamp puts that in the same place as your hours.

It runs on Linux, and it can be self-hosted. TimeCamp lists a Linux app, which Harvest does not. Its Enterprise plan offers self-hosted deployment and private cloud, priced on request.

Its free plan has unlimited users. TimeCamp’s free forever plan does not cap headcount. It does not itemize every feature limit on the pages reviewed here, so see the vendor’s pricing page for exactly what the free tier includes.

What Harvest does better

Invoicing is the core of the product. Harvest turns tracked time into invoices, takes online payments and tracks expenses. It connects to accounting tools such as QuickBooks and Xero. TimeCamp invoices too, but in Harvest the timer, the timesheet and the invoice were designed as one flow.

The free plan includes invoicing. One seat and two projects, with time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking, for $0. A freelancer with one or two retainer clients can run their billing on this indefinitely. TimeCamp lists invoicing from Starter upward, so the cheapest TimeCamp plan with invoicing is a paid one.

It can track from your calendar. If most of your billable hours are meetings and calls, pulling entries from a connected calendar saves retyping them. That fits consultants whose day is set by their calendar.

It has browser extensions. Harvest lists browser extensions alongside its Mac, Windows and mobile apps, so you can start a timer from the web tool you are already working in.

The pricing is simpler. There are three paid tiers and no separate AI usage bill. Enterprise adds profitability reporting and timesheet approvals at $14 per seat per month billed annually.

The trial is clear. It runs 30 days and needs no credit card. TimeCamp offers a free trial on paid plans but does not state its length on the pages read, so see the vendor’s pricing page.

Two things to know before you buy. Harvest’s site footer now reads Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A., so Bending Spoons owns it. The pricing page names its plans Teams and Enterprise, while the pricing FAQ still refers to “pro” and “premium” plans. Read the plan details, not just the plan name.

Head-to-head table

Capability	TimeCamp	Harvest	Dayflow (ours)
Automatic capture	Apps and websites via desktop app (listed from Premium; recheck)	None listed	Screen frame every 10 seconds, AI-written timeline
Timers and timesheets	Manual timers and timesheets	One-click timers, daily and weekly timesheets, calendar	Not a timer app; captures automatically
Invoicing	Starter and above	Yes, with online payments, including on Free	No
Expenses	Ultimate	Yes, including on Free	No
Team reports and approvals	Approvals on Ultimate	Team reporting; approvals and profitability on Enterprise	No team reports or payroll approvals
Website blocking	Not listed	Not listed	No
AI summaries	AI Time Tracker fills timesheets, billed by tokens	None listed	AI writes your day into a timeline; can miss or misread work
Data location	Vendor cloud; self-hosted or private cloud on Enterprise	Vendor cloud	Recordings and timeline stored on your Mac; local AI or cloud processing
Free tier	Free forever, unlimited users, limits not itemized	1 seat, 2 projects, with invoicing	Full app at $0
Platforms and license	Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android; not open source	Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, browser extensions; not open source	Mac only (macOS 14+); open source, MIT

Which one makes invoicing easier?

For billing clients, Harvest. Invoicing is on every plan, including the free one, and the same product handles expenses, online payments and the hand-off to QuickBooks or Xero. Your timers become line items without another tool.

TimeCamp gets you an invoice too, from Starter upward, and its Premium plan adds billable time and budgets. Pick it for billing if you also want automatic tracking or attendance and time off in the same account, or if the per-seat price matters more than the invoicing flow.

If you bill by the hour, it helps to know what you actually earn per hour after unbillable time. The real hourly rate calculator does that sum before you set rates in either tool.

Which is better if you forget to start timers?

TimeCamp. Harvest’s tracking depends on you: start the timer, fill the timesheet, or let your calendar stand in for your day. Harvest lists no automatic activity capture. On a busy day where you switch clients six times, the gaps get filled from memory on Friday.

TimeCamp’s automatic layer records the apps and websites you used and maps them to projects by keyword. You still review the result, and the AI Time Tracker can propose entries for an extra token-based charge.

There is a third route if you are on a Mac and want to keep Harvest for billing: let an automatic recorder keep the record and copy hours across. We cover that workflow in building a Mac timesheet without manual entry, and the wider set of options in our guide to automatic time tracking on a Mac.

Pricing compared

Plan	TimeCamp	Harvest
Free	$0, free forever, unlimited users	$0 forever, 1 seat, 2 projects
Entry paid	Starter: $3.99 per user/month billed annually, or $5.49 month-to-month	Teams: $9 seat/month ($108 per seat billed annually), or $11 seat/month billed monthly
Middle	Premium: $6.99 per user/month billed annually, or $9.99 month-to-month	Enterprise: $14 seat/month ($168 per seat billed annually), or $17.50 seat/month billed monthly
Upper	Ultimate: $9.99 per user/month billed annually, or $13.99 month-to-month	Enterprise Plus: custom pricing
Top	Enterprise: on request	n/a
AI add-on	Token-billed, vendor estimate about $6 per user/month	None listed
Trial	Offered on paid plans; length not stated, see the vendor’s pricing page	30 days, no credit card

What one person pays per year, on the cheapest plan that covers timesheets and invoicing:

• Harvest, up to two projects: $0. The free plan includes invoicing and expenses.
• Harvest, three or more projects: Teams at $108 a year billed annually, or $132 a year at $11 a month.
• TimeCamp, with invoicing: Starter at $47.88 a year billed annually ($3.99 × 12), or $65.88 a year month-to-month ($5.49 × 12).
• TimeCamp, with invoicing and automatic app tracking: Premium at $83.88 a year billed annually ($6.99 × 12), or $119.88 month-to-month ($9.99 × 12). If you add the AI Time Tracker, TimeCamp’s own estimate of about $6 a month adds roughly $72 a year. That depends on token usage, so treat it as an estimate.

For a solo freelancer with a few clients, Harvest costs nothing until the third project, and after that it costs more than either TimeCamp plan. For a team, TimeCamp’s per-seat price is lower at every tier, and the gap grows with headcount.

Dayflow, for comparison, is $0 under the MIT license, and the optional Pro plan is $20 a month, or $240 a year. Pro pays for Dayflow-managed cloud analysis, not invoicing. Neither version replaces the billing plan above. Details are on our pricing page.

When to choose TimeCamp

• You lose billable time because you forget to start timers, and you want the desktop app to catch it.
• You are buying for a team and per-seat cost matters. Starter at $3.99 a user billed annually is less than half of Harvest Teams.
• You want attendance, time off, budgets or resource planning in the same product as your timesheets.
• Someone on the team uses Linux.
• Your company needs self-hosting or private cloud, which TimeCamp offers on Enterprise.
• You want AI to draft timesheet entries and accept paying for it by usage.

When to choose Harvest

• Invoicing clients is the main reason you track time.
• You are a freelancer with one or two active projects and want to pay nothing. The free plan covers time, invoices and expenses.
• You want invoices that clients can pay online and that flow into QuickBooks or Xero.
• Your billable work happens in meetings, so calendar-based tracking fits.
• You prefer starting a timer from a browser extension.
• You want a 30-day trial without entering a card.

If Harvest is close but not quite right, our roundup of Harvest alternatives for Mac covers other options. Freelancers comparing more broadly can start with time tracking apps for freelancers on Mac.

Where both fall short

Both tools record time against a project. Neither records what you actually did. A Harvest entry says “Client A, 2h 15m” because you said so. A TimeCamp entry says you spent that time in a browser and an editor that matched a keyword. When a client asks what those hours went to, or you can’t remember whether Tuesday afternoon was Client A or Client B, you are back to reconstructing from memory, email and commit history.

Both are also vendor-hosted cloud services, closed source and priced per seat. TimeCamp’s self-hosted option exists only on Enterprise, priced on request.

Dayflow covers the memory gap on a Mac. It records the screen at one frame every 10 seconds, keeps the full recordings and timeline on your Mac, and has AI write the day into a readable timeline of what you worked on. You can run that analysis with a local model through Ollama or LM Studio, with your own cloud provider, or through Dayflow Pro. With local AI, screenshot analysis stays on-device. The other two modes send selected screenshots off your Mac; local and cloud processing explains what goes where. You can export a date range as Markdown from Settings and use it to fill in Harvest or TimeCamp, or our timesheet template.

Two caveats. AI summaries can miss or misinterpret work, so check the timeline before you bill from it. And Dayflow does not bill anything. It produces the record, and Harvest or TimeCamp still produces the invoice.

If you are surveying the wider field of Mac time trackers, including ones that sit between these approaches, see our guide to the best time tracker for Mac.

Where Dayflow is the wrong pick

• You need to send invoices. Dayflow has no invoicing, expenses or payments. Use Harvest, or TimeCamp Starter and above.
• You manage a team’s hours. Dayflow has no team reports, timesheet approvals or payroll approvals. TimeCamp Ultimate and Harvest Enterprise both list timesheet approvals.
• You track attendance or time off. That is TimeCamp, from Starter.
• Anyone on the team is off a Mac. Dayflow runs only on macOS 14 or later. TimeCamp covers Windows, Linux, iOS and Android. Harvest covers Windows, iOS, Android and the browser.
• You want website blocking. Dayflow does not block sites, and neither of the other two lists it.
• You want billable hours with no review step. Dayflow’s timeline is written by AI and can be wrong. For hours you invoice directly, a timer in Harvest is more literal.

The bottom line

For timesheets and invoicing, Harvest is the better tool when billing clients is the job. Invoicing is on every plan, payments and accounting integrations are built in, and a freelancer with two projects pays nothing. TimeCamp is better when the problem is capturing the time at all. Automatic app and website tracking, lower per-seat prices and team operations features make it the stronger buy for groups and for anyone who forgets timers.

Dayflow, our product, does not do this job. It is a free, MIT-licensed Mac app that keeps a private record of what you worked on, which you can use to check and fill in your Harvest or TimeCamp timesheet before you bill.

Frequently asked questions

Is TimeCamp or Harvest better for invoicing clients?

Harvest is the stronger invoicing tool on paper. It builds invoices from tracked time, accepts online payments, tracks expenses and connects to accounting tools such as QuickBooks and Xero. Its free plan includes invoicing for one seat and two projects. TimeCamp also invoices, but only from its Starter plan, which costs $3.99 per user per month billed annually or $5.49 month-to-month.

Does Harvest track time automatically?

No automatic activity capture is listed for Harvest. It tracks through one-click timers, daily and weekly timesheets, or entries pulled from a connected calendar. If you often forget to start a timer, you will be filling gaps from memory. TimeCamp's desktop app tracks apps and websites automatically, which is the main reason people pick it over Harvest.

Is TimeCamp free?

TimeCamp has a free forever plan with unlimited users, but its pricing page does not itemize every free plan limit. Invoicing is listed from the Starter plan upward, and app and website tracking appears to start at Premium. Check the current limits on TimeCamp's pricing page before you rely on the free plan for client work.

How much does Harvest cost per year for one person?

One freelancer with two projects or fewer can use Harvest's free plan, which includes time tracking, invoicing and expenses. Past that, the Teams plan costs $108 per seat billed annually, or $11 a month billed monthly, which is $132 over a year. Enterprise costs $168 per seat per year billed annually.

Which is cheaper, TimeCamp or Harvest?

TimeCamp is cheaper per seat on every paid tier. Its Starter plan costs $3.99 per user per month billed annually, against Harvest Teams at $9 per seat per month billed annually. Harvest is cheaper for one freelancer with no more than two projects, because its free plan includes invoicing. TimeCamp's AI Time Tracker is billed separately by tokens.

Does TimeCamp or Harvest have AI features?

TimeCamp has an AI Time Tracker, part of its Time Intelligence Center, that fills timesheets from your activity. It is billed by token usage, which TimeCamp estimates at about $6 per user per month, and it comes with $10 in trial credits. Harvest lists no AI features on the pages reviewed for this article.

Can Dayflow replace Harvest for freelance invoicing?

No. Harvest beats Dayflow here. Dayflow does not create invoices, track expenses, take payments or handle timesheet approvals. It records your Mac screen at one frame every 10 seconds and has AI write a readable timeline of your day. Some people use that timeline to check their hours before they enter them in Harvest, which still sends the invoice.

Does TimeCamp work on Linux?

Yes. TimeCamp lists Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. Harvest lists Web, Mac, Windows, iOS, Android and browser extensions, with no Linux app named. If someone on your team works on Linux, TimeCamp is the one of these two that covers them with a native app.

Where is my data stored in TimeCamp and Harvest?

Both are cloud services hosted by the vendor. TimeCamp offers self-hosted deployment and private cloud on its Enterprise plan, priced on request. Harvest is a web service with desktop and mobile apps and lists no self-hosted option. Dayflow stores recordings and its timeline on your Mac, though cloud AI modes send selected screenshots off-device.

Who owns Harvest now?

Harvest's site footer reads Bending Spoons Operations S.p.A., so Harvest is now owned by Bending Spoons. Its current pricing page names the paid plans Teams and Enterprise, while the pricing FAQ still refers to pro and premium plans. Read the plan details carefully before you buy.