Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: A Definitive Comparison [March 2024]

Clockify and Harvest are among the best time tracking apps out there. But after two weeks of thoroughly researching and testing them, we’ve learned they’re designed for completely different users.

Harvest’s time and expense tracking, invoicing, and payment features make it perfect for freelancers and lean businesses who want an all-in-one solution to manage client projects or contractors. However, as your business expands, you’ll realize that its toolset and price don’t support larger scales, and its basic reports don’t provide good insights to improve productivity. 

Meanwhile, Clockify is ideal for small teams and businesses tracking time, generating reports, and invoicing clients. It lets you closely monitor employee movement and activities with GPS tracking and a screenshot recorder. While some managers love these features, it may cause tension and employee distrust — negatively impacting company culture. Its reporting features are also quite basic.

Since both platforms lack a comprehensive blend of reporting features, we included Toggl Track in this comparison.

Toggl Track’s comprehensive reporting, analytics, and insights tools make it the perfect platform for businesses that want to understand productivity trends and optimize project efficiency and profitability. Its design and time tracking flexibility also make it easy for employees to adapt, improve their focus, and track time accurately.

This article is a deep dive into how Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track compare. We’ll look at five categories:

• Time Tracking
• Project Administration
• Billing and Invoicing
• Reports and Analytics
• Pricing

Let’s start with a summary.

Comparison Summary: Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track

What is Clockify?

“Stay lean. Move fast. See everything.”🏃‍♂️🔭

Nenad Milanovic and Lazar Vujanic observed that existing time tracking apps were very complex and lacked the features most users needed. So in 2017, they launched Clockify as a simple time tracking solution for all. 

Clockify lets you track time and generate invoices across all projects. It also has dashboards and reports for understanding where most of your time is spent. Managers who prefer to regularly monitor and keep tabs on their employees would love its employee surveillance features — GPS tracking for employees’ location and screenshot capture for their screen activity.

These features make Clockify the ideal tool for small teams that want a simple time tracker to visualize their time distribution and productivity. It also caters to organizations that expect industrial efficiency from their employees.

What is Harvest?

“Time tracking and more.” ⏲️➕

Web designers Danny Wen and Shawn Liu launched Harvest in 2006 after they couldn’t find a tool that efficiently handled time tracking and invoicing.

Harvest has a simple and minimalist interface for tracking time and expenses, reporting, and invoicing. It has a timer and timesheet for individual and bulk time entries. A key feature is its invoicing toolset, which lets you generate invoices, send them to clients, and accept direct payments. Plus, its basic reports help you keep track of billable hours and expenses.

This makes it ideal for freelancers and lean businesses who need a lightweight tool that covers everything from time tracking to invoicing and accepting payments.

What is Toggl Track?

“Empower your employees, improve your performance.” 📈

Software developers, Alari Aho and Krister Haav, wanted to find out how much time they spent on client projects in their software consulting firm. So, in 2006, they launched Toggl to help them do just that. The time tracking app was later renamed to Toggl Track, after two more products were added: Toggl Plan for project scheduling and capacity planning and Toggl Hire for hiring assessment. 

Since then, Toggl Track has evolved into an intuitive and reliable time tracking app that works across web, desktop, mobile, and browser extensions — making it easy for employees to adopt in their daily routines. It has comprehensive Reports and Analytics tools for uncovering bottlenecks and inefficiencies in your workflows. This serves as the basis for engaging in constructive conversations, identifying opportunities for training and mentorship, and making strategic decisions to optimize team and project outputs.

Toggl Track is the perfect solution for small teams, agencies, and businesses who want to maximize productivity and profitability while promoting a culture of growth and mutual trust.

Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: Time Tracking

In a nutshell, Harvest has basic web, mobile, and desktop apps, Clockify steps it up with its desktop app, and Toggl Track is the most reliable for time tracking across all platforms.

Harvest and Clockify have timers and timesheets for manual and automatic time entries, while Toggl Track lets you add time entries even offline.

Harvest lets you track time manually or with a timer. Select your project and task, add notes, and hit the timer to begin. Instead of starting the time, you can add a time duration and save. 

You can also switch to the week view to manually fill in a timesheet for the entire week. 

Tracking time in Clockify is simple. Describe what you’re about to work on, choose the project it belongs to, add tags if needed, turn the billable tag on or off, and start the timer. 

Like Harvest, Clockify lets you manually enter individual time entries or add them in bulk in a timesheet.

At a glance, Toggl Track’s time tracking process is similar to Clockify’s: 

• It allows you to track time on web, mobile, and desktop apps.
• It allows manual time entries and timer logs.
• And it offers a browser extension.

But, unlike Clockify, Toggl Track allows you to track time automatically.

The desktop app features the Autotracker, which locally keeps track of your time based on your activities. The Autotracker data is stored locally on your computer and isn’t visible to anyone until you save it into Toggl Track. It’s purely for your convenience.

And if you’re new to it, it gives you a tour to help you get familiar with its interface and start tracking time.

Toggl Track’s timer works offline. So, if you start tracking time and the internet goes down, the timer continues running, and you can stop it when done like normal. 

This prevents the time entry and billing inaccuracies that can occur with Clockify and Harvest during outages. Once you’re back online, Toggl Track syncs your time entries to the cloud.

Harvest displays daily time entries, Clockify shows a weekly overview, and Toggl Track has multiple views to suit different preferences.

Harvest’s “Day” view lets you see your daily time entries and the total hours logged for that day. However, to view entries for other days, you need to manually switch between them, which can be tedious if you need an overview of your weekly or daily time totals.

Unlike Clockify and Toggl Track, you cannot group multiple time entries in a single, collapsible row. This makes your time entries long and cluttered. It’s also difficult to see your total time on a task if you track it with multiple entries.

Clockify shows you all of your time entries for the current week on a single page, organized by day. It also calculates your total daily and weekly hours, making it easy to assess your productivity and workload capacity.

Toggl Track’s display of time entries is similar to Clockify. But Toggl Track takes it a step further. 

The line bar at the top of your time entries gives you a visual overview of tasks that take most of your time so that you can make any necessary adjustments for the upcoming week.

You can also switch from the List View to the daily and weekly Calendar View to add and view time entries. This view lets you identify patterns during your day, like your most busy periods and free time. 

Harvest’s desktop and mobile apps are basic, Clockify’s and Toggl’s are feature-rich, but Toggl Track tops it with easily accessible keyboard shortcuts and a Pomodoro timer. 

Similar to Clockify and Toggl Track, Harvest has a desktop app, a mobile app, and a browser extension for accessing key features on the go. You can track time, add expenses, run reports, and view invoices.

Meanwhile, Clockify and Toggl Track’s desktop and mobile apps are packed with extra features to make time tracking easier and more efficient:

• Set default project (desktop): Automatically select your default project when you start a timer without project details.
• Reminders (desktop): Add a reminder to track time on specific days and times.
• Automatic start and stop (desktop): Start your timer automatically based on triggers like day, time, and open desktop apps. You can also automatically stop the timer when your device sleeps or shuts down.
• Activity tracking: Automatically records every web or desktop app you use for more than, let’s say, 10 seconds.
• Idle detection (desktop): This feature shows how long you’ve been inactive and lets you decide whether to keep or discard the time entry.
• Offline mode (desktop and mobile): Track time without an internet connection.

While Clockify’s apps and extensions have keyboard shortcuts and a Pomodoro timer, they’re more easily accessible and intuitive in Toggl Track.

In addition to default keyboard shortcuts, Toggl Track lets you add custom ones to start and stop the timer for tasks you often do. 

Plus, its Pomodoro Timer is accessible across its mobile apps, desktop apps, and browser extensions, helping to boost focus and productivity.

Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: Project Administration

In a nutshell, Harvest has limited flexibility for team and project management, Clockify is a bit more flexible, and Toggl Track gives you the most options to support complex business structures.

Harvest lets you add time entries in timesheets for approvals, Clockify allows you to disable timesheets, and Toggl Track lets you set up timesheets automatically to reduce errors.

Harvest’s and Clockify’s timesheets work the same — they allow you to add multiple time entries manually. This feature helps log time for repetitive tasks within a project.

However, it can be annoying in cases where time tracked using the timer doesn’t automatically transfer to the timesheet. You have to manually input it again, increasing the chances of errors.

Unlike Harvest, Clockify lets you minimize these errors. How? Let your team focus on one time entry mode by disabling the time tracker or timesheet.

Clockify and Harvest let you send reminders to your team to submit their timesheet for approval. After their submission, you can either approve or reject them for re-submission.

Instead of relying on manual entry, Toggl Track lets you set up Timesheet Reports. This feature automatically generates weekly timesheets from your team’s time entries.

Like Harvest and Clockify, you can set up reminders to alert team members to submit their timesheets for approval. Since these are already generated, all they need to do is review, edit, and submit. 

Harvest gives you one workspace to manage teams and projects, Clockify allows multiple workspaces, while Toggl Track supports multiple workspaces and organizations.

Harvest only provides one workspace to manage your teams and projects, which is enough for most freelancers and small businesses. Meanwhile, Clockify lets you create multiple workspaces if you need to manage multiple departments in your business separately.    

A user in a Harvest or Clockify workspace can have any of the following levels of access:

• Member: This role allows users to track time and expenses and view their personal reports. 
• Manager: Users in this role have additional power to view and approve timesheets, set billable rates, run reports, and manage invoices of projects assigned to them.
• Administrator: They control the entire workspace, including inviting new members and assigning roles.

With Toggl Track, you can set up multiple Organizations and Workspaces in your account. This helps manage multiple businesses or service offerings under one account. 

A user invited to a workspace (under a specific organization) is assigned to one of six user roles:

• Member,
• Project manager,
• Project lead,
• Team lead,
• Workspace admin,
• and Organization admin.

These granular role assignments ensure effective team collaboration and management across different projects.

Unlike Harvest, managers and admins in Toggl Track and Clockify have access rights to streamline time tracking. For example, they can set up reminders for employees to track time. The rules for the reminder could look like this:

“If team members tracked less than 40 hours by the end of the Week, send them a reminder.”

The Reminders feature eliminates the need to monitor time entries and manually send reminder emails.

They can also set time entry restrictions to streamline how and when to log time. And if needed, conduct audits to spot time entries that:

• aren’t assigned to a project,
• aren’t assigned to a task,
• or don’t fall within a certain time duration.

Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: Billing and Invoicing

In a nutshell, Clockify and Toggl Track let you set up billable rates and generate invoices, while Harvest makes it easy to accept payments.

Harvest has three types of billable rates. Clockify and Toggl Track have more, but they’re easier to set up in Toggl Track.

Harvest, similar to Clockify and Toggl Track, lets you set up non-billable, fixed-fee, and billable rates for each project. But Harvest only lets you set up three types of billable rates, which is more than enough for most freelancers and small businesses:

• Project billable rate,
• Person billable rate,
• and Task billable rate.

You can also set a project budget and opt for email alerts if spending exceeds a certain percentage of the budget. Alerts allow you to make necessary resource adjustments and ensure projects stay within budget.

Toggl Track lets you set up four types of billable rates:

• Workspace rate,
• Workspace member rate,
• Project rate,
• and Project member rate.

These rates take priority from the bottom up. So if you add a project member rate for a project, it overrides the project, workspace member, and workspace rates. If you don’t specify project member, project, and workspace member rates, the workspace rate is used for billing.

Like Harvest, managers and admins can set up budget alerts to keep project finances in check.

Clockify’s billing system works similarly to Toggl Track and, like Harvest, allows you to mark expenses as billable. However, these settings aren’t organized under one page, making it confusing to set up and manage.

Toggl Track lets you export invoices and send them to clients, Clockify lets you send them directly to clients via email, and Harvest lets you accept invoice payments.

Toggl Track’s Invoices are based on billable hours and you can generate them with a few clicks. Filter your time reports for a specific project (or client), activate the billable tag, and create an invoice.

You can edit or delete time entries on the invoice, add new entries (like expenses and discounts), and set a currency. You can customize invoices with an ID, due date, payment terms, addresses, and taxes. When ready, export them to your accounting software to accept payments and manage payroll.

With Clockify, you can generate invoices from billable hours and expenses. You can add notes, apply taxes, and include discounts. 

Unlike Toggl Track, which only shows a list of your invoices, Clockify makes it easier to manage them with tags like unsent, sent, paid, and void. You can export invoices as a CSV or Excel file or email them directly to your clients as a PDF file.

Harvest has all the invoicing features in Clockify, Toggl Track, and more. You can:

• set invoices as one-time or recurring,
• accept payments from clients via PayPal or Stripe,
• and schedule reminder emails when invoice payments are late.

These features are helpful for freelancers and small businesses who want to manage billing and invoicing on one platform. However, agencies and medium-to-large businesses will still need dedicated accounting software to manage more complex financial operations.

Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: Reporting and Analytics

In a nutshell, Harvest focuses on basic time and expense reports, Clockify has dashboards and reports, but Toggl Track’s reporting is more robust, provides better insights, and is customizable.

Harvest only lets you track time and expense reports.

Harvest’s reports compile your time and expense entries so it’s easy to share them with clients. You can filter reports by periods, clients, projects, tasks, and team members and export them as CSV, PDF, or Excel files.

Clockify and Toggl Track’s time reports have multiple views and filters.

Clockify and Toggl Track’s reporting tools have three main views to help you analyze time entries:

• Summary: Visual reports of your organization’s total tracked time.
• Detailed: List of all the time entries recorded in your organization.
• Weekly: List of time entries for each week, grouped by user and project.

You can filter these reports by team, client, project, task, tag, status, and description. Unlike Harvest, you can share reports with others (internal and external) via a public link. Alternatively, export them as PDF, CSV, and Excel files.

Clockify’s dashboards are rigid, meanwhile, Toggl Track’s Reports can be customized to suit your needs.

Clockify and Toggl Track have dashboards for:

• regular users to visualize their time entries, 
• managers to see entries for their projects and team members, 
• and admins for complete visibility over all projects. 

Clockify’s dashboards are rigid and non-interactive. Plus, you can’t export or share it with key stakeholders in your team.

Meanwhile, Toggl Track’s Analytics dashboards are fully customizable and shareable. You can create any number of dashboards with tables, pivot tables, bar charts, donut charts, and line graphs, arrange them in your preferred layout, and apply relevant filters. 

This way, you see exactly what’s needed to keep a pulse on team productivity, project progress, and efficiency.

Toggl Track stands out with its Insights feature for optimizing resource allocation and profitability.

Toggl Track’s Insights feature helps managers analyze extensive time data to adjust resources for better productivity and profitability. 

For example, the “Data trends” view provides a visual comparison summary of total hours spent across multiple teams, projects, and clients.

Plus, the “Project profitability” view plots your project earnings against your labor costs. This makes it easy to analyze the profitability of each client and project within a specific timeframe.

The “Employee profitability” graph also shows each employee’s costs and earnings for your business, making it easy to spot top performers and under-utilized employees. This could contribute to strategic actions like training, promotions, and resource reallocations.

But that’s not all. 

The “Comparative” view lets you compare the total number of work hours logged between any two weeks. This helps managers analyze productivity fluctuations across projects and teams and make decisions that streamline operations and boost efficiency.

Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: Pricing

In a nutshell, Harvest has one paid plan for freelancers and lean businesses, Clockify’s starter plans are cheaper, and Toggl Track offers the best value for money.

Harvest’s free plan is limited to 1 user, Toggl Track’s free plan is limited to 5 users, while Clockify allows unlimited users.

Clockify‘s free plan offers basic time tracking for unlimited projects and users. You can set billable rates. However, you cannot track billable expenses or generate invoices.

Harvest lets you add unlimited clients and send unlimited invoices on its free plan. However, it restricts you to just one user and two active projects. Plus, you won’t be able to customize your workspace with your company logo, attach files to invoices, or integrate with QuickBooks Online, Deel, and Asana.

Toggl Track‘s free plan supports unlimited time tracking, clients, and reporting for up to five team members across all platforms — web, mobile, desktop app, and browser extensions. This makes it a good fit for freelancers, small teams, and businesses looking for a budget-friendly time tracking app.

Harvest has a single-tier paid plan. Clockify’s starter plans are cheaper than Toggl Track. But Toggl Track offers the best value across all paid plans.

Harvest’s only paid plan Pro Plan unlocks all features:

This simple pricing structure makes it an ideal option for freelancers and small teams who need an all-in-one time tracking, billing, invoicing, and payments solution. 

Clockify’s pricing starts with a Basic plan which is very affordable, but most users find that it’s not very different from its free plan. Meanwhile, the Standard plan is ideal for small teams who want to manage timesheet approvals and invoicing. The remaining higher plans unlock employee surveillance features for managers who want to monitor employee activities closely.

Toggl Track’s pricing starts with a Starter plan. It provides the most value for small teams who need an intuitive and comprehensive time tracking and reporting solution to understand how their time is spent and bill clients. On the other hand, the Premium and Enterprise plans provide managers with unique insights to boost team productivity and project profitability.

Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track: Pros & Cons

Final Verdict: Clockify vs Harvest vs Toggl Track

Harvest is a good choice for freelancers who need time tracking softwarel with in-built payment features. However, it has basic reporting tools and the cost might be better for smaller teams.

Use Harvest if:

• You’re a freelancer.
• You want to track time, send invoices, and accept payments in one platform. 
• You only need basic time and expense reporting tools.

Click here to get started with Harvest!

On the other hand, Clockify is the perfect choice for small teams who want a time tracking tool on a budget and managers who want to pay more for employee surveillance features.

Use Clockify if:

• You’re a small business. 
• You want an affordable time tracking app.
• You don’t trust employees and want to closely monitor their activities. 

Click here to get started with Clockify!

Meanwhile, Toggl Track’s intuitive time tracking interface and powerful reporting tools make it easy for managers to boost employee adoption while gaining insights to maximize profitability. 

Use Toggl Track if:

• You need a reliable and accurate time tracking tool for your business.
• You want to boost employee adoption with a user-friendly tool that values their privacy and builds trust.
• You need powerful insights to optimize productivity and profitability.

Click here to get started with Toggl Track!