Clockify vs Harvest for UK Agencies: Which Time Tracker Is Worth Your Money?
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Unbilled Hours Are Lost Revenue
If you run a UK agency, the problem is rarely effort. It is that time tracking is clunky, invoicing slips, and by the time anyone reviews a fixed-fee project it is already over budget.
Clockify and Harvest come up in the same breath constantly, and they are not really competing for the same buyer. One starts free and scales cheaply with depth on the reporting side. The other is built to shorten the distance between tracked time and a sent invoice.
Two things decide it for most UK agencies: what happens to your per-seat bill as the team grows, and how cleanly the tool hands data to your accounting software. Neither product prices in pounds, which matters more than most comparisons admit.
What Agencies Actually Need
- Effortless capture across several clients and projects at once
- Budget alerts before a fixed-fee project eats its margin
- A short path from tracked time to invoice
- Utilisation reporting, so you can see who is overloaded and who has capacity
- Client-facing reports that do not need reformatting
- Integrations with the project management and accounting tools you already run
Clockify
Pricing
Clockify prices in euros, not dollars, which is the first thing most comparisons get wrong. Per seat per month, annual then monthly:
| Plan | Annual | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Free | €0 | €0 |
| Basic | €3.99 | €4.99 |
| Standard | €5.49 | €6.99 |
| Pro | €7.99 | €9.99 |
| Enterprise | €11.99 | €14.99 |
There is also a cake.com bundle at €12.99 a seat annually, or €15.99 monthly, adding team chat and project management to time tracking.
The free tier covers up to five users, which sounds generous until you look at the limits: exports are PDF only, reporting is capped at a one-month range, projects are public only, the API allows 30 requests an hour, and billable rates are not included. Free suits internal time tracking. It does not suit billing clients.
What Sits on Which Tier
This is the part that decides your real entry price, and it is not the headline €3.99.
Basic, €3.99. Billable rates, historical rates, time audit, decimal format, project templates, bulk edit, breaks, required fields and full data exports.
Standard, €5.49. Invoicing, recurring invoices, approvals, manager role, time off, targets and reminders, lock timesheets, attendance and overtime, rounding, task rates and the QuickBooks integration.
Pro, €7.99. Budgets and estimates, alerts, labour cost and profit, forecasting, scheduling, expenses, multiple currencies, custom fields, email reports, expense and assignment reports, activity monitoring, GPS tracking and data region selection.
Enterprise, €11.99. Single sign-on, custom subdomain, SCIM provisioning, control accounts and audit log.
So for an agency buying this to stop fixed-fee overruns, Pro at €7.99 is the plan, not Basic. A ten-person agency there is about €80 a month on annual billing. If you want to invoice from Clockify at all, the floor is Standard at €5.49.
Data region selection sitting on Pro is worth noting separately if where your client data is stored matters to you.
How It Works Day to Day
Timers are the default, with manual entry and a weekly timesheet view for people who prefer filling in Friday afternoon. Browser extension, desktop and mobile apps are all available. Projects carry clients, colours and tasks, which suits agencies running retainers alongside project work.
Reporting is Clockify’s strongest suit: summary reports by client, project or person, detailed entry-level reports, weekly team views, custom date ranges and exports to PDF, CSV and Excel. Labour cost and profit reporting, which is the margin number agency owners actually want, is a Pro feature. Reports can be shared with clients by public link, which suits time-and-materials retainers where transparency is part of the deal.
Invoicing from Standard upwards is functional rather than deep. For VAT-registered agencies, treat it as a stepping stone to your accounting software rather than a replacement for it.
Harvest
Pricing
Harvest prices in US dollars with no UK pricing, and the plan structure changed in 2026. It is now Free, Teams, Enterprise and a custom-priced tier.
| Plan | Annual price | Seats | What it adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 1 | Time tracking, expense tracking, invoicing, project estimates, up to 4 custom reports, 50+ core integrations |
| Teams | From $9 a seat, $108 billed annually | Unlimited | Billable and cost rates for teams, team reporting, accounting and payment integrations, project and people import, scheduled phone support |
| Enterprise | From $14 a seat, $168 billed annually | Unlimited | Profitability reporting, timesheet approval, unlimited custom reports, custom exports, activity log, SAML single sign-on, required notes |
| Custom | On request | Unlimited | Custom integrations, white labelling, dedicated success manager, assisted migration |
Those are the annual rates. Annual billing is 20% cheaper than monthly, so monthly works out at roughly $11 and $17.50 a seat. Both paid plans come with a 30-day trial.
Note the wording on the pricing page: “starting from”. The seat rate is a floor rather than a total, and reporting on the 2026 changes describes usage-linked charges on top of seats, which is what produces renewal invoices larger than the pricing page implies. Get the checkout total for your own volume.
Resource scheduling through Forecast is a separate companion product at extra cost, though the integration with it is included on every tier. Comparison sites still listing Pro and Premium tiers are describing the old line-up.
How It Works Day to Day
Time tracking is clean and the interface is more immediately intuitive than Clockify’s, which helps adoption with less technical teams. Native integrations with Asana, Trello, Basecamp and Jira let people log time without leaving the tool they are already in.
Budget management is a genuine strength. Set budgets in hours or value, and Harvest emails you and the team when a project passes the threshold you set. That turns budget oversight from a monthly review into a live alert.
Three tier details matter more than the feature list. Billable and cost rates for teams are not on the free plan, so Free tracks time but cannot price it. The accounting and payment integrations, which are the main argument for Harvest in a UK stack, start on Teams rather than Free. And profitability reporting, which compares internal cost rates against what you bill, sits on Enterprise at $14, alongside timesheet approval, custom exports and unlimited custom reports. Below Enterprise you are capped at four custom reports.
If margin reporting is why you are buying Harvest, price the $14 tier rather than the $9 one.
Client-facing reports export cleanly, though the shareable-link approach is less prominent than Clockify’s.
Invoicing is where Harvest earns its keep. Pick the project, pick the approved time entries, and the invoice populates itself with line items you can brand and send.
The Currency Question
Neither tool bills UK agencies in pounds. Clockify charges in euros, Harvest in dollars, so both carry an exchange rate you do not control, and a quoted per-seat figure moves with the rate between signing up and renewing.
It also makes headline comparisons awkward, and the honest comparison is not entry tier against entry tier. Margin reporting is the thing agencies buy these tools for, and on both products it sits high: Clockify Pro at €7.99 a seat, Harvest Enterprise at $14 a seat. That is the like-for-like pair, and Clockify is still the cheaper of the two before you add Harvest’s usage charges. At ten seats the difference is noticeable. At twenty it decides the question.
MTD, Digital Links and Where These Tools Sit
Neither product is accounting software, and neither files anything with HMRC. What matters is how time and invoice data reaches the software that does.
For MTD for VAT, which applies to every VAT-registered business, your VAT records must be kept digitally and the data must move between systems through digital links. Re-typing totals from a time tracker into your accounts breaks that chain, even if the numbers are right.
That is the practical argument for Harvest’s accounting integrations, which cover Xero and QuickBooks and start on the Teams plan: invoices push into the accounting software rather than being re-keyed. Clockify has a native QuickBooks integration from Standard upwards, but no Xero integration appears on its pricing table, so a Xero agency should plan on invoicing from Xero itself and using Clockify as the time source.
If the agency owner is a sole trader rather than a limited company, MTD for Income Tax is also live, applying since April 2026 to qualifying income above £50,000 and reaching £30,000 in April 2027.
Head to Head
| Clockify | Harvest | |
|---|---|---|
| Currency | Euros | US dollars |
| Free plan | 5 users, PDF exports only, no billable rates, no invoicing | 1 seat, invoicing included, no billable or cost rates |
| Entry paid price | €3.99 a seat annually, €4.99 monthly | $9 a seat annually, around $11 monthly |
| Pricing model | Flat per seat | Per seat, quoted as “starting from” |
| Billable rates | Basic, €3.99 | Teams, $9 |
| Invoicing | Standard, €5.49 | All tiers, including Free |
| Budgets and estimates | Budgets and alerts on Pro, €7.99 | Project estimates on all tiers; no budget row on the comparison table |
| Margin reporting | Labour cost and profit, Pro, €7.99 | Profitability reporting, Enterprise, $14 |
| Custom reports | Included in reporting from Basic | Capped at 4 below Enterprise |
| QuickBooks integration | Standard, €5.49 | Teams, $9 |
| Xero integration | Not listed on the pricing table | Teams, $9 |
| Client-facing reports | Shareable public links | Exportable, custom exports on Enterprise |
| Data region choice | Pro, €7.99 | Not listed |
| Single sign-on | Enterprise, €11.99 | Enterprise, $14 |
| Support | 24/7 email, chat and phone on all tiers | Scheduled phone support from Teams |
| Free trial | Free plan, no trial needed | 30 days |
Which Should You Choose?
Clockify if you want a free or low-cost start with room to scale, if per-seat cost matters because the team is growing, if you want detailed reporting and public report links for retainer clients, and if you are content to invoice from Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent instead.
Harvest if invoicing speed is your actual bottleneck, if you already run Xero or QuickBooks and want the native link, if you are a smaller high-value team where workflow beats per-seat cost, and if you want profitability reporting without configuring it.
FAQ
Is Clockify free for agencies?
The free tier covers five users, but it has no billable rates, exports to PDF only and caps reports at a one-month range. That makes it fine for internal tracking and unsuitable for billing clients. Billable rates start on Basic at €3.99 a seat.
Does either tool handle Making Tax Digital?
No. Both feed accounting software, which is where MTD obligations sit. The distinction worth caring about is digital links: a native integration preserves them, manual re-keying does not.
Can I share time reports with clients?
Both support it. Clockify generates shareable public links, which suits time-and-materials retainers. Harvest leans on exports.
Which free plan is better?
They fail in opposite directions. Clockify’s covers five users but has no billable rates and no invoicing, so it tracks internal time rather than client work. Harvest’s covers one seat but does include invoicing, though without billable or cost rates for teams. A solo freelancer who wants to invoice is better served by Harvest Free; a small team tracking internal time is better served by Clockify Free.
Which is better for budget management?
Harvest, marginally, because alerts need little configuration. The cost comparison is closer than it looks though: Clockify puts budgets, estimates and alerts on Pro at €7.99 a seat, and Harvest puts profitability reporting on Enterprise at $14.
Why do Harvest’s prices vary so much between sources?
Because the plan structure changed in 2026, from Free, Pro and Premium to Free, Teams, Enterprise and a custom tier, and many comparison pages still show the old names. Harvest also quotes “starting from” rather than a flat rate, so take the figure from your own checkout.
Clockify vs Harvest: The Bottom Line
For most UK agencies, Clockify is the better value, and the gap grows with headcount. Compare the tiers that carry margin reporting rather than the entry ones: €7.99 a seat against $14, with Harvest quoting its rate as a starting point rather than a total.
Harvest is the better buy when invoicing is the bottleneck you are actually trying to fix, and when the Xero or QuickBooks integration is worth paying for. For a small, senior team billing at high rates, it usually is.
Whichever way you lean, price the tier that holds the feature you are buying the tool for. On Clockify that is budgets and profit on Pro, or invoicing on Standard. On Harvest it is profitability reporting on Enterprise. The free plans on both sides are for trying the interface, not for running an agency.
Pricing and features correct at time of writing. Plans and capabilities are subject to change, so always confirm current details on the provider’s website before purchasing. Prices are quoted in the currency each provider bills in, and UK buyers should check the converted cost and VAT treatment at checkout.