Free Time Tracking App vs Harvest: Real Differences

Harvest quickly costs 20 euros per user per month

I started with Harvest myself a few years ago. The onboarding felt fine and the screen looked clean enough. Then the first real invoice showed up after six months: 12 dollars per user, three of us. That came to more than 200 euros for the year, only for time tracking. Most freelancers I know just don't add that up until it hits.

With a free time tracking app like Jomawo you pay only after you hit certain limits. For solo people or two-person teams it often stays free for good. That's usually the first difference that matters.

Project billing in practice

Harvest lets you bill by the hour or by fixed price. It works. You still end up checking manually that every hour made it in before you send the invoice. We once missed the last two hours on a support ticket. At 90 euros an hour that was 180 euros that showed up late.

In a free time tracking app you often spot during entry that a project is close to its budget. At Nordlicht Studios the website relaunch had a fixed 12,000 euro cap. After 87 logged hours the buffer was down to 14 hours and the warning popped up on its own.

Integrations and exports

Harvest connects to a lot through Zapier and sends data straight to QuickBooks or Xero. That helps if your accounting system is already big. Most German freelancers and small agencies just need a clean CSV or PDF for the tax advisor.

With Jomawo you download the timesheet as PDF with the columns you need. The DATEV link is still in development, yet the export already carries project name, team member, date, start and end time plus breaks. That was enough for Baumann & Partner Steuerberatung on their client portal project.

Calculation example: 14 unlogged quarter hours

Take a freelancer at 85 euros per hour. If 14 quarter hours slip through each month, short Slack answers or quick fixes, that's 3.5 hours. At 85 euros it comes to 297.50 euros lost every month. Over a year that is 3,570 euros. People usually notice only when they line up the monthly report against the actual invoices.

A free time tracking app with timer reminders or automatic rounding cuts that loss down. Harvest has similar features, but only on the paid plans.

Team features and permissions

Harvest gives you roles like admin, manager and employee. That makes sense once you have five or more people. With two or three it gets more fiddly than helpful. I consider detailed role models overrated when most users end up seeing everything anyway.

In Jomawo you add people and assign projects. Everyone sees only their own entries and the projects they work on. GreenBox Logistik runs it for their tracking app MVP that way: the developer logs only their project, the lead sees everything. No extra setup needed.

What Harvest does better

Harvest has a mature invoicing feature built in. You can create invoices, add partial amounts and track payments. If you don't run separate invoicing software that saves real time. With Jomawo you export the times and bring them into your accounting tool or Lexoffice.

Reporting depth is also higher in Harvest if you need very detailed profitability numbers per project. Most of our users get by with the standard reports and keep the monthly fees.

Data protection and GDPR

Harvest is a US company. Data sits on American servers. For many freelancers that is fine. Anyone handling sensitive client data or internal policies usually wants EU servers. Jomawo keeps everything in Europe and supplies a GDPR-compliant export on request.

This is not a deal-breaker for most, but it is one of the first things I check.

When Harvest is still the right choice

If you already rely on many integrations, want to create invoices inside the same tool and have more than ten people, Harvest can be the better fit. The interface feels polished and support answers fast. The price reflects that.

For everyone else, freelancers, small agencies or teams of up to five, a solid free time tracking app usually covers what you need. The real question is whether you end up paying for features you rarely touch.

I usually tell people to run both for two weeks on their actual projects. The decision tends to come down to how much time you really save versus what keeps showing up on the invoice.