SB Assistant Blog

SB Time Tracker vs Harvest vs Toggl: The 2026 Breakdown

Anselmo — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you bill clients for your time, you have probably shortlisted these three names. They look interchangeable from a distance: all three run a timer, all three produce reports, all three say "invoicing" somewhere on the pricing page. Up close they are three different bets on what a time tracker is for.

Disclosure first: we make SB Time Tracker, one of the three. The rule for this post is the same one we use on our comparison pages: every competitor number is checked against the vendor's own pricing page on the date in the footer, and we say plainly where we lose. We lose twice below.

Three products, three pricing models

The fastest way to understand these tools is not the feature grid. It is how each one charges you.

	SB Time Tracker	Harvest	Toggl Track
Model	Flat per seat	Per seat + usage fees	Freemium tiers
Price	$14/seat/mo, every app included	Teams $9, Enterprise $14 /seat/mo (annual), plus usage-based fees	Free (limited users); Starter $9; Premium $14 first year, then $18
What raises the bill	Adding a person	Adding a person, or more projects, clients, tasks, and invoices past your plan's allowance	Adding a person, or needing a gated feature
Trial	30 days, no card	30 days, no card	30 days, no card

Harvest moved to its current model after the Bending Spoons acquisition: a per-seat base with usage-based fees layered on top. Harvest's own pricing page says it directly: additional invoices, projects, clients, and tasks are billed based on what you use. The result is that your bill tracks your business activity, not just your headcount. Busy month, bigger bill.

Toggl Track is classic freemium. The free plan is genuinely useful for a small team, and the paid tiers gate the business features: profitability analysis, labor costs, and the audit log all live on Premium, which is $14 per license per month for your first annual year and renews at $18.

SB Time Tracker is one flat number: $14 per seat per month, and the seat includes the entire SB Assistant suite, not just the tracker. No tiers, no feature gates, no usage meters. The bill is your headcount times fourteen, forever, and a seat is a person: client-portal users are free and AI agents don't count.

Where Toggl wins: the tracking itself

Honesty round one. If the question is purely "which tool is nicest for capturing time," Toggl wins, and it is not especially close.

The Toggl timer is the category benchmark: one-click start, idle detection in the desktop apps, a Pomodoro mode, native iOS and Android apps, and integrations that put a timer inside Jira, GitHub, Notion, and dozens of other tools. It is deliberately privacy-first, with no screenshots or surveillance features.

SB Time Tracker covers the essentials well: a live timer, manual entry, and Day/Week/Month calendar views with recurring entries for the standing meetings. But we have no idle detection, no Pomodoro mode, and our mobile story is an installable web app rather than native apps. Harvest sits in the middle: a solid, mature tracker without Toggl's polish.

If tracking is the whole job and billing happens somewhere else, buy Toggl and stop reading.

Where the billing loop decides it

Most service businesses do not track time as a hobby. The hours exist to become an invoice, the invoice exists to become a payment, and somebody has to chase the ones that go quiet. That loop is where the three tools separate.

Toggl generates a PDF from a time report, and that is the end of its loop. You download the invoice and send it yourself; there is no hosted payment, no reminders, no retainers. Toggl is not pretending otherwise, but it means "Toggl for billing" is really "Toggl plus a second tool."

Harvest has one of the smoothest invoicing workflows in the category, from tracked hours to sent invoice to online payment. It earned its reputation there. The catch in 2026 is the meter: invoices are one of the usage dimensions the fees are charged against, so the better your billing month, the more the billing tool costs.

SB Time Tracker runs the whole loop on the flat seat: approved hours flow into a branded invoice, the client gets a hosted payment page with card and ACH, retainers can bill themselves on a schedule, and overdue invoices get automatic reminders at 7, 30, and 60 days. Project profitability with cost-vs-billable rates and QuickBooks Online sync are on the same plan, because everything is.

What else is in the seat

This is the structural difference rather than a feature war. Harvest is a time-and-billing tool. Toggl is a time tracker. SB Time Tracker is one app of a three-app suite: the same $14 seat includes SB Project Management (boards, dependencies, cross-project timeline, automations) and SB CRM (contacts, pipeline, weighted forecast).

If you already run a PM tool and a CRM you like, that is worth little to you. If you are currently paying for a timer plus a project tool plus a spreadsheet of leads, the comparison stops being $14 against $9. It is one bill against three.

Leaving, if it comes to that

You learned this year why exit terms matter. Harvest deactivates trial accounts after 30 days but preserves the data; on a paid account your export options are good. Toggl's free tier means you can downgrade rather than leave. SB's rule: if you cancel, your account goes read-only for 90 days, so you export on your schedule, not ours.

And in both directions, switching is not a weekend project. SB imports Harvest and Toggl CSV exports directly (projects, clients, and time entries), which is under an hour of work for a typical small firm.

The honest verdict

Pick Toggl Track if you want the best raw tracking experience, you bill through accounting software anyway, and native mobile apps or deep dev-tool integrations matter. It is the best timer on this page.

Stay on Harvest if its invoicing workflow carries your business and your usage profile is light enough that the metered fees stay small. Check your actual usage in Settings before renewing; make the call on your numbers.

Pick SB Time Tracker if you want the tracked-hours-to-paid-invoice loop in one tool, a bill that only moves when headcount does, and you would rather one $14 seat covered projects and sales too. The feature-by-feature pages are here with the same disclosure rules, or start free: 30 days, every feature, no card.

Competitor pricing verified 2026-09-04 against the vendors' own pricing pages. This market has been moving; check the live pages before deciding. If we got a number wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.

Best Harvest Alternatives in 2026 (Honest Comparison)

Anselmo — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

If you're reading this, there's a decent chance your Harvest renewal notice looked different this year. You're not imagining it.

In mid-2025, Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons, and in 2026 the pricing model changed shape. The old deal was simple: a flat per-seat rate, and your bill was your headcount times that rate. The new model keeps a per-seat base (Teams from $9/seat/month billed annually, $11 monthly; Enterprise from $14/seat annually) and layers usage-based fees on top, charged against your active projects, clients, tasks, and invoicing once you pass each plan's included allowance. There's also a fixed-price "Unlimited" variant if you'd rather not meter your own business activity.

The practical result: two firms with identical headcount can now pay very different amounts, and the more successfully you use Harvest (more clients, more projects, more invoices) the more it costs. For a service business, that's a bill that grows with your busiest months. Some longtime customers have reported renewal quotes several times their old rate.

To be fair to Harvest: it's a genuinely good product. The invoicing workflow, from tracked hours to sent invoice to payment, is still one of the smoothest in the category. If the new pricing works out fine for your usage profile, staying is a legitimate choice, and we'll say so again at the bottom.

But if you're here because you want your software bill to be predictable again, here's an honest look at the shortlist. One disclosure up front: we make SB Assistant, one of the tools below. We'll tell you where each option wins, including where we don't.

What to actually compare

Three questions cut through most of the marketing:

Is the price predictable? Flat per-seat, or does it scale with usage, tiers, or feature gates?
Does it invoice, or just track? Half the "Harvest alternatives" you'll find are timers with no billing. If invoicing is why you had Harvest, a timer alone means adding a second tool.
What happens to your data if you leave? You just learned why this matters.

The comparison at a glance

	SB Assistant	Toggl Track	Clockify	Harvest (stay)
Price	$14/seat/mo flat	Free (up to 5 users); $9 to $18/user/mo	Free tier; $3.99 to $11.99/user/mo	$9 to $14/seat base + usage fees
Usage fees	None	None	None	Yes (Flex) or fixed Unlimited tier
Invoicing	Included	Basic PDFs from reports	On Standard plan and up	Included (best-in-class)
Also included	Project management + CRM	None	Scheduling, expenses (higher tiers)	None
Trial	30 days, no card	Free plan	Free plan	30 days, no card

Prices verified August 2026 against vendor pricing pages; annual-billing rates shown where vendors quote both. Always check the live pages. This market has been moving.

SB Assistant: for teams that want the whole stack at one price

What it is: A suite for small US service businesses: time tracking with invoicing, project management, and a CRM. One login, one bill.

Pricing: $14 per active seat per month, flat. Every app included. No tiers, no feature gates, no usage fees. Client-portal users are free and AI agents don't count as seats.

Where it wins: Predictability and scope. $14 buys the entire suite, so the comparison isn't "$14 vs. $9 for a timer." It's $14 vs. a timer plus a PM tool plus a CRM, each with its own login and its own bill. Hours flow straight into invoices. And if you leave, your data stays read-only for 90 days so you export on your own schedule.

Where it doesn't: We're newer and smaller than everyone else on this list, and we're US-focused. If you need a decade of integrations or EU invoicing compliance today, the incumbents are ahead of us. If you only want a timer and nothing else, Clockify is cheaper.

Honest fit: Consultants, agencies, and service teams of roughly 2 to 25 who bill for time and are tired of paying for three tools that don't talk to each other. See the full feature-by-feature Harvest comparison or start free.

Toggl Track: for the best pure time-tracking experience

What it is: The category's UX benchmark. Fast timers, a browser extension that works inside Jira, GitHub, and Notion, and reporting that's genuinely pleasant to use. Deliberately privacy-first: no screenshots, no surveillance features, ever.

Pricing: Free for up to 5 users. Starter at $9/user/month (annual); Premium at $18/user/month for profitability analysis and approvals.

Where it wins: Daily tracking experience and reporting depth. If your team lives in dev tools, the integrations are the best in class.

Where it doesn't: Invoicing. Toggl generates basic PDFs from time reports. It is not a billing system, and there's no native payment collection. If invoicing is central to your workflow, Toggl means running a second tool for billing, which changes the real monthly cost.

Honest fit: Teams that bill through separate accounting software anyway and want the nicest possible timer.

Clockify: for the tightest budget

What it is: The value play. A capable tracker with the lowest per-seat prices in the category.

Pricing: A well-known free tier, with paid plans from $3.99/user/month (annual); invoicing arrives on the Standard plan at $5.49/user/month, and even the top Enterprise tier is $11.99. Note: reports in 2026 indicate the famously unlimited free plan now carries a user cap, so check the current terms before planning around it.

Where it wins: Price, full stop. A 10-person team on Standard runs about $55/month with invoicing included. Nothing else on this list touches that.

Where it doesn't: Polish and depth. The interface is more utilitarian than Toggl's, the invoicing is more basic than Harvest's, and there's no project management or CRM. It's a tracker with extras, not a business system.

Honest fit: Cost-conscious teams that need solid tracking plus workable invoicing and will trade polish for price.

Or: stay on Harvest

If your usage profile is light (few clients, modest invoice volume) the Teams base rate may cover you, and Harvest's invoicing workflow remains excellent. Before deciding anything, open Settings > Billing in your Harvest account, check your actual usage against your plan's allowances, and simulate your renewal. Make the call with your own numbers, not anyone's blog post. Including this one.

We publish comparisons like this with a simple rule: every competitor claim is verified against live sources on the date at the top, and we say plainly where we lose. If we got a number wrong, tell us and we'll fix it.

Introducing the SB Assistant blog

Anselmo — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

We already publish a changelog for each app. What the changelog can't do is explain why — why a feature works the way it does, why we priced the way we did, or what we learned watching a small agency try to close out a month. That's what this is for.

Why a blog

SB Assistant is a suite for small US service businesses: SB Time Tracker, SB Project Management, and SB CRM. All three are live, and all three come with one account — $14 per seat / month, flat, every app included, no feature gates by plan.

That's an unusual thing to say out loud in this market, and saying it once on a pricing page isn't enough. Most of what we believe about running this business only shows up in small decisions: what we won't tier-gate, what we won't meter, what we won't ship until it actually works. A blog is where those decisions get written down.

We'll keep it plain. Short sentences, concrete numbers, honest comparisons. If we can't back a claim, we won't make it.

What we'll write about

Four beats, in rough order of how often you'll see them.

Beat	What it covers	Roughly how often
Product notes	Why a feature works the way it does, and how to get the most out of it	Most weeks
Running the business	Billing, utilization, margins — the operator's side of a service business	Twice a month
Behind the build	Decisions we made and the tradeoffs they cost us	Monthly
Announcements	Anything that changes what you get for your seat	As it happens

Product notes

The changelog tells you a feature shipped. These posts tell you when to reach for it. Expect walkthroughs that start from a real situation — an invoice that needs to go out today, a project that's quietly gone over budget — rather than a tour of the settings screen.

The week view in SB Time Tracker. Screenshots here come from the real app, not a mockup.

Running the business

Time tracking is only interesting because of what it tells you afterward: which projects earn, which clients are quietly unprofitable, how much of the week is actually billable. Those posts will be about the numbers, not the software.

Behind the build

One login, one bill, built like a suite rather than a pile of apps — that shapes almost everything, and not always in our favor. We'll write about the times it cost us something.

Announcements

Rare, and always about something that changes what your seat includes. This post is one.

What you can expect us not to do

No hype adjectives, no invented benchmarks, and no competitor numbers we haven't verified against that competitor's own published pricing.

We also won't use this space to walk back the pricing. It stays what it is: $14 per seat / month with every app included, a 30-day free trial with no credit card, client-portal users free, and AI agents that don't take a seat.

Where to find it

New posts land on this page, newest first. There's an RSS feed if you'd rather not check, and posts are filed by tag if you're looking for one beat in particular.

If you want the per-release detail instead, the changelogs are still the place: Time Tracker, Project Management, and CRM.