Harvest Raised Prices Up to 150x After Acquisition. Here Are Your Options.

In June 2025, Italian software company Bending Spoons acquired Harvest, the popular time tracking and invoicing tool. What followed was a familiar playbook: aggressive cost-cutting, monetization pressure, and price increases that left long-time users scrambling for alternatives.

What Happened

Bending Spoons is known for acquiring established software products and applying a formula: cut 70–80% of overhead (usually staff), then aggressively monetize the remaining user base. Previous acquisitions (Evernote, Meetup) followed the same pattern.

For Harvest users, the impact was immediate:

• Accounts previously paying $12/month were auto-migrated to Enterprise plans costing $1,900/month
• Yearly plans of ~$130 were quoted at $19,000+ for renewal
• “Usage-based billing” penalized users with years of accumulated historical data
• February 2026 brought another round of increases, driving more long-time users to cancel

The Real Cost of Vendor Lock-In

The Harvest situation illustrates a painful truth: when your business data lives in a single vendor’s platform, an acquisition can turn your essential tool into a financial liability overnight. Users with years of time tracking history found themselves in a “data hostage” situation — their accumulated data being used to justify Enterprise-tier pricing.

This isn’t unique to Harvest. Any tool backed by private equity or venture capital faces eventual pressure to maximize revenue — often at the expense of long-time users who built their workflows around the product.

Alternatives for IT Freelancers

If you’re looking for a new home after Harvest, here are the strongest options:

1. vlastERP(€0–29/mo) — All-in-one: time tracking + invoicing + projects + profitability analytics. EU-compliant. 2-month free trial with no credit card required.
2. Toggl Track($0–18/user/mo) — Excellent focused time tracker with a clean UI, but no invoicing, expense tracking, or project management built in.
3. Clockify($0–15/user/mo) — Free unlimited time tracking, but invoicing and project management are separate add-ons through the CAKE.com bundle.
4. Moxie($12–40/mo) — Freelancer-focused all-in-one tool, but lacks profitability reporting and EU-specific compliance features.
5. FreshBooks($0–18/mo) — Strong invoicing with a self-host option, but limited time tracking or project management integration.

How to Migrate from Harvest

Regardless of which tool you choose, the process is straightforward:

1. Export your data from Harvest— Go to Settings → Export and download your clients, time entries, and invoices as CSV files.
2. Sign up for your new tool— Most alternatives offer a free trial, so you can test before committing.
3. Import via CSV— Upload your exported data into the new platform.

For vlastERP specifically, the CSV import handles clients, projects, and time entries. We’ve built a dedicated Harvest migration guide that walks you through every step.

Lessons Learned

• Always have an export strategy. Before you commit to any tool, verify that you can get your data out in a standard format (CSV, JSON, or via API).
• Prefer tools that don’t lock your data. Look for open APIs, CSV export, and transparent data policies.
• Consider independent/bootstrapped tools over PE-backed ones. Bootstrapped companies are incentivized to keep customers happy, not to maximize short-term returns for investors.
• Check if your tool has a full APIfor data portability. If it doesn’t, your data is effectively trapped.