Which Time Monitoring App is Higher for You?

Contemplating that Harvest and RescueTime have distinctive use circumstances, it must be simple to resolve between the 2 apps. However don’t make a hasty choice. Learn my complete Harvest vs. RescueTime comparability to study their strengths and weaknesses. 

We examined each apps rigorously, and on this information, I’ll examine them aspect by aspect that will help you make an knowledgeable choice. I’ll go over their similarities and variations on fronts equivalent to time monitoring, exercise monitoring, expense monitoring, mission monitoring, and extra. Hold studying for all the small print. 

At a Look: Fast Abstract

Harvest is a time-tracking app for handbook time monitoring. In different phrases, customers begin/cease timers or enter timesheets manually to log work hours, similar to they might with many different time trackers. 

Harvest additionally helps handle the monetary processes of your small business. It enables you to create estimates, monitor out-of-pocket bills, and handle invoices. Be taught extra within the full Harvest overview.

RescueTime, however, mechanically logs the time you spend on apps and web sites. Not like Harvest, you don’t want to begin or cease a timer. As a substitute, RescueTime begins recording your time and exercise within the background when you begin your gadget. 

Past time monitoring, it tracks productiveness ranges and blocks distractions to encourage deep focus on the duties at hand. Be taught extra within the full RescueTime overview.

Pricing and Plans

Particular person customers with fundamental time monitoring wants can use Harvest and RescueTime with out paying a dime. Nonetheless, Harvest’s free plan is extra interesting because it additionally provides mission administration, invoicing, and fundamental reporting instruments. However as you’d count on, you’ll want a paid plan to entry superior options with each platforms. 

You’ll be able to take a look at superior options earlier than shopping for with Harvest’s 30-day free trial or RescueTime’s 14-day free trial. Harvest doesn’t require a bank card for a trial, permitting you to tinker with key options risk-free. RescueTime’s trial requires a bank card, so in case you resolve that it’s not for you, keep in mind to cancel the subscription inside 14 days to keep away from a cost in your card. 

Each suppliers assist user-based pricing, permitting you to pay for under the seats you want. This makes them interesting to freelancers and small groups with restricted budgets. On the floor, RescueTime appears to be like extra reasonably priced than Harvest, however I believe that Harvest delivers ‌higher worth for cash, because of its spectacular function set. 

Professionals and Cons

The next professionals and cons provide you with a sneak peek into the areas the place Harvest and RescueTime excel or fall quick. 

Harvest Professionals ✅

• Straightforward to trace billable and non-billable time
• Handle estimates and invoices on a single platform

Harvest Cons  ❌

• No GPS time monitoring capabilities
• No labor compliance options

RescueTime Professionals ✅

• Logs time spent on apps and web sites
• FocusTime boosts productiveness 

RescueTime Cons  ❌

• Doesn’t have a chosen timer
• No labor compliance options 

Use Instances

Harvest and RescueTime function units differ considerably, making them ultimate for various workforce administration wants:

Harvest is finest for:

• Billable time monitoring: Harvest requires customers to pick a mission and job when clocking in. This makes it simple to attribute each minute to a particular mission, enhancing billing and price monitoring. 
• Monitoring mission budgets: With Harvest, you’ll be able to set mission budgets and monitor prices based mostly on precise hours. Staying forward of spend might help you alter processes on the fly to spice up profitability. 

RescueTime is finest for:

• Enhancing private productiveness: RescueTime tracks the time you spend on web sites and apps on cell and desktop units. It then categorizes your actions that will help you pinpoint and get rid of time-wasters for higher productiveness. 
• Avoiding distractions throughout work: RescueTime enables you to block social media and different private or distracting web sites throughout FocusTime. This helps you spend time on significant work, boosting productiveness. 

Aspect-by-Aspect Characteristic Overview

Whereas Harvest and RescueTime are each time-tracking apps, their strategies and have units are very totally different. Every app is designed for various wants. Under, I’ll break down how the apps work, highlighting their variations to information you to the higher selection on your workflow. 

1. Time Monitoring — Winner: Harvest

In my testing, monitoring time with Harvest was easy. Whether or not you like utilizing the online or cell apps, or the Chrome extension, it solely takes just a few clicks to begin the timer. When a consumer clocks in, they need to choose a mission and job they’re engaged on, and the app attributes their working time to the proper consumer. This simplifies billing down the highway.

Whereas its user-friendliness shines by, Harvest isn’t with out flaws. One difficulty was that the app continued monitoring time even when the tester turned off the gadget. In a real-world situation, this might result in inaccurate timesheets, complicating billing and price monitoring. What’s worse, managers can’t edit workers’ timesheets, which just about ensures a relentless back-and-forth throughout approval.

RescueTime, however, has no choice to begin or finish a timer. As a substitute, it jumps straight into motion when you flip in your gadget, and continues logging time so long as the gadget is on. With the automated strategy, workers who juggle a number of duties don’t need to depend on their recall to trace mission time precisely.

With out correct safeguards, automated monitoring might result in intrusive monitoring. The nice factor is you could configure RescueTime to log time solely throughout work hours, defending worker privateness. It’s also possible to predefine work varieties and productiveness statuses to allow the app to precisely categorise actions. 

Verdict: Harvest has a transparent benefit over RescueTime as a result of it places you answerable for time monitoring. I additionally discovered it the perfect match for companies that need to precisely monitor mission time for truthful billing. Nonetheless, Harvest might use superior controls to streamline compliance with labor legal guidelines. 

2. Mission Administration — Winner: Harvest

Mission administration isn’t Harvest’s or RescueTime’s major focus. Their mission modules present solely the important options for monitoring time and budgets, fairly than managing tasks by varied phases.

Harvest enables you to create tasks and hyperlink them to particular shoppers for straightforward billing. It’s also possible to break tasks into duties for environment friendly delegation, outline budgets for value monitoring, and set deadlines to maintain tasks on monitor.

I appreciated the power to arrange Harvest to inform me when a mission used up a sure share of the mission’s price range. The alerts assist you to spot points early and stop value overruns. 

RescueTime additionally enables you to create tasks and break them into duties. However in contrast to Harvest, you’ll be able to’t set a mission price range or monitor labor prices in opposition to it. It doesn’t assist with billing, both. Do not forget that RescueTime lacks a billing module, and doesn’t let workers choose tasks and duties at the beginning of the day.

As a substitute, RescueTime tracks all exercise on a pc and makes use of automation to categorize actions per job or consumer. For instance, as an alternative of seeing that an worker spent 4 hours on Google Chrome, you’ll be able to see the particular mission they labored on throughout that point. This helps perceive how employees spend their time throughout work hours. 

Verdict: Harvest is the winner on this class, with mission administration instruments that work nicely to assist customers monitor billable hours per consumer and monitor prices. RescueTime’s mission instruments assist decide how workers spend their time, however want handbook modifying for correct reporting. 

3. Productiveness-boosting modes — Winner: RescueTime

Whereas it falls quick on time monitoring modes, RescueTime shines when used to spice up productiveness. One notable function is FocusTime, which helps you to carve out distraction-free classes to deal with deep work. The way in which it really works is straightforward. 

It mechanically creates a block record based mostly on ‌apps categorized as private or distracting. I do want that RescueTime made it simpler to create lists of internet sites to permit or block. Proper now, you want to go to your Actions overview, hover over a web site, and use an arrow to maneuver it to the record you need. When you’ve got a protracted record, this will get tiring fairly quick.

You’ll be able to differ the size of focus classes and schedule them throughout the time of day if you’re most efficient. For instance, in case you’re an evening owl, you’ll be able to schedule focus classes late into the night time. RescueTime alerts you earlier than a spotlight session, serving to you begin on time. 

When you’re in a spotlight session, you’ll be able to’t entry any web site or app on the block record. This helps you obtain deep focus and enhance productiveness. It’s also possible to sync a music streaming service, like Spotify or YouTube, to vibe to your favourite tunes whereas working. 

Harvest doesn’t supply the same function. 

Verdict: RescueTime is the clear winner on this class. I’ve discovered it helpful for customers who battle with distractions throughout work hours. 

4. Exercise Monitoring — Winner: RescueTime

If you want to monitor productiveness and digital exercise, RescueTime can do it with some limitations. Not like different apps designed for monitoring desktop exercise, RescueTime doesn’t have frequent options like screenshots or keystroke recording. However it’s nice at capturing the apps and web sites your employees go to throughout the day and sorting them into totally different productiveness classes.

Exercise classes are RescueTime’s standout function. The app mechanically teams actions and flags potential time-wasters. It’s also possible to reclassify them and assign productiveness scores to fine-tune your outcomes. These classes are used to dam distracting web sites throughout FocusTime and in experiences to indicate the place your time goes.

By default, there are 11 exercise classes, like enterprise, communication & scheduling, social networking, design & composition, and entertaining. The classes are additional damaged down into sub-categories, every with a productiveness rating, both focus work, different work, impartial, private, or distracting.

When RescueTime tracks an app, say “Google Docs,” it teams it to a class like “design/comp: writing” and assigns a productiveness rating like “Focus work.” You’ll be able to open the “Actions” tab to get an in depth report displaying how a lot time you spend on productive or non-productive work. 

Harvest doesn’t include an exercise monitoring function. 

Verdict: RescueTime is the winner on this class. It is probably not as feature-rich as Clockify or Hubstaff, however its exercise tracker offers clear visibility into your habits. It helps spot and block time-wasters to focus extra successfully on significant work.

5. Expense Monitoring — Winner: Harvest

Harvest lets workers log any out-of-pocket bills they’ve throughout a mission. Suppose mileage, meals, motels, parking, tolls, and leisure. You’ll be able to add a brand new expense sort or customise present ones to match your inner insurance policies.

It’s also possible to assign a unit value for some bills, like mileage. This helps be certain that the billing fee is according to established requirements just like the IRS mileage charges. 

Logging bills is straightforward on each the cell and desktop apps. What impressed me is that every expense is categorized underneath a particular mission and job. And since every mission is tied to a consumer, bills are mechanically grouped by shoppers, simplifying billing. Even higher, Harvest requires workers to connect a receipt, making it simple to confirm every expense. 

Whereas all that sounds good, Harvest’s expense monitoring may really feel restricted for companies with comparatively advanced expense administration wants. Throughout testing, I observed the dearth of a built-in approval workflow, which suggests bills are thought-about permitted instantly upon entry. This may occasionally not go well with companies that require multi-step approval to keep up accuracy and accountability.

RescueTime doesn’t have an expense administration module.

Verdict: Harvest is definitely the winner on this class. Whereas it lacks a built-in approval workflow, it’s nonetheless efficient if you wish to invoice shoppers for bills and labored hours. 

6. Estimating and Invoicing — Winner: Harvest

In addition to expense monitoring, Harvest additionally automates different duties like estimating and invoicing. However its Estimates module lacks superior options like multi-phase estimation and forecasting, and feels restricted in comparison with established estimating instruments. 

Nonetheless, I discovered Harvest to be efficient for gentle estimations. You’ll be able to embody detailed merchandise descriptions, tax, reductions, and branded components to create professional-looking estimates. What I appreciated is that it’s simple for shoppers to overview the estimates and

 settle for or decline them on-line. 

Harvest teams every consumer’s billable bills and time to simplify the invoicing workflow. Simply choose the consumer, add the bills and mission time you need to invoice, and that’s it. It’s also possible to flip permitted estimates into invoices.

I additionally discovered it simple to trace invoices to see what’s been paid and what’s overdue. Even higher, you’ll be able to monitor funds inside Harvest, with an choice to simply accept partial funds to keep up a gradual money move. Nonetheless, you’ll be able to’t mechanically cost playing cards or financial institution accounts, so shoppers need to make funds manually. 

RescueTime doesn’t assist estimating and invoicing. 

Verdict: Harvest wins one other finance-related class since RescueTime doesn’t supply any estimating or invoicing options. 

7. Reporting — Winner: Tie

Each Harvest and RescueTime have a variety of reporting choices. 

Harvest focuses on offering helpful info that lets you enhance day-to-day operations and control profitability. A few of its notable experiences embody time, profitability, expense, un-invoiced, exercise log, and contractor experiences.

In my testing, producing Harvest experiences was a breeze, because of its intuitive interface. The experiences use graphs and charts to make advanced information simpler to know for sooner decision-making. The one minor difficulty is that Harvest’s report-sharing choices are restricted to PDF and CSV report downloads. 

In the meantime, RescueTime prioritizes experiences that assist you to unravel your work habits and productiveness. Its dashboard shows productiveness metrics, equivalent to a productiveness pulse, FocusTime targets, and lifelong milestones – all on a single web page. 

Like Harvest, it makes use of graphs and charts to make information simply digestible. Nonetheless, its sharing choices are restricted to CSV obtain solely. You’ll be able to’t arrange experiences to be despatched to your inbox or electronic mail experiences to individuals straight from the platform. 

Verdict: Each Harvest’s and RescueTime’s reporting modules assist you to to get related insights out of your information. Whereas their experiences deal with totally different areas, they’re equally succesful. Therefore, this class ends in a tie.

8. Integrations — Winner: Harvest

I appreciated Harvest’s potential to combine with greater than 70 third-party apps. I discovered it helpful for extending its capabilities in areas the place it falls slightly quick. For instance, its integrations with mission administration software program allow you to monitor time proper inside your go-to instruments. 

It additionally integrates natively with accounting, invoicing, developer instruments, file storage, and CRM. Sadly, Harvest doesn’t combine with payroll platforms, which could be off-putting for corporations seeking to enhance wage cost.

In contrast, RescueTime integrates natively with six third-party apps. It syncs properly with fashionable calendars, mission administration, communication instruments, and different time trackers like Harvest. Nonetheless, since RescueTime isn’t geared in the direction of monitoring any monetary transactions, it doesn’t combine with payroll or accounting software program.

These variations apart, each Harvest and RescueTime assist Zapier integrations. Zapier enables you to join the platforms to nearly any software program in your tech stack with out coding. Furthermore, the 2 apps have an API that helps you construct customized integrations.

Verdict: Harvest is a transparent winner because it helps way more native integrations than RescueTime. Nonetheless, it has just a few gaps that could be discouraging for some companies, like the dearth of integrations with payroll software program. 

Consumer Scores

Harvest and RescueTime each have good overview scores, which largely replicate excessive buyer satisfaction with the platforms. Whereas the constructive critiques outweigh the detrimental ones, there are just a few essential feedback, like RescueTime’s privateness issues and Harvest’s utilization limits on the free plan. 

Harvest

• ⭐ 4.6/5 on Capterra (637 critiques)
• ⭐ 4.3/5 on G2 (818 critiques)

RescueTime

• ⭐ 4.6/5 on Capterra (141 critiques)
• ⭐ 4.2/5 on G2 (94 critiques)

* Scores had been up to date in November 2025.

Safety & Compliance

Harvest’s and RescueTime’s safety and privateness choices look strong on the floor. They each encrypt information in transit and depend on the server-host’s encryption to guard information at relaxation. 

Nonetheless, the platforms don’t maintain any certification and haven’t undergone a third-party audit to validate their safety measures. Fortunately, neither Harvest nor RescueTime has ever had a knowledge breach or safety downside. It’s a superb signal, however in case you want verified safety, then higher choices exist.

Setup and Onboarding

Testing Harvest, it took me a while to arrange a mock firm profile, branding, groups, shoppers, and tasks for invoices and estimates. This doesn’t imply that it’s laborious to arrange Harvest. 

Quite the opposite, even first-time customers will discover it fairly simple. However the sheer variety of issues you want to configure to get your workforce up and operating makes the method time-consuming. The nice factor is that Harvest does supply a get-started wizard, which helps you to do all fundamental configuration duties in a single place. 

Once I tried Harvest, its interface appeared a bit dated and bland. For instance, its navigation panel is positioned on the prime, whereas trendy customers count on it to be on the left. The nice factor is that its design doesn’t take away from the general consumer expertise. 

Equally, signing up for RescueTime takes longer than traditional. The signup began with a sequence of irritating questions that turned an in any other case easy course of into one thing unnecessarily time-consuming. That difficulty apart, establishing an account takes minutes since RescueTime preconfigures many options, like productiveness scores and tasks. 

Help and Buyer Service

Judging their efficiency on the variety of out there assist choices, RescueTime has the sting. It has a neighborhood discussion board and a voicemail-only cellphone line, two choices you don’t get with Harvest. Harvest, for its half, provides a stay chat choice, which is offered throughout regular enterprise hours solely. 

In terms of responsiveness, Harvest wins by a mile. Once I examined it, the assist brokers responded inside 7 minutes of submitting the question on stay chat. Since RescueTime doesn’t supply a stay chat, the contact type is the quickest method to discover assist. Throughout testing, RescueTime brokers responded inside 2 hours to contact type queries. 

Who Wins: Harvest or RescueTime?

Our take:

Though Harvest and RescueTime are each time trackers, they’re not direct rivals. I discovered large variations of their capabilities, which implies that they’re geared in the direction of totally different use circumstances. Your selection between Harvest and RescueTime received’t come right down to which app is superior, however fairly, which platform has the options you want. 

Harvest is right for freelancers and groups that need to monitor billable hours and enhance estimating and invoicing. It’s a superb match for customers who spend their time in entrance of the display screen, both in a bodily workplace or working from house. 

RescueTime can also be nice for desk employees, however for various wants. Contemplating that it lacks a handbook timer, it received’t assist customers monitor billable time. However its automated time monitoring mode makes it a superb choose for customers who need to monitor productiveness metrics and perceive how they spend their work hours. 

Connecteam vs. Harvest vs. RescueTime

Whereas Harvest and RescueTime are designed for desk employees, Connecteam is constructed primarily for deskless workers. For that reason, it has some options you received’t discover with both Harvest or RescueTime, together with: 

Compliant GPS Time Monitoring 

Connecteam time tracker helps you monitor time precisely and in full compliance with labor legal guidelines. It enables you to arrange geofences (digital boundaries) round job websites — building websites, places of work, warehouses, and eating places. This function is very helpful in workplaces the place you want to confirm worker areas to forestall time theft. 

With the geofence, workers can solely clock in or out when bodily inside the job web site, stopping off-site punching. Higher but, you’ll be able to configure the Connecteam geofence to clock out workers who depart a job web site with out authorization. This improves timesheet accuracy, making certain your organization pays employees just for the hours spent on the precise job. 

I additionally actually like Connecteam’s versatile break tracker. It enables you to configure mandated breaks and strictly implement them to keep away from authorized bother. You’ll be able to arrange reminders to remind workers to begin breaks on time, and you’ll block early returns, which regularly result in necessary break violations. 

On prime of that, Connecteam time beyond regulation tracker enables you to monitor every day, weekly, every day double-time, vacation, and seventh consecutive day time beyond regulation. I like you could simply alter the time beyond regulation thresholds and charges to align with native labor legal guidelines. Even higher, Connecteam calculates employees’ time beyond regulation pay mechanically, eliminating tedious handbook calculations. 

Computerized Shift Scheduling 

Connecteam’s scheduling helps guarantee every worker is the place they must be on the proper time. It has an intuitive scheduling interface, a drag-and-drop device, shift templates, and recurring shifts. Mixed, these instruments velocity up scheduling, serving to you obtain full protection in minutes, not hours.

For giant groups seeking to schedule workers even sooner, Connecteam’s AI-powered Auto-Scheduler ticks the proper containers. It analyzes shift necessities, worker {qualifications}, and availability to mechanically assign the proper employees to tons of and even hundreds of open shifts. In addition to slashing scheduling time right down to minutes, it ensures every employee handles a shift inside their skillset, enhancing work high quality. 

Connecteam additionally enables you to set scheduling guidelines, equivalent to most shifts and hours, to align with business rules and labor legal guidelines. The automated battle detector helps implement these guidelines. It examines every schedule to pinpoint points like overlapping shifts, prompting you to repair them earlier than publishing the schedule. This prevents the last-minute scramble and confusion that always cripple operations. 

Wonderful Buyer Help

With Connecteam, buyer assist isn’t an afterthought. It’s a built-in benefit that makes your expertise smoother and extra rewarding. What I like is that the supplier provides a pleasant mix of guided and self-service assist choices. Assist is offered to all customers, together with free plan subscribers, by way of 24/7 stay chat, cellphone, electronic mail, and information base. 

Once I examined Connecteam’s stay chat, I obtained responses inside a minute of submitting the question. Generally, I didn’t even have to escalate my difficulty to a human agent, because of the thorough AI assistant. The assistant supplied nice solutions, with hyperlinks to detailed guides in case I wanted extra context. 

Connecteam additionally provides a paid assist choice referred to as Connecteam Professionals. With this selection, you’re linked to an authorized setup and onboarding accomplice that will help you by the preliminary setup section and get your workforce up and operating in file time. This allows you to take advantage of out of every function from the beginning, even ones you may not have discovered by yourself. 

Connecteam is your finest match if you wish to handle your deskless workforce with out paying extra for superior options. Its free plan — out there for as much as 10 workers — offers you entry to all options, together with GPS time monitoring, scheduling, and job administration. 

You’ll solely want ‌a paid plan when your workforce grows. On this case, you can begin with the Fundamental plan for $29 monthly for 30 workers, which works out to lower than $1 a month per consumer. Even with bigger groups, you’ll be able to attempt Connecteam at no cost with a beneficiant 14-day trial, no bank card required. 

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