Saturday, August 22, 2026
After Bending Spoons acquired Harvest, the company moved away from simple per-seat pricing. Some longtime customers are now facing dramatically higher renewal costs.
Harvest, a time-tracking and invoicing software company used by freelancers and professional-services firms, changed how it charges customers after Italian technology company Bending Spoons acquired it in July 2025.
Harvest says more than 70,000 companies use its software.
Under the old pricing model, businesses generally paid a flat monthly fee for each user. The new model keeps a per-seat price but adds another cost tied to how the customer uses Harvest.
Customers can handle that usage cost in two ways. With Flex, the bill can change based on activity inside Harvest, including projects, clients, tasks and invoicing. With Unlimited, customers pay a fixed usage fee on top of the per-seat price.
UK consultancy Salentis told the BBC its average monthly Harvest cost increased from about $130 to $2,110. That’s roughly a 1,500% increase.
How Harvest Changed Its Pricing
| | OLD | FLEX | UNLIMITED |
|---|
| How you're charged | Primarily per seat | Per seat + usage | Per seat + fixed usage fee |
| Can activity increase your bill? | Generally no | Yes | No |
| Does public pricing show the full cost? | N/A | No | No |
| What changed | Seats drove cost | Seats and activity drive cost | Seats plus a fixed usage charge |
Harvest’s Teams plan currently starts at $9 per seat per month when billed annually and $11 when billed monthly. Enterprise starts at $14 per seat annually and $17.50 monthly.
But those are starting prices.
Harvest says additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks can increase the cost under usage-based billing. The company presents the model as a way for customers to pay based on how much they use the product.
What Harvest does not publish on its pricing page is a standard Unlimited usage fee.
That makes it hard for someone outside an existing Harvest account to compare the full cost of Flex, Unlimited and the old per-seat model.
What Harvest Says About the New Pricing
Harvest frames the new model around flexibility and paying based on use. The company has not publicly provided a more detailed explanation for the change.
The pricing shift followed Bending Spoons’ acquisition of Harvest in July 2025.
The BBC said it approached Harvest for comment about the recent increases but did not include a response from the company.
Some Longtime Customers Are Seeing Dramatic Increases
Salentis had used Harvest across its businesses for at least 15 years before receiving the new pricing.
The company said accepting the higher renewal cost would double its annual IT spending. After Salentis challenged the increase, Harvest offered a lower price of $1,309 per month for the next year if paid upfront.
Salentis said it plans to move to another service instead.
The BBC also cited a U.S. customer who reported an annual Harvest bill increasing from $2,800 to $23,000.
These are individual customer experiences. Harvest has not raised every customer’s price by the same percentage. The amount depends on the account and the billing option.
The Unlimited option shows how far the new pricing can move from legacy costs.
In one customer-reported example on Trustpilot, a seven-user business that had been paying $69 a month said its renewal moved the account to Enterprise with Unlimited usage billing at $821.50 a month. That’s an increase of about 1,091%.
The customer said a Flex alternative was also offered, but it would still have cost several times the previous bill.
This example has not been independently verified and should not be read as a standard Harvest Unlimited price. Harvest does not publicly list one.
Insider Take
Business software can get deeply embedded in how a company works. People know the system. Processes are built around it. Years of data may live there.
Switching is a pain.
That gives the existing software provider a powerful retention advantage. Even when a competitor is cheaper or has better features, moving can feel like more trouble than it’s worth.
Harvest may have changed that calculation for some customers.
A 10% or 20% increase might not be enough to justify moving years of data, retraining employees or changing familiar workflows. When the renewal cost becomes several times higher, the inconvenience of switching can suddenly look manageable.
And that gives competitors an opening.
Some longtime Harvest customers quoted in recent coverage say they plan to leave. We don’t yet know how widespread that response will be or what it will mean for Harvest’s retention.
But when a customer who has stayed for 10 or 15 years decides the cost of remaining is greater than the hassle of moving, the retention equation has changed.
Raise the cost of staying far enough, and the pain of switching starts to look worth it.
Related Member Resources
Planning a pricing change? These Member Center resources can help you test the financial impact and think through the customer rollout before renewal arrives.
Sources
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