Harvest vs InvoiceShelf
Harvest and InvoiceShelf are both invoicing software. Harvest is a commercial product from Harvest. InvoiceShelf is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 1.9k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Harvest when
- An agency or consultancy bills by the hour and wants staff to track time easily against project budgets.
- Pick InvoiceShelf when
- You need straightforward invoicing on your own server and do not need full accounting.
Side by side
Time and expense tracking with project budgets, reports and invoicing from tracked hours, integrated with QuickBooks and Xero.
A self-hosted invoicing app for freelancers and small businesses: estimates, invoices, payments, expenses and customer records, forked from Crater.
Resource planning needs the separate Forecast product, and per-seat pricing adds up for larger teams.
No double-entry accounting or tax filing, and AGPL licensed.
Production-ready
Usable
Cloud service, mobile app, desktop app and browser extension
Self-hosted server
Not published
PHP, Laravel and Vue
Closed source, sold by Harvest
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
503 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
1.9k GitHub stars
Not known
Established: started 2 years ago, latest release 2.4.7.
Other comparisons
More invoicing apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.