Harvest tracks hours. Sonra tracks hours against fee, by phase, so you can see where each job is heading while there is still time to act. $180 a month flat for the whole firm, with a 30-day free trial and no sales call.
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Short answer: Harvest is a good, simple time tracker and invoicer for any kind of team. Choose Sonra instead if you run fee-based architecture projects and want to see hours against the fee for each phase, not just total hours per project.
Many small architecture firms start on Harvest because it is easy to set up and the team will actually use it. The gap shows up at month end: an architecture fee is split across phases (schematic design, design development, construction documents and so on), and the question that matters is how far through each phase's fee you are. In Harvest that usually becomes a spreadsheet kept by one person.
Sonra puts that view in the same place the hours are logged. Time goes against projects and phases, every phase has a fee budget, and you can see where each phase will land once the open tasks are done. It is built for practices of roughly 5-25 people.
On price, honestly: Harvest lists its Teams plan at $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly), with usage-based charges for additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks. For a team of under about 16 people that is usually less than Sonra's $180 flat. Sonra costs less once you pass that, and it never changes as the firm grows or as you add projects.
How the two stack up on the things architecture firms ask about most.
| Feature | Sonra | Harvest |
|---|---|---|
| Built specifically for architecture firms | ✓ | General-purpose |
| Time tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Time against project phases | ✓ | Tasks within a project |
| Fee budget for every phase | ✓ | Project-level budgets |
| Projection of where each phase will land | ✓ | — |
| Tasks with hour estimates & checklists | ✓ | — |
| Team resourcing & time off | ✓ | Separate product (Forecast) |
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| QuickBooks / Xero sync | Not yet | ✓ |
| Price | $180/month, whole firm | $9–11 per seat + usage charges |
Comparison based on publicly available information from getharvest.com, checked November 2026. Harvest is a trademark of its respective owner; Sonra is not affiliated with or endorsed by Harvest. Features and pricing change - please verify current details with each vendor.
The reasons practices pick Sonra when they outgrow a general time tracker.
Every phase of a job has a fee budget. Hours logged by the team burn it down, and Sonra shows where the phase will land once the open tasks are done, not just where it is today.
$180 a month for the whole firm. No counting seats, no rationing logins, and no extra charges for more projects or clients. The people who log the hours are the ones who make the fee picture right.
Sonra was created by a former architect who has sat through the Friday-evening timesheet chase. It is built for practices of roughly 5-25 people running fee-based jobs.
Harvest does its job well, and for some firms it is the better fit. You're probably better served staying with Harvest if:
If your real question is "are we on track against the fee for this phase?", and you'd like the team's hours to answer it without a spreadsheet, that's what Sonra is designed for.
What firms ask when comparing the two.
Yes, if you want time tracking that is tied to your fee. Harvest is a general-purpose time tracker and invoicer. Sonra is built for architecture practices: time is logged against projects and phases, every phase has a fee budget, and you can see where each phase will land once the open tasks are done.
Sonra is $180 per month, flat, for the whole firm. Harvest lists its Teams plan at $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly), with usage-based charges for additional invoices, projects, clients and tasks. For a firm of fewer than about 16 people Harvest is usually the cheaper monthly bill; above that, or if you want everyone to have a login without counting seats, Sonra's flat price is lower.
Phase-based fee budgets, a projection of where each phase will land once the open tasks are done, tasks with hour estimates and checklists, a personal week planner for staff, team resourcing and time-off requests, all in one product. Harvest tracks hours and invoices well; Sonra also shows whether each phase of a job is on track against its fee.
Not yet. Harvest can copy invoices and payments to QuickBooks Online and Xero. Sonra handles invoicing itself, so many firms run billing without a separate sync, but if an accounting integration is essential to you, Harvest is the better fit today.
Yes. Export your detailed time report from Harvest as CSV and we'll help you import the hours against your projects and phases during the 30-day trial, so your phase budgets start from where each job actually is rather than from zero.
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