Background
Why Harvest got expensive
Harvest was acquired by Bending Spoons in July 2025. Its pricing was then restructured from a flat per-seat rate into a per-seat fee plus usage-based charges for invoices, projects, clients and tasks. Because the per-unit rates for the usage layer are not published, a customer can no longer work out their own bill in advance, and renewals default to the higher tier unless you intervene before the renewal date.
That is the whole explanation. The rest of this page is the part that is actually useful: the pattern it belongs to, and how to tell whether the tool you move to can do the same thing to you in three years.
This is a pattern, not an accident
Bending Spoons is an Italian software company whose business model is buying established software and operating it at scale. Harvest is one of many. Dates below are from public reporting, checked 27 July 2026.
| Product | Acquired | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Evernote | 2023 | Announced 2022, closed early 2023. |
| Meetup | 2024 | Acquired in the first half of 2024. |
| WeTransfer | July 2024 | – |
| Brightcove | late 2024 | Reported at $233 million. |
| Harvest | July 2025 | The repricing followed. |
| Vimeo | September 2025 | Reported at $1.38 billion. |
| Eventbrite | 2025 | – |
| AOL | 2025 | – |
The portfolio also includes Komoot, Remini and StreamYard. Users have publicly reported price increases following several of these acquisitions. We have not audited anyone else's invoices, so treat those reports as reports.
In July 2026 the company listed on Nasdaq, raising a reported $1.68 billion, and has said it intends to keep acquiring. Whatever you think of the model, the honest read is that this will keep happening to software you rely on, and that is worth planning for rather than being surprised by twice.
How to judge your next tool
Four questions. They take about ten minutes and they are the ones that would have given you warning this time.
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1
Can you get your data out, today, without asking?
Not "we offer migration support". An export button you can press yourself, producing a file you can read. If leaving requires their cooperation, you do not have leverage at renewal.
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2
Is any part of the bill metered?
A per-seat price is predictable: you know your headcount. A price that moves with invoices, projects, clients or tasks means your bill grows precisely because the tool is working, and you cannot forecast it.
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3
Are the per-unit rates published?
If a vendor charges by the unit but will not publish the unit price, you cannot compute your own bill before agreeing to it. That is the part that turns a price rise into a surprise.
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4
Is there a written commitment about future price changes?
In the terms, not in a blog post. Notice period, and what happens to an existing subscription when list prices move.
The same four questions, asked of us
It would be a cheap page if we did not. FlatHours is a small company and could in principle be bought too, so the only meaningful answer is what is written down and what you can do without us.
Export
Every time entry and invoice exports to CSV whenever you like, no request required. Dropping to the free plan does not lock your history.
Metering
Nothing is metered on any plan, including the free one. We do not count invoices, projects, clients or tasks. Our free tier used to cap projects and clients, and we removed it, because we could not attack metered pricing while doing it ourselves.
Published rates
One flat number per plan, on the pricing page. There is no usage layer to publish rates for.
Written commitment
In the Terms, not here: an existing paid subscription keeps its price for at least twelve months after any change, we email before anything takes effect, and we will not add a usage fee to an existing subscription.
Read the Terms rather than taking our word for it, and if you are working out what to do before your renewal date, the migration guide lists the alternatives honestly, including several that are cheaper than us.