How it compares
Pick the tool that fits how your agency plans. CapacityLens answers one question: who is free next week?
| Tool | Granularity | What it tracks | Hosting | Price model | Pick it when |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet | Whatever you lay out | Whatever you type | A file you share | No licence fee | You have a handful of people and one person keeps the sheet up to date. |
| Float | Hours or percentages | Scheduling, capacity, and time tracking on its higher plan | Hosted by the vendor | Per scheduled person, per month | You want hour-level scheduling or time tracking in the same tool. |
| Forecast (Harvest) | Days and hours on project timelines | Assignments, workload, and scheduled against actual time through Harvest | Hosted by the vendor | Paid subscription; see Harvest Forecast pricing | You already track time and budgets in Harvest and want planning beside it. |
| Resource Guru | Hours per booking | Bookings of people and other resources, including repeat and multi-resource bookings | Hosted by the vendor | Per person, per month | You book rooms, equipment or vehicles as well as people. |
| CapacityLens | Weeks on screen; bookings are date ranges with a daily amount | Who is booked, free or over capacity; time off; placeholders for people you have not hired | You host it; the demo runs on your own computer | Free software under AGPL-3.0 with no paid tier; you pay only for your own server (server size) | You want a week-by-week capacity view with no budgets, timesheets or task tracking, and your data on your own server. |
Competitor facts checked 2026-10-01. Vendors change their plans, so check their own pages before you decide.
What CapacityLens leaves out
CapacityLens does not track budgets, timesheets or tasks, and it does not schedule by the hour. If you need any of those, one of the tools above is the better choice. Philosophy explains why.
What you'd give up
Compared with a paid, hosted tool:
- No hosted version: you or someone you trust runs the server.
- No importer from spreadsheets or other tools. You enter people, clients and projects in the app; the JSON import only moves data between CapacityLens installations.
- No email notifications or alerts. Email is used only for invitations, password resets and sign-in checks; over-capacity warnings appear in the app.
- No calendar sync and no integrations: there are no API keys, webhooks or documented public API.
- One report: the Overview, which shows each person's free capacity week by week.
Next: Try the demo — see it running with sample data in about two minutes.