The short version. Wave is free with unlimited invoices and bookkeeping, and makes its money on card processing. Zoho Invoice is free for up to 500 invoices a year with its own branding on them. Invoice Ninja is free for 5 clients with unlimited invoicing, and $14 a month after that. Harvest at $9 a seat is the answer when you bill by the hour and the hours are the hard part. FreshBooks lists at $23 a month for its Lite plan, which allows 5 billable clients, and that is the comparison that decides most of this.
Every price here came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 16 August 2026. Promotional prices are noted as such, because they expire and the list price is what you renew at.
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Three of these are free, so the question is what the money buys
Invoicing is a solved problem and has been for years. Wave, Zoho Invoice and Invoice Ninja will all send a professional invoice, take a card payment and keep a record, without charging you anything. That is the baseline, and every paid product on this page has to beat it.
Set the free tiers against the cheapest paid tier and the shape of the market is obvious:
- Wave is free with unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records.
- Zoho Invoice is free with 2 users, 3 projects and 500 invoices a year.
- Invoice Ninja is free with 5 clients and unlimited invoicing.
- FreshBooks lists Lite at $23 a month, which allows 5 billable clients.
Invoice Ninja gives you 5 clients for nothing and FreshBooks charges list price for the same number. That does not make FreshBooks a bad product, but it does mean the reason to buy it has to be something other than sending invoices, and most articles in this category never get around to saying what.
So we ranked on what the free tier genuinely covers, on the card processing rates, which is where free products actually earn, and on whether the paid features solve a problem an independent has rather than one an accounting department has.
1. Wave is free and does not run out
Starter is free, with unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. Pro is $19 a month, or $190 a year, adding automatic bank transaction import, receipt digitisation and branded invoicing, and was listed at a promotional $9.50 a month on 16 August 2026. Card processing on Starter is 2.9% plus $0.60, and Amex is 3.4% plus $0.60. Pro removes the $0.60 for the first 10 transactions a month. Wave Advisors bookkeeping starts at $149 a month. Verified 16 August 2026.
Unlimited invoicing and actual double-entry bookkeeping, for nothing, with no client cap. For a consultant with a handful of clients and a simple set of books, this covers the entire requirement and there is no tier you will eventually be pushed onto.
Understand where the money is, because it is in the payments. At 2.9% plus $0.60 per card transaction, a client paying a $5,000 invoice by card costs you about $146. That is the real price of the free plan, and it is entirely avoidable by taking bank transfers for large invoices, which most business clients will happily do.
The Pro tier’s removal of the $0.60 fixed fee on the first 10 transactions a month is worth arithmetic if you send many small invoices. On ten transactions that saves $6, so the plan is really being sold on bank import and receipt scanning.
Who it is wrong for: anyone needing serious project accounting, or anyone outside its supported regions, since Wave’s coverage and payment support are narrower than the others here. Check that before committing your books to it.
2. Zoho Invoice is free, and tells you why on every invoice
Free at $0, described as “$0 for Seamless & Dependable Invoicing” and forever-free. Limits are up to 2 users, a maximum of 3 projects, and up to 500 invoices per year, with “Powered by Zoho Invoice” branding included. No paid tier is listed on the pricing page. Verified 16 August 2026.
Five hundred invoices a year is roughly ten a week, which is far more than an independent consultant sends. For this audience the cap is theoretical, and what you get for free is a polished, well-built invoicing product from a company large enough that it is not going anywhere.
The branding is the cost and you should look at it before deciding it does not matter. Every invoice you send a client carries a line advertising the software. Most clients will not care. If you charge senior day rates, some will notice, and it is a strange place to economise.
The bigger consideration is gravity. Zoho gives this away because it is the entrance to a suite, and if you later want CRM, books and projects you will be inside their ecosystem. That is fine if you want that and a slow drift if you do not.
Who it is wrong for: anyone who wants an unbranded invoice without paying, which Wave provides, and anyone with more than 2 people or 3 concurrent projects.
3. Invoice Ninja gives you five clients and the source code
Free forever with 5 clients and unlimited invoicing, four templates, logo branding, online payments, recurring invoices, inventory, time tracking, project boards, expense tracking, a client portal, partial payments, PDF preview and automatic currency conversion. Ninja Pro is $14 a month, or $140 a year with two months free. Enterprise is $18 a month, scaling by user count, or $180 a year. Premium Business is custom from $280 a year. Self-hosting is available through invoiceninja.org and the pricing page does not state a cost for it. Verified 16 August 2026.
Read that free feature list against FreshBooks Lite at $23 a month. Same client limit, and the free product includes time tracking, expenses, recurring invoices, a client portal and partial payments.
The five client cap is the real constraint, and it is the right one to have. A consultant with three or four retained clients is fully served here for nothing, and the moment you have more than five you have the revenue to justify $14 a month.
It is also open source and self-hostable, which for financial records is a more serious argument than it was for a booking link. Your invoice history is the thing you least want trapped in a product that changes its terms.
Who it is wrong for: anyone wanting bookkeeping rather than invoicing. This is not an accounting system, and Wave is, for the same money.
4. Harvest, when the hours are the difficult part
Free forever with 1 seat and 2 projects, including time tracking, invoicing, expense tracking and Mac and iOS apps. Teams is $9 a seat a month, or $108 a seat billed annually, a 20% discount. Enterprise is $14 a seat a month, or $168 annually. Enterprise Plus is custom. Verified 16 August 2026.
Harvest is a time tracking product that invoices, and the order matters. If you bill hourly across several projects, the hard part was never producing the document, it was knowing what to put on it, and everything here is built around that.
Timers that are pleasant to use are an underrated category of software, because the ones that are not simply do not get used, and an untracked hour is an unbilled hour. The Mac and iOS apps are a real part of the value.
The free tier is the tightest here at 1 seat and 2 projects, which will not last. At $9 a seat the paid tier is still cheap, and this is the only product on the page where the paid version is clearly buying you something the free ones do not attempt.
Who it is wrong for: anyone on fixed-price or retainer work. If you do not bill by the hour, you are paying for the feature that justifies the price and using the part everything else does for free.
5. FreshBooks is the most polished and the hardest to justify
Lite lists at $23 a month with 5 billable clients. Plus lists at $43 a month with 50 clients. Premium lists at $70 a month with unlimited clients. Select is custom. All plans charge $11 a month per additional team member. On 16 August 2026 the page showed promotional prices of $2.30, $4.30 and $7.00 respectively. Add-ons include Advanced Payments at $20 a month and FreshBooks Payroll at $40 a month plus $6 per user. Verified 16 August 2026.
It is a genuinely good product. The interface is the friendliest here, the mobile apps are strong, the accounting underneath is proper double-entry rather than a ledger with invoices attached, and the whole thing is designed for people who find bookkeeping unpleasant.
The pricing is where it struggles against this list. Lite at $23 list price permits 5 billable clients, which is what Invoice Ninja gives away. Fifty clients requires the $43 tier. And $11 a month per extra person is steep for a practice that occasionally brings in an associate.
Treat the promotional prices as marketing rather than as the cost. A first-year discount of 90% is a real saving and it renews at list, and the decision worth making is whether you would pay $23 in month thirteen.
Who it is wrong for: anyone comparing on price, which is most of this audience. Buy it if the friendliness is what gets you to do the books at all, which is a legitimate reason and worth naming honestly.
Situations this list does not cover
Anyone with inventory or payroll. That is a full accounting package and a conversation with a bookkeeper, not an invoicing tool.
Agencies with staff. Per-seat costs and project profitability change the calculation entirely.
International contractors with complex tax obligations. Multi-jurisdiction VAT and sales tax handling should lead the decision, and none of these solve it on their own.
Anyone whose problem is being paid late. Every tool here sends reminders. Late payment is usually a contract and a follow-up problem, and no software has ever fixed a client who does not intend to pay on time.
Also weighed
Stripe Invoicing. Free to create, with the standard processing fee on payment. If you already take card payments through Stripe, this may be the shortest path and it never appears on lists like this.
QuickBooks and Xero. Full accounting rather than invoicing, and the right answer once you have a bookkeeper who has an opinion. Overkill for a sole consultant sending four invoices a month.
PayPal Invoicing. Free to send, and the processing fees and the presentation are both worse. Fine for an occasional one-off.
A spreadsheet and a PDF. Genuinely adequate for a handful of invoices a year, and it stops being adequate the first time you have to work out what is unpaid.
Questions we get asked
What is the catch with the free ones?
Card processing on Wave, at 2.9% plus $0.60, which on a $5,000 invoice is about $146. Branding on every Zoho Invoice document. A 5 client cap on Invoice Ninja. All three are honest trades and none of them is a countdown to a paywall.
Why pay $23 for FreshBooks when Invoice Ninja is free?
Both allow 5 clients at those prices, so the answer has to be the experience. FreshBooks is friendlier and its accounting is more complete. That is worth money to people who otherwise avoid their books, and it is worth nothing to people who do not.
How do I avoid the card fees?
Ask for bank transfer on invoices above a threshold you pick, and offer cards below it. Business clients paying four-figure invoices almost never mind, and it is the single largest saving available anywhere on this page.
Do I need time tracking?
Only if you bill by the hour, and then Harvest is worth the $9. On fixed price or retainer work it is optional, though tracking hours privately is the only way to find out whether your fixed price is any good.
Are promotional prices worth taking?
Yes, and decide as though they do not exist. FreshBooks Lite was showing $2.30 against a $23 list price, so ask whether you would pay $23 in the second year. If the answer is no, you are buying a migration you will do while busy.
Should I self-host?
Invoice Ninja is the only one here that offers it, and for financial records the argument is stronger than usual, since invoice history is the last thing you want stuck inside a product whose terms change. That said, running it means backups and updates, which is a real job.
Our maintained directory shortlists for solo consultants cover the rest of it, from defining the offer to keeping proposals, contracts and invoices telling one story.
Last reviewed: 16 August 2026. Every price was read off the vendor’s own pricing page on that date. FreshBooks was showing promotional prices well below list, and we have quoted both. Invoice Ninja does not state a self-hosting cost on its pricing page. We review this page quarterly.
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