Invoice Ninja

• Free plan covers up to ~5 active clients on the hosted build and unlimited clients on the self-hosted edition.
• Payment depth: Stripe, PayPal, Square, Authorize.net, Mollie, GoCardless and dozens more, plus crypto on some plans.
• All-in-one scope: invoices, proposals, quotes, recurring billing, time tracking, expenses, tasks, and a client portal.
• Self-hosted option is the standout: full feature set, no monthly fee, you own the data.
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android keep you billable from the road.

What is Invoice Ninja?

Invoice Ninja is an invoicing, billing, and lightweight operations platform built for freelancers, consultants, agencies, and small product businesses. It launched in 2014 as an open-source project and has since grown into one of the most established names in the self-hostable invoicing space, with a parallel cloud offering run by the same team (Hillel Singer and the core maintainers).

The product is essentially a billing command center: you create branded invoices and proposals, send them with embedded payment links, track time against projects, log expenses, and reconcile payments — all from one dashboard. A client portal lets your customers view outstanding invoices, pay, and download PDFs without you forwarding attachments manually.

Two editions ship side by side:

• Hosted (cloud) — invoiceninja.com runs the infrastructure. You get a free tier and paid plans.
• Self-hosted (open source) — you deploy the app on your own server via Docker, Laravel, or shared hosting. The source is on GitHub and the feature set is essentially identical to the paid cloud plans.

Key features in detail

Invoicing engine

The core of the product. You get line items, partial payments, deposits, credit notes, refunds, multi-currency invoicing, and tax handling (inclusive or exclusive). PDFs are generated server-side and can be auto-attached to reminder emails. Late-fee surcharges and automatic reminders are configurable per client, which is a quiet but huge time-saver for freelancers chasing overdue invoices.

Proposals, quotes, and e-signatures

Most invoicing tools treat proposals as an afterthought. Invoice Ninja's quote-to-invoice pipeline is solid: build a quote, send it for signature, and once accepted it converts into a draft invoice with the same line items and pricing intact. That's a real workflow improvement for agencies that scope work before they bill it.

Project, time, and expense tracking

You won't get a full PSA suite, but you do get projects with tasks, a desktop and mobile timer, expense entry with receipt uploads, and per-project profitability reporting. For a solo consultant or a 3-person studio, it's enough to retire Toggl + a spreadsheet.

Automation and recurring billing

Subscriptions, auto-bill, dunning reminders, and scheduled invoice generation are all available. The hosted edition adds Zapier and webhooks for connecting to CRMs or accounting tools like Xero and QuickBooks.

Self-hosting and data ownership

This is the differentiator. If you're comfortable with a LAMP or Docker setup, you can run the full product on your own VPS for free, forever. The codebase is open source, the community is active on GitHub, and there's a paid white-label option (Resller) if you want to host it for clients.

Invoice Ninja pricing

Invoice Ninja's pricing has historically been one of its strongest selling points, but the exact tiers have shifted multiple times. As of our last check, treat the following as a directional guide and verify on the official site before purchasing.

• Hosted Free — limited to a small number of active clients (historically ~5) and basic features. Enough to test the product or run a micro-business.
• Hosted Pro — published pricing has floated in the ~$16/month range when billed annually. Unlocks unlimited clients, removes Invoice Ninja branding, and adds the full feature set including proposals, recurring billing, and project tools.
• Hosted Enterprise — higher tier for larger teams, white-label client portal, priority support, and the reseller/white-label license.
• Self-hosted (open source) — free, with the option to buy a white-label license if you need to remove Invoice Ninja branding for clients.

Payment gateway transaction fees are not added by Invoice Ninja — you pay your processor (e.g., Stripe) directly. There's no per-invoice fee, which is a meaningful difference from tools that take a cut of every payment.

Invoice Ninja vs the alternatives

Who Invoice Ninja is for

The platform is purpose-built for a specific buyer: the solo freelancer, independent consultant, creative agency, or SaaS founder who sends between 5 and 200 invoices a month and is tired of accounting software that bills them like an enterprise. It scales up reasonably well into small teams through the project and task features, but it's not trying to replace an ERP.

It's also unusually well-suited to technical users thanks to the open-source edition. If you want to fork it, white-label it, or run it on a $5 VPS, you can — and you don't have to give up features to do it.

How to get started with Invoice Ninja

1. Choose your edition

   Decide between the hosted free/paid plan and the self-hosted open-source build. Most people start on the hosted free tier to test the workflow.

2. Connect a payment gateway

   From Settings → Payment Gateways, connect Stripe, PayPal, or whichever provider your business uses. This unlocks "Pay now" buttons inside invoices.

3. Brand your invoice

   Upload your logo, pick a template, and configure tax, currency, and numbering. White-label the client portal if you're on a paid tier.

4. Create your first client and invoice

   Add a client, build a line-item invoice, and send. The client gets an email with a PDF and a payment link.

5. Turn on automation

   Enable recurring billing for retainers and configure automatic reminders for overdue invoices. Set up a Zapier hook or webhook to push paid invoices into your accounting tool.

Verdict

Invoice Ninja has been around long enough to be boring in the best possible way: the invoicing engine is reliable, the self-hosted community is mature, and the pricing undercuts most well-known competitors by a wide margin. The hosted free tier is genuinely usable, the paid Pro tier is roughly half the cost of FreshBooks' entry plan, and the open-source edition is a no-brainer if you have any sysadmin capacity.

It's not the most glamorous product on the market, and the UI won't win design awards, but the depth of payment gateway support, the quote-to-invoice pipeline, and the optionality of self-hosting make it one of the best-value invoicing tools a freelancer or small agency can adopt in 2026.