The short answer. Invoice Ninja is a genuinely good product with a real free tier, and it is open source, which we are not. The catch is the client limit: five, after which you are on $14 a month. If you invoice more than five clients and want a hosted tool, Invoice Forever removes that ceiling for nothing. If you want to self-host and own the whole stack, pick Invoice Ninja and do not think twice.
What Invoice Ninja costs
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | 5 clients, unlimited invoices |
| Ninja Pro | $14/month | $140/year. Unlimited clients and invoices |
| Enterprise | From $18/month | Scales with team size, up to $300/month for 51–100 users |
| Premium Business | From $280/year | Custom pricing |
| Invoice Forever | $0/month | Everything, unlimited, with no paid tier to move to |
Prices read from Invoice Ninja's own pricing page on 23 July 2026. Vendors change pricing often, so check the current figures before deciding. If something here is out of date, please tell us and it gets fixed.
Their free option
Free forever for up to 5 clients, with unlimited invoices to those clients.
Where Invoice Ninja is genuinely better
Writing a comparison page that finds no merit in the competitor would be a waste of your time, so here is the honest list.
- It is open source and self-hostable. You can run it on your own server and never depend on anyone else staying in business, which is a stronger guarantee than any promise we can make.
- Built-in payment processing, so clients can pay the invoice directly. We have none.
- A client portal where customers can log in and see their invoice history.
- Time tracking and project features, if you bill by the hour and want that in one place.
- It has been around for years with a large community behind it.
Where Invoice Forever is the better answer
- No client limit at any point. Five clients or five hundred, the price is zero.
- Tax and formatting rules built in for 61 countries, so the right VAT rate, tax-ID format and required fields are already filled in for where you invoice.
- A free EN 16931 / Peppol e-invoice export for the EU mandates, which passes the official EU validator.
- You can create a full invoice without an account at all.
- No upgrade path exists, so nothing can be taken away later to sell back to you.
So which one
Pick Invoice Ninja if: You want to self-host, you need to take card payments through the invoice, or you bill by tracked time.
Pick Invoice Forever if: You invoice more than five clients, you invoice internationally, or you want the EU e-invoice export without paying for it.
Trying it costs nothing and needs no account. The invoice generator is open right now, so you can make a real invoice with your own details and see whether the output is good enough before moving anything.
Questions people ask
Is Invoice Ninja really free?
Yes, for up to 5 clients, with unlimited invoices to them. Past 5 clients you move to Ninja Pro at $14 per month. It is also open source, so self-hosting it is free in licence terms whatever your client count, though you then pay for and maintain the server.
What is the catch with Invoice Forever being free?
There is no client limit, no invoice limit and no paid tier to upgrade to. It is funded by voluntary donations. The honest trade-off is that we do not process payments, run a client portal or track time, and we are not open source.
Can I move my data from Invoice Ninja?
You can export your clients and invoices from Invoice Ninja and re-enter them here. There is no automatic importer yet. Invoice Forever exports everything you create as a single file at any time, so you are never stuck here either.