Invoicing software is judged on whether you get paid faster, not on how the invoice looks.
This guide ranks on what the payment options cost per invoice, how the reminders behave without being embarrassing, and whether the VAT and e-invoicing rules of your country are handled or left to you.
AuthorHannah ReiterSenior Analyst, Business Applications
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vendor. How that works.
In short
What invoicing software does
Invoicing software creates and sends invoices, tracks what is unpaid, chases it, and hands the result to your accounting system.
Five things, in this order. Feature counts are not among them: they are the least useful
comparison in software, because every vendor ticks every box.
01
Setup effort in invoicing software
What the first ninety days of a invoicing software rollout cost in hours, not in licence fees. A product that needs a partner engagement before it does anything is a different purchase from one a team configures in an afternoon.
02
What invoicing software really costs
What the bill becomes once the modules a normal buyer of invoicing software needs are added, and whether you can read that number without a sales conversation.
03
Getting your data out of invoicing software
How your own data comes back out, in what format, and whether that export is included in the invoicing software contract or billed as a project.
04
Independence from the vendor
Whether you can buy invoicing software, run it and leave it on your own terms. This test decides most of the order on this page, and it is why the largest vendors in invoicing software often sit below the smaller ones.
05
Who the product is built for
The size and shape of company each invoicing software product was actually built for. Most regret in software comes from buying for a company you are not yet.
The fourth test decides most of the order on this page, and it is the reason the largest
invoicing software vendors sit below the smaller ones. A product with a published price, an export
that works and no mandatory implementation partner is a product you can leave.
A platform suite that arrives with a quote, a partner and a two-year commitment may well be
the better software and is still the harder decision to reverse. We rank invoicing software for the
buyer who has to live with that decision without a procurement department, which is a stated
bias rather than a hidden one.
We do not publish a score out of ten. A number like 8.4 is a judgement dressed as a
measurement, and nobody can check it.
What you can check is on this page: what each invoicing tool costs, where the vendor is
established, whether the price is published, and what we think it is bad at. Our full method
is on the how we work page.
Per month by plan, published; part of QuickBooks Online
—
A business already on QuickBooks Online
A freelancer who only needs to send invoices
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Dutch invoicing and bookkeeping that stays out of the way
Ranked #1 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Moneybird is the nicest interface in Dutch bookkeeping and it does the boring parts properly: VAT returns, bank matching, and a clean handover to your accountant, all in language that matches Dutch practice.
For a freelancer or small business in the Netherlands or Belgium it removes an entire category of friction. Outside those two countries the compliance argument evaporates and it becomes an ordinary invoicing tool.
What stands out
NL/BE compliance
Clean interface
Accountant access
Where it costs you
Only compelling in the Netherlands and Belgium
Not built for complex inventory
Right for
A Dutch freelancer or SME that wants invoicing and books in one
Ranked #2 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourceSelf-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
Invoice Ninja is open source, self-hostable and supports more payment gateways than most commercial products, which means no per-invoice cost and no ceiling on volume.
For a technical freelancer or a small agency that is a genuinely free answer. Self-hosting is your responsibility including backups and updates, and the hosted tiers, while cheap, are plainer than the commercial competition.
What stands out
Open source
Self-hostable
Many payment gateways
Where it costs you
Self-hosting is your problem
Hosted tiers are plain
Right for
A technical team that wants no per-invoice cost
Wrong for
A business with no server capability
United StatesFree self-hosted; hosted plans published
Ranked #3 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Harvest is the right shape when the invoice is essentially a timesheet: time tracking that people actually use, project profitability visible before the project ends, and invoices generated from tracked hours.
Agencies and consultancies adopt it and keep it for years. As pure invoicing it is basic, and it expects a real accounting package behind it rather than replacing one.
What stands out
Best time tracking
Project profitability
Simple invoicing
Where it costs you
Basic as pure invoicing
Expects an accounting package behind it
Right for
An agency where the invoice is the timesheet
Wrong for
A product business with stock
United StatesFree tier; paid per seat per month, published
Belgian Peppol e-invoicing and invoicing, priced by monthly document volume
Ranked #4 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Billit calls itself a pioneer of Belgian e-invoicing and the product reflects it: invoices go out as structured Peppol documents, incoming invoices and receipts are scanned and processed, and accountant and business work from the same records.
More than 300,000 businesses use it by the vendor's count. Pricing is by documents per month, published, with every feature in every plan. It stops at the ledger, so bookkeeping remains in the accountant's own system.
What stands out
Peppol e-invoicing
Volume pricing
Accountant access
Where it costs you
Not a bookkeeping package; the ledger stays in your accountant's software
Document-volume tiers mean a busy month can push you into the next band
Right for
Belgian businesses and their accountants meeting the Peppol e-invoicing obligation from 2026
Wrong for
Businesses wanting invoicing and full bookkeeping in one subscription
BelgiumPer month by document volume, published; all features in every plan
Ranked #5 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Bonsai covers the whole freelance paperwork chain — proposal, contract with e-signature, time tracking, invoice, and basic books — which removes three separate subscriptions for an independent consultant.
The templates are legally sensible starting points rather than boilerplate. Once you have a bookkeeper and a proper accounting package, most of what Bonsai does becomes redundant and the per-user pricing stops making sense.
What stands out
Contracts included
Proposals
Freelance-focused
Where it costs you
Priced per user
Unnecessary once you have a bookkeeper
Right for
A freelancer who wants proposal, contract and invoice in one
Ranked #6 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
The right answer when the problem is subscriptions, proration and failed-payment recovery rather than sending documents. Overbuilt and overpriced for one-off invoicing.
What stands out
Subscription logic
Dunning
Revenue recognition
Where it costs you
Overbuilt and overpriced for one-off invoicing
Revenue share on top of the subscription
Right for
A subscription business with proration and dunning to manage
Wrong for
A company sending occasional invoices
United StatesPer month plus revenue share, published
Ranked #7 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
sevdesk covers the specific German requirements — the invoice format, the e-invoicing mandate, the DATEV export the tax adviser will ask for — and does it at a published monthly price. For the buyer it is written for, that combination removes both a compliance worry and a subscription.
It is not a general product: the interface, the templates and the exports are all built for one country, and a business that starts selling across borders will outgrow the reason it chose it.
What stands out
German e-invoicing
Bookkeeping included
Published price
Where it costs you
Germany-focused compliance and language
Reporting is basic once the business grows
Right for
A German freelancer or small company that must issue compliant invoices
German invoicing software with e-invoices and automation for online sellers
Ranked #8 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
easybill, from Kaarst near Düsseldorf, covers quotes, invoices, e-invoices, delivery notes, reminders, subscription invoices and payment matching, and hands the result to the tax adviser through a DATEV export.
Its distinctive part is automation for online retail: orders from shops and marketplaces such as Amazon become invoices without anyone typing them. A free tier covers fifty documents a month. It deliberately stops before bookkeeping, and everything about it, from language to tax logic, is German.
What stands out
E-Rechnung
Marketplace automation
Free tier
Where it costs you
Invoicing only; bookkeeping needs a tax adviser or separate software
German-language product built for German tax rules
Right for
German online sellers automating invoices from shop and marketplace orders
Wrong for
Businesses outside Germany or wanting bookkeeping included in the subscription
GermanyFree tier; paid per month by plan, published; annual discount
Central European invoicing with dunning that works
Ranked #9 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Fakturoid does one job with unusual care: getting an invoice out and then getting it paid. The reminder sequences run on their own, the payment status comes back from the bank, and the whole thing costs a few euros a month.
Local tax handling is correct for its home markets. The reservations are about size rather than quality — a small team behind the product, a modest set of integrations, and support and documentation that are noticeably better in Czech than in English.
What stands out
Automatic reminders
Czech and Slovak rules
Cheap
Where it costs you
Small vendor with a limited integration ecosystem
English documentation trails the Czech
Right for
A small business in Czechia or Slovakia that gets paid late
Wrong for
A company that needs deep accounting or many integrations
Italian invoicing and SdI e-invoicing for freelancers and small firms
Ranked #10 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingEurope
Fatture in Cloud turns Italy's mandatory electronic invoicing into something a sole trader can do from a phone: invoices go through the SdI, quotes, orders and receipts sit alongside, bank statements are reconciled, and the accountant has direct access.
Plans are published and billed annually, with a cheaper first year. It is a TeamSystem product, which brings stability and the usual upsell into the wider suite. Outside Italy none of it applies.
What stands out
SdI e-invoicing
TeamSystem-owned
Italian market
Where it costs you
Billed annually with automatic renewal, and the first-year price is an introductory offer
Owned by TeamSystem, so the roadmap follows a larger suite
Right for
Italian freelancers, flat-rate taxpayers and small firms issuing SdI e-invoices
Wrong for
Any business invoicing mainly outside the Italian tax system
ItalyAnnual subscription by plan, published; first-year discount
Invoicing and time tracking for people who bill hours
Ranked #11 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
FreshBooks is built around the service business: timers, projects, expenses to rebill, and a client portal that shows what is outstanding. Turning a month of tracked hours into an invoice takes one step, and the estimate-to-invoice path is clean.
Two things to check before buying. Plans are tiered by number of billable clients, so an agency with many small accounts moves up the price list quickly, and anything involving inventory or purchase orders is outside what the product does.
What stands out
Time to invoice
Client portal
Published price
Where it costs you
Billable client limits on lower plans
Weak for product or inventory businesses
Right for
A consultancy or agency that invoices tracked time
Wrong for
A product business with stock and purchase orders
CanadaPer month by plan, published; charged per client tier
Ranked #12 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingAsia-Pacific
Zoho Invoice is free with no invoice cap and includes a client portal, time tracking, expenses and multi-currency — the kind of package that usually costs twenty euros a month.
There is no catch on the invoicing itself. The catch is strategic: it exists to introduce you to Zoho Books, Zoho CRM and the rest, and the product assumes you will eventually go there.
What stands out
Genuinely free
Time tracking
Client portal
Where it costs you
It is a funnel into the wider Zoho suite
Support is thinner on the free product
Right for
A freelancer who needs free invoicing that is not crippled
Ranked #13 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
If money already moves through Stripe, invoicing on the same account gives you the best card acceptance rates in the business and no reconciliation between two systems. Hosted invoice pages and automatic retries are included.
Per-invoice pricing means the cost scales with volume in a way flat subscriptions do not, and the accounting side is deliberately minimal — this is a payment tool with invoices, not a ledger.
Ranked #14 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Strongest on the paying-out side, where approval routing and audit trails matter more than the invoice template. Effectively US-only, and priced per user.
What stands out
AP automation
Approval routing
US bank integration
Where it costs you
Effectively US-only
Priced per user
Right for
A US company automating approvals on money going out
Invoicing attached to the accounting most accountants know
Ranked #15 of 15 in Best Invoicing Software in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
The invoicing inside QuickBooks Online is competent and, more importantly, joined up: the invoice, the payment and the ledger entry are one record, and the accountant sees it in the system they use for everyone else.
That removes the reconciliation problem that standalone invoicing tools create. The catch is that this is not sold as invoicing. You buy accounting, at accounting prices, and the discounted first year is followed by a renewal that has climbed for several years running.
What stands out
Accountant familiarity
Payments built in
Part of a suite
Where it costs you
You are buying accounting to get invoicing
Introductory pricing rises sharply at renewal
Right for
A business already on QuickBooks Online
Wrong for
A freelancer who only needs to send invoices
United StatesPer month by plan, published; part of QuickBooks Online
Invoicing software creates and sends invoices, tracks what is unpaid, chases it, and hands the result to your accounting system. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
15 of the 15 tools here publish what they cost; the other 0 quote per organisation, which means a sales conversation before you can compare anything.
If you are buying without a procurement function, start with the ones that publish: Moneybird, Invoice Ninja, Harvest, Billit, Bonsai, Chargebee, sevdesk, easybill, Fakturoid, Fatture in Cloud, FreshBooks Invoicing, Zoho Invoice, Stripe Invoicing, BILL, QuickBooks Invoicing.
02
Work out what the first ninety days cost in time
Licence cost is the number in the contract; setup effort is the number that surprises people. Ask every shortlisted vendor who does the configuration, how long it took the last customer of your size, and what happens if that person leaves halfway.
03
Check the exit before the entry
Ask for an export of your own data in a format you can open, and ask whether it is included or billed as a project. A vendor that hesitates here is telling you what renewal negotiations will feel like in three years.
04
Match the tool to the size you are, not the size you plan to be
Most regret in this category comes from buying for a headcount that never arrived. The entry-level products here are not worse; they are aimed at a different company.
05
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 15 vendors are established in 8 countries across 3 regions (North America 8, Europe 6, Asia-Pacific 1). Where a vendor is established decides which government can compel access to what it holds, which is a different question from where the servers are. For most buyers that is a factor, not a veto.
06
Consider whether you want the source
1 of these are open source, which means you can host them yourself and read what they do with your data. That control is real, and so is the maintenance it hands you.
One-off invoices or recurring revenue: two different products
Moneybird, Fakturoid, sevdesk and Zoho Invoice are built for sending an invoice and chasing it. Chargebee and Stripe Invoicing are built for subscriptions: proration, dunning, failed-card retries and revenue recognition.
Buying a subscription billing engine for twenty invoices a month is expensive; running a subscription business on a simple invoicing tool means reconciling by hand every month.
Count your recurring invoices as a share of the total.
If anything renews automatically, check how failed payments are retried.
Ask what happens when a customer upgrades mid-period.
Percentage of revenue against a flat fee
Stripe Invoicing charges a percentage per invoice and Chargebee adds a revenue share above its platform fee. That is cheap at low volume and becomes the largest line on the page as you grow.
The flat-fee products, Moneybird and Fakturoid among the cheapest here, cost the same whether you bill five thousand or five hundred thousand.
Model both pricing shapes at your current and your projected volume.
Separate the billing fee from the payment processing fee. They are different charges.
Check whether the percentage applies to the invoice total or the amount collected.
E-invoicing mandates are arriving on a schedule
Structured e-invoicing is becoming compulsory across Europe on staggered national timetables, and a PDF attached to an email will stop being an invoice in the legal sense.
The local products are ahead here because they have to be: sevdesk and easybill for Germany, Fakturoid for Czechia, Moneybird for the Netherlands, Billit for Belgium, Fatture in Cloud for Italy. Ask about your country and the date, not about the feature in general.
Find out the mandate date for your country and your company size.
Ask which structured format the product emits and whether it is certified.
Check that inbound e-invoices can be received, not only sent.
What happens after the invoice is sent
Creating an invoice is the easy half. Chasing it is the half that pays for the software: automatic reminders on a schedule, a payment link that works on a phone, and a clean handover into the ledger. Harvest and Bonsai bundle time tracking because for their buyers the invoice starts as hours.
Set up the reminder schedule in the trial and send yourself the sequence.
Check which payment methods your customers actually use are supported.
Confirm the export into your accounting system is a real integration, not a CSV.
What goes wrong most often when buying invoicing software
Paying a percentage of revenue for what a flat-fee tool does, because the percentage was invisible at launch volume.
Ignoring the e-invoicing mandate until the quarter it applies.
Choosing an invoicing tool your accounting system cannot read, and reconciling by hand forever.
Buying subscription billing for a business that does not have subscriptions.
07
Frequently asked questions
11 answers
What is the best invoicing in 2026?
Moneybird leads our ranking of 15. The nicest interface in Dutch bookkeeping, with VAT returns and accountant handover handled properly. Outside the Netherlands and Belgium the compliance argument disappears.
How did you rank these invoicing tools?
On what separates products after the demo: how much setup the first ninety days take, what the price becomes once the modules a normal buyer needs are added, how your data comes back out, whether you can buy and leave it without a partner engagement, and who the product is genuinely for.
That fourth test is why the large platform suites usually sit lower here than their market share would suggest. Not on feature counts, and not on a score we invented.
Which invoicing tools publish their pricing?
15 of the 15, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Harvest: Free tier; paid per seat per month, published.
Billit: Per month by document volume, published; all features in every plan.
Bonsai: Per month by plan, published.
Chargebee: Per month plus revenue share, published.
sevdesk: Per month by plan, published.
easybill: Free tier; paid per month by plan, published; annual discount.
Fakturoid: Per month by plan, published, low.
Fatture in Cloud: Annual subscription by plan, published; first-year discount.
FreshBooks Invoicing: Per month by plan, published; charged per client tier.
Zoho Invoice: Free.
Stripe Invoicing: Per invoice percentage, published.
BILL: Per user per month, published.
QuickBooks Invoicing: Per month by plan, published; part of QuickBooks Online.
The other 0 quote per organisation.
Is there a free invoicing tool?
Invoice Ninja, Harvest, easybill, Zoho Invoice offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition. Read what the free tier excludes before you plan around it.
Which invoicing tools are open source?
Invoice Ninja. Open source means you can read what the product does with your data and run it yourself. It does not mean the hosted edition is free.
Which invoicing tools can you host yourself?
Invoice Ninja. The other 14 are sold as a hosted service only, which means the question of where your data sits is answered by the vendor, not by you.
Where are these invoicing vendors established?
In 8 countries across 3 regions: North America 8, Europe 6, Asia-Pacific 1.
Moneybird is established in the Netherlands.
Invoice Ninja is established in the United States.
Harvest is established in the United States.
Billit is established in Belgium.
Bonsai is established in the United States.
Chargebee is established in the United States.
sevdesk is established in Germany.
easybill is established in Germany.
Fakturoid is established in Czechia.
Fatture in Cloud is established in Italy.
FreshBooks Invoicing is established in Canada.
Zoho Invoice is established in India.
Stripe Invoicing is established in the United States.
BILL is established in the United States.
QuickBooks Invoicing is established in the United States.
Establishment decides whose courts and whose disclosure laws apply, which is a separate question from where the data is hosted.
What should you use instead of Moneybird?
Invoice Ninja and Harvest are the next two on this page.
Invoice Ninja is for a technical team that wants no per-invoice cost; Harvest is for an agency where the invoice is the timesheet. All 15 are ranked here with what each one is bad at.
Who should not buy Moneybird?
A company outside the Benelux. Only compelling in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Do you get paid for these rankings?
Vendors can pay for visibility, which affects where and how prominently a product appears. It does not change a word of what the entry says about that product, including the criticism, and it cannot buy inclusion for something that does not belong in the category.
We take no commission when you click through to a vendor and we do not know whether you bought anything. The full arrangement is on our disclosure page.
How often is this invoicing guide updated?
Whenever the facts move: a price change, an acquisition, a product that stops being maintained. The published and updated dates at the top of the page are real, and a review means someone went back to the vendor documentation rather than bumping a date.
These 15 products are the ones we judged worth ranking in invoicing. If yours belongs here and is missing, tell us what it does and who it is for, and we will look at it. Inclusion is an editorial call and it is not for sale — but nobody gets considered for a list they were never put in front of.
People land on this page with a shortlist to make, not a browsing habit to feed. That is a narrower audience than a banner reaches and a far more decided one.
Written by us, about you
We describe the product in our own words, say who it suits and say who it does not. A vendor never writes the entry and never sees it before it goes up.
A correction costs nothing
If a fact about your product is wrong here, tell us and we fix it, whether or not there is any money between us. That offer is older than any commercial arrangement on this site.
Placement is separate, and disclosed
Where a product sits in the ranking can be paid for, and the notice above the list says so on every page. What the entry says about the product is not for sale at any price.
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