The 6 Best Free Invoice Apps for Freelancers and Small Business Owners

If you're a freelancer, small business owner, or entrepreneur, then you already know the headaches that can come from creating and managing invoices. Without invoices, you won't get paid. They're pretty important!

But the thing is, not all invoicing solutions are equal. The best one for you will depend on your particular needs, how complex your invoices are, and your budget. Unsurprisingly, the best invoicing apps will cost you money.

If you don't want to pay, you'll want to look into one of the fantastic free invoicing solutions covered in this article. They're available on the web, for Android, and for iOS.

1. Invoice Simple

Invoice Simple is an easy and fast invoicing software app to send estimates to your clients and customers. It's perfect for small and medium businesses, freelancers, creatives, and other workers who require simple yet professional software for their invoicing. You can easily keep track of your invoices using the Android or iOS applications, or via the web.

Invoice Simple helps you save time on admin. You get various templates to customize with your company's logo, photos, and signatures, and quickly email or text your invoices and receive notifications to always keep up with your payments.

Download: Invoice Simple for Web | Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

2. Invoice Ninja

Invoice Ninja is an excellent tool for freelancers and small business owners who have more complex needs beyond simple hand-crafted invoices.

As a free user, you can manage up to 100 clients and unlimited invoices, plus advanced features like time tracking, auto-billing, branded invoices, direct payment integration with over 40 gateways, and the ability to accept deposits and partial payments. However, invoices have a "Created by Invoice Ninja" watermark.

Upgrading to the $10/month plan increases your max clients to unlimited, grants access to 10 professional invoice templates, a custom Invoice Ninja URL where clients can view and pay invoices, the ability to create custom invoices, auto-reminder emails, and much more.

If you're a freelancer, you might also want to explore these nifty apps and sites all freelancers should know about.

Download: Invoice Ninja for Web | Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

3. Invoicely

Invoicely serves the same kinds of users as other invoicing apps: freelancers and small business owners who deal with complex accounting needs beyond simple invoices.

One of the more advanced features is managing multiple businesses with multiple team members and clients for each business, which comes in handy for serial entrepreneurs. You can also receive payments online directly to your invoice, which Invoicely uses to auto-update an invoice's paid status.

Free users get unlimited clients and invoices, but none of the notable advanced features and generated invoices are branded with the Invoicely logo. For $9.99/month, you get features like time tracking, taxes, mileage, customized branding, and online payment methods other than PayPal.

Download: Invoicely for Web | Android | iOS (Free, in-app purchases available)

4. Akaunting

Akaunting is a completely free web tool that lets you invoice, track expenses, and handle all your freelance or small business accounting needs right in the browser. It works well on PC, Android, and iOS devices.

Notable features include unlimited clients and invoices, billable expenses, inventory tracking for sales, dynamic reports, direct payment for invoices, per-client discounts, full accounting with deposits and transfers with bank accounts, and multilingual panels for admins and clients.

What's unique about Akaunting is that it's open-source, and you can download the software and host it on your own web server. You'd still access it using a web browser, but all the data remains with you. For privacy-minded folks who want remote invoice access, Akaunting is a smart choice.

Download: Akaunting for Web | Android (Free)

5. Wave Invoicing

Wave Invoicing is the best-known invoice app on this list, especially for small business owners, but it is ranked fifth because it can be a bit slow at times, and the interface can be a bit rough to navigate.

However, Wave is completely free and comes in three parts: the invoicing software (for creating and sending invoices for payment), the accounting software (for tracking income and expenses), and receipt scanning (for scanning receipts with a mobile device for expense tracking).

Notable invoicing features include auto-reminders for overdue clients, professional invoice templates, custom branding for your invoices, invoice sending and management on mobile devices, see when clients view an invoice, automatic cloud backups, and more.

You'll only have to pay if you want to use Wave's online payment processing or payroll management services. If you don't care about either of those, Wave is entirely free to use.

Download: Wave Invoicing for Web | Android | iOS (Free)

6. Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice is a completely free invoicing app, with no ads or hidden fees. Zoho Invoice was one of the company's first products; it's diversified over the years and now makes enough income elsewhere to offer Zoho Invoice at no cost. It claims it won't sell your data, so it's a win all round.

The only limitation you need to account for is that you can only generate up to 1,000 invoices per year. As a freelancer or small business it's unlikely you'll reach that limit anyway, but if you do then you can contact Zoho's support team for your options.

With Zoho Invoice, you can bill multiple clients, account for multiple currencies, automate payment reminders, collect payments directly (which makes this a great free billing app too!), log project time, and much more. You can do all of this from the website, or on-the-go through the handy Android or iOS app.

Download: Zoho Invoice for Web | Android | iOS (Free)

Which Free Invoicing App Is Best for You?

Let's be clear about one thing: whichever invoicing app you choose, you're trusting that it will do what it says and won't fail on you.

This is why we only recommend free invoicing apps for freelancers and small business owners without complex invoicing needs. If your accounting is complicated, you should definitely pay for a robust invoicing solution.

That said, if you're okay with free, then we highly recommend Invoice Simple (for basic and straightforward invoicing), Invoice Ninja (for growing freelancers and small business owners), or Akaunting (for privacy-minded folks).

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