Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover creator finance. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Time tracking free for up to five people
Open-source invoicing, free for 5 clients
Clockify | Invoice Ninja | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $3.99 | From $14 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Time tracking free for up to five people
Clockify tracks time across projects and clients and leaves the tracking itself uncapped on the free plan, which covers up to five users. Paying adds the administrative parts a business needs rather than more tracking: entering time for other people, required fields, bulk edits and billable rates. Reports export in the shapes an accountant asks for. Each paid capability sits on a specific tier, so it is worth checking which one holds the feature that prompted the upgrade before choosing.
Our note
Ignore the tier the page leads with and check Basic first, because it is $1.50 a seat cheaper and carries most of what people upgrade for. Compare with Toggl Track on the free plan rather than the paid ones, since that is where the two differ most and where most teams will stay.
Only on this side
Open-source invoicing, free for 5 clients
Invoice Ninja issues invoices, quotes and recurring bills, takes payment through a long list of gateways, and gives the whole thing away for up to five clients with no time limit and no invoice cap. The application is open source, so anybody who would rather hold their own data can run it on their own server instead of paying for the hosted version. Paying lifts the client limit and adds the branding and automation a business wants. Five clients is the ceiling that decides it, and it arrives sooner than most people expect.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Data export |
|---|
| Not stated |
| Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | None | None |
|---|
| Runs on (they differ) | Web, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux | Web, iOS, Android |
|---|
| Covers | Creator Finance, Project Management | Creator Finance, Accounting & Tax |
|---|
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
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| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
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| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
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| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
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Our note
Count your clients rather than your invoices, because that is the limit that actually bites and it arrives sooner than the free plan suggests. Self-host only if you were going to maintain a server anyway, since the hosted Pro plan costs less than the hours will.
Only on this side