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.
Contracts and invoices for a solo freelancer
Open-source invoicing, free for 5 clients
Indy | Invoice Ninja | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $12.50 | 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 | 7 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
Contracts and invoices for a solo freelancer
Indy puts proposals, contracts, invoices, time tracking and a client portal in one place, priced for one person rather than for a firm. The free plan allows three of each a month, which fits somebody taking a handful of brand deals a year. Anybody past that will hit the cap in a week and the paid tier is billed two years at a time.
Our note
Bonsai does the same job with better templates and costs more. Indy is the one to pick if the free tier covers your volume, and the two-year lock is the reason to think twice about the paid one.
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 | Not stated | None |
|---|
| Runs on (they differ) | Web | Web, iOS, Android |
|---|
| Covers | Legal & Contracts, Creator Finance | Creator Finance, Accounting & Tax |
|---|
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
|---|
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
|---|
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
|---|
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
|---|
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.
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