Invoice Ninja vs Relay Comparison 2026
Both cover creator finance and accounting & tax. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Open-source invoicing, free for 5 clients
Business banking with twenty checking accounts
At a glance
- Invoice Ninja starts cheaper, at $14.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Invoice Ninja | Relay | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $14 | From $30 |
| 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 | 14 days |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
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.
Invoice Ninja
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.
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.
Relay
Business banking with twenty checking accounts
Relay's difference is that it hands you twenty checking accounts rather than one, which is what makes envelope budgeting work on a business rather than on a spreadsheet beside it. Income splits on arrival: tax here, contractors there, what is left is yours. It also issues a stack of cards and connects to the usual bookkeeping tools. The free plan is a real account rather than a trial.
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.