Invoice Ninja vs Toggl Track Comparison 2026
Invoice Ninja and Toggl Track solve consecutive steps rather than competing: Invoice Ninja bills the client and Toggl Track measures the hours that went into the work, and neither does the other's job. Invoice Ninja is free forever for up to 5 clients, then $14 a month for Pro. Toggl Track is free for a limited number of users, then $14 a month for Premium, though that $14 is a first-year annual rate that renews at $18. A freelancer billing by the hour plausibly wants both running at once.
Open-source invoicing, free for 5 clients
Time tracking that stays free for a small team
At a glance
- Toggl Track starts cheaper, at $9.
- Both have a genuinely free tier.
Side by side
Invoice Ninja | Toggl Track | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price (they differ) | From $14 | From $9 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | 30 days |
| API | Yes |
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.
Only on this side
- Covers accounting & tax
Toggl Track
Time tracking that stays free for a small team
Why people weigh these two
- Toggl Track instead of Invoice Ninja
- Toggl Track stays free for a small team, paid from $9, tracking the hours that become an invoice rather than issuing it.
- Invoice Ninja instead of Toggl Track
- Invoice Ninja is open source and free for up to five clients, from $14 past that, invoicing first with time tracking as a feature rather than the other way round.
Which one should you pick
Choose Invoice Ninja for the billing side: invoices, quotes and recurring bills through a long list of payment gateways, free forever for up to five clients with no invoice cap. It is open source too, so self-hosting is an option for anybody who would rather keep client financials off somebody else's server. Five clients arrives sooner than expected, so treat the free plan as a starting point.
Choose Toggl Track for the hours themselves: a browser extension, desktop app and phone tracker that is good at the part everybody forgets, reminding you to start the timer and letting you fill the gap afterward. The free plan is enough for one person indefinitely. Read the Premium footnote before budgeting: $14 a month is a first-year rate that becomes $18, a 29 percent rise most people do not plan for.
Common questions
- Do these two tools do the same job?
- No. Invoice Ninja issues invoices and takes payment; Toggl Track only measures where the hours went and reports on them. Billing the tracked time still happens somewhere else, which is why the two are often run together rather than as alternatives.
- Which one is cheaper?
- Both start free. Invoice Ninja's Pro plan is a stable $14 a month. Toggl Track's Premium is also $14 a month at first, but only for the first year of annual billing; it renews at $18 afterward, a detail easy to miss.
- Can Invoice Ninja track time the way Toggl Track does?
- Its listing does not describe a time-tracking feature; it is built around invoices, quotes and recurring bills. Toggl Track is the dedicated tool for recording hours, across a browser extension, desktop app and phone.
- Is either one self-hostable?
- Invoice Ninja is: it is open source, so the data can stay on your own server instead of the hosted version. Toggl Track's listing does not offer a self-hosted option.
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.