Best invoicing software for freelancers: seven tools, one set of scores
Every invoicing tool a freelancer shortlists has already been tested on this site — head to head, against the rival it is most often weighed against. This page is the roundup those comparisons add up to: the seven tools that invoice, ranked on the overall scores we have already published, with each one’s cheapest invoicing tier and its fees on a $2,000 invoice set side by side. Nothing here is scored fresh. If a number on this page disagrees with one of our comparison guides, the guide is the one that is right — and this page repeats the guides.
The ranking, for the record: FreshBooks 8.1, Bonsai 8.0, then a three-way tie at 7.9 — Wave, Zoho Books and QuickBooks — then Xero 7.8 and HoneyBook 7.6. Treat that order as the starting point, not the answer. A tenth of a point has never chosen anyone’s software; the job in front of the invoice has. So after the table, this page is organised the way the choice actually arrives: six verdicts by the work you do — best overall, best free, best for winning the work, best value paid tier, best for an accountant’s books, and best where the proposal and the invoice are one document.
How these scores work
The score beside each tool is its overall score from our published head-to-head comparisons, repeated unchanged — FreshBooks carries the same 8.1 here as it does against Wave, Bonsai and QuickBooks, and every other tool likewise. The category scores underneath each total live in the pairings, and each section below links to them. Prices are list prices, checked against each vendor’s pricing page in November 2026. Fee maths is done on a $2,000 invoice at published rates; where a vendor quotes a floor rather than a rate — Bonsai’s ACH, “as low as 1%” — the fee is priced at that floor and labelled as such.
Our verdict
FreshBooks leads the field at 8.1 — the invoicing specialist is still the best all-round answer for a solo — but the most useful lines on this page are further down the table. Two of the 7.9s are genuinely free: Zoho Books is a full double-entry ledger at $0 under $50,000 of revenue, and Wave’s Starter is free with no published ceiling. Bonsai’s 8.0 buys the documents that win the work. And HoneyBook, last on points at 7.6, is first at one specific job — the booking chain — which is why a roundup needs verdicts as well as a ranking.
All seven, side by side
One spine runs through the table: the cheapest tier that can actually send an invoice, and what a $2,000 invoice costs to collect on it, by card and by bank transfer. Read the fee columns together and the field compresses — card fees span just $1.55 from cheapest to dearest, while bank fees span $25.
| Tool | Our score | Cheapest tier that invoices | Card fee on $2,000 | Bank fee on $2,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FreshBooks | 8.1 | Lite — $23/mo (up to 5 clients) | $58.30 | $10.00 (1%, capped at $10) |
| Bonsai | 8.0 | Essentials — $19/mo billed annually ($228/yr) | $58.30 | $20.00 (at the quoted “as low as 1%” floor) |
| Wave | 7.9 | Starter — $0 | $58.60 | $20.00 (1%, $1 minimum) |
| Zoho Books | 7.9 | Free — $0 (revenue up to $50,000/yr) | $58.30 | $5.00 (0.8%, capped at $5) |
| QuickBooks | 7.9 | Free — $0 (1 user, 2 invoices a month); first full tier Simple Start, $38/mo | $59.80 | $20.00 (1%) |
| Xero | 7.8 | Early — $27/mo (20 invoices a month) | Via connected providers | Via connected providers |
| HoneyBook | 7.6 | Starter — $29/mo billed annually ($348/yr) | $58.25 | $30.00 (1.5%) |
Three readings of that table are worth more than the ranking above it. First, card fees are nearly a tie across the whole field — HoneyBook’s $58.25 is the cheapest by five cents, QuickBooks’ $59.80 the dearest — so the card column should never choose your software. Second, bank transfers are where the money moves: Zoho Payments’ 0.8% capped at $5 keeps all but $5 of a $2,000 transfer, while HoneyBook’s 1.5% takes $30. At one such invoice a month, that spread is $300 a year. Third, the subscription column outweighs both: the dearest entry tier here, HoneyBook’s $348 a year, costs more than a full year of the widest fee gap — which is why the verdicts below are organised by the job, and priced by the tier that does it.
The verdicts, by the job you actually have
Best overall — FreshBooks (8.1)
The highest score we publish, earned the way the product is built: invoicing first, with the books kept underneath. FreshBooks is the shortest route from finished work to a paid invoice on this page, and its 5-client cap on Lite, $23 a month, is the honest shape of its pricing — it meters the thing a growing practice actually runs out of. If you invoice a handful of clients and want the invoice itself to be effortless, this is the default. The full pricing runs through our FreshBooks vs Wave comparison — the paid specialist against the free core.
Best free — Zoho Books under $50,000, Wave when free has to last
Two tools here cost nothing, and they are not the same nothing. Zoho Books Free is a complete double-entry ledger — reconciliation, a chart of accounts, 50+ reports, an accountant seat — at $0 while revenue stays at or under $50,000 a year and invoices under 1,000. Wave Starter is free with no published revenue ceiling at all, on a lighter invoicing-and-bookkeeping core, for the US and Canada only. Under Zoho’s ceiling, the ledger is the better free product by a distance. Expecting to cross it, or unwilling to migrate when you do, start on Wave. They meet directly in our Zoho Books vs Wave comparison.
Best for winning the work — Bonsai (8.0)
If your jobs begin with a pitch, the invoice is the last document in a chain — proposal, contract, signature, tracked time, bill — and Bonsai is the only tool here that sells the whole chain in one subscription. That is what its 8.0 is scored on. The entry price needs reading carefully: Basic, $9 a month, cannot send an invoice at all, so the chain really starts at Essentials, $228 a year. What Bonsai calls its books is a tracker, not a ledger — which is exactly the trade this verdict accepts. Priced from both directions in our Bonsai vs FreshBooks and Bonsai vs Zoho Books comparisons.
Best value paid tier — Zoho Books Standard ($15 a month)
The cheapest meaningful upgrade on this page buys the deepest books on it: the full ledger, live bank feeds and three users for $180 a year. Standard’s quiet weapon is the transfer fee — Zoho Payments charges 0.8% capped at $5, so at one $2,000 bank transfer a month the cap saves $180 a year against rivals charging 1%: the tier pays for itself out of the fee saving before its depth is counted. Its limits are the missing front — estimates, not proposals or contracts — and a US-only payments rail. The ladder is priced rung by rung in our Zoho Books vs QuickBooks comparison.
Best for an accountant’s books — QuickBooks (7.9), with Xero (7.8) beside it
Ask most US accountants which books they would rather receive and the answer is the incumbent: QuickBooks is the standard your accountant already works in, with the deepest books in this class — which is what its 7.9 grades. Its free tier is a doorway, not a product — one user, two invoices a month — so budget for Simple Start at $38 a month, and note its card fee, 2.99%, is the dearest in the table. Where the practice has people rather than paperwork — staff, a bookkeeper, an advisor all inside the same books at no per-seat cost — Xero’s 7.8 is the accountant’s platform of the other hemisphere, metering invoices instead of users. Both reads are priced in our QuickBooks vs FreshBooks and Xero vs Zoho Books comparisons.
Best booking chain — HoneyBook (7.6)
Last on points, first at one job. For a creative business that sells bookings — photographers, planners, designers, coaches — HoneyBook runs the whole hire in one branded client file: the inquiry, the proposal, the contract ready to sign, the deposit invoice attached, from its first tier, $29 a month billed annually. No other tool here includes proposals and contracts from its entry tier. The compromises are priced in the table: the dearest bank fee we test, 1.5%, and a narrower accounting story underneath. If the client experience is part of what you sell, its 7.6 is scored on a smaller job than the others — and it wins that job. The chain is priced in our HoneyBook vs Bonsai comparison.
Each tool in short
1. FreshBooks — 8.1
Invoicing software a solo can learn in an afternoon, with the books kept light underneath until you pay to deepen them. Lite is $23 a month for up to five clients, Plus $43, Premium $70, and extra team members cost $11 a month each. Its bank fee is the second cheapest on this page — ACH at 1% capped at $10 takes exactly $10 of a $2,000 payment — and its card fee, 2.9% + $0.30, is the joint-standard $58.30.
The honest limit is the meter: client caps mean a growing practice climbs tiers for headcount, not features, and the accounting depth an accountant eventually wants is bought, not included. Read it against the free core in FreshBooks vs Wave and against the standard in FreshBooks vs QuickBooks.
2. Bonsai — 8.0
The freelancer suite: proposals, contracts with e-signature, a client portal, time tracking that flows into invoices, and behind it all an income-and-expense tracker it calls books. Essentials, $19 a month billed annually, is the cheapest tier that invoices; Premium is $29 and Elite $49, with a three-user minimum a solo will never use. Card fees tie FreshBooks at $58.30 on $2,000; its ACH is quoted as “as low as 1%” with no published cap — priced at that floor above, $20.
The honest limit is the back of the job: a tracker is not double-entry, there is no reconciliation and no balance sheet, so a complicated year gets rebuilt by an accountant in a real ledger. Read it against the ledger in Bonsai vs Zoho Books.
3. Wave — 7.9
The free core: unlimited invoicing and bookkeeping on Starter at $0, with Pro — $19 a month or $190 a year — adding bank auto-import, receipt capture and automated reminders. Its card fee carries the field’s highest fixed charge, $0.60, making a $2,000 card payment $58.60; bank payments cost 1% with a $1 minimum, $20 here.
The honest limits are geography and scope: Wave is US and Canada only, there is no time tracking, and there are no contracts or proposals at any tier — the documents in front of the invoice live somewhere else. Read it against the ledger in Wave vs Zoho Books and against the specialist in Wave vs FreshBooks.
4. Zoho Books — 7.9
The real ledger: double-entry accounting, reconciliation and 50+ reports from the free tier up — its accounting depth grade is the highest in this class — priced per organisation with users included by tier. Free holds while revenue is at or under $50,000 and invoices under 1,000 a year; Standard is $15 a month, extra users $2.50 each, and Zoho Payments takes 2.9% + 30¢ by card and 0.8% capped at $5 by transfer — the cheapest bank fee we test, $5 on $2,000.
The honest limits are the free plan’s expiry and the missing front of the job: no proposals and no contracts at any tier, estimates are where its documents stop, and Zoho Payments is US-only. Read it against the suite in Bonsai vs Zoho Books.
5. QuickBooks — 7.9
The accounting default: the books most accountants already work in, at list prices that start where the free doorway ends — Simple Start $38 a month, Essentials $85, Plus $140, Advanced $340, with multi-currency from Essentials up. Payments take 2.99% by card, the dearest in this table at $59.80 on $2,000, and 1% by ACH, $20.
The honest limit is that the value sits in the ecosystem rather than the invoice: a solo paying $38 a month is buying their accountant’s fluency and the deepest reporting here, inside software shaped for businesses larger than one person. Read it against the ledger bargain in QuickBooks vs Zoho Books.
6. Xero — 7.8
The people-unlimited ledger: every tier includes unlimited users, and the meter is paperwork instead — Early, $27 a month, caps you at 20 invoices and 5 bills a month; Growing is $59; multi-currency waits for Established at $97. Xero publishes no card rate of its own — payments run through connected providers — so this page prints no Xero fee rather than inventing one.
The honest limit is the entry cap: 20 invoices a month is a ceiling a busy solo can touch, and the step to Growing is the real starting price for many. Read it against the specialist in Xero vs FreshBooks and against the bargain in Xero vs Zoho Books.
7. HoneyBook — 7.6
The booking chain: an inquiry lands on a lead form, moves through a pipeline, and becomes one branded file the client opens once — proposal inside, contract ready to sign, deposit invoice attached — from Starter, $29 a month billed annually, with Essentials at $49 and Premium at $109. Its card fee is the cheapest on this page by five cents, $58.25 on $2,000.
The honest limits are the bank fee — 1.5% takes $30 of that same invoice, the dearest here — and a client-experience product’s narrower accounting underneath it. Its 7.6 is the score of a specialist, not a failure. Read it against the suite in HoneyBook vs Bonsai and against the specialist in HoneyBook vs FreshBooks.
What a ranking cannot tell you
Totals compress different jobs into one number. HoneyBook’s 7.6 and QuickBooks’ 7.9 are not measurements of the same thing: one grades a booking experience, the other an accounting platform, and a photographer and a bookkeeper reading this page need opposite ends of it. That is why every verdict above is tied to a fact — a cap, a tier, a fee — rather than to the points alone.
Geography quietly disqualifies. Wave serves the US and Canada only. Zoho Payments, the rail behind the cheapest bank fee here, is US-only. FreshBooks and QuickBooks price in dollars and work widely, and Xero’s strength sits with accountants outside the US as much as inside it. A tool you cannot legally or practically pay through is not a cheaper tool; check the rail before the ranking.
And the first invoice needs none of them. If your volume is still small, the invoice itself does not require an account at all. Our free invoice generator produces it in your browser — no sign-up, nothing uploaded — and our proposal generator drafts the document that stands in front of it. What the seven tools above sell is the system around the invoice. Subscribe when the system is the bottleneck, not before.
Questions
Related: do the maths before you subscribe
Work out the rate your invoices must carry with the freelance hourly rate calculator — taxes, expenses and non-billable time included. And whatever you send the invoice from, it still needs every field on it: our checklist of what to include on a freelance invoice and the sending routine in how to send an invoice apply to all seven tools equally.
Also compare: the two free tiers against each other are Zoho Books vs Wave — the ceiling against the core. The top of the table against the standard is FreshBooks vs QuickBooks — same scores as here, priced from the incumbent’s side. Same field, narrower questions.