Open source alternative to FreshBooks, Wave, Invoice Simple and Bonsai
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Manage invoices, expenses, and client portals in a self-hosted app with no per-seat fees.
InvoiceShelf covers the full billing cycle from estimate to payment in one install. Create branded invoices with custom fields and taxes, record payments, and let clients download and pay through their portal. No per-seat charges means the cost stays at the server.
If you send fewer than a handful of invoices a month and prefer a no-setup mobile app, Invoice Simple is designed for that use case.
Multi-company support lets one InvoiceShelf install serve several companies with separate branding, currencies, and team roles. Accountants or agency owners managing a handful of clients can avoid paying separate SaaS seats for each entity.
If your agency needs project management, task tracking, and contracts alongside invoicing, Bonsai covers that stack but at a subscription cost.
InvoiceShelf deploys via Docker or a manual PHP install with documented configuration. Developers who already manage their own server infrastructure and want their billing data alongside other internal tools will find the setup familiar.
Non-technical users or teams without someone willing to maintain a server should choose a managed cloud service.
The 3.x preview includes a ZUGFeRD / Factur-X module targeting German B2B e-invoicing requirements and French reform formats. Businesses that want to test this compliance path before it is available from their current paid tool can use the 3.x preview with non-production data.
If you need EN 16931 compliance in production today, the 3.x branch is explicitly alpha. Wait for a stable 3.x release, or use a tool that already ships this in a production build.
Freelancers and small businesses pay recurring fees to invoicing services for functionality they could run themselves. FreshBooks charges per seat with caps on client count; Wave adds processing fees and upsells to paid plans; Bonsai bundles features you may not need at a fixed monthly cost. Beyond the cost, your customer and invoice data live on someone else's servers in a proprietary format with no easy export path.
The harder pain is fragmentation: a separate invoicing tool, a spreadsheet for expenses, a third service for client portals. When a payment comes in partially, reconciling it against an invoice takes manual work across multiple screens. For businesses that invoice recurring clients, setting up retainer cycles repeatedly adds friction with no corresponding business value.
Build polished invoices and estimates with custom fields, notes, and your own tax rules. The final PDF uses your branding and can be downloaded or emailed directly to the client. Estimates convert to invoices without re-entering data.
Schedule retainers and subscriptions once; InvoiceShelf generates repeat invoices automatically. As of version 2.4.7, the scheduler catches up missed periods at its next run rather than skipping them, making it reliable on shared hosting setups where the cron runs infrequently.
Record expenses against companies and view sales, taxes, overdue balances, and profit in one dashboard. Partial payments, credit notes, and payment history are tracked per invoice. Stripe is supported for online card payments from the client portal.
Each client gets a private portal to view invoices and estimates, download PDFs, and pay online without contacting you. Automatic payment reminders can be sent by email. The portal is part of the base install with no additional module required.
Run several businesses from one InvoiceShelf install, each with its own branding, currency, and tax configuration. Team members can be invited with scoped roles, keeping client data separated across companies.
The 3.x preview adds a ZUGFeRD / Factur-X module that embeds EN 16931 XML into invoice PDFs, targeting the German B2B e-invoicing mandate and French reform formats. The XML is also downloadable standalone. This feature is in the alpha preview branch, which the README explicitly labels as not production-ready.
FreshBooks is the most widely used cloud invoicing service for freelancers, with a polished UI and built-in time tracking. The core difference is hosting model and cost structure.
| Feature | InvoiceShelf | FreshBooks |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Cloud only |
| Recurring billing | Yes | Yes |
| Client portal | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-company | Yes (one install) | Separate account per business |
| Time tracking | No | Yes |
InvoiceShelf is the better choice when you want full ownership of billing data, need to run multiple businesses without paying separate subscription fees, or already manage your own server. FreshBooks is worth the subscription when you need built-in time tracking tightly integrated with invoicing, or when maintaining a server is not feasible for your team.
Wave offers free invoicing and accounting with no subscription, but earns revenue from card processing fees and optional paid services. InvoiceShelf is also free to run, but on your own server.
| Feature | InvoiceShelf | Wave |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Hosting | Self-hosted | Cloud only |
| Processing fees | Depends on your Stripe account | Yes (Wave Payments) |
| Data ownership | Full (your server) | Wave's servers |
| Accounting features | Invoicing-focused | Bookkeeping and invoicing |
If you are willing to manage a server, InvoiceShelf removes the processing fee dependency entirely; you connect your own Stripe account with its own rate. Wave is a better fit when you want bookkeeping and financial statements alongside invoicing without any server setup.
Bonsai bundles contracts, proposals, time tracking, project management, and invoicing for freelancers. InvoiceShelf covers invoicing and expenses only.
InvoiceShelf is the right pick when invoicing and expense tracking are the primary need and you do not want to pay monthly fees for project management you do not use. Bonsai is the better fit for freelancers who manage client work end-to-end, need contracts and proposals alongside invoicing, and want one cloud tool rather than a self-hosted setup.
Self-hosting deploys InvoiceShelf through Docker using the official image.
```bash
docker run -d -p 8090:8090 invoiceshelf/invoiceshelf:latest
```Yes. InvoiceShelf is AGPL-3.0 licensed and free to self-host. You run it on your own server and pay nothing to the project. The only cost is your server infrastructure. There is no cloud-hosted free tier, paid plan, or feature paywall in the self-hosted install.
InvoiceShelf 3.x supports SQLite, MySQL/MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. For small installs, SQLite works with no extra setup and is what the official Docker Compose configuration uses by default. Larger installs with multiple users or companies should use MySQL or PostgreSQL for better performance.
You schedule a recurring invoice once with a start date, interval, and billing details; InvoiceShelf generates repeat invoices automatically. As of version 2.4.7, the scheduler catches up any periods missed while the server was down or the cron ran infrequently, so a brief outage does not leave gaps in billing.
InvoiceShelf does not have an automated FreshBooks or Wave importer. You would export your customer and invoice history from the paid tool (CSV or PDF), then enter or bulk-import into InvoiceShelf. This is a one-time migration effort; after setup, your data stays on your own server.
Yes. Stripe is supported for online card payments from the client portal. Clients can pay invoices directly from their portal page with a card. Configuration requires a Stripe account and API keys set in InvoiceShelf's settings.
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