Managed hosting from
£25/month +VAT
Small resource profile: 1 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 10 GB SSD storage. Typically suits businesses billing hundreds of clients a month. Deployment, upgrades, daily backups, monitoring, SSL and UK hosting included, with no per-user fees. How our pricing works
Invoicing that does not bill you for growing
FreshBooks caps how many clients you can bill on its cheaper tiers, and QuickBooks charges more as your team and usage grow. Invoice Ninja is the open source alternative: quotes, invoices, recurring billing, online payments and expenses, with unlimited clients and unlimited invoices, running on your own infrastructure at a flat fee. Node deploys, manages and supports Invoice Ninja as a production service hosted in the UK.
What Invoice Ninja is
Invoice Ninja is an open source platform for the money side of running a services business. It handles the full billing lifecycle: send a quote, convert it to an invoice on approval, take payment online, chase what is overdue and report on the lot. Recurring invoices bill retainers and subscriptions automatically, expenses and vendors are tracked alongside income, and time tracking turns logged hours into line items.
Clients get a branded portal on your domain where they can view quotes, approve them, see invoices and statements and pay online. Payment gateway integrations, including Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless, mean a pay-now button on every invoice, with payments reconciled against the right invoice automatically. Templates, taxes, multiple currencies and custom fields let the paperwork match how your business actually bills.
Because Invoice Ninja is open source and self-hostable, all of it runs on infrastructure you control, with no artificial limits on clients, invoices or users.
Why self-hosted Invoice Ninja instead of FreshBooks or QuickBooks
No client-count limits: FreshBooks' lower tiers cap the number of clients you can bill, at the time of writing as few as five on the entry plan, which turns winning customers into a pricing event. Invoice Ninja has no client or invoice limits at all.
No per-user creep: QuickBooks and FreshBooks charge more for extra team members and features as you grow. Self-hosted Invoice Ninja adds users for free, so the bookkeeper, the ops manager and the director all get access without a bigger subscription.
UK data residency: your client list and billing history describe your entire business. Self-hosted Invoice Ninja keeps that data on UK infrastructure under an Article 28 data processing agreement rather than in a North American SaaS cloud.
No lock-in: your clients, invoices and payment records live in a database you own and export cleanly. Leaving a SaaS accounting tool usually means losing easy access to years of history; here the history is simply yours.
Your brand throughout: invoices, quotes, emails and the client portal all carry your branding on your domain, not a vendor's.
From quote to cash, automatically
The workflow is where Invoice Ninja earns its keep. Quotes convert to invoices in one click when a client approves in the portal. Recurring profiles generate and send retainer invoices on schedule, with auto-billing against saved payment details where the gateway supports it. Late invoices trigger automatic, escalating reminders, so chasing debtors stops being a monthly ritual. Every event fires webhooks, and we pair Invoice Ninja with n8n workflow automation so a paid invoice can update your CRM, post to your accounts channel or kick off delivery.
Part of a fuller finance stack
Invoice Ninja is deliberately focused: billing, payments and expenses, done well. If you need broader business management, Dolibarr adds CRM, stock and full ERP functions around invoicing. If you run subscription billing at scale with complex catalogues and entitlements, Kill Bill is the heavyweight open source billing engine. We run all three, and will advise on which fits, or how they fit together.
Keycloak and single sign-on
Every application in a Node tenant joins your own Keycloak realm, so staff sign in once with corporate credentials and use Invoice Ninja alongside every other app we run for you. Admins grant and revoke access centrally, MFA and session policies apply consistently, and leavers lose access to your billing system the moment they are removed from your identity system. It is one of the ways the Node platform turns a collection of apps into a coherent workspace.
How Node runs Invoice Ninja for you
We operate Invoice Ninja as a fully managed service, not a server you have to babysit.
Deployment: we deploy Invoice Ninja in a production configuration on your own domain, with TLS, reliable email delivery for invoices and reminders, and your payment gateways connected.
Upgrades and maintenance: we test and apply updates, manage migrations and keep your instance current and secure without interrupting billing runs.
Monitoring and support: we monitor availability, email and payment flow health, take regular backups of your billing data, and our team is on hand when you need changes or help.
Your infrastructure or ours: hosted on Node's UK infrastructure or deployed into your own environment, on-premises or in your cloud accounts, with the same managed service either way.
The economics of billing software that scales against you: SaaS invoicing prices on the things that grow when your business does: clients, users, invoices, features. Win more customers and FreshBooks moves you up a tier; add a bookkeeper and QuickBooks charges for the seat. A managed Invoice Ninja deployment from Node is a flat, predictable cost whether you bill ten clients or ten thousand, with every feature included and your billing history on infrastructure you control.
Adoption and community
9,800+ GitHub stars Invoice Ninja states that its invoicing platform is trusted by more than 200,000 businesses worldwide.
“Self-hosted InvoiceNinja 4 & Stripe integration. Works great, sends follow-up emails, adds gateway fees to the invoice.”
Hacker News
“I've been self-hosting invoice-ninja for a number of years now... quite like it.”
Hacker News
“It is overkill if all you want is time tracking. But it is a good self-hosted solution for project-based time tracking and invoicing.”
Hacker News
Quotes are from public community discussions, linked to their original sources.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best open source alternative to FreshBooks or QuickBooks for invoicing?
Invoice Ninja is the leading open source invoicing platform. It covers quotes, invoices, recurring billing, online payments, expenses and time tracking with a branded client portal, and it can be self-hosted with unlimited clients and invoices. Node Digital deploys and manages Invoice Ninja for UK businesses.
Where is our billing data hosted?
On Node's UK infrastructure, or in your own environment if you prefer. Client records, invoices and payment history stay on infrastructure you control, backed by an Article 28 data processing agreement so your GDPR position is clear.
Can you migrate us from FreshBooks or QuickBooks?
Yes. Clients, invoices and products can be exported from FreshBooks and QuickBooks and imported into Invoice Ninja. We handle the migration, set up your templates, taxes and payment gateways, and make sure invoice numbering carries on cleanly from where you left off.
Does Invoice Ninja limit the number of clients or invoices?
No. FreshBooks caps the number of billable clients on its lower tiers and both FreshBooks and QuickBooks charge more as usage grows. Self-hosted Invoice Ninja has no client or invoice limits: bill five clients or five thousand for the same flat managed fee.
Can clients pay invoices online?
Yes. Invoice Ninja integrates with a wide range of payment gateways including Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless, so invoices carry a pay-now link and payments are recorded against the invoice automatically. Clients also get a branded portal to view quotes, invoices and statements.
Does Invoice Ninja support single sign-on?
Yes. Every application in a Node tenant joins your own Keycloak realm, so your team signs in to Invoice Ninja with the same corporate credentials they use everywhere else, with MFA and access policies enforced centrally.
What does the managed Invoice Ninja service include?
Deployment in a production configuration, upgrades and security patching, monitoring, backups of your billing data, payment gateway and email setup, and support from our team when you need changes. You send invoices; we run the platform.
Talk to us about Invoice Ninja.
Drop us a line and our team will discuss your billing requirements and how a managed Invoice Ninja deployment can cut your invoicing costs.
Our heritage
These projects were delivered by Tokyo Digital, acquired by Node in May 2023 and now a wholly owned subsidiary of Node DT Group. The same team builds and runs the Node platform today.