invoiceninja
by invoiceninja
Invoice Ninja is an invoicing app that also handles quotes, expenses, projects, tasks and time tracking. You can use the hosted service or run it on your own server, with desktop and mobile apps available.
- Stars
- 10.3k
- Licence
- Elastic
- Runs on
- A small server
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- PHP
- Age
- 4719 days
What you can do with it
- Create and send invoices and quotes to clients, and take online payments
- Track time and expenses against projects and tasks
- Give clients a portal where they can view and pay their invoices
Could replace
- FreshBooks
- Harvest
Our suggestion based on what it does, not a feature-by-feature comparison.
Make money with it
A freelancer could set up and maintain self-hosted Invoice Ninja installs for small businesses as a paid service.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Replace a paid invoicing subscription by self-hosting your own billing system
- Bill clients by the hour using tracked time and tasks, and collect payment online
Can you use it commercially?
Not open source (Elastic licence). Usually free to use for your own business, but you can't resell it or offer it as a hosted service. Read the licence.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
Self-host it with Docker or on a PHP server using Composer, following the installation guide, or use the hosted version or the desktop and mobile apps.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Licence is not clearly stated (source-available, not standard open source)
- Removing Invoice Ninja branding from client-facing pages needs a paid white-label licence ($40 a year)
- Online payments and email delivery rely on third-party services such as Stripe and Postmark
- Losing the APP_KEY means the data can no longer be decrypted
Who's talking about it
Checked 28 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
