Invoice NinjaBeautiful and simple, by default.
Open-source is freedom if you want to run a server and wire up the rest. Most freelancers just want a beautiful invoice that looks right and goes out, without the platform around it.
$6/mo
Drupd
$14/mo
Invoice Ninja
Free plan, no card
The tally · 15 things that matter for billing
7
/ 15Drupd pulls ahead
5
/ 15Both hold their own
3
/ 15Left out, on purpose
Not a feature count for its own sake. Drupd wins where billing speed and the finished invoice matter, and steps aside where Invoice Ninja is doing a different, heavier job.
Invoice Ninja is a powerful open-source platform you host and configure, and Drupd is not trying to be. Drupd makes one bet: a beautiful invoice, sent in under three minutes, with nothing to deploy and nothing to set up.
Where Invoice Ninja hands you the parts, a theme editor, and a settings tree to climb, Drupd hands you a hand-typeset, true-A4 document that is already done. The platform Drupd leaves out is the reason there is nothing to configure, nothing to design, and nothing in the way of getting the invoice out.
The same work, two very different tools.
An ember check marks the side that leads; a dash means that tool leaves it to the other, on purpose.
Four reasons the switch pays off.
01 / Nothing to deploy
A server you never have to think about
Invoice Ninja is most powerful when you self-host it, which means a box to patch, back up, and keep online. Drupd is hosted and finished the moment you sign in. Your only job is the invoice.
02 / The artifact
Beautiful out of the box, no theming required
Five handcrafted templates, hand-typeset and server-rendered at true A4, carry your brand color, logo, and crypto wallet icons by default. No theme files, no CSS, no fiddling. The PDF a client opens is already a polished, professional document that looks like a designer made it, not a default you have to fix.
03 / Payments
Get paid without standing up a gateway
Paste a payment link, bank details, or a wallet address and you are collecting. Five crypto chains are native, with icons in the PDF, where Invoice Ninja stops at Bitcoin through a separate BTCPay server.
04 / Simplicity
One calm screen, not a platform to administer
No projects, no plugins, no gateway matrix, no settings tree to climb before you bill anyone. Drupd does invoicing, sending, and getting paid, and keeps the screen calm so the work goes out fast. Where Invoice Ninja is powerful because it does everything, Drupd is fast because it does one thing well.
04 · The price
Cheaper than Ninja Pro, hosted and finished, with no server bill or ops time hiding behind “free.”
The invoice is the part your client sees.
Every other screen serves this one document, so we treat it as a thing worth crafting. Drupd hand-typesets each template and renders it server-side at true A4 — your brand color, logo, and payment details set with a designer’s care — so the invoice landing in your client’s inbox looks deliberate, polished, and unmistakably professional. Not generated. Made.
Invoice
INV-0042
From
Studio North
Billed to
Halberd & Co.
Ready when you are
Send your next invoice in Drupd.
Keep Invoice Ninja for everything around the work if you want it. Let Drupd handle the part your client actually opens.
- Drupd
- $6/mo
- Invoice Ninja
- $14/mo
- Free plan
- No card
Fair questions.
The honest answers, including the ones where Invoice Ninja is the better fit.
Invoice Ninja is free and open-source. Why pay for Drupd?
Free self-hosted means you run the server: deploy it, patch it, back it up, keep it online, then theme the invoice until it looks right. Drupd is $6/mo for the hosted, finished version, with a beautiful true-A4 invoice and a calm one-screen workflow out of the box and nothing to maintain, plus a genuinely free plan for unlimited invoices to three clients. You are paying for the absence of an ops job and a design job, not for the software alone.
Can I self-host Drupd like Invoice Ninja?
No, and that is deliberate. Drupd is hosted so it stays fast, secure, and up to date without any work on your side. If owning and running your own instance is a hard requirement, Invoice Ninja is the better fit, that openness is the whole point of it.
Does Drupd have an API like Invoice Ninja?
Yes. Drupd ships a Bearer-token REST API with idempotency keys and signed outbound webhooks. It is scoped to invoicing rather than the full self-hosted platform surface, but the building blocks for automation are there.
What about crypto? Invoice Ninja supports Bitcoin.
Drupd supports five chains natively, BTC, ETH, USDC, USDT, and Solana and Tron, with token and chain icons rendered right in the PDF. Invoice Ninja handles Bitcoin only, through a separate BTCPay Server integration you set up yourself.