Billcraft and FreshBooks solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $39, the other is a subscription at $19/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| Billcraft | FreshBooks | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $19/month ($228/yr) |
| Clients | Unlimited | 5 billable clients (Lite) |
| Your data | On your machine/server | Their cloud |
| Invoices + PDF + share links | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring invoices | Yes | Yes |
| Email via your own SMTP | Yes | No (their sender) |
| Works offline (desktop mode) | Yes | No |
| Source code | MIT, yours | Closed |
What Billcraft does well
- Business profile — Name, logo, address, tax ID, currency and payment/bank instructions printed on every invoice.
- Unlimited clients — Full CRUD with company, email, address, notes. FreshBooks Lite caps you at 5 billable clients.
- Real invoices — Line items (qty × rate), tax %, discount %, notes, due dates, configurable numbering.
- Professional PDFs — Clean server-side template (pdfkit — no headless browser) with your logo and status pill.
What FreshBooks still does better
There's a real reason FreshBooks costs what it does: a bigger team, broader integrations and dedicated support behind it. If that ecosystem is genuinely what you need, it's worth paying for.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on FreshBooks's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $19/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Billcraft pays for itself and then some: two months of FreshBooks pays for Billcraft outright. Everything after that is free, forever.
Try Billcraft — $39, once
Clients, invoices, PDFs, share links & recurring billing — on hardware you control.