Can you send an unbranded invoice on a free plan?
We do not currently have an affiliate relationship with any product on this page, and no vendor paid for placement or review. Outbound product links are marked nofollow.
The Short Answer
- Wave — Wave's comparison table checks "Add your logo and brand colors" for the free plan and reserves "Remove Wave branding from footers" for Pro, while invoices themselves are unlimited.
- Invoice Ninja — Removing 'Created by Invoice Ninja' starts at $14 a month on cloud, and self-hosting does not escape it — the vendor states "Self-hosting white-labels $40/ year".
- Zoho Invoice — Zoho states its invoices include "'Powered by Zoho Invoice' branding to help spread the goodwill", and there is no paid Zoho Invoice tier, so no amount of money removes it.
- Stripe Invoicing — Stripe charges "0.4% Per paid invoice" with no monthly fee, and neither its pricing page nor its branding docs state whether a Stripe mark appears on the invoice.
| Product | Best for | From | Free plan | Free-plan branding |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wave | Your logo free, Wave's footer $19 a month | $19/mo | Yes | Payment to remove |
| Invoice Ninja | Open source, and the branding is licensed separately | $11.67/mo (annual) | Yes | Payment to remove |
| Zoho Invoice | Free forever, and the branding is not for sale | Free only | Yes | Payment to remove |
| Stripe Invoicing | No subscription, and no answer on branding | — | No | Not confirmed |
What it costs to have your name alone on the document
An invoice is one of the few things a small business sends that is supposed to look like it came from the business. So the question is narrow: does the free plan let you send one that carries only your name?
Three of these vendors answer no, and price the yes differently:
| Route | Price of removing the vendor’s name |
|---|---|
| Invoice Ninja, self-hosted | $40 / year |
| Invoice Ninja, Ninja Pro | $14 / month |
| Wave Pro | $19 / month |
| Zoho Invoice | not for sale |
| Stripe Invoicing | unknown |
Every free plan here lets you add your own logo. Wave’s table checks “Add your logo and brand colors” for the free tier; Invoice Ninja lists “Brand Invoices with Your Logo” on Free. That is worth noticing, because it means the vendors are not withholding branding. They are adding theirs alongside yours.
Wave’s pricing table makes this unusually legible by putting the two facts in adjacent rows. “Add your logo and brand colors” — free. “Remove Wave branding from footers” — Pro only. Invoices are genuinely unlimited on the free plan, so the footer is the only thing $19 a month changes about the document itself.
Zoho is the one that cannot be bought
Every other vendor here treats its own branding as inventory. Zoho does not, and the reason is structural rather than generous.
Zoho Invoice’s pricing page is headed “Pricing? It’s free for all small businesses.” There is no paid Zoho Invoice tier. The FAQ states what that costs you:
Zoho Invoice includes “Powered by Zoho Invoice” branding to help spread the goodwill and support other growing businesses.
So the line is permanent. Not gated behind a plan — there is no plan. If you need to grow past the free caps of two users, three projects and 500 invoices a year, Zoho points you at Zoho Billing, which is a different product entirely.
That is a coherent trade and worth understanding as one. Zoho gives away a real invoicing product and takes payment in distribution. It is the same logic every free scheduling link runs on: the document you send to other people is the advertisement. Zoho is just the only vendor here honest enough to make it permanent rather than dangling a removal price.
One gap we could not close: Zoho never says where the branding appears. Invoice PDF, client payment portal, or both. That is the difference between a line your client reads and a line they never see, and the vendor does not answer it.
Open source does not mean unbranded
We have now hit this twice, and the second time is worse than the first.
In project tools, Plane taught us that open source describes what you may do with code you run, and says nothing about the vendor’s hosted free tier. Invoice Ninja extends that further. Its application is open source and free to self-host — and the vendor’s own page states:
Self-hosting white-labels $40/ year
Running the code yourself does not remove “Created by Invoice Ninja” from the invoice. The branding is licensed separately from the software. You can hold the entire codebase, run it on your own hardware, owe nobody anything for the application, and still be shipping the vendor’s name to your clients unless you pay the annual fee.
$40 a year is cheap — it is the cheapest route in this whole comparison. The point is not the price. It is that “open source” and “unbranded” are independent properties, and almost everyone assumes they travel together.
Stripe: the blank we are keeping
Stripe Invoicing has no monthly subscription. It charges “0.4% Per paid invoice”, or 0.5% on Plus, with Stripe Payments fees on top. A percentage from the first invoice is not a free plan, and it is also not a subscription, so the usual framing does not fit it.
On the branding question we came back with nothing. Stripe’s docs confirm your icon and logo apply to “Invoice PDFs” account-wide. Neither that page nor the pricing page says whether a Stripe mark appears alongside them. We searched both and left the verdict blank rather than assuming that no mention means no mark.
Your logo free, Wave's footer $19 a month
1. Wave — Your logo free, Wave's footer $19 a month
Unlimited free invoices, with the branding rule stated as its own row.
Best for Unlimited free invoices with Wave's name in the footer
From $19/mo. Free plan: Starter, $0 — "Create unlimited estimates, invoices, bills, and bookkeeping records." Single user. Card payments are charged separately at 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction..
- Pro — $19/mo ("$19 USD/month Billed monthly." A promotional "$9.50 USD/month" rate for the first three months was showing when we read the page. Unlimited seats.)
Two adjacent rows in Wave's own comparison table answer this precisely, and they say different things. "Add your logo and brand colors" is checked for the free Starter plan — "Add your logo and brand colors to our professional invoice templates." The very next row, "Remove Wave branding from footers", is checked only for Pro at $19 a month; the Starter cell is empty. So the free invoice carries your logo and Wave's footer at the same time. Volume is genuinely unlimited — "Create unlimited estimates, invoices, bills, and bookkeeping records" — which makes the branding line the only thing being sold here.
Pros
- Unlimited invoices, estimates and bookkeeping records on a $0 plan, with no client cap stated.
- Your own logo and brand colours are included on the free plan, not held back.
- The pricing table states the branding rule as its own row rather than leaving it to be discovered on a sent invoice.
Skip it if
- Removing Wave's footer branding costs $19 a month — it is the only thing the Pro upgrade changes about the invoice itself.
- Card payments on the free plan cost 2.9% + $0.60 per transaction.
- Starter is single-user; a second person requires Pro.
Open source, and the branding is licensed separately
2. Invoice Ninja — Open source, and the branding is licensed separately
The cheapest unbranded route here, and not the one you would guess.
Best for Open source, and the branding is licensed separately either way
From $11.67/mo (annual). Free plan: Cloud Free — "5 Clients + Unlimited Invoicing", "Forever free · Yes, really." The application is separately open source and self-hostable at no software cost..
- Ninja Pro — $14/mo, or $11.67/mo billed annually · 1 seat ("$14 per month, billed monthly", or annually at $140 — described as "Save $28 — 2 months free!")
- Enterprise — $18/mo, or $15/mo billed annually · 2 seats (Starts at $18 a month for 2 users ($180 a year) and scales to $300 a month at 100 users.)
- Self-hosted white-label licence — price not shown on the page we opened (Stated only as an annual figure — "Self-hosting white-labels $40/ year" — so no monthly price is recorded rather than dividing one out.)
The free cloud plan lists "Brand Invoices with Your Logo" as included, and is "5 Clients + Unlimited Invoicing", "Forever free · Yes, really." But the comparison table marks "Remove Invoice Ninja branding" as unavailable on Free, checked from Ninja Pro at $14 a month, whose feature list spells it out: 'Remove "Created by Invoice Ninja"'. The part worth knowing is that self-hosting does not escape it. Invoice Ninja's own pricing-update page states "Self-hosting white-labels $40/ year" — running the open-source code on your own server still leaves the vendor's line on the invoice unless you buy that licence.
Pros
- Unlimited invoicing on the free cloud plan, capped on clients rather than on documents.
- Fully open source and self-hostable with no software licensing cost for the application itself.
- Your own logo is included on the free plan.
Skip it if
- Removing 'Created by Invoice Ninja' costs $14 a month on cloud — the free plan cannot send an unbranded invoice.
- Self-hosting does not remove the branding either: the vendor states "Self-hosting white-labels $40/ year".
- The free cloud plan stops at 5 clients.
Free forever, and the branding is not for sale
3. Zoho Invoice — Free forever, and the branding is not for sale
The only vendor here that does not sell the removal, because it has no tier to sell.
Best for Free forever, and the branding is not for sale
From Free only. Free plan: The whole product is free — the pricing page is headed "Pricing? It's free for all small businesses." Capped at "Add up to two users", "Create a maximum of three projects" and "Send up to 500 invoices per year." There is no paid Zoho Invoice tier; more capacity means moving to the separate Zoho Billing product..
Zoho's own pricing FAQ states it plainly: "Zoho Invoice includes 'Powered by Zoho Invoice' branding to help spread the goodwill and support other growing businesses." You can still brand the document yourself — the template help page confirms you can "upload your business logo here to display on the document" — but Zoho's line sits alongside it. What makes this the outlier in the category is that there is no paid Zoho Invoice plan at all, so no amount of money removes it. Every other product here prices the removal; Zoho does not sell it. Zoho does not state where the branding appears (invoice PDF, client portal, or both), and we did not establish that.
Pros
- The entire product is free with no upgrade path being dangled — "Pricing? It's free for all small businesses."
- Two users and custom logo and brand colours are included at no cost.
- 500 invoices a year is generous for a small business, and the number is published rather than described as "limited".
Skip it if
- "Powered by Zoho Invoice" branding is stated by the vendor and cannot be removed at any price, because no paid Zoho Invoice tier exists.
- Hard caps at 2 users and 3 projects regardless of how the business grows.
- Zoho never states whether the branding appears on the invoice PDF, the client-facing portal, or both.
No subscription, and no answer on branding
4. Stripe Invoicing — No subscription, and no answer on branding
A percentage instead of a plan, and an unanswered question.
Best for No subscription, a percentage of every invoice that gets paid
From —. No free plan.
- Starter — price not shown on the page we opened (Not a monthly price. "Stripe Invoicing has no fixed fees or setup costs, but Stripe Payments pricing will apply", charged at "0.4% Per paid invoice".)
- Plus — price not shown on the page we opened ("0.5% Per paid invoice", covering "Invoicing Starter features as well as quotes". Again a percentage, not a monthly figure.)
Pros
- No monthly subscription or setup fee for Invoicing itself — cost scales with use.
- Your own icon, logo and brand colour apply to invoice PDFs account-wide through Stripe's branding settings.
- Both percentages are published on the pricing page rather than quoted on request.
Skip it if
- We could not establish whether a Stripe-generated invoice carries Stripe's own branding. docs.stripe.com/invoicing/customize confirms your icon and logo apply to "Invoice PDFs", but neither that page nor the pricing page states whether a Stripe mark appears alongside them, so the verdict is left blank.
- There is no free plan: 0.4% applies from the first paid invoice, so cost is a share of revenue rather than a flat fee.
- Stripe Payments card-processing fees apply on top of the invoicing percentage.
What this means if you are choosing today
Sending a handful of invoices and not precious about a footer line: Zoho Invoice is the most capable free product here, with 500 invoices a year and two users, and you accept the line permanently.
Volume matters more than the footer: Wave’s free plan is unlimited on invoices, estimates and bookkeeping records with no client cap stated, which no one else here matches.
The footer matters: run Invoice Ninja yourself and buy the $40-a-year white-label licence. That is the cheapest confirmed way to put only your name on the document, and it costs under a fifth of Wave Pro over a year — in exchange for maintaining a server.
Before you commit to any of them, send one invoice to your own address and look at what arrives. That single test answers the two things these pages do not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which free invoicing tool sends invoices without the vendor's name?
None of the ones we read. Wave puts its branding in the footer until you pay $19 a month. Invoice Ninja keeps 'Created by Invoice Ninja' until Ninja Pro at $14 a month. Zoho Invoice includes "Powered by Zoho Invoice" branding and has no paid tier at all. For Stripe Invoicing we could not establish whether a vendor mark appears.
Can you remove Zoho Invoice branding?
Not by paying Zoho for Zoho Invoice, because there is no paid Zoho Invoice plan to buy. The pricing page is headed "Pricing? It's free for all small businesses", and its FAQ states the product "includes 'Powered by Zoho Invoice' branding to help spread the goodwill and support other growing businesses." More capacity means moving to Zoho Billing, a separate product. Zoho does not state where the branding appears — invoice PDF, client portal, or both.
Does self-hosting Invoice Ninja remove its branding?
No. This surprised us and it is stated by the vendor: "Self-hosting white-labels $40/ year". The application is open source and free to run, and the branding is a separate licence. Running the code on your own server does not by itself put your name alone on the invoice.
What is the cheapest way to send an unbranded invoice?
Of the routes we could confirm, Invoice Ninja's self-hosted white-label licence at $40 a year is the cheapest, if you are willing to run the server. On hosted plans, Invoice Ninja's Ninja Pro at $14 a month undercuts Wave's Pro at $19. Zoho cannot be bought out of it at any price, and Stripe's position is unknown.
Did you send invoices and look at them?
No. Every verdict here was read on the vendor's own pricing page or documentation on 6 August 2026 and is labelled as read, not run. Sending one real invoice would settle two things these pages do not: where exactly Zoho's branding appears, and whether a Stripe invoice carries a Stripe mark.
How We Keep This Updated
Prices move and vendors rewrite their plan tables, so every value on this page carries the date we read it. When a page changes, the change lands here rather than being edited away quietly. The procedure is on the methodology page. tell us and we will re-check it.
- 2026-08-06 — First published. Branding rows read on each vendor's own pricing comparison. Verdicts were re-derived against the branding question alone after an initial pass merged it with free-plan invoice and client caps — two questions with different answers.