Self-hosted invoicing for freelancers and small businesses. Pay once. Own it forever. No subscription.
FreshBooks charges $19/month, forever, to store your client list and send your invoices from their servers. Invoice Generator is the same core workflow — clients, invoices, PDFs, shareable payment links, recurring billing — running entirely on your machine (or your $5 VPS). Your client data never leaves hardware you control.
- Business profile — name, logo upload, address, tax ID, currency, payment/bank instructions printed on every invoice
- Clients — full CRUD with company, email, address, notes
- Invoices — line items (qty × rate), tax %, discount %, notes, due dates, configurable numbering (prefix + auto-increment)
- Statuses — draft / sent / paid, with overdue computed automatically from the due date
- Professional PDFs — clean server-side template (pdfkit, no headless browser) with your logo, status pill, and payment details
- Public share links — send clients
/inv/<token>: they see a polished invoice page and can download the PDF, no login required - Dashboard — outstanding total, paid this month, overdue list at a glance
- Recurring invoices — monthly templates auto-create drafts via an in-process scheduler; optionally auto-email them (BYO SMTP)
- Email invoices — one click, PDF attached, via any SMTP provider (Gmail app password, Mailgun, Postmark…)
- 100% local — SQLite database, no telemetry, no external services
Runs as a normal desktop app. Data lives in your OS user profile; no password needed.
npm i
npm run build
npm run desktopNeed clients to open invoice links from anywhere? Deploy the exact same app to a $5 VPS:
npm i
npm run build
cp .env.example .env # set ADMIN_PASSWORD!
npm start # http://localhost:5303Or with Docker:
docker compose up -d # persists SQLite db in a named volumeRun it as a desktop app, or deploy to a $5 VPS when you need it public. Same code, same database schema — copy your
data/folder between them any time.
Want the packaged Windows installer with zero terminal time? Grab the one-time-purchase build:
→ https://whop.com/onetime-suite
| Invoice Generator | FreshBooks Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $39 once | $19/month ($228/yr) |
| Clients | Unlimited | 5 billable clients |
| Your data | On your machine/server | Their cloud |
| Invoices + PDF | ✅ | ✅ |
| Shareable invoice links | ✅ | ✅ |
| Recurring invoices | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom logo & numbering | ✅ | ✅ |
| Email via your own SMTP | ✅ | ❌ (their sender) |
| Works offline (desktop mode) | ✅ | ❌ |
| Source code | MIT, yours | ❌ |
Two months of FreshBooks pays for this outright. Everything after that is free, forever.
- Backend: Node 20+, Express, better-sqlite3 (WAL), pdfkit (pure-JS PDFs — no puppeteer/Chromium), nodemailer, multer
- Frontend: React 19 + Vite 7, Tailwind CSS 4, Framer Motion, Lucide icons — dark mode by default
- Desktop: thin Electron wrapper (
electron/main.js) that boots the same Express server on a free local port with data in the OS userData dir — auto-logged-in, offline-friendly - Storage: single SQLite file + uploads folder in
data/(or Docker volume / Electron userData)
| Env var | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
PORT |
5303 |
HTTP port (web mode) |
ADMIN_PASSWORD |
changeme |
Dashboard login (web mode; desktop mode skips login) |
DATA_DIR |
./data |
SQLite db + logo uploads |
PUBLIC_BASE_URL |
request host | Base URL used in emailed invoice links |
SMTP is configured in-app under Settings → Email and stored in the database.
npm start # API on :5303
npm run dev # Vite dev server on :5304 (proxies /api)
npm test # end-to-end smoke test (real DB, real PDF)npm run dist builds the Windows NSIS installer (electron-builder).
MIT — see LICENSE.