Invoice Ninja vs Recurly (2026): Pricing, Features & Verdict
Invoice Ninja and Recurly both score 6.8/10 on our Finance Software criteria. For 10 users, Invoice Ninja costs about $18/mo, against $249/mo for Recurly; only Invoice Ninja has a free plan.
Last updated: November 2026
Invoice Ninja
6.8/10
Source-available invoicing, quoting, payments, expense and time-tracking software for freelancers and small businesses. You can use the hosted cloud service or run it on your own server.
Recurly
6.8/10
Recurly is a subscription billing and recurring payments platform that helps subscription businesses run billing, collect payments, recover failed charges, and report on revenue.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
| Feature | | |
|---|---|---|
| Scores | ||
| Overall Rating | 6.8/10 | 6.8/10 |
| Scalability | 5/10 | 8/10 |
| Analytics | 4/10 | 5/10 |
| Compliance | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Integration | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Security | 7/10 | 8/10 |
| Support | 6/10 | 6/10 |
| Cost | 9/10 | 4/10 |
| Customization | 8/10 | 6/10 |
| Ease of Use | 6/10 | 7/10 |
| Pricing | ||
| Free plan | Yes | No |
| Cheapest paid plan | $14/mo Ninja Pro | $249/mo Starter |
| Estimated cost for 10 users | $18/mo Enterprise | $249/mo Starter |
| Features | ||
| Invoicing | ||
| Multi-currency | ||
| Online Payments | ||
| Tax Compliance | ||
| Bank Reconciliation | Not listed | |
| Expense Management | Not listed | |
Invoice Ninja vs Recurly cost by team size
Invoice Ninja costs less at every team size we checked.
| Team size | Invoice Ninja | Recurly |
|---|---|---|
| 1 user | FreeFree | $249/moStarter |
| 5 users | $18/moEnterprise | $249/moStarter |
| 10 users | $18/moEnterprise | $249/moStarter |
| 25 users | $18/moEnterprise | $249/moStarter |
| 50 users | $18/moEnterprise | $249/moStarter |
The plan that fits each team size, billed monthly, before add-ons and usage charges. Each cost opens that tool's pricing calculator for the team size.
Who Invoice Ninja and Recurly suit
| Audience | Invoice Ninja | Recurly |
|---|---|---|
| Agencies | 7/10Projects, Kanban tasks, client portal and multi-user permissions on Enterprise support small agency billing. | Not rated |
| Consultancies | 8/10Quotes with e-signature, project time tracking and expense rebilling fit consultants who bill by the hour. | Not rated |
| Developers | 8/10Source-available Laravel code, Docker self-hosting, a REST API and SDKs let technical teams run and extend it. | Not rated |
| E-commerce | Not rated | 7/10A dedicated All-Access for Shopify plan offers bundles, subscribe-and-save, and gift subscriptions. |
| Enterprise | 3/10User caps of 100, no ledger and a very small vendor team make it a poor fit for large organisations. | Not rated |
| Finance Teams | Not rated | 6/10The RevRec add-on and the NetSuite and QuickBooks connectors help finance teams, though reviewers say reporting is limited. |
| Freelancers | 9/10The free plan, flat-priced Pro tier, time-to-invoice tools and client portal are built around solo billers. | Not rated |
| Legal | 5/10LawPay is a supported gateway, but the product has no legal-specific trust accounting. | Not rated |
| Mid-Market | Not rated | 8/10The All-Access plan has a 1 million USD billing-volume minimum, which suits growing subscription businesses. |
| SaaS Companies | Not rated | 9/10The core product is built around recurring subscription billing, dunning, and revenue recognition. |
| Small Business | 8/10Unlimited clients, recurring billing, many payment gateways and up to 10 linked companies suit small firms at low cost. | Not rated |
| Startups | Not rated | 5/10Starter includes a 90-day trial, but its 249 USD monthly fee is high for very early companies. |
Which One Should You Choose?
Why choose Invoice Ninja
- Has a free plan (Recurly does not)
- Lower estimated cost for 10 users: $18/mo vs $249/mo
- Higher Cost score (9/10 vs 4/10)
- Higher Customization score (8/10 vs 6/10)
Why choose Recurly
- Higher Scalability score (8/10 vs 5/10)
- Higher Analytics score (5/10 vs 4/10)
Pros & Cons
Invoice Ninja
Pros
- The Free plan includes online payments, recurring billing, expenses, projects and a client portal, and Pro is only $140 a year.
- Supports about 20 payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Square, GoCardless, Mollie, Braintree, LawPay and Bitcoin options, and can pass gateway fees on to clients.
- The code is published on GitHub, with Docker and other self-hosting options, so teams can keep their data on their own infrastructure.
- Supports PEPPOL, XRechnung, ZUGFeRD and Facturae e-invoicing, which helps European sellers meet mandates.
- The hosted service reports SOC 2, PCI-DSS, AES-256 encryption at rest and MFA on all accounts.
- Reviewers on G2 and SpotSaaS praise the frequent feature releases, roughly every two months.
Cons
- It is not full accounting: there is no general ledger, balance sheet or payroll, so bookkeeping software is still needed.
- Bank sync, user permissions and e-invoicing require the Enterprise plan, and the Free and Pro plans are limited to a single user.
- Reviewers say custom invoice and portal designs need JSON or CSS knowledge.
- Self-hosted setup and upgrades take technical skill, and forum users have reported bugs and gaps in the documentation after major version changes.
- Reporting is limited to invoice, expense and P&L-style reports, and G2 reviewers call the interface dated.
Recurly
Pros
- Supports more than 20 payment gateways and can route payments across several of them, which reduces lock-in to one processor.
- Reviewers credit the automated dunning and card updater with reducing involuntary churn.
- Reviewers describe the platform as reliable, with few major outages.
- Recurly says it holds PCI-DSS Level 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, with SSO, SAML, and two-factor authentication.
- Has ready-made connectors for Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Avalara.
Cons
- Reporting and analytics are the most common complaint in reviews.
- Customer-specific billing exceptions are hard to handle, according to reviewers.
- All-Access requires 1 million USD in billing volume, and Starter charges both a platform fee and a percentage of billings.
- It is not an accounting system and has no general ledger, so it must be paired with accounting software.
- Some reviewers criticise the commercial terms and contract experience.
Not sold on either?
Frequently Asked Questions
Invoice Ninja and Recurly both score 6.8/10 on our Finance Software criteria. The largest gap is in Cost: 9/10 for Invoice Ninja and 4/10 for Recurly.
Invoice Ninja costs less for 10 users: about $18/mo on its Enterprise plan, against about $249/mo on its Starter plan for Recurly, billed monthly.
Invoice Ninja has a free plan; Recurly does not list one.
