Updated August 2026
    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    10.0k

    Invoice Ninja: Maintenance, Licence and Alternatives

    Powerful tool to invoice clients online.

    TL;DR • Invoice Ninja • as of August 2026

    Invoice Ninja is an open-source money, budgeting & management project positioned as an alternative to Invoicing, with 10.0k GitHub stars and a health score of 100/100. It committed 1903 times in the last twelve months across 12 of those months, and its status is actively maintained. Licence: Elastic-2.0. It has real momentum, so treat it as a live competitor rather than a stale repository.

    10.0k
    GitHub stars
    100/100
    Health score
    1903
    Commits (12 mo)
    12/12
    Active months

    Maintenance health

    Status Actively maintained — Committed within the last 45 days.
    Last commit 2026-08-11
    Days since last commit 6
    Commits, last 3 months 373
    Commits, last 12 months 1903
    Months with activity 12 of 12
    Last release 2026-08-15
    Archived No
    Licence Elastic-2.0
    Category Money, Budgeting & Management
    Positioned against Invoicing

    Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.

    What the licence lets you do

    Elastic-2.0

    Source-available (BSL, SSPL, Commons Clause): readable but not open source. Commercial use is usually restricted — read the licence before building on it.

    This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.

    What Invoice Ninja means for your idea

    Invoice Ninja is shipping code consistently, so a buyer comparing your product will find a maintained free option. Price and position against the total cost of self-hosting it, not against the paid incumbent's list price.

    Assume every prospect can find a free version in five minutes. Your wedge has to be something open source structurally cannot deliver: compliance, support SLAs, managed hosting at scale, or a workflow the maintainers refuse to build.

    Invoice Ninja: common questions

    Is Invoice Ninja still maintained in 2026?

    Actively maintained. Invoice Ninja recorded 1903 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 12 of those months and 373 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-08-11. Last release: 2026-08-15. Committed within the last 45 days.

    Can I use Invoice Ninja commercially?

    Invoice Ninja is published under Elastic-2.0. Source-available (BSL, SSPL, Commons Clause): readable but not open source. Commercial use is usually restricted — read the licence before building on it.

    Is Invoice Ninja a good Invoicing alternative?

    Invoice Ninja targets the same job as Invoicing and is actively shipping. Adoption sits at 10.0k stars. Whether it is a good replacement depends on your deployment constraints: self-hosting adds infrastructure, upgrade and security work that a commercial subscription absorbs for you.

    How crowded is the Money, Budgeting & Management category?

    42 open-source implementations, 27 of them actively maintained, led by HyperSwitch at 43k stars. Saturation score 72/100 — Crowded. Free, maintained alternatives already dominate this category.

    Invoice Ninja alternatives in Money, Budgeting & Management

    HyperSwitch

    Money, Budgeting & Management

    43k

    Payment switch to make payments fast, reliable and affordable. Connect with multiple payment processors and route traffic effortlessly, all with a single API integration.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    Apache-2.0

    Actual

    Money, Budgeting & Management

    28k

    Local-first personal finance tool based on zero-sum budgeting, supporting synchronization across devices, custom rules, manual transaction importing (from QIF, OFX, and QFX files), and optional automa

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    MIT

    Firefly III

    Alternative to Personal finance

    24k

    Firefly III is a modern financial manager. It helps you to keep track of your money and make budget forecasts. It supports credit cards, has an advanced rule engine and can import data from many banks

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    AGPL-3.0

    Lago

    Alternative to Stripe Billing, Chargebee, Usage-based billing

    10k

    Metering and usage-based billing.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    AGPL-3.0

    Sure

    Money, Budgeting & Management

    9.5k

    Personal finance application for everyone (fork of Maybe).

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    AGPL-3.0

    Competing with free? Check the market first.

    IdeaProof scores your idea against live competitors, market size and 1,000+ documented startup failures in about two minutes.