Best invoicing app for contractors
Most "best invoicing app" lists are written by people who bill for content, not jobs. This one names real published prices for seven apps contractors actually run, states what each one is bad at, and includes our own app — flagged as ours, limits and all.
1. Job Cost Pro
Ours — built by this site's founder. Judge accordingly.
Best for: an invoice that is built from what the job actually cost, not a blank template.
Invoices in Job Cost Pro pull from the same receipts and hours already logged against the job, so the number you send a client is tied to a real cost history instead of typed in from memory. That is the whole idea — invoicing and job costing are one workflow here, not two apps stitched together with a spreadsheet in between.
Pricing: Free tier is permanent — 3 active projects, 50 receipts/month, no card. Paid plans $29.99 or $49.99/month.
The catch: No estimating, no scheduling, no dispatch — this is a money app, not a calendar app. iPhone and web only today; no Android app. If you invoice flat fees with no job costs behind them, the thing that makes this useful to us is wasted on you.
Free plan: 3 projects, 50 receipts a month. No credit card. Some features require a paid plan.
2. Joist
Best for: estimate-to-invoice in one flow, on the phone, at the kitchen table.
Joist built its name on turning an estimate into a signed proposal into an invoice without leaving the app, which is the exact sequence a lot of trades and small remodelers run every week. The mobile-first estimate-to-invoice loop is genuinely well built, and it has the contractor following to show for it.
Pricing: No free plan today. Basics $12/month (5 documents/month), Pro $17/month (unlimited documents and clients), Elite $32/month (adds change orders), and a newer Run plan at $100/month, all on monthly billing. All tiers get a 14-day free trial of the full Run-plan feature set, no card required.
Source: joist.com/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: The free plan Joist used to offer is gone — every tier is paid now, and the entry tier caps you at 5 documents a month, which a busy contractor clears fast. It is an estimating-and-invoicing tool, not a job-cost tool — nothing here tells you what a job actually cost to build.
3. Jobber
Best for: field service businesses that need scheduling and dispatch as much as invoicing.
Jobber is built around the full field-service loop — booking, scheduling, crew dispatch, route optimization — with invoicing as one piece of a bigger operations system. If your business runs on a calendar of appointments more than a queue of remodels, this is the shape of tool built for you.
Pricing: Core $29/month, Connect from $99/month, Grow $149/month, Plus from $399/month (annual billing; month-to-month is higher: Core $49, Connect $139, Grow $199, Plus $499). 14-day trial of Grow-level features, no card required. Job costing itself only arrives at the Grow tier.
Source: getjobber.com/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: It is priced and built for service-call volume, not project-based remodeling — the jump from Core to Connect to unlock QuickBooks sync and automated invoice follow-ups is steep for a solo or two-person crew, and job costing is locked behind the third tier up.
4. Square Invoices
Best for: someone already taking card payments through Square who wants invoicing bolted on for free.
If you already run a Square reader at the jobsite or a Square Point of Sale, the free Invoices tier is a reasonable way to add invoicing without a second subscription. It covers invoices, recurring invoices, estimates, contracts, and basic project workspaces at no monthly cost.
Pricing: Square lists a free plan with no monthly fee, plus paid Plus and Premium plans. We could not confirm the paid-plan dollar prices from Square's own page today — the price table did not load for us — so ask Square for the current price.
Source: squareup.com/us/en/invoices/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: The free tier is real, but it is accounting-and-payments-shaped, not job-shaped — nothing connects an invoice line to what that specific job cost you in materials and labor.
5. Invoice2go
Best for: solo operators who want the simplest send-an-invoice, get-paid loop, if 30 invoices a year is enough.
Invoice2go is a straightforward invoicing app — send a professional invoice, take a card payment, track when a client viewed it — with three tiers that differ in yearly invoice cap and card fee. It's aimed squarely at solo operators who want the simplest send-an-invoice, get-paid loop.
Pricing: Three tiers that differ in yearly invoice cap and card fee: Starter 30 invoices at 3.5%, Professional 100 at 3.0%, Premium unlimited at 2.9%. We could not confirm the dollar prices from the vendor's own page today — they appear only after you pick a currency and billing period — so ask Invoice2go for the current price.
Source: invoice.2go.com/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: The entry tier's 30-invoices-a-year cap is easy to blow through in a single busy month, and none of the tiers do anything with what a job cost to build — it is invoicing and payment collection, full stop.
6. Zoho Invoice
Best for: genuinely free invoicing with no trial clock running out.
Unlike most "free trial" invoicing tools, Zoho Invoice has a free plan with no subscription fees and no 14-day countdown. It covers tax-compliant invoices, recurring billing, quotes, expense tracking, and a client portal, which is a real feature set for zero dollars.
Pricing: Free, permanently — capped at 2 users, 3 active projects, and 500 invoices a year, with "Powered by Zoho Invoice" branding on every invoice. Zoho offers Zoho Billing as a paid step-up for businesses that outgrow those caps.
Source: zoho.com/us/invoice/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: The 3-project and 500-invoice caps will eventually bind a growing contractor, and the branding stays on your invoices the whole time you are on the free plan — that is the trade for zero dollars. It is bookkeeping-and-invoicing software, not job costing; the "projects" here are billing containers, not cost centers.
7. QuickBooks Online
Best for: an invoice that lands directly in the books your accountant already reconciles.
QuickBooks Online invoices are QuickBooks Online transactions — no export, no sync step, because the invoicing lives inside the same ledger your accountant closes out every month. For a lot of contractors, that single fact outweighs everything else on this list.
Pricing: Simple Start (the entry paid tier, includes basic invoicing) is $38/month; QuickBooks also now lists a limited Free plan (1 user, 2 invoices a month). Project profitability — the job-costing feature — starts on the Plus tier at $140/month as of the August 1, 2026 price increase.
Source: quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: Job costing is gated behind the $140/month Plus tier — Simple Start gets you invoicing and bookkeeping, not a view of what any specific job cost. And like every general accounting tool here, costs land when someone codes a transaction at a desk, not when the receipt happens at the counter.
8. Wave
Best for: a one-person operation that wants free invoicing and free bookkeeping together.
Wave has kept a genuinely free Starter tier for years — unlimited invoices, estimates, bills, and basic bookkeeping records, with no monthly fee. For someone just starting out who mostly needs to send a professional invoice and keep simple books, it is a real answer.
Pricing: Starter plan is free — unlimited invoices and estimates, card processing at 2.9% + $0.60/transaction. Pro is $19/month and adds branding removal, file attachments, and automated late-payment reminders.
Source: waveapps.com/pricing · checked October 8, 2026
The catch: It is accounting-shaped, like QuickBooks and Zoho — there is no job-level cost view here at any tier. And the free plan's per-transaction card fee has no discount until you move to Pro.
Two different invoicing problems hiding in one search
A contractor searching "best invoicing app" is usually asking one of two different questions, and most lists answer neither well. The first question is "how do I send a professional-looking invoice and get paid faster" — that is a payments-and-templates problem, and Square, Invoice2go, Wave, and Zoho all solve it competently. The second question is "how do I know what this invoice should actually say" — meaning, what did the job cost, and does the number I am about to send reflect that.
Almost nothing on this list answers the second question, because almost nothing on this list is built around a job. QuickBooks and Wave are built around a ledger. Square is built around a payment. Joist is built around a proposal. Jobber is built around a schedule. Job costing, when it shows up at all — Jobber's Grow tier, QuickBooks Plus — arrives as an add-on feature bolted onto a tool designed for something else, not as the thing the tool is actually for.
That distinction is the reason we built ours the way we did, and it is also the honest reason it will not be the right answer for every contractor reading this. If you invoice flat-rate jobs with predictable costs, a job-cost-first invoicing app is solving a problem you do not have — pick from the payments-and-templates side of this list instead.
What to actually check before you pick one
Start with where the number on the invoice comes from. Do you type it in from memory, pull it from an estimate you built weeks ago, or does it reflect what the job has actually cost you in materials and labor as of today? Those are three different levels of trust in the number you are about to send a client.
Then check what happens when a $900 receipt covers two jobs, or a crew splits a day across three sites — can the tool handle that split cleanly, or does it force everything into one bucket and quietly corrupt your job-level numbers? Most of the apps on this list were never asked to answer that question, because they were not built around jobs in the first place.
Then look at where your invoicing tool sits relative to your books. Does it live inside your accounting system already (QuickBooks, Wave, Zoho), sit next to it and require an export (Joist, Invoice2go, Square, Jobber, us), or replace it entirely? None of those is automatically wrong — but know which one you are choosing, because switching later means moving a year of invoices somewhere new.
Finally, price it at the tier you would actually need, not the cheapest advertised number. Job costing on Jobber means the Grow tier at $149/month on annual billing ($199 month-to-month), not the Core tier at $29. Job costing on QuickBooks means Plus at $140/month (monthly billing), not Simple Start at $38. The headline price and the price of the feature you actually came here for are frequently two different numbers.
Why we put our own app on this list
Because leaving it off would be stranger than including it, and because an anonymous "best of" page that quietly funnels you toward the author's own product is exactly the pattern we dislike about most lists in this category. Job Cost Pro exists because its founder, a working remodeler, bid a $42,000 bathroom at a 30% margin and finished at 12%, having lost track of costs across a job that outran his invoicing tool's ability to keep up with what it actually cost.
So it is on the list, flagged as ours, with its limits stated plainly: iPhone and web only, no estimating, no scheduling, no dispatch. Nobody paid to appear here, there are no affiliate links, and the prices above came off each vendor's own page on the date shown — except the figures we could not confirm (Invoice2go's and Square's paid-plan prices), which the copy says outright rather than guessing. If Jobber, Square, or QuickBooks fits your operation better than we do, that is a fine outcome. The point is a contractor who can trust the number on the invoice, whichever app gets them there.
Log a receipt at the counter, and the job margin — and the invoice — update from what the job actually cost. Free on 3 projects and 50 receipts a month.
Free plan: 3 projects, 50 receipts a month. No credit card. Some features require a paid plan.
