BillingNow keeps its pricing page refreshingly simple compared to most invoicing software, but “simple” does not always mean “cheap enough for your situation,” and there are real questions worth answering before you commit annual billing. I run Ecommerce Paradise, where I teach people how to build and scale online businesses. A lot of that work touches high-ticket dropshipping specifically, and I get asked about invoicing tools constantly from readers running a service line, consulting practice, or trades business alongside their store. Here is the complete breakdown of what BillingNow actually costs and whether it is worth it for your situation.
Affiliate disclosure: some links in this article are affiliate links and I may earn a commission at no cost to you. It does not change which tools I recommend or what the research found.
| Plan | Monthly Price | Annual Price | Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $9.99/mo | N/A | Unlimited invoices, users, clients, credit notes, expense scans |
| Annual | $8.33/mo equivalent | $99.90/yr | Same as monthly, 17% savings |
One Flat Price, No Feature Gates
BillingNow does not charge extra as you add clients or team members. Try it free for 3 days, no credit card required.
The Two Plans, In Plain Language
BillingNow does not use a tiered pricing model at all, which sets it apart from nearly every competitor in the invoicing space. There is one feature set, and you choose whether to pay for it monthly at $9.99 or annually at $99.90, which works out to $8.33 a month, a 17 percent discount for committing to a year upfront. Both plans include unlimited invoices, unlimited estimates, unlimited credit notes, unlimited team users, and unlimited AI-powered expense scans. Nothing is locked behind a higher tier because there is no higher tier. I cover the product itself in more depth in my full BillingNow review if you want the complete feature walkthrough before deciding on a plan.
What “Unlimited” Actually Includes
Unlimited invoices and unlimited clients means you are never asked to upgrade because you added a sixth client, which is a real limitation on several competing platforms. Unlimited team users means a bookkeeper, virtual assistant, or business partner can get their own login without triggering a per-seat charge, a structure most invoicing tools do not offer below $30 or $40 a month. Unlimited AI expense scans means every receipt you photograph gets processed without hitting a monthly cap, which matters if your business generates a meaningful volume of job-site or travel expenses each month.
What Is Not Included in the Subscription Price
Payment processing runs through Stripe, and Stripe’s standard transaction fees apply separately from your BillingNow subscription. This is standard across the invoicing category, not unique to BillingNow, but it is worth budgeting for since a business processing meaningful payment volume will pay more in Stripe fees over a year than in BillingNow subscription cost itself. Confirm current Stripe rates directly, since they can vary by card type, region, and payment method.
There is no separate payroll add-on, no bookkeeping service upsell, and no per-transaction fee charged by BillingNow itself beyond the flat subscription. That is a meaningfully different cost structure than a platform like Wave, which layers on ACH fees, instant payout fees, and a separate paid bookkeeping tier that can push real annual cost well above the advertised list price.
Monthly vs Annual Billing: Which Should You Choose
The math is simple here: annual billing saves $19.98 a year compared to paying monthly, which is a meaningful but not massive discount. If you are testing BillingNow for the first time, start with the monthly plan even though it costs slightly more, since a 3-day trial is short and you may want a few full billing cycles to decide the platform genuinely fits your workflow before locking in a year.
Once you have used it for one or two months and confirmed it handles your invoicing and expense tracking the way you need, switching to annual billing at that point captures the discount without the risk of prepaying for a tool you end up not using. At under $100 a year either way, this is a low-stakes decision compared to committing annually to a $40 or $50-a-month accounting platform.
How BillingNow’s Pricing Compares to Competitors
FreshBooks’ entry-level Lite plan costs $19 a month, nearly double BillingNow’s rate, and caps you at just 5 billable clients with 1 included team member before charging $11 per additional user. A freelancer with more than 5 active clients or who wants to add a second user immediately pays significantly more on FreshBooks than on BillingNow for a comparable invoicing workflow. See the full breakdown in my BillingNow vs FreshBooks comparison.
Wave’s Starter plan is free, which undercuts BillingNow on sticker price entirely, but Wave’s payment processing runs 2.9 percent plus 60 cents per credit card transaction against Stripe’s more standard rates, and Wave lacks BillingNow’s AI receipt scanning and AI billing assistant on its free tier. I break down the full tradeoff in my BillingNow vs Wave comparison.
QuickBooks and Zoho Books both start well above BillingNow’s price point and are built for businesses that need full double-entry accounting rather than straightforward client invoicing, so they are not a fair apples-to-apples price comparison unless your needs have genuinely outgrown a pure invoicing tool.
For a side-by-side look at all four of these options in one place, see my roundup of the best BillingNow alternatives.
Two Realistic Budget Scenarios
Consider a solo electrician invoicing 15 to 20 clients a month with occasional recurring maintenance contracts. At $9.99 a month, or $99.90 annually, BillingNow’s unlimited-client structure means the invoicing tool itself never becomes a scaling cost as the client list grows, and the AI receipt scanning saves real time on tracking gas, parts, and supply expenses without a bookkeeper’s hourly rate attached to manual entry.
Now consider a two-person consulting team that also wants a bookkeeper to have visibility into the books. BillingNow’s unlimited users covers the bookkeeper’s login at no extra charge, but if that bookkeeper needs double-entry accounting views, bank reconciliation, or a general ledger rather than just invoice and payment visibility, the team will likely need to pair BillingNow with a proper accounting platform or move to one that includes both, since BillingNow does not attempt full bookkeeping.
The Cost of Not Having a Proper Invoicing System
It is worth putting BillingNow’s under-$10-a-month price tag against what it is actually replacing. According to Clockify’s compilation of late invoice payment research, small businesses wait an average of 28.8 days to get paid, and a separate study found nearly a third of freelancer invoices arrive at least a day late. A spreadsheet or a generic template does not send automated late-payment reminders, does not offer a built-in Stripe pay link, and does not track which clients are consistently slow, all of which are the exact mechanisms that shorten that 28.8-day average in practice.
Put another way, if a $9.99-a-month tool shaves even a few days off your average collection time on a handful of invoices a month, it pays for itself many times over in improved cash flow alone, separate from the time saved on manual invoice creation and receipt entry. That framing matters more than the sticker price when you are deciding whether the subscription is worth adding to your monthly software stack.
How Pricing Transparency Compares Across the Category
One underrated advantage of BillingNow’s flat, two-plan pricing page is how easy it is to budget against. Research from the U.S. Small Business Administration consistently flags software and subscription creep as an underestimated cost center for small business owners, since tools with tiered pricing and per-seat add-ons make it easy to lose track of the actual monthly total once a business grows past its first year. A single flat number, whether you pay monthly or annually, is easier to forecast against a fixed budget than a platform where your bill changes every time you add a client or a team member.
This does not mean flat pricing is automatically better for every business. A larger operation that genuinely needs the deeper feature set bundled into a tiered competitor’s higher plans may find that tool cheaper in practice once you account for everything it replaces. But for the freelancer or small trades business BillingNow targets, pricing that does not change as the business grows removes one recurring source of unpleasant billing surprises.
Finding Suppliers for the Product Side of Your Business
If invoicing software is solving the service side of your income while you build out a product-based store, the next piece of that puzzle is sourcing. My guide to finding reliable suppliers covers vetting, negotiating terms, and avoiding the common mistakes that trip up first-time importers, and those supplier relationships benefit from the same clean invoicing discipline you would apply to client billing, since supplier payment terms and your own client payment terms both flow through the same cash position.
What Happens When You Try to Cancel
Before cancelling any subscription, export your data. BillingNow supports exporting invoices, client records, expense data, and financial reports to PDF, CSV, or Excel, so make sure you pull a complete export of your billing history before ending your subscription regardless of which platform you are moving to next. This is basic hygiene for any SaaS cancellation, but it matters more for financial and invoicing data than for most other software categories, since you may need those records for tax purposes years later.
Budgeting for BillingNow Alongside Your Other Business Costs
At under $10 a month, BillingNow is one of the cheaper recurring software costs most freelancers or trades businesses will carry, sitting well below typical costs for a business formation service, a dedicated business phone line, or basic liability insurance. If you are also running a store in a high-ticket niche, invoicing software for a service side of the business is a small line item relative to inventory or ad spend, but it is still worth tracking since a handful of small subscriptions add up over a year. Readers picking their first niche should start with my high-ticket niches list before layering on a service arm to fund it.
How to Decide Between Monthly and Annual Without Overthinking It
A simple rule of thumb: if you are still evaluating whether BillingNow fits your workflow, stay on monthly for at least one full billing cycle after the trial ends. The $19.98 annual savings is not large enough to justify locking in before you know the tool works the way you need it to for your specific mix of clients, invoice frequency, and expense volume. Trades workers billing per job versus consultants billing on retainer will use the recurring invoice and milestone billing features differently, and it is worth confirming the workflow fits before committing to a year.
Once you have run at least four or five invoice cycles through the platform without friction, switching to annual billing is a low-risk move given the total dollar amount involved. Set a calendar reminder a week before your annual renewal date regardless of which plan you choose, since that is generally the point where SaaS subscriptions quietly renew without much thought and it is worth a quick gut check on whether the tool is still earning its spot in your monthly software stack.
Comparing Total Cost of Ownership, Not Just the Sticker Price
Sticker price comparisons between invoicing tools miss real cost differences that only show up once you factor in payment processing, add-on features, and per-seat charges. A tool advertised at $0 a month that charges higher payment processing fees and gates automation behind a paid tier can cost more in practice over a year than a $9.99-a-month tool with no additional fees beyond standard payment processing.
Run the actual math for your specific volume before choosing based on the advertised monthly number alone. If you process $5,000 a month in client payments, a half-percent difference in processing fees between platforms adds up to real money over twelve months, often more than the subscription price difference between the tools themselves. This is the same discipline worth applying to any recurring software decision for your business, whether that is invoicing, hosting, or ad platforms.
Is BillingNow Worth the Price
For the specific audience it targets, freelancers, solo trades professionals, and small teams who need fast, professional invoicing without a full accounting platform, BillingNow’s price is genuinely hard to beat given the unlimited-everything structure. The value proposition weakens the moment your needs expand into full bookkeeping, payroll, or inventory-linked billing, at which point you are better served paying more for a platform built for that scope from the start rather than trying to stretch BillingNow past its intended use case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a free trial for BillingNow?
Yes, BillingNow offers a 3-day free trial that does not require a credit card upfront, though this is shorter than the 14 or 30-day trials common among competitors.
Does BillingNow charge per client or per invoice?
No, both the monthly and annual plans include unlimited clients and unlimited invoices at the same flat rate, with no usage-based charges beyond your subscription and standard Stripe processing fees.
Can I negotiate BillingNow’s pricing for a larger team?
BillingNow’s public pricing does not list an enterprise or custom tier, and the flat-rate model with unlimited users means there is generally little need to negotiate, since the price does not scale up with team size the way competitor per-seat pricing does.
Does BillingNow charge extra for the AI billing assistant or receipt scanning?
No, both features are included in the base subscription price at every billing frequency, with no separate add-on fee for AI functionality.
Is annual billing refundable if I cancel early?
Refund policies vary and should be confirmed directly on BillingNow’s site before purchasing annually, since not every SaaS company prorates a refund for unused months on an annual plan.
Will BillingNow’s price go up as I add more clients or invoices?
No, the flat-rate structure means your monthly or annual cost stays the same regardless of how many clients, invoices, or team members you add, which is a meaningful difference from tiered competitors that charge more as your business grows.
Does BillingNow offer discounts for nonprofits or students?
BillingNow’s public pricing page does not list a nonprofit or student discount at this time, so confirm directly with the company if that applies to your situation before assuming standard pricing is your only option.
Can I switch from monthly to annual billing mid-subscription?
Most SaaS billing systems allow a mid-cycle switch to annual, though the exact proration rules should be confirmed in your account settings or with support before making the change.
My team covers pricing decisions like this one, along with the rest of the financial and legal side of running a growing online business, inside the Ecommerce Paradise Academy on Skool. It is free for the first 7 days, then paid based on the tier you choose.
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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