Zoho Invoice is free. What does it cost a builder anyway?

Zoho Invoice is free. Not a 14-day trial: Zoho says it is "completely free to use, with no hidden charges or time limits", and you don't need a card. It even does CIS deductions on invoices, which is more than some paid trade apps manage on their own.

So if you're a labour-only subbie sending a monthly invoice to one main contractor, Zoho Invoice may be all you need, and paying for anything else would be daft.

If you're a builder pricing extensions and kitchens, with stage payments, extras and subbies of your own, the price tag isn't the cost. The cost is the evenings you spend doing by hand what the free app doesn't do. That's the sum this post is about.

Free, with a cap you'll rarely hit

Zoho's UK pricing page says Zoho Invoice is free up to 500 invoices a year (Zoho Invoice pricing), and the limits reset each year on the date you created your organisation (Zoho help). There are no paid plans: Zoho calls it "a forever free plan" and points you to Zoho Billing if you want more (Zoho help).

Five hundred invoices a year is plenty for most small firms. One limit to check before you rely on it: Zoho's global comparison page lists 2 users and 3 projects (comparison). We couldn't confirm that applies to UK accounts, but if it does, three projects is tight for a builder with jobs overlapping.

What Zoho Invoice does well

Credit where it's due. Zoho Corporation is a long-established software company, headquartered in Chennai and founded in 1996 (Wikipedia). Zoho Invoice scores 4.7 out of 5 from over 800 reviews on Capterra (Capterra). For a free app it covers a lot:

• CIS deductions. Enter your UTR and NI number, pick a rate, and invoices get a "Covered by CIS?" box with the deduction calculated for you (CIS help).
• A client portal where customers accept, decline or comment on quotes (features).
• E-signatures on quotes through the Zoho Sign integration (quotes).
• Projects, time tracking, online payment gateways and automatic payment reminders.
• Apps for iPhone and Android (Zoho Invoice). EstiMate runs in the browser on Android and as an iPhone app, so if you want a native Android app, Zoho has the edge there.

Where free stops on a building job

Prices checked October 2026. Zoho's CIS help says deductions aren't supported on expenses, and we couldn't find CIS returns (CIS help). Zoho Invoice's UK VAT help covers the reverse charge for trade outside the UK, while the domestic reverse charge is documented for Zoho Books and Zoho Billing (VAT help, Zoho Books VAT). On its UK Invoice pages, Zoho also says that if your business needs to comply with Making Tax Digital, it recommends Zoho Books. "Not found" means we searched and found nothing in October 2026, which isn't proof it's missing.

EstiMate doesn't file to HMRC either. It prepares the VAT figures and keeps the CIS register, and plenty of firms have an accountant do the filing.

The real cost: your evenings

Here's the sum with clearly illustrative numbers. Plug in your own.

Say you run four jobs a month, and each one throws up two extras. With a free invoice app where we couldn't find a variations feature, each extra means writing it up, emailing it, chasing a yes, and remembering to add it to the right invoice. Call it 30 minutes each. Eight extras is four hours a month.

Then the stage payments. Each stage invoice has to be worked out against the original price and the extras so far, by you, from your notes. Call it 15 minutes per invoice, three per job, twelve a month: three hours.

On those assumptions, that's seven hours a month. At an illustrative £240 day rate over an eight-hour day, your time is worth £30 an hour, so seven hours is £210. EstiMate is £15.99 a month. Even if your real figure is a quarter of that, the free app isn't free.

In EstiMate, extras are priced from site as variations with a one-tap approval link, and the contract total, invoices and reports update with an audit trail (variation order software). Payment milestones come with the plan, so stage invoices follow milestones you set up front rather than a fresh sum each time. The one thing EstiMate can't give you back is the time you spend checking it, which you should still do.

Who should stick with Zoho Invoice

• Labour-only subbies invoicing a contractor with CIS deducted. Our CIS guide covers what the invoice needs to show.
• Sole traders who aren't VAT registered, so the domestic reverse charge doesn't come into it.
• Anyone who needs a native Android app.
• Anyone already in the Zoho family who can move up to Zoho Books later.

Reviewers on Capterra and G2 do raise limits worth knowing: the free-plan caps, few payment integrations (one reviewer says "only integrates with Stripe"), limited template customisation with Zoho branding on free-plan documents, and a customer's currency that can't be changed after the first invoice (G2).

Who should look at EstiMate

• Builders with jobs that run for weeks, where the extras and stages are where the money is.
• Contractors who take on CIS subbies and want a register, not a spreadsheet.
• Anyone who wants the quote, contract, variations, invoices and the P&L in one place, priced per business on our pricing page.

EstiMate has a free plan too: three jobs a month, no time limit, no card, with watermarked PDFs. It's a different kind of free from Zoho's: it covers pricing three jobs a month with material and labour breakdowns, while contracts, invoicing, variations and the Accounts tab are on the £15.99 plan. If you've outgrown free invoicing altogether, our piece on why an invoice app isn't enough goes further.

What to do next

1. Write down how many extras and stage invoices you did last month, and roughly how long they took.
2. Put your own day rate into the sum above.
3. Price your next job in EstiMate on the free plan. When the first extra comes up, that's the point to try the £15.99 plan and run it as a variation.

Do the sum on your next job: start free.