You sign a fourth brand retainer, open the invoicing tool you have been using free for a year, go to add the client, and find out the plan will not take another one. The work did not get bigger. The client list did. That is the specific way this breaks for freelance social media managers, and it breaks at a caseload most invoicing pricing pages are not designed around.
Why a multi-retainer freelancer hits the cap first
A solo contractor in most other fields bills one or two clients for a lot of money. A freelance social media manager bills four or five brands for a little, every month, on a recurring cycle. Same revenue, four times the client records.
That matters because where these tools cap anything, they cap it in records, not in dollars. FreshBooks is the clearest case among the four checked here: its Lite plan is sold as “Send invoices to 5 clients”, and its own comparison table lists the Billable Clients row as 5 for Lite, 50 for Plus, and Unlimited for Premium. Nothing in that row asks what the invoices are worth. A freelancer running five $400 retainers and a freelancer running five $4,000 retainers sit at the same point on the meter.
So the pressure arrives at a predictable moment. Not when the money grows. When the third or fourth logo goes on the list, and the plan that was comfortable at two clients becomes the reason you cannot onboard the fifth.
Three different things a “free tier” can cap
The word “free” is doing at least three separate jobs on these pages, and they fail in different ways. The first is a cap on client or customer records, which is what FreshBooks meters. The second is a cap on invoices sent, which is the one freelancers expect and, among these four, the one nobody actually enforces at the entry level. The third is not a cap at all: it is a payment processing fee that applies whatever plan you are on, and that can differ between the free tier and the paid tier of the same product.
Wave is the live demonstration that these come apart. Its Starter plan costs $0 and includes, in the vendor’s own words, “Create unlimited estimates, invoices, bills, and bookkeeping records”. Unlimited invoicing, no disclosed client cap. What Starter does carry is a card rate of 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction, against the Pro plan’s 2.9% + $0. Read the asterisk and the picture tightens again: Wave’s footnote states the Pro rate of 2.9% + $0 applies “for the first ten cumulative transactions in a monthly subscription period, then 2.9% + $0.60” after that.
The other direction is just as common. A tool can advertise unlimited clients and still be the most expensive option on the list, because the subscription floor never drops to zero. Three of the four tools here have no ongoing free plan at all. “Get started for free” on those pages means a trial with an end date.
Four invoicing tools freelancers use, checked against their own pricing pages
| Tool | Is there an ongoing free plan? | Client cap on the lowest tier | Card processing rate as disclosed | Entry price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HoneyBook | No. The page states “All plans start with a free trial” and the FAQ describes 30 days, no credit card required. | None. The FAQ answers “How many projects or clients are included in each plan?” with “Unlimited.” | The page gives two figures. Its processing section and FAQ say card fees “start at 2.7% + 10¢” and bank transfers are 1.5%. Its plan comparison row reads “Fees starting at 2.9% + 25¢”. | Starter, $29/month billed yearly. The page’s own pricing toggle sets the billed-monthly figure at $36. |
| Wave | Yes. Starter is listed at $0. | None disclosed. Unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records on Starter. Adding admin, editor or viewer users is a Pro feature; free accounts can grant payroll manager or tax pro access. | Starter: 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction, 3.4% + $0.60 Amex. Pro: 2.9% + $0, but only for the first ten cumulative transactions in a monthly subscription period, then 2.9% + $0.60. | $0 for Starter. Pro is $19 USD/month billed monthly, or $190 USD/year billed annually. |
| FreshBooks | No. Paid tiers with a 30-day free trial. | 5 billable clients on Lite. Plus is 50, Premium is Unlimited. | Not stated on the pricing page. The page lists “Access to Lower Credit Card Transaction Fees” as a tier feature without publishing a percentage anywhere on it. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: a FreshBooks-published card rate by plan tier] | Lite, $23.00 USD/mo list. Plus $43.00, Premium $70.00. Team members are $11/mo per extra user. |
| Bonsai | No. The FAQ describes a 7-day trial, after which you choose a plan. | None. Basic lists “Unlimited clients” and “Unlimited projects”. The catch is elsewhere: invoicing is not in Basic. Essentials is the tier described as “Everything in Basic plus Invoices & Payments”. | Not stated on the pricing page. The FAQ says fees “vary depending on the payment method used” and refers readers to a separate help article. | Basic, $15/user/month monthly or $9/user/month billed annually. Essentials, the first tier that invoices, is $25/user/month monthly or $19 billed annually. |
Prices verified 3 September 2026, each read from the vendor’s own pricing page. Promotional prices were in force on some of those pages that day and are excluded in favour of list prices. This is a blog piece, not Watchdog data, and it is not on the re-verification schedule, so treat the figures as a snapshot of that date and check the page before you buy.
Running the retainer math against the caps
Take a freelancer with four monthly retainers at $400 each. Round numbers, substitute your own. That is $1,600 invoiced a month across four card transactions.
On Wave Starter, each invoice costs $400 × 2.9% + $0.60, or $12.20. Four of those is $48.80 a month in card fees on a $0 subscription. Moving to Pro at $19/month waives the sixty cents on each of the first ten transactions in the period, so the same four invoices cost $46.40. The fee saving is $2.40. The subscription is $19. At four transactions a month the upgrade does not pay for itself on processing, and it cannot: ten transactions times sixty cents caps the entire discount at $6.00 a month. Volume is what moves that, not retainer size.
FreshBooks is where the client cap actually bites. Lite at $23.00/mo covers five billable clients, so a fourth and a fifth retainer both fit. The sixth does not. Crossing it means Plus at $43.00/mo, which is $20.00 more per month, or $240 a year, to add one client. The upgrade does buy room to 50, but at the moment you are forced into it you are paying $240 a year for the sixth logo.
HoneyBook replaces the caseload question with a floor. No client cap, so a fourth retainer changes nothing, but the cheapest way in is $29/month billed yearly, which is $348 a year, or $36/month if you bill monthly. Its card fee on that $1,600 month depends on which of its own two disclosed starting rates you use: 2.7% + 10¢ works out to $43.60, and 2.9% + 25¢ works out to $47.40. Same page, same month, $3.80 apart.
Bonsai cannot be completed. Basic at $9/user/month billed annually has no client cap but does not invoice, so the entry point for this reader is Essentials at $19/user/month billed annually or $25 monthly. The processing side of that arithmetic is unavailable because the pricing page publishes no rate.
What to check before committing to one tool
- Whether archived clients still count. A cap of five is a cap of five forever if a finished project keeps its record. Check whether the tool has an archive state that releases a slot, or whether you will be deleting old clients, and their invoice history, to make room for new ones.
- Whether the processing rate is on the pricing page at all. HoneyBook and Wave publish percentages next to the plans. FreshBooks and Bonsai do not, and Bonsai’s FAQ sends you to a separate help article for the breakdown. If the rate is one click away from the price, budget an hour to find it before you sign up, not after.
- Whether a brand counts as a client or a project. Bonsai’s Basic tier lists unlimited clients and unlimited projects together, so the distinction costs nothing there. On a tool that caps one and not the other, it decides whether a brand running three campaigns is one record against your limit or three.
- Whether annual billing moves the cap or only the price. On all four of these pages the yearly toggle changes the dollar figure and leaves the feature and client limits alone. FreshBooks Lite is five clients at $23.00 whichever way you pay. Confirm that before assuming a year up front buys headroom.
- Whether the discounted rate has its own limit. Wave’s is the instructive one. The paid plan’s headline 2.9% + $0 reverts to 2.9% + $0.60 after ten transactions in the period, which is the sort of thing that lives in a footnote and shows up in a statement.
Where the free plan genuinely holds up
None of this is a knock on any of these products at the caseload they were priced for. FreshBooks Lite at five billable clients is a sound fit for a freelancer with two or three retainers and no plan to double that this year. Wave Starter genuinely does unlimited invoicing at $0, and if your clients pay by bank transfer rather than card, the fee comparison that dominates this piece barely applies to you. HoneyBook charges from the first month but never asks how many clients you have. Bonsai’s entry tier is cheap and uncapped, provided you understand that invoicing starts one tier up.
The useful move is not picking a winner. Write down your client count today, the count you expect in six months, and how your clients pay. Then open all four pricing pages and read the cap row before the price row. That is twenty minutes, and it is the only version of this comparison that is about your caseload. followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost, and covers the social media tools market on the same terms for every vendor, including that one.
FAQ
Is there a genuinely free invoicing tool for a freelancer with more than three clients?
Among the four checked here, Wave is the only one with an ongoing $0 plan, and its Starter tier discloses no client cap while offering unlimited invoices. HoneyBook and Bonsai also disclose no client cap, but neither has a free plan: HoneyBook’s entry tier is $29/month billed yearly and Bonsai’s first invoicing tier is $19/user/month billed annually. FreshBooks is the one with a hard number, five billable clients on Lite at $23.00/mo, and Lite is a paid plan, not a free one.
Does a free invoicing plan end up costing more once payment processing fees are counted?
It depends on how many invoices you send. Wave publishes both sides of this: Starter is 2.9% + $0.60 per card transaction and Pro is 2.9% + $0 for the first ten transactions in a monthly subscription period. The gap is entirely the sixty cents, so the paid plan can save at most $6.00 a month against a $19 monthly subscription. A freelancer sending four retainer invoices saves $2.40 and pays $19 for the privilege. Someone billing many small transactions is in a different calculation, which is why the answer turns on volume rather than on revenue.
Sources
- HoneyBook pricing, fetched 3 September 2026
- Wave pricing, fetched 3 September 2026
- FreshBooks pricing, fetched 3 September 2026
- Bonsai pricing, fetched 3 September 2026