"Free" means very different things in contractor software. Some apps are free forever with no document limit. Some are free for a handful of invoices a month. Some are a 14-day trial with a free label. And some used to be free and quietly stopped. If you are choosing an app to run your quotes and invoices, the free plan's limits matter more than its feature list, because you will hit them in your second busy week.
This guide covers the apps contractors most often consider, what their free option really includes as of November 2026, and how to choose.
What a contractor app needs to do
Before comparing names, decide what the app has to handle. For most trade businesses that is:
- Quotes and invoices that match. An accepted quote should become the invoice without retyping.
- Your costs, not just your prices. If the app can't show what a job costs you, it can't tell you whether the price is any good.
- Professional PDFs with your logo, license number and terms.
- Deposits and progress payments for anything bigger than a service call.
- Getting paid online, so the customer can pay from the invoice.
- No document cap you will hit in a normal month.
Anything beyond that, such as scheduling, dispatch or payroll, is a different category of software with a different price.
1. QuoTrak: free forever, with live margin
QuoTrak is built for trade contractors who quote and invoice their own jobs. The Free plan has no time limit and no cap on documents.
Free plan includes:
- Unlimited quotes and invoices
- Your costs on every line and your margin updating live as you build the quote
- Branded PDFs with your logo and colors
- Customer management, and a cost catalog to pull from (adding your own items to it is on Pro)
- Field tools calculators
What's on Pro ($15 a month, or $12 a month billed annually): sending quotes and invoices by email with reminders, online payments through Stripe, recurring and milestone invoicing, projects with quoted-versus-actual job costing, templates, and QuickBooks, Xero, Zapier and Google Sheets integrations. There are no per-user fees; field workers are included.
Best for: owner-operators and small crews who want to see their margin before the quote goes out. You can try it without an account in the free quote generator.
2. Wave: free invoicing inside free accounting
Wave is accounting software with invoicing built in. Its Starter plan is free and includes unlimited invoices and basic bookkeeping.
Strengths: genuinely free invoicing, and your books and invoices in one place.
Limits for contractors: it is built for general small businesses, so there is no job costing or margin on quotes. Free invoices carry Wave's branding, and removing it, along with automatic payment reminders, is part of the paid Pro plan. Card payments are charged per transaction.
Best for: very small operations that want free bookkeeping first and invoicing second.
3. Invoice Simple: quick invoices from your phone
Invoice Simple is a mobile-first invoicing app. It offers a free trial rather than a lasting free plan. Essentials ($6.99 a month) is limited to three invoices a month and Plus ($14.99) to ten. Unlimited invoices and deposits are on Premium ($21.99).
Strengths: fast to learn and comfortable on a phone.
Limits for contractors: the document cap is easy to hit, and there is no costing or margin behind the numbers.
Best for: someone sending the occasional invoice from the truck.
4. Joist: contractor estimates, no longer free
Joist is a well-known estimating and invoicing app for contractors, and many older lists still call it free. As of November 2026, Joist's pricing page says the free plan is no longer available. The entry plan, Basics, is $10 a month and capped at five documents a month, with a 14-day free trial.
Strengths: contractor-focused and easy to pick up.
Limits: no free option, and the entry plan's document cap. See the full QuoTrak vs Joist comparison.
5. QuickBooks: a very small free plan, and not a quoting tool
QuickBooks is the accounting standard for a reason, and many contractors' bookkeepers expect it. Its pricing page now lists a basic free plan for one user, limited to two invoices a month, and paid plans list from $38 a month. Job costing and its construction features are on the higher-priced plans, so everyday estimates are general-purpose.
Best for: your books, alongside a quoting tool that syncs to it. QuoTrak Pro can push your quotes and invoices to QuickBooks Online with a button, so you don't enter them twice.
Spreadsheets and templates
A spreadsheet is free and fully flexible, and for a handful of jobs a year it is fine. It breaks down when you have several quotes out at once: no record of what was sent and accepted, no link between quote and invoice, and formulas that are easy to break. If you are using one now, a free app with unlimited documents costs you nothing to try alongside it.
Free vs paid: when to upgrade
A free plan is enough when you send your own documents, collect payment by e-transfer or check, and keep your books elsewhere. Upgrading starts to pay for itself when:
- You chase late payments by hand every week (automatic reminders and online payment fix most of it)
- You bill deposits or progress payments on bigger jobs
- You want to know which jobs made money, not just which ones you quoted
- Someone else enters your invoices into the accounting software
Whatever you choose, check the per-user pricing before you hire. Some apps charge for every person on the account, which turns a cheap plan into an expensive one the day you add a crew member.
Which app should you choose?
- You want to see your margin on every quote, free: QuoTrak.
- You want free bookkeeping with invoicing attached: Wave.
- You send a few invoices a month from your phone: Invoice Simple.
- Your bookkeeper runs QuickBooks: keep it for the books, and quote in a tool that syncs to it.
Bottom line
The best free contractor app is the one whose free plan you won't outgrow next month and whose numbers tell you whether a job is worth taking. Check the document cap, check the per-user fees, and check whether it shows your costs or only your prices. For a side-by-side look at paid platforms too, see our comparison pages, and for more on choosing quoting software, the quoting and estimating guide.