Free Invoice Generator

How It Works

Fill in your company details, your client's details, add line items with quantities and prices, and set a tax rate if needed. Click "Print / Save PDF" to get a clean, professional invoice. Use your browser's "Save as PDF" option in the print dialog to download it. Everything runs locally · your data never leaves your device.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I save it as a PDF?

Yes. When the print dialog opens, choose "Save as PDF" (or "Microsoft Print to PDF" on Windows) as the destination instead of a physical printer.

Is my data stored?

No. All invoice data stays in your browser and is never transmitted anywhere. When you refresh the page or close the tab, the data is gone unless you've printed or saved it.

Can I customize the look?

The print layout uses a clean professional design that works universally. You can edit the generated PDF in any PDF editor after saving for further customization.

A short history of the invoice

The invoice in its loosest sense, a written record of "X owes Y for Z", is roughly as old as writing itself. The cuneiform clay tablets unearthed at Uruk (in modern-day Iraq) and dated to around 3300 to 3000 BCE include thousands of administrative records: barley ration lists, livestock counts, beer allotments, transfers of goods between temple storerooms. These are not invoices in the modern legal sense, but they are the same idea: a durable third-party record of a commercial transaction. Many of the earliest cuneiform tablets are administrative rather than literary, writing seems to have been invented in part to track who owed what. Roman commerce later used wax-coated wooden tablets (tabulae ceratae) for short-lived business documents, the Vindolanda tablets from a Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall (c. 90 to 120 CE) include ration purchases and supplier lists.

The watershed moment for modern invoicing is the publication of Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità by the Franciscan friar Luca Pacioli in Venice in 1494. Pacioli did not invent double-entry bookkeeping, Venetian and Genoese merchants had been using it for at least 150 years before him, but his book was the first printed treatise that explained it systematically. The relevant section, "Particularis de computis et scripturis," is often cited as the founding document of modern accounting. Pacioli's contribution was to codify three books every merchant should keep: the memoriale (memorandum), the giornale (journal), and the quaderno (ledger). The invoice as we know it sits at the boundary between the memoriale and the giornale: the source document that triggers entries in both the seller's and buyer's books. Pacioli's recommended invoice information, date, parties, items, prices, payment terms, has barely changed in 530 years.

By the 19th century, pre-printed paper invoice books with carbon copies were the dominant business form. Through the early-to-mid 20th century, NCR ("no carbon required") chemical-coated paper replaced literal carbon sheets, and tractor-feed dot-matrix printers generated multi-part invoice sets directly from accounting software. This is the world that gave us the 8.5×11" or A4 invoice layout that PDFs still emulate. Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards, UN/EDIFACT (1987 onward, governed by UNECE) and the older ANSI X12 in North America, let large trading partners exchange structured invoices computer-to-computer from the 1980s. EDI works but the message format is terse, hard to read by humans, and expensive to implement, so it stayed mostly a Fortune-500 phenomenon. The 2000s and 2010s pushed structured invoicing toward XML-based formats, especially UBL (Universal Business Language), an OASIS standard first published as UBL 1.0 in 2004 and now at UBL 2.4 (released February 2024).

Modern legal requirements, what an invoice must contain

United States: unlike most of the world, the US has no federal statute mandating what an invoice must contain. There is no equivalent of the EU VAT Directive at the federal level. What governs invoicing is a stack of indirect rules: state sales-tax laws (each of the 45 states with a sales tax imposes its own retention requirements, typically 4 years); IRS Publication 583 (businesses must keep books and records that "show your gross income, deductions, and credits", invoices are the primary supporting documentation); and the Wayfair decision (South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc., 138 S.Ct. 2080, decided 21 June 2018), which changed who has to collect sales tax across state lines and by extension changed who has to issue tax-detailed invoices. Form 1099-NEC, re-instated in 2020, means businesses paying contractors $600 or more in a year need to issue a 1099-NEC, with the contractor's invoices as the supporting paper trail.

European Union: the legal backbone is Council Directive 2006/112/EC on the common system of value added tax (the "VAT Directive"), adopted 28 November 2006. Articles 217 to 240 govern invoicing. Article 226 lists the mandatory content for a full VAT invoice: invoice date; sequential number that uniquely identifies the invoice; supplier's VAT identification number; customer's VAT identification number (for B2B intra-EU and reverse-charge); full names and addresses of supplier and customer; description of goods or services; quantity; date of supply (if different from invoice date); taxable amount per VAT rate plus unit price excluding VAT and any discounts; VAT rate applied; VAT amount payable; for exempt or reverse-charge transactions, a reference to the relevant article of the directive. Directive 2014/55/EU (16 April 2014) made structured e-invoicing mandatory for B2G transactions across the EU and required publication of a common standard, which became EN 16931.

The European e-invoicing wave (2019 to 2028)

• Italy, SDI mandate (live since 1 January 2019). Italy was the first EU member state to mandate electronic invoicing for all B2B and B2C transactions, not just B2G. The platform is called SdI, Sistema di Interscambio, run by Agenzia delle Entrate. Every invoice between Italian VAT-registered parties must be transmitted in the FatturaPA XML format (an Italian profile of UBL/EN 16931) through SdI. From 1 July 2022, the mandate was extended to invoices to/from foreign counterparties.
• France, Facturation Electronique (rolling out 2026 to 2027). Originally scheduled for July 2024, postponed by Article 91 of the 2024 finance law to a phased timeline: 1 September 2026, all French businesses must be able to receive structured electronic invoices, large and medium enterprises must also issue them; 1 September 2027, small and micro enterprises must issue. The French model uses a "Y" architecture: invoices flow either through the public portal (PPF, operated by AIFE) or through accredited private "Plateformes de Dématérialisation Partenaires."
• Germany, Wachstumschancengesetz (2025 to 2028). Germany's Growth Opportunities Act, passed by the Bundestag on 17 November 2023 and Bundesrat on 22 March 2024, includes the e-invoicing mandate. The phased rollout under §14 UStG: 1 January 2025, every B2B-active German business must be able to receive a structured e-invoice; 1 January 2027, businesses with prior-year turnover over €800,000 must issue structured e-invoices; 1 January 2028, the obligation extends to all remaining B2B German businesses regardless of size. Accepted formats: XRechnung (German EN 16931 implementation, mandatory for federal B2G since 27 November 2020) and ZUGFeRD 2.x.

The structured-invoice technical stack, EN 16931, PEPPOL, Factur-X / ZUGFeRD

EN 16931-1:2017 (with subsequent amendments) defines the semantic data model, what an "invoice number" or "buyer reference" or "tax category" means, independent of the syntax used to encode them. EN 16931-2 lists the syntax bindings: UBL 2.1 (OASIS) and UN/CEFACT CII (Cross Industry Invoice). The standard is the reference document the European Commission requires under Directive 2014/55/EU. PEPPOL (originally "Pan-European Public Procurement OnLine," now governed by OpenPeppol AISBL, founded 2012, based in Brussels) is a network of access points that route structured business documents, most commonly invoices in the PEPPOL BIS Billing 3.0 profile, which is itself a constraint of EN 16931 in UBL 2.1 syntax. PEPPOL is mandatory for B2G in 30+ countries (every EU/EEA member, plus Singapore, which adopted PEPPOL in 2018 for its nationwide InvoiceNow network, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, which adopted PEPPOL as the basis for its Qualified Invoice System under the consumption-tax invoice reform that took effect 1 October 2023).

For the practical small-business case, sending an invoice that a human can read and a machine can parse, the hybrid PDF format is the bridge. Factur-X (France) and ZUGFeRD (Germany) are essentially the same thing, jointly aligned under a 2017 cooperation between the FNFE-MPE and FeRD. Technically: a PDF/A-3 file (ISO 19005-3:2012) with an embedded XML attachment that conforms to EN 16931. The visual PDF is for humans; the embedded XML is for the recipient's accounting software. Because PDF/A-3 is the archival profile that allows arbitrary file attachments, the format meets long-term preservation requirements while still carrying machine-readable data. This tool produces a plain PDF, not Factur-X / ZUGFeRD / XRechnung. For German or French B2B from the 2026/2027 onward dates, you'll want a dedicated e-invoicing platform that can produce the structured format.

A practical synthesis of required fields

Pulling the common ground out of US recordkeeping practice, EU Article 226, UK HMRC guidance, and the various national e-invoice mandates, a defensibly compliant invoice almost always includes:

• A unique invoice number (sequential, per a documented numbering scheme, never reused).
• The issue date, and where relevant the date of supply (often called "tax point" in VAT regimes).
• Supplier: legal name, registered address, and tax registration number (VAT ID in the EU/UK, EIN in the US for B2B).
• Customer: name and address, plus their tax ID for B2B intra-EU and reverse-charge transactions.
• A clear description of each item: nature of goods or services, quantity, unit price.
• Subtotal (taxable amount) per tax rate.
• Tax rate(s) and tax amount(s), itemised.
• Total amount due in a stated currency.
• Payment terms, due date, accepted methods, and any late-payment terms.
• For exempt or zero-rated supplies, the legal basis (e.g., "Reverse charge, Article 196 of Directive 2006/112/EC" for cross-border B2B services in the EU).

This tool surfaces most of these except: dedicated tax-ID fields, per-line tax categories, and a structured "date of supply" separate from the invoice date. The address blocks accept tax IDs as free text, which works for most freelance and small-business cases.

Invoice numbering best practices

The legal constraint in most VAT jurisdictions is "sequential and unique." Best practice goes further:

• Year-prefixed sequential: 2026-001, 2026-002. Resets each January, makes it obvious which fiscal year an invoice belongs to. Used by most European freelancers.
• Customer-prefixed: ACME-2026-04. Useful if you bill very few clients many times.
• Project/job-based: PROJ123-INV-02. Common in consulting and construction.
• Pure sequential: 00001, 00002. Simple but tells a counterparty (or competitor) how much you bill.

Across all of these the rule is: never skip and never reuse a number. Deleted invoices should be recorded as voided rather than the number being recycled. Italian SDI and German finance authorities will reject filings where the sequence has gaps that aren't documented.

The freelance/SMB invoicing software market

A short tour:

• FreshBooks, founded 2003 by Mike McDerment in Toronto, started as cloud invoicing for self-employed consultants.
• Wave Accounting, founded 2010 in Toronto, free invoicing and accounting for small businesses, monetised through payments and payroll. Acquired by H&R Block on 11 June 2019 for US$405 million; the free invoicing tier remains.
• Intuit QuickBooks Online, released 2001, dominant US small-business accounting platform. Invoicing is one of dozens of modules.
• Xero, founded 2006 in Wellington, New Zealand by Rod Drury. Cloud accounting that grew from the antipodean SMB market into a global player.
• Zoho Invoice, part of Zoho Corporation (founded 1996 by Sridhar Vembu). The standalone Zoho Invoice product is free for unlimited use.
• Invoice Ninja, open-source invoicing platform, founded 2014 by Hillel Coren. Self-hosted (PHP/Laravel, MIT-licensed) or cloud version.
• Bill.com, founded 2006 by René Lacerte, originally accounts-payable automation; later added invoicing and bank integrations.
• Square Invoices, Block (formerly Square) added invoicing in 2014; integrates with Square Payments and Cash App.
• Stripe Invoicing, Stripe launched its standalone Invoicing product in 2018, targets developers and online businesses already using Stripe Billing.
• Excel/Google Sheets templates, still the way a huge portion of the freelance world creates invoices, especially for the first few customers before any SaaS is adopted.

The pattern across these competitors: most require an account, store data in the cloud, and monetise via subscriptions, payment processing, or upsells. The privacy-first counter-positioning of this tool, no signup, nothing leaves the browser, is genuinely differentiated for users who don't want a SaaS relationship for what is, structurally, a one-page form.

How "Print / Save PDF" actually works here

This tool uses the browser's native print pipeline plus the OS PDF driver rather than a JavaScript PDF library. When you click Print / Save PDF, the browser builds a print preview from the invoice HTML and opens the standard print dialog. From there, you pick a destination:

• Chrome / Edge: select "Save as PDF" in the destination dropdown.
• macOS (any browser): click the "PDF" dropdown in the bottom-left of the print dialog to "Save as PDF." macOS has had system-wide Save as PDF since Mac OS X 10.0 (2001).
• Windows: select "Microsoft Print to PDF" as the printer. This was added as a built-in driver in Windows 10 (2015), before that you needed a third-party PDF printer.

Output quality is excellent: real vector text, embedded fonts, copyable content, accessible structure if the source HTML was accessible. The trade-offs the tool is making with this approach: smaller bundle (no jsPDF or html2pdf shipped), nothing leaves the device, perfect text quality, but the user has to navigate the print dialog and pick "Save as PDF" themselves. For a free, no-account tool this is the right call.

Alternatives that other tools use: jsPDF (James Hall, 2012, MIT, ~100KB minified+gzipped, programmatic API to build a PDF with text and shape primitives), html2pdf.js (combines html2canvas with jsPDF, easier for "make my page look like a PDF" but the result is a raster image, not searchable text), pdfmake (declarative document-builder API), and server-side generation (wkhtmltopdf, Puppeteer/Chrome headless, weasyprint, what most SaaS invoicing tools use, highest quality but requires a backend).

More questions

Is the invoice this tool produces legally compliant?

For US invoicing, the EU VAT Directive Article 226 freelance/SMB case, and most other jurisdictions where a human-readable PDF is sufficient: yes, as long as you fill in all the required fields (sequential invoice number, dates, supplier and customer details with tax IDs where required, itemised goods/services with prices, tax breakdown, total). For Italy after 1 January 2019, France after 1 September 2026/2027, Germany after the §14 UStG dates from 2025 to 2028, and any B2G transaction in the EU, you'll need a structured e-invoice (XRechnung, FatturaPA, Factur-X / ZUGFeRD), which this tool doesn't produce. For those cases, use a dedicated e-invoicing platform.

Why is discount applied before tax?

This tool follows the most common convention: discount_amount = subtotal × (discount% / 100), then tax_amount = (subtotal - discount_amount) × (tax% / 100). This matches what Stripe Tax, Shopify, and most accounting packages do. It is not universal, some jurisdictions (a few US states with "gross receipts" taxes rather than sales taxes) tax the pre-discount amount. If you're in one of those edge cases, you'll need to skip the discount field and hand-calculate the tax line.

My data disappeared when I refreshed. Where is it?

Gone, and that's by design. This tool deliberately does not persist any data: no localStorage, no IndexedDB, no fetch to a server. Refreshing or closing the tab wipes everything. The privacy guarantee is that nothing about your invoice, sender, recipient, amounts, line items, tax IDs, has ever been stored anywhere outside your browser process. Save the PDF before you close the tab if you want a copy.

Can I add my logo?

Not directly in this tool. Once you've saved the PDF, you can add a logo using any PDF editor (Adobe Acrobat, Foxit, Preview on macOS, the free PDF Arranger on Linux). Or you could open the printed invoice in a tool like Word or Google Docs by pasting the content, add the logo there, and re-export. A logo-on-invoice workflow is a common upgrade request and a candidate for a future version, for now the tool stays focused on the no-signup, no-data-persistence core case.

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