Keel vs Zoho Invoice: Free Cloud Billing or On-Device?

Short answer: Zoho Invoice is a free cloud invoicing app with a deep feature set — estimates, recurring invoices, time tracking, expenses and mileage, a client portal, and links into the rest of Zoho. Keel is an iPhone app that keeps invoices, receipts, and mileage on the device with no account and no cloud. Choose Zoho Invoice if you quote before you bill or want a client portal. Choose Keel if you want no account at all.

Both of these are free at the entry point, which means price is not the deciding factor and something else has to be. That something is where the records live and how much apparatus you are willing to sign up for. If you are still working out what a correct invoice needs to contain regardless of software, what to include on an invoice will get you paid either way. And if the account itself is the sticking point, data privacy for freelancers covers why that objection is more common than vendors like to admit.

What does Zoho Invoice actually do?

Zoho Invoice is the invoicing product in Zoho’s larger software family, and it has been offered free since Zoho made it so. You create a Zoho account, use it in a browser or on mobile, and your data sits in Zoho’s cloud.

The feature list is unusually complete for something at no cost: estimates and quotes that convert into invoices, recurring invoices, expense tracking with a mileage log, timesheets for billable hours, a customer-facing portal where clients can view transactions, approve quotes, and pay, automated payment reminders, and payment gateway integrations. A business already using Zoho’s other products gets a joined-up view rather than another silo.

The free plan has published ceilings — Zoho caps invoices per year, users, and projects — and those figures are the sort of thing that moves, so read Zoho’s own pricing page rather than trusting a number quoted in an article. Above the ceiling the path is a paid Zoho product, which is where the free tier is designed to lead.

Where is Zoho Invoice genuinely better?

Several places, and one of them is a feature Keel does not have at all.

It creates estimates and quotes. Keel does not. That feature is in development, but today Keel bills for completed work and does not quote for prospective work. For a trade where every job starts with a written quote the customer approves, that is not a gap you work around — it is the whole decision, and Zoho wins it outright.

More than one person can use it. Zoho’s free plan covers a second user, so a partner or a bookkeeper can work in the same records. Keel has no concept of a second person at any price — it is one app on one phone, and that is a structural limit rather than a missing feature.

The client portal and recurring billing do real work. Clients log in, see their transactions, approve quotes, and pay; retainer and subscription clients get billed on schedule without you touching it. Automated payment reminders chase late invoices for you. Time tracking feeds billable hours straight into an invoice, which matters if you bill hourly.

Web access, Android, and cross-device sync. Keel has none of these. If your paperwork happens at a desk with a keyboard, or your phone is not an iPhone, this is settled before you read another paragraph.

Zoho also deserves a fair note on privacy: it publicly positions itself as a company that does not run an advertising business off customer data. That is a meaningfully better posture than many free tools. It is not the same as data never leaving your device, but it is not nothing, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

Where is Keel better?

Keel is an iPhone app that runs entirely on the device. There is no account to create, no password, no cloud sync, no bank connection, and no ecosystem to join. Its App Store privacy label reads “Data Not Collected.” You download it and start invoicing — no onboarding, no email verification, no upsell path into three other products.

That last part is worth sitting with. Zoho Invoice is free partly because it is a doorway into Zoho’s paid products, and that is a legitimate business model, not a trick. But it does mean the free tier has a ceiling that exists to move you along, and the natural next step is a subscription. Keel Free is $0 with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage, and the only upgrade is Keel Pro at a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase. There is no tier above it.

Keel is also one app instead of several. Invoices come with custom numbering, your logo, a brand color, and a payment-link QR code. Receipts are photographed and read on-device with Apple Intelligence, so the image is never uploaded to be processed. Mileage is logged in the same app — though Zoho tracks mileage as well, so that is a tie rather than a Keel advantage, and it should not be sold as one. The Freeboard shows where the business stands, reports pull the year together, and the Accountant Pack exports it as a CSV plus a one-page summary PDF. Underneath, the ledger is append-only and hash-chained, so entries are added rather than quietly rewritten. And because nothing needs a network, it all works in a basement or in airplane mode.

How do Keel and Zoho Invoice compare side by side?

	Zoho Invoice	Keel
What it is	Free cloud invoicing inside an ecosystem	On-device invoicing, receipts, mileage
Where data lives	Zoho’s cloud	Your iPhone only
Account required	Yes	No
Estimates / quotes	Yes	Not yet (in development)
Recurring invoices	Yes	No
Automated payment reminders	Yes	No
Client portal	Yes	No
Time tracking	Yes	No
Receipts / expenses	Yes	Yes, read on-device
Mileage log	Yes	Yes
Works offline	Limited	Fully
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android	iPhone only
Ecosystem	Zoho’s wider product family	Standalone
Pricing model	Free, with published plan ceilings	Free; Pro $249.99 one-time

Check Zoho’s current pricing page for the free plan’s limits — they are the kind of thing that changes. Currency support is one to verify directly rather than take from any comparison article, this one included: Zoho’s own documentation is not consistent about what Zoho Invoice handles versus what belongs to its paid billing product.

What can Keel not do?

Listed without softening, because none of it is arriving next week.

Keel does not create estimates or quotes — in development, not shipping. It does not import from a bank feed. It does not file your taxes; it produces figures and an export, and you or your preparer file. It does not manage a team or dispatch jobs. It has no web interface, no Android app, and no desktop version. Add to that list: no recurring invoices, no client portal, no time tracking, no automated payment reminders, and no published country or currency support.

Against Zoho specifically, that is a long list. Read it before you go further.

Who is Zoho Invoice the right tool for?

The freelancer who quotes before invoicing and bills the same people repeatedly. If your work starts with an estimate the client approves, if the same clients get billed every month on a retainer, or if you track hours against projects, Zoho does all of that at no cost and Keel does none of it. That is not a close call.

It also fits anyone who already uses Zoho products, anyone who wants clients to log into a portal rather than dig through email for an old PDF, anyone on Android, and anyone who does paperwork on a laptop. And it fits the reader who simply does not have a problem with cloud accounts — most people do not, and the honest advice for that reader is to use the free product with the deeper feature set.

Who is Keel the right tool for?

The one-person business on an iPhone that wants the smallest possible surface area. You finish a job, you invoice from the truck, you photograph the receipt for the parts, and the trip there and back is logged as mileage — all in one app, without an account, and without any of it being sent anywhere. In January you export one file for your preparer, which is also the practical answer to what the IRS expects from a mileage log.

Keel is right if the account is the objection, not the price. Both apps are free to start; only one of them requires you to create a login, accept terms, and place your client list on a server. Some people care about that a great deal and are tired of being told they should not. The trade-off is plain: no sync, no portal, no recurring billing, no web access, and if you lose the phone you have whatever you last exported.

If you want a lighter comparison against a simpler free invoicing app rather than a full ecosystem, Keel vs Invoice Simple covers that end of the market. Otherwise Keel is on the App Store: Keel — Invoice Maker & Receipts. The free tier is not a trial, so you can send real invoices before deciding.

Frequently asked questions

Both are free — so what actually separates them?

Where the data lives and how much the product wants from you. Zoho Invoice is free in exchange for an account, cloud storage of your client and billing records, and a path toward its paid products once you outgrow the free plan’s limits. Keel is free with no account and no server copy, and its only upgrade is a one-time purchase. Different bargains, both legitimate.

Can Keel send estimates like Zoho Invoice?

No. Estimates are in development but not available today, so if your work starts with a quote the client signs off before you invoice, Keel does not cover that first step and Zoho Invoice does. For quote-first trades this is usually the end of the comparison, and no privacy argument compensates for a missing document.

Can either app invoice in another currency?

Keel makes no published claims about country or currency support, so this article will not make any on its behalf. Zoho’s position is harder to summarize honestly than it looks: its own help pages are not consistent about what Zoho Invoice handles versus what is reserved for its paid billing product. If cross-border billing is central to your work, test it in the free tier of whichever you are considering and confirm with the vendor before committing, rather than relying on any comparison article.

What happens to my records if I stop using each app?

With Zoho, your data is in your account and you export it before you close that account. With Keel, the data is already on your phone — you export the year as a CSV and a summary PDF whenever you want, and there is no account to close. The flip side is that Keel has no cloud backup, so losing the phone means losing anything you did not export.

Do I have to use other Zoho products to use Zoho Invoice?

No. Zoho Invoice works on its own, and plenty of people use only that. The ecosystem is an option rather than a requirement, though the free plan’s ceiling does point toward a paid Zoho product eventually. If a single-purpose tool with no upgrade path above a one-time purchase is what you want, that is the structural difference Keel is offering.

Which one is better for tracking expenses and mileage?

Both do it, so this is not the deciding feature it is sometimes made out to be. Zoho Invoice records expenses and logs mileage, converting billable miles onto an invoice. Keel does the same, with the difference being that it reads photographed receipts on-device using Apple Intelligence, so the image is never uploaded to be processed. Pick on where the data sits, not on the feature list. Neither one files a return or replaces a preparer.

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This article is general information. Feature sets and pricing change — check both vendors’ current pages before deciding.