RunwayDue vs FreshBooks

Pick FreshBooks if you bill roughly the same clients every month, track time against your work, and want money in your account with the least friction between the timer and the deposit. It is a mature product that does that very well, and nothing on this page argues otherwise.

Revenue arrives in lumps: a proposal in March, a signed contract in April, four instalments spread across the rest of the year. If that is your shape, and the question that actually keeps you up is what does August look like, that is the question RunwayDue was built to answer.

That is the whole comparison. The rest is why.

At a glance

FreshBooks prices, fees and plans checked 25 September 2026 on its own pages. The detail behind every row is below.

Who each one is built for

FreshBooks is invoicing-first software for service businesses, built around a workflow that starts when the work does: track time, log expenses, raise the invoice, take the payment, keep the books. Its Retainers feature (on Plus and above) lets you bill a client a fixed amount up front and then track hours against the remaining balance. That is a product shaped for a steady drumbeat: an ongoing relationship, billed on a rhythm, measured in hours. The category question underneath this one, and how to test a tool against it, is in how to choose invoicing software when your revenue is not monthly.

RunwayDue starts one step earlier and looks one step further out. Work begins as a proposal you have not won, becomes a contract you have signed but not billed, and only then becomes an invoice. Those stages are different degrees of certainty about money, and RunwayDue keeps them apart on purpose. Four layers, not three, because money already collected is its own answer:

• Collected: money that actually landed
• Outstanding: billed, not yet paid
• Committed: signed, not yet billed
• Pipeline: proposed, not yet signed, weighted

Those four layers are never summed into one headline number, because that is how people talk themselves into revenue that does not exist. They sit side by side, and the six-month forecast stacks them so the uncertain part stays visually separate from the certain part.

The chain from proposal to instalment

This is the part that decides the comparison.

In RunwayDue a proposal carries a win probability and an expected close date, so it counts as weighted pipeline the day you send it. When the client accepts, one click turns it into a contract. The contract is not a document in a folder. Creating it spreads the value across the term and writes every future payment date into a billing schedule, one row per expected billing event. Monthly retainer, quarterly, one-off, or milestones you type in yourself.

Each row's Bill it button opens a pre-filled invoice for you to check and send. Billing it flips the row from pending to invoiced, and once that invoice is sent the money stops counting as committed and starts counting as owed. The same rupee or dollar never appears in two layers at once. Editing a live contract never disturbs an instalment that has already been billed; only the unbilled future moves.

The practical effect: "we won a twelve-month retainer" stops being a feeling and becomes twelve dated amounts you can point at. From that fall out the numbers a lumpy business actually needs: how many months of average collections are already secured by outstanding and committed work, what share of all your collections comes from your single biggest client, how many months in the last year had no money come in at all.

FreshBooks' document types are estimates, proposals and invoices. It tracks a proposal's status through in progress, viewed and accepted, and converts an accepted proposal into an invoice. That is genuinely useful, and it is not the same thing. There is no signed-agreement layer in between holding dated future instalments, so there is nothing to forecast from except invoices you have already raised.

Two things called e-signature

Both products say e-signature. They mean different scopes, and it is worth being exact.

In FreshBooks, e-signature appears in the documentation as a setting on the proposal: switch on "Require e-signature" and the client must accept and then sign before the proposal is complete, after which it can no longer be edited. Clean, and it does the job for proposal acceptance.

In RunwayDue, signing is its own capability pointed at any PDF. Upload a master services agreement your lawyer drafted, an NDA, a statement of work, or a document already attached to a proposal or contract. Add several named signers, sequentially or all at once, each with a private link and no account to create. Drag signature, initials, date, name and text fields onto the page, one colour per signer. When the last person signs, the signatures are burned into the original once and a certificate of completion is bound to the back: who signed, at the email the link went to, the time to the second, the network address, their explicit consent to sign electronically, and the SHA-256 fingerprint of the original file. One self-contained PDF, with everything a dispute would ask for already inside it, and no login for anyone to hand over.

Declining is a first-class outcome: the request closes with the reason attached and stops asking everyone else.

What the tiers actually cost for this job

FreshBooks list prices, checked August 2026: Lite $23/month (5 billable clients), Plus $43/month (50), Premium $70/month (unlimited), Select by quote. Yearly billing is 10% off. Lite, Plus and Premium include the account owner only, and Select adds two team members at no extra charge; each additional team member is $11/month. The trial is 30 days with every feature. When rechecked on 25 September 2026 the list prices were unchanged, and FreshBooks was offering new customers $1 a month for the first year of Lite, or 80% off Plus or Premium for three months, so the first months cost far less than list.

The structural point, which will outlive those numbers: proposals, e-signatures and the double-entry accounting reports all sit on Plus and above. If the proposal-and-signing half is why you are shopping, Lite is not the plan you are buying. Plus is.

RunwayDue's equivalent, also checked August 2026, is Pro: $15/month billed yearly, $17 monthly (25 clients, 250 documents a month), with e-signature, the books, every report, automatic chasing of overdue invoices and unsigned documents, recurring invoices and export all included. Two people are included, extra seats are $6/month each, and a read-only login for your accountant is free and never counts as a seat. Business is $50 yearly / $60 monthly for 500 clients and 10 people. There is a genuine free plan: 3 clients, 5 invoices and 3 proposals-or-contracts a month. There is also a 14-day Pro trial with no card that ends by dropping you to Free rather than into a paywall. Nothing you have made is ever deleted for not paying.

One thing worth knowing about billable clients

FreshBooks meters billable clients, and the counter behaves in a way people are regularly surprised by: archived clients still count toward your limit on every plan. Only deleting a client frees the slot, and deleting keeps their past invoices and payments. If you do project work for many clients once each, five slots on Lite or fifty on Plus go faster than the headline suggests, and tidying up means deleting rather than archiving.

RunwayDue's caps are the same kind of promise and worth checking the same way: 3 clients on Free, 25 on Pro, 500 on Business. Archiving a client here does free the slot, because the count only ever looks at clients you have not archived.

When FreshBooks is the better choice

Plainly, and not as throat-clearing.

Pick FreshBooks if money has to move automatically. RunwayDue takes cards for its own plans and not for yours: your invoices carry your bank details or your own payment link rather than a card button. FreshBooks processes card and ACH payments on the invoice itself, from 2.9% + $0.30 per card payment and 1% per ACH payment in the US (checked 25 September 2026). If "client clicks pay, money arrives" is non-negotiable, that decides it today.

Pick FreshBooks if you want your bank feeding the books. FreshBooks connects real bank accounts through Plaid or Yodlee and imports transactions automatically on every plan, with bank reconciliation on Plus and above (checked 25 September 2026). RunwayDue has no import of any kind: no bank feed, no CSV. Every expense and bill is typed in by hand. For a business with a lot of small costs, that is hours a month.

Pick FreshBooks if you bill by time, or need work on your phone. FreshBooks has time tracking, timesheets, projects, project profitability on Premium, mileage tracking, receipt scanning and mobile apps. RunwayDue has none of those and no mobile app at all. Bonsai, which also tracks time on every plan (checked 25 September 2026), is compared here on the same terms.

Pick FreshBooks if you need payroll, or a real accounting stack. FreshBooks offers payroll as an add-on, plus a general ledger and trial balance. RunwayDue deliberately has no payroll, and its books stop short of a full general ledger with hand-written journals; it says so on the balance sheet page. If your accountant wants to post journals, that is a real gap.

Pick FreshBooks if you need it to plug into things. Its app marketplace lists over 100 integrations and there is an API. RunwayDue has no public API, no Zapier and no marketplace. It also launched in August 2026: no track record, no reviews, no community, and it runs as one process on SQLite, which has not been tested at any scale beyond a small business.

The honest summary

FreshBooks is the better product for the middle of the job: tracking the work, moving the money, reconciling the bank, and doing it from a phone with a decade of polish behind it.

RunwayDue is the better product for the ends of the job: the proposal you have not won, the contract you have signed but not billed, and the forecast that depends on both. Underneath that it puts a simplified set of books (chart of accounts, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, aged debt, tax summary) and signing that works on any PDF, at about 40% of the price of the FreshBooks tier where proposals and signing begin.

If your months look alike, that trade is a bad one. If they do not, it is the only trade that matters. Zoho Invoice is the other invoicing-first tool worth weighing, compared here on the same terms.

Frequently asked questions

Is RunwayDue cheaper than FreshBooks?

For proposals and e-signature, yes, on list price. FreshBooks puts them on Plus, at $43 a month for 50 billable clients and one user, and it was offering new customers 80% off Plus or Premium for their first three months when checked on 25 September 2026. RunwayDue Pro is $15 a month billed yearly or $17 monthly for 25 clients and two people, with the books, every report and recurring invoices included, and Business is $50 a month billed yearly or $60 monthly for 500 clients.

Can FreshBooks count a signed contract as future revenue?

Not as dated instalments. FreshBooks' document types are estimates, proposals and invoices, and an accepted proposal converts into an invoice; its Retainers feature, on Plus and above, bills a fixed amount up front and tracks hours against the balance. RunwayDue puts a signed agreement between the proposal and the invoice, and the billing schedule it writes is what its forecast counts as committed revenue.

How does e-signature work in FreshBooks?

It is a setting on a proposal, on Plus and above: switch on "Require e-signature" and the client accepts and signs before the proposal is complete (checked 25 September 2026). RunwayDue signs any PDF, such as an agreement your lawyer drafted, with several named signers in order or all at once, and binds a certificate of completion to the finished file; it is an electronic signature with an audit trail, not a certificate-based digital signature.

Does FreshBooks take card and ACH payments on invoices?

Yes. FreshBooks puts a payment button on the invoice and processes cards from 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction and US bank transfers (ACH) at 1% (checked 25 September 2026). RunwayDue does not process client payments: its invoices carry your bank details or your own payment link, and you record the payment when it lands.

Does FreshBooks have time tracking and a mobile app?

Yes. FreshBooks has time tracking, projects, mileage tracking, receipt scanning and mobile apps, with project profitability on Premium (checked 25 September 2026). RunwayDue is a web app with none of those, so if you bill by the hour or work from your phone, FreshBooks fits better.

Do archived clients count towards the FreshBooks client limit?

Yes. FreshBooks' help centre says archived clients count towards the billable-client limit on every plan, and only deleting a client frees the slot (checked 25 September 2026). In RunwayDue they do not: the caps of 3 clients on Free, 25 on Pro and 500 on Business count only clients you have not archived.

Can I move my FreshBooks data into RunwayDue?

Not automatically. RunwayDue has no import of any kind, from FreshBooks or anywhere else, so clients and open invoices are entered by hand. That is manageable for a handful of active clients and a real cost for hundreds, and it is worth weighing before you switch.