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7 Catches in "Free" Invoice Generators — Checked Against Ours

Every catch below is a behaviour we observed in the niche while researching this site. Each ends with the same test applied to FacturaFit — stated as something you can check yourself, not something you have to believe.

1. "No watermark" — but a branded footer

The catch: the marketing says no watermark while every PDF carries a "created with" footer line advertising the tool to your customers. Both halves are technically defended; together they are a lie of emphasis.

Our check: generate any PDF here and read it. There is no footer, no brand name, no URL — your business is the only name on the document. Our own test suite extracts the text of generated PDFs and fails the build if a branding string appears.

2. The client cap that appears at client eleven

The catch: "free" generators cap saved clients or invoices at a number you discover only when your business outgrows it — the exact moment switching costs most.

Our check: there is no account and no tier, so there is nothing to cap into. Our acceptance tests seed 150 clients and 300 items into the book and assert all of them save. Try it in My Documents.

3. The account gate dressed as a feature

The catch: your documents live on their server, behind a login, in their format. leaving means losing your invoice register.

Our check: your library lives in your browser and exports as one JSON file you own. Import it back and numbering sequences restore exactly — that round-trip is an automated test here, not a promise.

4. Tax depth that stops at the total

The catch: a single GST % box and a total. No place-of-supply logic, no HSN summary, no checksum on the GSTINs — the invoice looks right and files wrong.

Our check: the flagship decides CGST/SGST vs IGST from the place of supply, validates GSTIN checksums (worked by hand on the validator page), and prints the HSN/SAC summary grouped by rate. The worked examples on the tool pages are the numbers the engine is tested against.

5. "GSTR-1 export" that excludes the exports you need

The catch: an export button that quietly covers only B2B, or silently includes invoices whose recipient GSTIN is invalid — planting errors in the buyer's return.

Our check: the export covers B2B, B2CL and B2CS, and an invalid-GSTIN invoice is excluded with the reason shown to you. The scope, the threshold and the schema's current verification status are all stated on the export guide — including the part where we say what is not yet verified.

6. Filing claims a website cannot honour

The catch: copy that implies the tool files your return, generates your IRN, or makes you compliant with Verifactu by itself — claims no client-side tool can keep, which surface as penalties addressed to you, not to the tool.

Our check: every page here states the boundary: documents and an export file; filing on the official systems. In Spain the Verifactu block is dated and two-layer — 2027 in force, October 2028 announced and explicitly not yet in the BOE. Flat compliance claims are banned strings in our build checks.

7. The proforma that does not say what it is

The catch: a proforma template with no "not a tax invoice" label, inviting a recipient to file or claim against a document with no tax standing.

Our check: open a proforma PDF: the label is printed on the document itself. In Spain the factura proforma says the same in Spanish. Honesty that only lives in a help page is not honesty the recipient ever sees.