French e-invoicing: what zero-euro offers really mean

In France’s electronic-invoicing reform, a displayed price of €0 covers several different commercial realities.

Several providers explicitly display €0. Qonto says it provides compliant, free and unlimited invoicing without requiring a professional account. Dougs displays a €0 service with no volume cap and no purchase obligation. Indy, Abby and Tiime also advertise a free regulatory core. The withdrawal of the public portal does not therefore force every company to pay a private-platform subscription.

The same zero can describe radically different products. At Pennylane, it is reserved for micro-businesses, one user and 1,200 invoices a year. At B2BRouter, it covers 24 annual transactions, including received invoices and tax declarations. At Shine Facture, ordinary quotes and invoices are unlimited but the free plan stops at five customers. Its FAQ says electronic sending and receipt are included across all plans, while the price table still marks issuance as “forthcoming” for Free. At Kolecto, zero is a first-year offer for newly created businesses. Elsewhere, the approved platform is included in software, a bank account or a subscription that is already being paid for.

After the amputated public portal and the 148 shopfronts in Bercy’s registry, this third part opens the price lists. It does not attempt to find the cheapest platform. It examines what free contains, what it excludes and when zero stops being zero.

Key points

Bercy did not award a public contract to a closed list of mandatory vendors. Operators apply, are registered after checks and tests, then each company chooses its platform.
In l0g’s sample of 19 public offers, 13 provide an unambiguous zero-price entry under a conservative counting rule. Dext remains outside the count because the standalone free e-reporting scope is not explicit enough.
A free offer may be standalone, restricted to a legal status, capped by volume, financed by adjacent services or temporary.
“Included at no extra charge” is not the same as “without cost” when the software, account or accounting service is already paid for.
Public price lists make some company profiles calculable. API access, multiple entities, integration, support and overages often remain unknown.
Technical switching has been regulated since July 2026. It does not automatically terminate the commercial contract.
Claims about €1,700 implementation packages and €30 monthly banking subscriptions appear in a parliamentary question. They remain leads to document, not generalised findings.

Companies still choose their platform

One confusion needs to be cleared up before looking at prices.

The state chose an architecture in which invoices pass through privately operated approved platforms. It did not choose, through a procurement process, the company that each artisan, freelancer or SME must pay.

The DGFiP describes the procedure as registration. An operator files an application, provides guarantees and demonstrates its ability to perform the regulated functions. Registration lasts three years and may be withdrawn after repeated breaches. The official January 2026 announcement adds that platforms on the main list met regulatory requirements and passed technical and interoperability tests.

The final supplier remains a management choice for the company. In a government answer published by the Senate on 6 August 2026, the relevant criteria include volumes, customer type and budget.

A business is compelled to enter the system, not to buy a specific brand. Competition therefore exists on paper. Its quality then depends on how readable the offers are, whether switching works in practice and whether a customer can compare anything beyond marketing headlines.

How l0g counted zero

This investigation uses a snapshot taken on 22 August 2026.

l0g selected 19 operators that appeared on the DGFiP’s main list and represented several business families: tools for sole traders, management software, accounting providers, technical platforms, banking groups and SME offers. The sample is not the entire market. It tests the range of commercial models using official pages that were publicly accessible.

An offer counted as a zero-price entry when the provider’s official page explicitly displayed a free plan or zero price capable of giving access to the regulatory circuit, even when that price was restricted by legal status, volume or time.

Three exclusions prevent the count from being inflated:

a platform “included at no extra charge” in paid software is not counted as a standalone zero-price offer;
a free invoice editor is not counted when the page does not clearly establish that the full regulated service is included;
a free trial is not a durable free offer.

Under that rule, 13 of the 19 pages examined provide an unambiguous zero-price entry. The thirteen are Qonto Facturation, Indy, Abby, Dougs Facturation, Tiime, Pennylane, SUPER PDP, B2BRouter, VosFactures, macompta.fr, Shine Facture, Kolecto and Odoo. This does not mean that the offers are equivalent. It measures only the presence of a door with no displayed direct price.

All prices in this article are before VAT. They come from provider pages and are attributed to the providers. l0g did not complete a full identified subscription journey with every operator or audit the contracts supplied after onboarding. Missing information remains missing.

Zero is an entry price, not a homogeneous product category. Examples are attributed to providers’ official price pages and do not amount to a ranking.

Five standalone zero-price offers

Five official pages display a relatively broad free core.

Qonto Facturation displays a €0 tool with no bank card and no bank account required. The page advertises unlimited quotes and invoices, receipt of supplier invoices, document centralisation and external-account synchronisation. The professional account remains a separate product, starting at €9 a month on the price list reviewed.

Dougs Facturation goes further in its wording: €0 before VAT per month, no volume cap and no purchase obligation. The accounting firm presents the approved platform and e-reporting as included in the package. Paid accounting services are the adjacent product.

Indy includes electronic invoicing and unlimited quotes and invoices in its €0 Essentiel offer. Paid plans add reminders, certain filings, support and accounting features. Its professional account is presented as optional.

Abby places electronic invoicing in its free Basique plan alongside quotes, invoices, revenue books and threshold alerts. The provider presents issuance, receipt and e-reporting as included at no extra charge. Banking, VAT, reminders, multiple users and stock sit in higher tiers.

Tiime also advertises a free platform with no commitment, covering issuance, receipt and e-reporting. The provider says the service will remain free. Its other products cover a professional account, accounting and work with accounting firms.

These pages do not establish how well the services will perform on 1 September. They establish a narrower point: the direct cost of compliance can genuinely be zero.

The analysis must be symmetrical. Free is not inherently suspicious. A provider may fund a low-cost regulatory component at scale through more profitable optional services. It may also want to secure a customer relationship before competitors do. Both motives are ordinary in software.

The unusual feature is where demand comes from. Here, the acquisition product answers a legal obligation affecting millions of businesses. Zero can therefore reduce customer-acquisition costs substantially.

The meter hidden behind zero

The price often changes less because of electronic invoicing itself than because of the unit chosen to measure it.

Pennylane restricts its free offer to micro-businesses, one user and 1,200 invoices a year. The restriction is clear. A company that changes status or adds a user leaves the free scope even when volume remains low.

B2BRouter offers a Basic plan at €0 for life. It covers one user, ten contacts and 24 annual transactions. The word transaction is decisive: it includes invoices sent, invoices received and tax declarations. Two supplier invoices a month can consume the annual quota before the business issues a single customer invoice.

VosFactures limits its free Micro plan to three documents a month. Its €5 Basique plan makes documents unlimited. Higher tiers add users and functions.

SUPER PDP uses the opposite model. Its online account is free up to 1,000 invoices a month. API pricing then falls from €0.01 to €0.005 and €0.0025 per invoice as volume rises, with a €2 KYC or KYB check and a €10 annual minimum. The platform states that an account exceeding 1,000 monthly invoices moves to API pricing.

macompta.fr offers up to 20 monthly flows to a non-subscriber. Public tiers then rise to €5, €10, €15 and €20 a month up to 500 flows. For customers subscribing to its accounting or invoicing software, the approved platform is included up to 250 monthly invoices. Its terms of service state that one e-reporting flow counts as one invoice and that each invoice sent or received is counted regardless of status.

Shine Facture moves the limit to the customer base. Free costs €0 and caps the customer base at five. The FAQ says electronic receipt and issuance are included at no extra charge across all offers. Yet the detailed grid still marked electronic issuance as “forthcoming” for Free on 22 August. l0g therefore retains the zero-price entry but flags the activation date for confirmation. Start is equivalent to €9 a month on annual billing, or €11 month by month. Plus is equivalent to €20 a month on annual billing, or €25 month by month, and adds a second access.

Kolecto reserves its €0 offer for the first twelve months of certain newly created businesses. Normal pricing then depends on headcount: €12, €39 or €99 a month, with annual invoice quotas and additional modules. Here, free describes an acquisition period, not the company’s stable cost.

The move to a paid plan therefore depends on the meter used.

It may be documents, transactions, customers, users, companies, addresses, received invoices, e-reporting days or activated applications.

Included platforms blur the standalone price

A second family of offers does not invoice the approved platform separately. The customer is already paying for something else.

Sage says use of its approved platform is integrated into several subscriptions, with caps specific to each product. Above those caps, usage is billed. The page directs customers to sales for overage prices. An existing customer may therefore face no immediate surcharge while still being unable to calculate publicly what the future bill will be beyond the cap.

Cegid advertises access to its approved platform at no extra charge for several Cegid and EBP products. l0g found no unified grid comparing caps, overages and configurations across the entire range.

Dext says the approved platform is included in existing subscriptions at no extra charge. Its free account documents compliant invoice creation and sending, and says it supports compliance for sending and receipt. The PA documentation nevertheless describes e-reporting as “forthcoming” and does not explicitly say whether it will be included in the standalone €0 account. Dext could therefore qualify as a fourteenth free entry, but l0g excludes it from the strict count until that scope is published unambiguously.

Axonaut presents the approved platform as included in its management software. Here too, the customer buys a suite containing CRM, invoicing, cash management and administrative features. A standalone price for the approved platform does not really exist.

This distinction is not a criticism. Native integration may be the cheapest answer for a company already using the software. It can reduce connectors, training and duplicate entry. It can also make comparison harder because the regulatory price disappears into a larger bundle.

At the other end of the spectrum, some providers publish a clear subscription.

Docaposte lists €19 before VAT a month for Starter, with 50 received invoices and advertised ten-year evidential archiving. Standard costs €69 for 100 documents and adds e-reporting, among other functions. Advanced is displayed at €149.

Sellsy charges per user with a minimum of two licences. At the collection date, Standard Facturation carried a first-year promotion of €29 per user per month against a public standard price of €39, with annual commitment. The promotion expires on 31 August 2026. Extending €29 across three years would therefore create a false calculation.

Odoo occupies a special position. Its “One App Free” plan allows one application with unlimited users. The Invoicing app advertises unlimited sending and receipt. Zero holds as long as the company remains inside that single application. Adding other applications or requiring an external API moves it into paid plans.

A calculator that preserves the unknowns

Comparing these offers through one monthly price would be misleading. The l0g calculator applies public price lists to a company profile over 36 months and leaves blank what a source cannot establish.

DIRECT-COST CALCULATOR

Does zero survive your company profile?

Enter volume, users and API needs. The tool prices only directly calculable public tariffs over 36 months. An unknown remains unknown.

local · zero tracker

Public direct cost over 36 months

32 flows/month

Abby

public calculation

Basique plan at €0

Public direct cost: €0 for the individual-use scope used here.

Key points

Companies still choose their platform

How l0g counted zero

Five standalone zero-price offers

The meter hidden behind zero

Included platforms blur the standalone price

A calculator that preserves the unknowns

Starting profile

Public direct cost over 36 months

Abby

Dougs Facturation

Indy

Odoo Facturation

Pennylane

Qonto Facturation

Shine Facture

Tiime

SUPER PDP

macompta.fr

VosFactures

B2BRouter

Docaposte e-Facture / SERES

Sellsy Facturation

Axonaut

Cegid

Dext

Kolecto

Sage

The components of total cost

Volume

Users and companies

Integration

Archiving

Support

Financial services

Exit

The business model behind a free regulatory service

Switching now has a regulatory clock

Two pricing alerts without public evidence

The comparator Bercy does not publish

Result: real free cores with variable boundaries

Method and main sources

Limitations