People searching price of cleartax gst software are usually deciding between two shapes of tool rather than two feature lists. This page sets out the difference, what it costs you either way, and how to test the alternative for free.
The real difference between ClearTax and Billixo
ClearTax is a cloud tax platform, best known for GST return preparation and e-invoicing rather than day-to-day counter billing.
Billixo takes the other route: it runs in a browser, so there is nothing to install, nothing tied to one machine, and no backup routine that is your responsibility. You sign in from the counter, from home, or from a phone in the market, and it is the same account.
Neither is universally better. If billing has to keep working through an internet outage, installed desktop software has a genuine advantage that no browser-based product can match — including this one. If billing has to keep working when the office computer dies, the advantage runs the other way.
Billixo is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to any other software mentioned on this page. All product names, logos and brands are the property of their respective owners and are used here only to describe what people are comparing. For current features, pricing and terms of any other product, please refer to that vendor’s own website.
Comparing the price honestly
We do not publish anybody else's prices here, and that is deliberate rather than evasive: prices change, editions differ, and being confidently wrong about a competitor's pricing in public is both unfair and unreliable. Take the current figure from their own site.
What is worth saying is how to compare whatever figure you find, because the headline price is usually the smallest part.
Count the second user, because that is where most pricing steps up and it is the thing most small businesses need within a year. Count renewal against any first-year price. Count the modules you actually need rather than the edition that was quoted. Count setup and training, which for installed software is often real money. And count the hours — a system that takes two minutes per invoice instead of thirty seconds costs more than any licence difference, and nobody invoices for their own time.
The honest number on this side: the Free plan is ₹0 with no card and no expiry, and the paid plans are bought for a fixed term, paid once, with no auto-renewal and no card kept on file. When a term ends the account settles back onto Free rather than being locked.
Comparing against a filing and compliance tool
ClearTax is a cloud tax platform, best known for GST return preparation and e-invoicing rather than day-to-day counter billing.
This is a comparison between two different halves of one job, and conflating them is an expensive mistake. A compliance tool takes figures and puts them on the portal. A billing system produces the figures.
So the useful question is where your pain actually is. If you already have clean numbers and the portal work is slow, a filing tool is the right purchase. If closing the period and arriving at correct numbers is the slow part — which for most small businesses it is — then no filing tool will touch it, because the problem happened three weeks earlier at the invoice.
The expensive arrangement is both: invoices raised in one place, returns prepared in another, and a hand-off between them. That join is where the errors live — a GSTIN that was never captured, a place of supply typed wrong, an HSN left blank — and every one of them has to be repaired by hand at return time.
This product sits on the billing side and produces GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B figures plus the GSTR-2B reconciliation. Filing itself stays with you or your practitioner, which is where the responsibility sits anyway.
What Billixo offers
- Browser-based. Nothing to install or update; the same account from any machine or phone.
- A genuinely free plan. ₹0, no card, no expiry — so you can test it properly before deciding anything.
- GST compliance built in. Every Rule 46 field on the invoice, HSN/SAC per line, and the CGST/SGST versus IGST split derived from place of supply rather than chosen.
- AI bill scanning. Photograph a supplier bill and it becomes a draft purchase record.
- AI HSN lookup from a plain description, for the codes nobody remembers.
- Inventory that moves as you bill, with low-stock warnings.
- Receivables and reminders — ageing, part payments, and a written chase you can send on WhatsApp.
- GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B summaries, exported in a format a practitioner can open directly.
- Bulk import and export — CSV and Excel in; CSV, Excel and JSON out, export free on every plan.
- Fixed-term pricing with no auto-renewal. One payment, no card kept on file.
How to compare them properly, in an afternoon
- Open a free Billixo account — no card, so this costs nothing but time.
- Enter your real business details: GSTIN and registration state, not sample data.
- Add two customers, one in your state and one outside it. This is the test that separates good tax logic from a dropdown.
- Add three of your actual products with their HSN codes.
- Raise the same invoice in both systems and time it honestly.
- Compare the two PDFs side by side as your customer would see them.
- Export a GST summary from each and open both. Whichever needs less repair is the one that will save you the month.
Cost, compared fairly
We will not quote ClearTax’s prices here, because they change and it is not our place to state them — check their site for what they charge today.
What we can state is ours. Billixo has a Free plan at ₹0 with no card and no expiry, and paid plans bought for a fixed term with one payment and no auto-renewal. Nothing is charged per invoice and nothing is charged per user on the free plan.
The comparison worth making is not licence against licence anyway. It is total cost: licence, plus setup time, plus time per invoice forever, plus the cost of the errors the software lets through. That last one is usually the largest and is never on a pricing page.
Billixo is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to any other software mentioned on this page. All product names, logos and brands are the property of their respective owners and are used here only to describe what people are comparing. For current features, pricing and terms of any other product, please refer to that vendor’s own website.
Running both for a month
The lowest-risk way to change billing software is not to change it on a Monday. It is to run the new one alongside the old for a full month, billing a small, real subset of customers through it.
By the end of that month you know three things a demo cannot tell you: whether it is actually faster on your invoices, whether the GST summary reconciles to what you billed, and whether anyone on your team quietly refuses to use it.
A free plan makes that month cost nothing, which is most of why it exists. Start free now.
HSN and SAC codes, and how many digits you need
Every line on a tax invoice needs an HSN code for goods or a SAC for services. How many digits depends on your aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year — smaller businesses report fewer digits than larger ones, and B2B and B2C invoices are treated differently.
Because the requirement is tied to turnover and has been tightened in stages, the practical answer is to store the fullest code you can against each product once, and let the software report at the level required. A six-digit code can always be truncated; a two-digit one cannot be expanded.
Billixo keeps the code on the product record and carries it onto every line automatically, and its AI HSN lookup will suggest one from a plain description when you genuinely do not know.
Invoice numbering: one unbroken series per year
The invoice number has to be consecutive, unique within the financial year, and no more than sixteen characters of letters, numbers, slashes and hyphens. Gaps invite questions. Duplicates cause them.
This is the single most common reason a spreadsheet-based billing setup fails an audit: two people billing on two machines, both starting from the last number they remember. A system that issues the number centrally cannot make that mistake.
The series restarts on 1 April, and Billixo restarts it for you rather than waiting to be told.
The AI, and what it is actually for
The useful application of AI to billing is not a chatbot. It is the twenty minutes a day spent retyping things that already exist on paper.
- Scan a supplier bill. Photograph it; the lines, the GSTIN, the tax and the totals come back as a draft you check rather than a form you fill.
- Find the HSN code. Describe the product in plain words and get a code to confirm, instead of scrolling a list of eleven thousand.
- Ask about your own numbers. "What is outstanding over sixty days?" answered from your data, not a manual.
- Write the reminder. A polite, specific chase for an overdue invoice, ready to send on WhatsApp.
Nothing is sent anywhere until you ask for it, and the platform runs on whichever model it has been configured with — including one hosted on your own server.
Who this actually suits
It fits a business that raises between a handful and a few hundred invoices a month and would rather not think about GST between the 10th and the 20th: traders, distributors, retail counters, workshops, agencies, consultants, contractors and manufacturers who sell on invoice.
It fits less well if you need deep manufacturing costing, multi-currency consolidation, or payroll — those are different products, and pretending otherwise wastes your evaluation time.
If you are not sure which side of that line you fall on, the free plan answers it in an afternoon at no cost. Start free now.
Free, and what it costs you instead
Free software usually costs you something that is not money: your data held hostage, an export that does not work, ads inside your invoice, or a "free" tier so narrow it is a demo with a login screen.
The line here is drawn differently. Export works on the free plan — CSV, Excel and JSON — because data you cannot get out is not data you own. The invoice is a real compliant invoice, not a sample. The limits are on volume and on the conveniences, not on whether the thing works.
Start free now. If it does not suit you, take your data with you.
Where your data lives
On the server this platform is installed on. Every record carries a company identifier and every query is scoped to the signed-in account at the framework level, so one business cannot read another’s data by any route, including a crafted one.
Sign-in is rate limited, sessions can be restricted to one device per user, and passwords are stored hashed. Exports are available on every plan, free included: if you ever want to leave, your data leaves with you.
Frequently asked questions
Can I import my data from ClearTax?
If you can export your customer and product lists to CSV or Excel — and most systems can — then yes, bulk import takes them in one pass. Outstanding invoices normally come across as opening balances rather than as full invoice history.
Do I have to stop using ClearTax to try this?
No, and you should not. Run both for a month on a small slice of real billing. That is the only comparison that tells you anything, and the free plan makes it cost nothing.
Which is cheaper?
We will not state ClearTax’s pricing — check their site. Ours starts at ₹0 on a free plan with no card and no expiry, and the paid plans are fixed-term with one payment and no auto-renewal.
Are the invoices valid for GST?
Yes. Every invoice carries the fields Rule 46 requires — GSTIN, HSN/SAC on each line, place of supply, the correct CGST/SGST or IGST split, and a consecutive invoice series that restarts each financial year.
Can I move my existing customers and products in?
Yes. Bulk import from CSV or Excel on any paid plan, and export back out in CSV, Excel or JSON at any time, including on Free. Most people bring their party and item lists across in one pass and carry outstanding invoices as opening balances.
Start free, decide later
You do not have to choose a plan to begin. Start on Free, use it for as long as it suits you, and upgrade only when a limit actually gets in your way — never automatically, and never because a countdown ran out.
Open the software demo → — or create the free account from the same page.
Read the full details → on the home page, including pricing and the AI features.
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